New York – Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is expected to launch
"The Daily," its iPad-only news publication, at an event in San
Francisco on Jan. 19, Forbes reported. Yahoo’s Cutline blog adds that Apple CEO
Steve Jobs will appear alongside Murdoch at the event.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4emsfkp
(Forbes)
San Mateo, Calif. – Gazillion Entertainment, a developer and
publisher of online games, said on Wednesday it has promoted David Brevik to
president and COO. Brevik previously served as the president of Blizzard North
for seven years. The company also named Jeff Lind as vice president and studio
head for Secret Identity, and Dan Fiden as vice president of publishing.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4ssarvw
New York – Vevo, the music video portal joint venture
between Universal Music, Sony Music and Abu Dhabi Media Company, on Wednesday
announced the launch of a free app for Android smartphones. Users will be able
to browse the Vevo catalog, which includes 25,000 videos from 7,500 artists,
via Voice Control.
Related Links:
http://www.vevo.com/platforms/android
New York – TargetSpot, the provider of a digital audio
advertising network, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $8 million in
new financing.
Investors included Union Square Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures,
CBS Radio and Milestone Venture Partners.
New York-based TargetSpot offers both
self-service and sales-supported services for audio, display and pre-roll video
advertisers.
Distribution partners include investor CBS Radio, AOL Radio,
Entercom, Live 365, Yahoo Music and MySpace Music.
The company will use the
funds for additional product development, network expansion and to grow its
national sales force.
Related Links:
http://www.targetspot.com
Los Angeles – RapidShare and similar online file-hosting
services have overtaken BitTorrent and traditional file-sharing networks in
terms of Web traffic, leading MarkMonitor to declare in a report that they are
now the top sites for downloading pirated content. With over 13 billion annual
visitors, RapidShare was deemed the leading digital piracy website, followed by
fellow file host Megaupload, with 5 billion visitors.
File hosts Hotfile,
4Shared and Mediafire all claim spots in the top 100 most-visited sites
globally — before The Pirate Bay, TorrentFreak noted.
For its part, RapidShare
strongly criticized the report in a statement questioning its methodology.
"The
authors conclude that RapidShare has to be the biggest digital piracy site from
looking at the number of page visits, totally ignoring the fact that millions
of customers use the service for perfectly legitimate purposes,"
RapidShare said, adding that it "reserves the right to take legal
action" against MarkMonitor for defamation.
The Motion Picture Association
of America (MPAA) dubbed the MarkMonitor report a "call to arms" for
U.S. lawmakers to take stronger action to quell piracy.
"The findings in
the MarkMonitor report on online piracy and counterfeiting are a call to arms
for both government and the private sector," the MPAA said.
"As the
report demonstrates, a small number of rogue websites are generating
mind-boggling traffic in pirated content."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/6f9ow64
(PDF: MarkMonitor report)
http://tinyurl.com/4j4snvj
(TorrentFreak)
New York – Defying expectation, U.S. private equity fundraising
in 2010 declined even further from the low levels of 2009, according to new
figures from Dow Jones LP Source.
All told, 336 funds raised $86.3 billion,
down 16% from the $102.2 billion raised by 366 funds the prior year.
While most
sectors experienced a slowdown, areas such as distressed debt funds, mezzanine
funds and industry-focused funds raised more capital than they did in 2009.
"Despite high expectations for fund-raising in 2010, many firms ended up
sitting by the edge of the pool so that they could focus on returning capital
to investors," said Laura Kreutzer, the managing editor of Dow Jones Private
Equity Analyst.
"As we head into 2011, more firms are diving into the
fund-raising market, either because they have a better story to tell or because
they can’t afford to wait any longer."
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4n33xal
New York – Revenues from online games on social networks are
expected to grow 27.7% in 2011 and top $1 billion, up from $856 million in
2010, according to a report from market research firm eMarketer. The sector saw
a rapid rise in popularity last year, fueled by titles like Zynga’s
"FarmVille." Nearly 62 million U.S. Internet users are expected to
play social games monthly this year, up from 53 million in 2010.
The sale of
virtual goods represents the largest share of social games revenues, followed
by lead generation, and advertising.
Ad spending on social games is forecasted
to grown from $120 million last year to $192 million in 2011 and $271 million
next year.
"Forecasts of audience and revenue growth
present an opportunity for marketers to promote their brands through social
games," said eMarketer’s Paul Verna.
"Implementations include branded
virtual goods, custom games, virtual environments within existing games and
lead-generation offers. Some campaigns even combine virtual and real-world
items, expanding the gaming experience beyond social networks like Facebook and
Myspace."
Related Links:
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1008166
Washington – Nearly six in 10 American adults are now
wireless Internet users, according to a new study by the Pew Internet &
American Life Project. All told, 59% of Americans now go online wirelessly
using either a laptop or cell phone, up from 51% a year ago.
The organization
said that although cell phone ownership has remained stable over the past year,
users are taking advantage of a much wider range of their phones’ capabilities
compared with a similar point in 2009.
Most notably, 76% use their phones to
take photos and 72% use them to send or receive text messages.
The complete
survey is available at the link below.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/4tgs6xd
Mountain View, Calif. – Google (NASD: GOOG) announced on Wednesday that
it will discontinue support for the popular H.264 video codec from its Chrome
browser, in what it termed a move towards open standards on the Web.
"Though
H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open
innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed
towards completely open codec technologies," Google product manager Mike
Jazayeri wrote in a post on the company’s blog.
The H.264 codec, used in
camcorders, Blu-ray players and other video devices, requires users to pay
licensing fees to holders of patents behind the technology, which include
Microsoft, Philips and Sony.
Google will now focus on WebM, a rival
specification to H.264 that is open source and royalty-free.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/6g9pn4d
(Google blog)
