San Francisco – MyLikes, the developer of a social media
advertising service, has raised $5.6 million in its first round of venture
capital financing, TechCrunch reported.

Khosla Ventures led the investment
round; Lightspeed Partners and Metamorphic Ventures also participated.

Founded
in 2008, San Francisco-based MyLikes recruits celebrities and other social
influencers to post messages to Twitter and other services plugging various
products or services.

Participants can make more money based on how many
followers they have, and how often their contacts click on their endorsement
posts.

Related Links:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/28/mylikes-khosla-buchheit

http://mylikes.com

San Francisco – Funium, a developer of social games
"with social value, that produce real-world, useful content,"
announced on Monday that it has raised $1.2 million in angel funding, from
Family Odyssey and FamilyLink.

Funium said it will use the funds to launch its
first title, "Family Village," on Facebook in the second quarter.

The
game lets players "explore their personal family trees and unite with
their real families while building their own highly personalized virtual online
community."

Related Links:
http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110228005886/en

http://www.familyvillagegame.com

Los Gatos, Calif. – Netflix now offers subtitles on 30% of
all of the streaming video content available to its subscribers, the company
said in a blog post. The company aims to increase this to 80% viewing coverage
by the end of 2011, and said it has added a dedicated page listing all of the
TV episodes and movies with subtitles available.

Related Links:
http://blog.netflix.com/2011/02/30-of-netflix-streaming-content-has.html

http://movies.netflix.com/Subtitles

Los Angeles – A documentary in production about notorious
Sweden-based file-sharing site The Pirate Bay has received a $30,000 grant from
the Swedish government, TorrentFreak reports. "TPB-AFK," from Swedish
filmmaker Simon Klose, also raised more than $50,000 separately through a
fundraising campaign on Kickstarter. The film profiles The Pirate Bay’s
founders, and chronicles their 2009 trial on copyright infringement charges, as
well as events since.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4dluhuh
(TorrentFreak)

Foster City, Calif. – Sony (NYSE: SNE) has announced that it will slash
25% off the price of its PSP (PlayStation Portable) gaming device, which as of
Sunday will sell for $129 instead of $170.

The company said the device has sold
more than 23 million units in North America, and 67.8 million worldwide since
the PSP was launched in 2005.

The price cut comes as Sony prepares to launch
its next-generation PSP, expected to be released in the fall.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/6zr5723

Mountain View, Calif. – Google (NASD: GOOG) has rolled out changes to its
U.S. search engine aimed at reducing the ranking of low-value or lesser quality
Web pages produced by "content farms."

Google said the change
"noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries."

"This update is
designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites — sites which are low-value
add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very
useful," the company wrote on its blog.

"At the same time, it will
provide better rankings for high-quality sites–sites with original content and
information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so
on."

Google noted that the changes do not take into account data from its
recently launched Personal Blocklist add-on for its Chrome browser — which
lets users block low-quality sites on their own — but said the new changes to
its search algorithm address 84% of the most-blocked domains using the tool.

Demand Media (NYSE: DMD), the publisher deemed by many to be a "content farm"
that recently held its IPO, said it has not yet noticed any changes.

"It’s
impossible to speculate how these or any changes made by Google impact any online
business in the long term — but at this point in time, we haven’t seen a
material net impact on our Content & Media business," the company
wrote on its blog.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4fvkwux
(Google blog)

http://tinyurl.com/64crsf8
(Demand Media blog)

Los Angeles – Hollywood movie studios Universal, 20th
Century Fox and Summit Entertainment have filed claims against bankrupt video
chain Blockbuster, seeking immediate payments or even return of their DVDs,
according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Universal claims it is owed $6.4 million
by Blockbuster, while Summit is seeking $9.5 million and Fox says it is owed $7
million.

Blockbuster said earlier this week that it has received a $290 million
buyout offer from an investor group, and that it has initiated an auction
process for other prospective bidders.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/69wsuk7
(Hollywood Reporter)

Los Angeles – News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) has begun its efforts to sell off
its struggling Myspace social network-turned entertainment portal in earnest, and
has received early interest from some 20 potential suitors, Reuters reported, citing
a person familiar with the talks. The company earlier this month retained the
services of investment bank Allen & Co. to assist with the sale, and
Reuters’ source said News Corp. will initiate discussions with interested
parties in the second week of March.

Suitors are rumored to include private
equity and venture capital firms, as well as social media firms such as Zynga
or MocoSpace.

News Corp. acquired Myspace for $580 million in 2005.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4dayrwd
(Reuters)

Washington – Fearing the deal could give Google (NASD: GOOG) too much
power in the travel search market, the Justice Department is poised to block
the Silicon Valley company’s $700 million acquisition of Massachusetts-based
ITA Software, barring last-minute negotiations, Politico reported. ITA’s
software is used by most major airlines and travel distributors to organize
flight information.

Clients include American, Continental, Southwest, United,
US Airways and Virgin Atlantic, as well as online travel sites including
Hotwire, Kayak, Orbitz and TripAdvisor.

Since Google first announced the deal
in July, the online travel industry has sought to block the acquisition,
alleging the company’s dominance in search would give it an unfair advantage.

A
key to saving the deal, say industry insiders, could be Google’s willingness to
continue giving rivals access to the software under reasonable licensing terms.

Related Links:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/50147.html

Dulles, Va. – Echo360, a provider of Internet audio and
video technology used by universities, has raised $3 million through a notes
offering, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC).

Nine investors took part in the round.

Echo360’s main offering helps
universities record and replay lectures from professors through podcasts, video
and rich media.

The technology was developed in partnership with the University
of Western Australia.

The company, which also raised $26.4 million in a private
equity round that closed last April, initially was born in 2007 as a subsidiary
of Anystream.

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/68qm2em
(SEC filing)

http://echo360.com