In This Update:
• Why Microsoft Should Bid Again – and Yahoo Should Accept
• Quantance Raises $12 Million to Boost Cell Phone Reception
• Citysearch Becomes More Social and Mobile
• Glam Launches GlamApps, a sort of Facebook for Advertisers
• National Geographic Society To Do Video Games
• Tech Firms Turn to Social Media to Reach Consumers
• Is YouTube the Next Google?
• Amazon’s CDN Won’t Hurt Akamai Or Limelight — Not Yet, At Least
• Publicis Acquires Tribal Agency, Buying Into LatAm Digital Marketing
• Blinkx Reboots Bid For Ad Net MIVA, New All-Cash Offer

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Why Microsoft Should Bid Again – and Yahoo Should Accept
GIGAOM
Now that Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang has finally stepped aside, removing what many (including Ballmer himself) saw as one of the main barriers to bringing the two companies together, Microsoft should re-ignite acquisition talks with the company. But that’s not the only reason. There are plenty of other good ones why it should do so – and why Yahoo should accept. After his last effort to strike some kind of a deal with Yahoo ended in failure, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said categorically that the software behemoth had no interest in making another acquisition bid for the troubled web company. Was he just bluffing? That should become obvious relatively soon, now that co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang has finally stepped aside, removing what many (including Ballmer himself) saw as one of the main barriers to bringing the two companies together. But that’s not the only reason Microsoft should re-ignite acquisition talks with the company. There are plenty of other good ones why it should do so – and why Yahoo should accept.
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Quantance Raises $12 Million to Boost Cell Phone Reception
GIGAOM
Quantance, a San Mateo, Calif.-based chip firm, has raised a $12 million second round of funding to build a component part that will improve cell phone data reception by boosting the signal the phone sends to the base station. The funding, led by the TD Fund, with DoCoMO Capital, Granite Ventures and InterWest Partners also participating, supports Quantance’s efforts to manufacture and market its analog chip. The involvement of DoCoMo Capital, the venture arm of the Japanese cell phone giant, could help boost Quantance’s acceptance in the handset market if NTT DoCoMo pushes the chip for its own handsets.
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Citysearch Becomes More Social and Mobile
READ WRITE WEB
Citysearch, the popular local restaurant and shopping guide, announced a new beta version of its service tonight. The new version provides a better local search experience, with the ability to search specific neighborhoods instead of just metropolitan areas. Citysearch also announced a retooled mobile site, which lets users read and write reviews on their mobile devices, and gives them access to menus from participating restaurants. Citysearch has also implemented Facebook Connect, which allows users to log in to the site with their Facebook accounts, and the company plans to roll out OpenID support early next year.
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Glam Launches GlamApps, a sort of Facebook for Advertisers
VENTURE BEAT
Glam Media, a company targeting content and ads mainly at women, is letting advertisers launch full-fledged widgets and applications on the Glam site. Just like Facebook lets developers create applications that run freely on its site, Glam is doing the same for advertisers. The main difference is that these advertisers get to have their display ads run front-and-center throughout their applications or widgets. The apps they create are designed to be integrated into the blogs and other publishing sites in Glam’s network.
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National Geographic Society To Do Video Games
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The successful science and educational organization The National Geographic Society, best known for their long-running magazine, has just made an interesting announcement. Their next venture in their for-profit operations is video games. This month, National Geographic Games, a newly formed division within the company, will launch three gaming products to be soon followed by another in December and three (so far) are planned for next year. The games will be developed for major gaming consoles, handhelds, and mobile platforms, including, yes, the iPhone.
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Tech Firms Turn to Social Media to Reach Consumers
REUTERS
Recognizing the limits of traditional advertising, established technology companies are diving headlong into the sometimes chaotic landscape of social media to promote their products.
Companies ranging from PC maker Dell Inc to storage equipment maker NetApp Inc are increasingly turning to outside blogs, viral videos and websites such as FaceBook, Twitter, FriendFeed and Digg — and their tens of millions of users — to reach consumers. These social networking sites harness the age-old power of the word-of-mouth recommendation and can be potent marketing tools. If nothing else, they demand a higher level of consumer engagement than conventional ads.
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Is YouTube the Next Google?
READ WRITE WEB
During the Web 2.0 Summit recently, the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, pointed out that one of the reasons the world is no longer the same is YouTube. For better or worse, said Mr. Newsom, we are now always on the record. Every significant and insignificant conversation is being recorded, and the videos are available on YouTube. His co-panelist Joe Trippi, who was in charge of Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, further explained that because of YouTube, we have now entered the age of transparency. Joe argued that because we are always on record, the only sensible thing to do is to tell the truth. The panelists agreed that YouTube, and the online video movement, is fundamentally changing our society.
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Amazon’s CDN Won’t Hurt Akamai Or Limelight — Not Yet, At Least
SILICON ALLEY INSIDER
Amazon (AMZN) announced the roll-out of its long-expected content delivery service , calling it “Cloudfront.” One common reaction: The service will disrupt CDN leaders Akamai (AKAM) or Limelight (LLNW). Not immediately. Why? Our own Dan Frommer laid out the case in September: Amazon.com is jumping into the content delivery network market. Smart move. But it won’t be a significant threat to industry leaders Akamai or Limelight any time soon. That’s because it’s not supposed to: Amazon is targeting the users of its other cloud services like S3, EC2, etc. In fact, it requires that its CDN clients use its S3 storage system, which pretty much ensures that it won’t steal any of the CDNs’ huge media and enterprise customers any time soon.
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Publicis Acquires Tribal Agency, Buying Into LatAm Digital Marketing
PAID CONTENT
Big Four ad agency Publicis is now buying into Latin American digital advertising, acquiring Sao Paulo-based Tribal to add to its Digitas online ad group. Digitas CEO Laura Lang said Tribal is “fundamental” to expanding in the growing region. Publicis bought Digitas back in 2006 and has grafted on various international digital acquisitions in the UK, India, Singapore, China and its native France, so this will be a foothold across the Atlantic.
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Blinkx Reboots Bid For Ad Net MIVA, New All-Cash Offer
PAIDCONTENT
Blinkx isn’t taking no for an answer. Despite dropping its pursuit of pay-per-click ad network MIVA last month after being rebuffed, it’s now restarted the reverse-takeover bid after recording strong earnings last week. At $0.55 per share ($19 million), the new bid is far less than the $1.20 ($41 million) first offered back in August, but is still 108 percent up on MIVA’s Tuesday close of $0.26 and comes in all-cash. MIVA’s share price has tanked by 85 percent this year and the outfit last week raised a $10 million credit facility after seeing Q3 losses widen from $3.3 million to $10.5 million.
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