In This Update:
• NYTCo Hires Goldman, Sachs To Sell Interest In New England Sports Ventures
• Yahoo Reports $303 Million Fourth-Quarter Loss
• Search Ad Firm WordStream Raises $4 Million First Round; New CEO
• Chicago Digital Marketing Firm Manifest Digital Raises $9 Million
• Mobile Device Developer Modu Raises $7Million from Qualcomm
• AT&T: 1.9 Million iPhones Activated
• Gmail Gets Offline Support, Finally
• Movie Channel to Debut on Web
• Websense Buys Defensio
• Four Approaches to Music Recommendations: Pandora, Mufin, Lala, and eMusic
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NYTCo Hires Goldman, Sachs To Sell Interest In New England Sports Ventures, Red Sox
PAIDCONTENT
The New York Times Company went public this morning with the effort to sell its 17.75 percent interest in New England Sports Ventures, LLC, (NESV) announcing the hiring of Goldman, Sachs & Co. to “explore the possible sale.” NESV is among the most potentially lucrative non-publishing assets the company owns; it includes the Boston Red Sox, Fenway Park, 80 percent of New England Sports Net, and half of NASCAR’s Roush Fenway Racing team. NYTCo, the second-largest shareholder in the holding company, acquired its stake in 2002, before the storied team won two World Series; the value has been estimated at about $166 million with thoughts that it could sell for about $200 million.
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Yahoo Reports $303 Million Fourth-Quarter Loss
SFGATE
Yahoo Inc. said Tuesday that it lost $303 million in the fourth quarter because of one-time costs in what is the first financial report under new CEO Carol Bartz. She took the reins two weeks ago, replacing co-founder Jerry Yang, who resigned after an 18-month tenure marked by slowing growth, a failed takeover bid by Microsoft Corp. and a depressed share price. Although not as bad as expected, the latest results did little to dispel investor appetite for a turnaround. Yahoo lost $303.4 million (22 cents per share) in the fourth quarter compared with a $205.7 million profit (15 cents) a year ago. Excluding the $600 million in costs for layoffs and a decline in value of overseas assets, Yahoo would have earned 17 cents per share, exceeding analysts’ expectations of a 13-cent profit.
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Search Ad Firm WordStream Raises $4 Million First Round; New CEO
PAIDCONTENT
WordStream has picked up $4 million in a first round of financing led by Sigma Partners; the investment also comes with a new President and CEO, Rob Adler. Adler previously served as co-founder and president of CCBN, an online financial services company Thompson Financial acquired in 2004; founder Larry Kim will now serve as VP, marketing and products. The Boston-based search ad technology firm will use the funds to support the launch of its new campaign management suite, which includes support for both paid and organic search optimization.
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Chicago Digital Marketing Firm Manifest Digital Raises $9 Million
ALARM CLOCK
Chicago’s Manifest Digital has raised up to $9M in VC funding from BIA Digital Partners. Not much in the way of tech here. This strikes us as more of a regional, revenue growth play. The firm was founded in 2001 and sells the table to large corporates from design, rapid application development, hosted management services and online marketing strategy.
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Mobile Device Developer Modu Raises $7Million from Qualcomm
ZD NET
Israel’s daily business newspaper Calcalist is reporting that San Diego’s Qualcomm has invested $7 million in modu, a modular mobile phone maker headed by the inventor of the USB flash drive.
Founder and CEO Dov Moran started modu in 2007 in Kfar-Saba, Israel, after selling his previous company, msystems, to SanDisk in 2006 for $1.6 billion.
In a way, modu’s concept is similar to a flash drive.
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AT&T: 1.9 Million iPhones Activated
ZD NET
AT&T said Wednesday that it activated 1.9 million iPhone 3Gs in the fourth quarter with 40 percent of those activations representing new customers. In the back half of 2008, AT&T activated more than 4.3 million iPhones.AT&T also noted that it iPhone customers deliver higher revenue per user and have lower churn rates. The news comes amid a mixed quarter for AT&T where its wireless business shined, but earnings fell a penny short of expectations. Like Verizon’s report on Tuesday, AT&T’s financial results had a little bit for everyone. The overall message, however, is that the two telecom giants-Verizon and AT&T-can weather a downturn well.
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Gmail Gets Offline Support, Finally
READ WRITE WEB
One of the longest-running requests for Google’s web mail service Gmail has been for offline functionality. Now, finally, Gmail users will be able to type up those emails inside an airplane. Google has just announced offline Gmail support via Gmail Labs – to start with for consumers and businesses using Google Apps, but regular Gmail consumers will get it over the next couple of days. The offline feature was built using Gears, Google’s offline web application API.
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Movie Channel to Debut on Web
WALL STREET JOURNAL
A trio of studios attempting to create a movie channel plans an early push onto the Web in May as the consortium battles to score key distribution deals on cable and satellite television.
The joint venture of Viacom Inc., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. disclosed long-awaited details of the channel — including a name, Epix — signaling that the studios are forging ahead
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Websense Buys Defensio
SOCAL TECH
San Diego-based Websense said Tuesday that it has acquired Defensio, a provider of technology for dealing with spam on social networking and Web 2.0 web sites. Financial terms of the acquisition were not announced. WebSense said the buy would extend the firm’s capabilities by providing visibility into spam posted on blogs, user forums, and social networking web sites. Defensio’s tools are used to stop comment spam in blogs. Defensio founder Carl Mercier joins Websense as Director of Software Development.
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Four Approaches to Music Recommendations: Pandora, Mufin, Lala, and eMusic
READ WRITE WEB
Currently, we are seeing four different approaches to giving music recommendations in the market place – though the lines between them are often fluid and some services mash them up in different ways. For the sake of this post, we will only look at a small sample of music recommendation and discovery services that we think are representative of a specific approach. Pandora: Humans Only, Mufin: Algorithms Only, Lala: Explicit P2P Recommendations, and eMusic: Hybrid Approach.
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