In This Update:
• U.S. Web Ad Spending Dropped in First Quarter
• Research In Motion Acquires GPS Company Dash Navigation
• Ranks Of Active VCs Dwindling By Any Measure
• ESPN The Magazine To Charge for Content Online
• In Downturns, Internet Companies Look to Sell Start-Ups
• IPO Caution Still Outweighs Optimism
• Best Buy Adds Digital Downloads with CinemaNow Deal
• Jobs Ready to Return to Apple Helm
• Study: Just a Few on Twitter Do All the Tweeting
• Report: Tech Job Market Not Getting Any Better
• Court Case Against VeriSign, .Com Monopoly Revived

• UK’s Wonga Raises $22.5 Million for Short Term Loans

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U.S. Web Ad Spending Dropped in First Quarter
MEDIAWEEK
U.S. Internet ad spending slid in the first quarter of this year by five percent compared to the same period last year, netting out at $5.5 billion, according to the latest report issued by Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. That figure represents the lowest ad spend level in nearly two years, and a decline of roughly ten percent versus the fourth quarter-when the industry’s long period of nearly uninterrupted growth showed signs of stalling.
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Research In Motion Acquires GPS Company Dash Navigation
TECHCRUNCH
Research In Motion has acquired Dash Navigation for an undisclosed amount, according to a spokeswoman for RIM. Dash, which makes makes the car GPS device Dash Express been struggling to compete with GPS device competitors like Garmin, and shifted its focus away from the hardware business last year towards selling its software to other device manufacturers. Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia backed, Dash originally manufactured a network-connected GPS that pooled the location and speeds of all nearby Dash owners to give them back real-time traffic reports.
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Ranks Of Active VCs Dwindling By Any Measure
WALL STREET JOURNAL
How big is the U.S. venture industry? The National Venture Capital Association says that in 2008 there were 882 firms that had raised at least one fund in the last eight years, a substantial drop from 2007 when there were 1,019 fitting that definition. Another measure is to look at the number of venture firms that made a U.S. investment in 2008. While that methodology yields a number of active firms – 848 – that is in the same ballpark, it shows a less dramatic decline. But all bets are off this year and next as many funds raised during the tech bubble hit the end of their natural lives. The active investor data is from VentureSource, an industry tracker owned by Dow Jones & Co.
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ESPN The Magazine To Charge for Content Online
PAIDCONTENT
ESPN The Magazine becomes the latest print publication to try charging for its content online. The magazine announced on its website Friday that its online version, ESPNTheMag.com, was merging with the ESPN Insider service, which charges $39.95 a year for specialized sports content. “As of Friday June 5, ESPNTheMag.com ceased to exist as we know it, but the site’s signature pieces and voice continue to live on the Insider page,” the magazine alerts visitors. (Print subscribers can continue to access magazine articles via the Insider for free).
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In Downturns, Internet Companies Look to Sell Start-Ups
REUTERS
Many Internet and media companies that were busy buying start-ups in the boom years could shed assets they no longer deem central to their business, as the recession imposes an age of frugality. Scathed by the heavy losses they incurred when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, tech companies moved quickly to cut costs and focus on staying profitable as the current recession hit. Now, as the doldrums linger, many are taking a hard look at the start-ups they bought during the good times, many of which were never a good fit. Some of those acquisitions could wind up right back on the sales block.
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IPO Caution Still Outweighs Optimism
WALL STREET JOURNAL
Companies and investment bankers may be talking with greater frequency about the possibilities of launching IPOs in the U.S., but the number actually filing paperwork remains small, with only six deals filed this year. A case study of how companies view today’s market for initial public offerings of stock can be seen at Metastorm Inc., a Baltimore software company that filed to go public more than a year ago but withdrew its deal in November because of the harsh environment for new stocks.
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Best Buy Adds Digital Downloads with CinemaNow Deal
PAIDCONTENT
Best Buy wants a piece of the booming digital movie distribution business-and it has brokered a new deal with CinemaNow parent company Sonic Solutions to get it. Movie buffs will soon be able to download films directly from BestBuy.com, and through select devices the company sells in-store. This is the second major distribution deal CinemaNow has scored this year, since it’s supposed to power Blockbuster’s online movie service.
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Jobs Ready to Return to Apple Helm
WALL STREET JOURNAL
After months of uncertainty about Steve Jobs’s health, the Apple Inc. chief executive appears on track to return from medical leave this month, said people familiar with Apple. The big question now among Apple’s business partners, investors and fans: Will Mr. Jobs make his reappearance at Apple’s annual software developers’ conference next week in San Francisco, possibly to unveil a new iPhone? Mr. Jobs, a survivor of pancreatic cancer, went on medical leave in January. He had earlier exhibited significant weight loss, and cited a nutritional problem related to a hormone imbalance.
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Study: Just a Few on Twitter Do All the Tweeting
REUTERS
A tiny fraction of those who use the fast-growing social network phenomenon Twitter generate nearly all the content, a Harvard study shows. That makes it hard for companies to use the micro-blogging site as an accurate gauge of public opinion, the Harvard Business School study showed. The Harvard study examined public entries of a randomly selected group of 300,000 Twitter users. The researchers studied in May the content created in the lifetime of the users’ Twitter accounts. It found that 10 percent of Twitter users generated more than 90 percent of the content, said Mikolaj Jan Piskorski, who led the research. More than half of all Twitter users post messages on the site less than once every 74 days.
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Report: Tech Job Market Not Getting Any Better
WALL STREET JOURNAL
While the unemployment figures released Friday suggest that the worst of the recession may be over, the people who hire tech workers aren’t showing it. Eighty-one percent of businesses said that they are scaling back their hiring of information-technology pros, according to a survey of 1,900 HR execs and recruiters to be released Monday by job Web site Dice.com. The number is up slightly from a similar survey in November, when 73% of respondents said that they were scaling back hiring. Meanwhile, 43% of businesses said that they thought it was likely they would lay off IT staff over the next six months, down slightly from the 48% who thought layoffs were likely in November.
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Court Case Against VeriSign, .Com Monopoly Revived
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
The Bay Area company that holds exclusive rights to the registry of dot-com domain names can be sued under antitrust laws for allegedly conspiring to set prices above market rates by several dollars per consumer, and hundreds of millions of dollars overall, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a suit accusing VeriSign Inc. of colluding with the government-backed nonprofit that oversees domain names to fix prices and lock out competition. Plaintiffs include companies that buy registration rights from VeriSign and their customers that purchase dot-com names. The suit challenged VeriSign’s 2006 contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. Signed without competitive bidding, the six-year agreement allowed the company to raise domain name prices, which were limited to $6 at the end of 2006, by 7 percent a year in four of the six years.
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UK’s Wonga Raises $22.5 Million for Short Term Loans
ALARM:CLOCK
London-based Wonga has raised $22.25M led by Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, with existing investor, Balderton Capital. Wonga offers small, short-term cash advances to UK consumers. They plan to use the money to expand beyond the UK. They boast “our automated, real-time processing systems leaves traditional lenders eating dust.” Wonga says it has done 100K cash advances of up to 30 days since it launched 11 months ago.
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Tags: Accel Partners, Apple, CinemaNow, Greylock Partners, RIM, Twitter, Venture Capital, Wonga