January 22, 2009

In This Update:
• Sony Projects Record Operating Loss as Demand Falls
• Microsoft Sees Profits Fall, Starts Layoffs
• Publicis Invites Microsoft, Hulu, Yahoo to Online Video Pool Party
• 4INFO Raises $20 Million for Ad-Supported Texting Campaigns
• Do Good Site GoodGuide Raises $3.73 Million in First Round
• Washington Post Launches Database of Political Who’s Whos
• YouTube Will Soon Let Big Content Partners Bring Their Own Ads
• Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
• Lenovo’s Bizarre W700d Advert
• Industry Moves: Ex-IAC, Microsoft Exec Berkowitz Lands at Move
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Sony Projects Record Operating Loss as Demand Falls
BLOOMBERG
The outlook increases pressure on Chief Executive Officer Howard Stringer, 66, who is reorganizing the main electronics business after failing to meet his pledge to raise Sony’s operating profit margin to 5 percent. Recessions in Europe, Japan and the U.S. have cut consumer spending, while Sony lacks hit products that have powered profits at Apple Inc. and Nintendo Co. Weaker demand, the stronger yen and reorganization expenses led to the earnings shortfall, Tokyo-based Sony, which had forecast profit of 200 billion yen, said today. The company was projected to post an operating loss, or sales minus the cost of goods sold and administrative expenses, of 70 billion yen, based on the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of five brokerages.
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Microsoft Sees Profits Fall, Starts Layoffs
ARS TECHNICA
Microsoft, which was scheduled to deliver its financial results after the close of the markets today, gave the markets a surprise by releasing its results early. The news will certainly not make for a happy day of trading for the company’s shares, as revenue came in at only slightly above last year’s levels, while the mix of revenue sources shifted in a way that actually dropped the company’s earnings-per-share by six percent. The company has responded by announcing it would immediately drop 1,400 employees, and might shed as many as 5,000 within the next 18 months.
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Publicis Invites Microsoft, Hulu, Yahoo to Online Video Pool Party
PAIDCONTENT
Ad agencies and broadband sites continue to hold out hope for some secret to unlocking cascades of revenue from online video. So while YouTube tinkers at the margins with various ad formats and programs, Publicis Groupe’s media agency Starcom MediaVest Groupe isn’t waiting for the solution to pop from the minds at Google. The WSJ has the details on the Paris-based company’s attempts to gather a team of online media firms to finally figure out what ad features work best for online video.
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4INFO Raises $20 Million for Ad-Supported Texting Campaigns
MOCO NEWS
4INFO, the San Mateo, Calif.-based company that enables ad-supported text messaging campaigns for media companies, has raised $20 million in a round of funding that includes both equity and debt. Existing investors Peacock Equity and Gannett, US Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Sand Hill Capital participated in the round. New investor, Selby Ventures, also participated. The funding will be used to serve traditional media companies that are looking for integrated mobile campaigns, and develop marketing and media technologies. Already, it has delivered campaigns for a number of national brands.
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Do Good Site GoodGuide Raises $3.73 Million in First Round
ALARM CLOCK
San Francisco’s GoodGuide has raised $3.73M in Series A funding, says PEWire, from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and New Enterprise Associates. GoodGuide provides analysis and data on the health, environmental and social impacts of products and companies. At a recent getaway with some buddies who are environmental activists we were reminded how tough it is to keep up on how to be a good consumer. There seems to be so much conflicting information. GoodGuide seems to have the staff who you would turn to for answers on what baby wipes are best and what toys are most likely to be harmful. They recently won a Crunchy award which is a start at publicity but now they need to get into the Oprah’s and Good Morning America’s to make the site go mainstream.
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Washington Post Launches Database of Political Who’s Whos
CNET
The Washington Post today is launching Who Runs Gov, a site primarily made up of a database of personalities in the United States government. If one is looking for info on one’s state’s senator or representative, or details about a cabinet or high-ranking military official, it looks like the site could be a valuable resource. Who Runs Gov is a wiki, powered by MindTouch. Registered users can edit the pages, but changes don’t go live until the site’s staffers approve the edits. Also, subjects of Who Runs Gov profile pages (or their staff) will be able to submit their own profile information for inclusion on pages about them, a fundamental different to Wikipedia, where you’re not supposed to write about yourself.
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YouTube Will Soon Let Big Content Partners Bring Their Own Ads
TECHCRUNCH
Most of the ads have been contextual overlay ads sold and served up by YouTube. Currently very few media partners are able to sell their own ads on YouTube, but industry sources expect that this program will soon be expanded to more big media partners, possibly before the end of the first quarter. YouTube confirms that a few big partners, like CBS, can already sell their own ad inventory on both the videos in their YouTube channels and any videos with their content uploaded by users that is picked up by YouTube’s Content ID system. But this group is very limited. (YouTube wouldn’t comment on future plans).
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Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages
WASHINGTON POST
If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past. Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts. What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.
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Lenovo’s Bizarre W700d Advert
NEOWIN
Interesting is one word we’d describe it as but plain bizarre is the outcome of a brand new advert for Lenovo’s new W700d dual screen laptop.The laptop got a mention shortly before Christmas and was one of the star attractions at this years CES in Las Vegas. Lenovo’s marketing department is hardly creating a star like advert however. The ad shows a male office worker and female colleague on a late-night work session. Whilst the two are working the male starts geeking out and describes the features of the new W700ds laptop from Lenovo. Whilst he is boasting about built in colour calibrators the female colleague starts removing various items of clothing until she is topless and hidden behind her own laptop. The advert is bizarre and according to Cnet was posted to the official Lenovo company blog earlier this week.
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Industry Moves: Ex-IAC, Microsoft Exec Berkowitz Lands at Move
PAIDCONTENT
Move has a new CEO: Steve Berkowitz, who joined the company’s board after he left Microsoft earlier this year, now will lead the online real estate company. He succeeds Mikel Long, who is leaving the company and the board after seven years. Berkowitz was CEO of Ask.com when it was acquired by IAC in 2005; he left for Microsoft in 2006, where he was SVP of the online services business.
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