In This Update:
• Google’s Russian Deal Blocked by Regulators
• Android Market’s First 24 Hours: It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again
• Sony Stock Slides 14 Percent on Earnings Revision
• Forecast has Office, Vista Going in Opposite Directions
• Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Growth at Political Blogs this Election
• Email Still Matters: WordPress.com Tests Reply Via Email
• Leap Wireless Adds Two to Senior Management Team
• More Proof NBC Gets the Web: Watch Next Week’s ‘30 Rock’ Now
• New Palm OS Announced: ALP 3.0
• Venrock Backs Martini Media
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Google’s Russian Deal Blocked by Regulators
CLICKZ
A Russian regulatory body, the Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS), has refused to let Google acquire ad agency ZAO Begun in a proposed $140 million deal. Rambler Media, Begun’s British holding company, agreed to sell the six-year-old contextual ad network to Google in July. Google and Rambler had initially expected to close the transaction in September.
Rambler currently owns 50.1 percent of ZAO Begun, and under the terms of proposed deal would acquire the remaining 49.9 percent stake from Bannatyne Limited before selling all of Begun to Google.
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Android Market’s First 24 Hours: It’s Like Déjà Vu All Over Again
VENTURE BEAT
It’s hard to take any data collection in the 24-hour period following a product’s launch very seriously. But the mobile analytics and advertising firm Medialets compares its first data from Google’s Android Market with the first 24-hours of the iPhone App Store. Probably not surprisingly, the results are pretty similar. People like games, shopping, music and weather, according to the data. Perhaps not coincidentally, those often seem to be topics people talk about or do when they’re bored, or meet someone for the first time. Upon first meeting the G1, the initial phone built using Google’s Android platform by T-Mobile, users appear to be gravitating towards apps that are obvious.
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Sony Stock Slides 14 Percent on Earnings Revision
NEW YORK TIMES
Shares of Sony Corp. plummeted 14 percent Friday after the Japanese electronics giant slashed its annual profit and sales forecasts due to poor demand amid a global slowdown. Sony said Thursday afternoon its profit for the fiscal year through March 2009 would likely drop 59 percent from the previous year to 150 billion yen ($1.5 billion). It blamed deteriorating sales of flat-panel TVs and other gadgets for the dismal projection. Previously, Sony had expected to post 240 billion yen ($2.4 billion) in profit for the fiscal year. ”It was yet another indicator that the global economy is really slowing. The revision had a very negative impact on other tech-related stocks,” said Yutaka Miura, senior strategist at Shinko Securities.
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Forecast has Office, Vista Going in Opposite Directions
NEW YORK TIMES
Microsoft’s quarterly call with Wall Street on Thursday told the tale of two software franchises and their diverging financial fortunes. Microsoft’s Client revenue, which virtually all comes from sales of Windows Vista, grew just 2% year-over-year to $4.22 billion in its fiscal first quarter of 2009.
“That fell pretty far short of Microsoft’s expectations,” said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with the independent research firm Directions on Microsoft. “That’s always a worry, since it’s the core of the company’s business.”This was the second recent quarter out of three that saw Vista sales grow sluggishly or shrink. In Microsoft’s third quarter of 2008, Client revenue fell 24% year-over-year, although sales grew 13% year-over-year in the intervening fourth quarter.
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Huffington Post and Politico Lead Wave of Growth at Political Blogs this Election
COMSCORE
HuffingtonPost.com led among a group of selected stand-alone political blogs and news sites with 4.5 million visitors in September, up 472 percent versus year ago, while Politico.com attracted 2.4 million visitors (up 344 percent) and DrudgeReport.com saw 2.1 million visitors (up 70 percent). Looking at the demographic profiles for the top three sites, HuffingtonPost.com, Politico.com and DrudgeReport.com, one can conclude that visitors to these sites tend to be older, wealthier, and more likely to be male than the average U.S. Internet user.
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Email Still Matters: WordPress.com Tests Reply Via Email
READ WRITE WEB
Despite the competition and rumors of its demise, email remains a very prevalent part of our daily lives. (That’s one reason why Google continues to pour effort into Gmail.) Yet even with its familiarity, we’re still discovering new ways we can use email to control other applications and perform simple tasks. Now WordPress.com has embraced email for exactly that purpose. A new WordPress.com feature – currently in closed beta – adds actual utility to those “You’ve got a comment” emails: Reply via Email. For those WordPress.com hosted blogs that make it into the beta, replying to comments will be as easy as replying to email. Users simply fire off responses to comment-notification emails and their witty retorts appear in the comment string.
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Leap Wireless Adds Two to Senior Management Team
SOCALTECH
Leap Wireless International Inc. reported this week that it has strengthened its executive staff with the addition of two senior vice presidents. The San Diego-based provider of discount wireless voice and data communications services said Keith Buckley recently joined the company as senior vice president of supply chain management. Buckley, the company said, is responsible for supervising its end-to-end supply chain operations.
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More Proof NBC Gets the Web: Watch Next Week’s ‘30 Rock’ Now
SILICON ALLEY INSDIER
Another round of applause for NBC, which finally seems to have figured out the Web, via Hulu. The latest: You can catch the season premiere of Tina Fey’s ‘30 Rock’, which won’t air until next week, on Hulu today .
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New Palm OS Announced: ALP 3.0
CRUNCH GEAR
The new Palm OS, fresh out of Access, the company that bought PalmSource during the Great Post-.Com Boom Palm Upheaval. The OS supports Linux applications along with classic Garnet apps from the previous generation. Access has published PDFs on the OS and framework and there is some expectation that the OS will be hit Japan sometime this year and.
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Venrock Backs Martini Media
ALARM CLOCK
San Francisco’s Martini Media Network, which targets affluent individuals, has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Venrock. Martini has aggregated a collection of sites that target the rich in channels like sailing, private aircraft, cigars, golf, classic cars, and wine. Its a great niche. Enough said. Because many of these sites don’t get much traffic, they plan to bound away for advertisers through multiple channels including widgets, skins, newsletters and mobile. Martini is led by CEO Skip Brand who was Chief Revenue Officer at Pudding Media. He was also VP, Strategy and Business Development at JiWire and Sr. Director Business Development at Yahoo!
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