Kleiner Perkins' sFund Backs Comparison Shopper FindTheBest

0

Santa Barbara, Calif. – FindTheBest.com, a comparison
shopping engine, announced on Wednesday that it has received Series A funding
from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ sFund, which
was established to invest in start-ups in the social media space.

Santa
Barbara, Calif.-based FindTheBest was founded by Kevin O’Connor, the co-founder
of online ad firm DoubleClick, which was acquired by Google.

The company’s service
relies on researchers to edit its socially curated comparison engine, which can
be updated by users.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/37knaaa

http://www.kpcb.com/initiatives/sfund

http://www.findthebest.com

Groupon Acquires Ludic Labs, Three Asian Deals Sites

0

Chicago – Groupon, the social shopping service rumored to be
in talks to be acquired by Google at a $5 billion valuation, announced on
Wednesday that it has acquired Ludic Labs, a provider of local online ad
services, as well as three deal-focused websites in Asia.

Financial terms of
the transactions were not disclosed.

In addition to San Mateo, Calif.-based
Ludic, Groupon acquired Asia-based uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost.

Along with the
acquisitions, Groupon announced the opening of a new office in Palo Alto,
California, and the launch of Groupon’s services in Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Singapore and the Philippines.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/28uqxe3

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6B01CK20101201

http://ludic-labs.com

http://www.groupon.com

MySpace Launches New Mobile Site; Plans iPhone App

0

Beverly Hills, Calif. – News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace on Tuesday
launched a new mobile website and announced plans for a new iPhone application,
noting that a third of its "Gen Y users" interact with the site on
mobile devices every day. MySpace said the iPhone app, due in coming weeks,
will focus on the activity stream, and provide tools for easy sharing across
networks without having to be logged in.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/34tn9on

Zynga Inks Membership Points Deal With American Express

0

New York – Social games publisher Zynga
("Farmville," "Mafia Wars") on Tuesday announced a
partnership with American Express, which will allow customers to use their
membership rewards points from American Express to pay for limited edition
virtual goods, as well as physical and virtual game cards for Zynga’s games.
The deal makes AMEX the first financial services provider to offer reward
redemptions for virtual games.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/27u7slk

http://www.zynga.com

http://www.membershiprewards.com

CreateSpace Offers "Mister Rogers," Johnny Carson on DVD

0

Los Angeles – Amazon.com’s (NASD: AMZN) CreateSpace on-demand DVD
manufacturing service said on Tuesday that it has signed deals with The Fred
Rogers Company and Respond2 Entertainment, to release classic TV episodes of
"Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood" and "The Tonight Show Starring
Johnny Carson," respectively, on DVD. The first batch of additions
includes 100 episodes of Mister Rogers and 56 episodes of Carson.

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/33q4ct6

http://www.createspace.com

Music Reports to Handle Royalties for Gracenote Lyrics Service

0

Woodland Hills, Calif. – Music Reports said on Tuesday that
it has signed a multi-year deal to administer the music publishing rights and royalty
accounting for Gracenote’s lyric service in North America.

 

Related Links:
http://www.musicreports.com

Sirius XM Radio Hits 20 Million Subscribers; Renews NFL Deal

0

New York – Sirius XM Radio (NASD: SIRI) announced on Tuesday that it
recently surpassed 20 million subscribers, and has signed a five-year extension
of its broadcasting and marketing deal with the National Football League (NFL).

“Reaching and surpassing 20 million subscribers is a significant milestone
for us,” said CEO Mel Karmazin.

“We have added the last 10 million
subscribers faster than the first 10 million — despite a tremendously
competitive environment — representing a strong endorsement of our service and
our programming by discerning consumers who want and demand the best in audio
entertainment.”

Sirius XM, which has broadcast NFL games since 2004, will
continue to offer every NFL game live nationwide from preaseason through Super
Bowl.

 

Related Links:
http://www.sirius.com

Report: Mobile Games Revenues to Top $11 Billion by 2015

0

Hampshire, U.K. – Mobile games revenue will surpass $11
billion by 2015, nearly double the $6 billion generated in 2009, according to a
report from market research firm Juniper Research.

Revenue from in-game purchases
— fueled in part by Apple’s in-app billing mechanism — is expected to
overtake the traditional pay-per-download model as the primary model for
monetizing mobile games by 2013.

The report notes that more mobile games are
now being offered for free, aiming to generate revenue through in-game
purchases like extra gaming levels or gameplay items.

Juniper adds that
discoverability remains a problem for developers.

"Discoverability can be
a ‘chicken and egg’ problem: high downloads lead to prominence, but achieving a
high number of downloads is largely dependent on already being prominent,"
said Juniper analyst Daniel Ashdown.

"Consequently, a small minority of
games achieve very high downloads, whilst the vast majority achieve very small
download figures."

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/26ekorm

Report: News Corp. Open to Sale of MySpace

0

Los Angeles – News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) is open to the idea of selling off
MySpace, the social network it acquired for $580 million in 2005 which recently
underwent a rebranding as an entertainment portal, Reuters reported, citing
comments made by News Corp. COO Chase Carey.

"There are opportunities here
to do 20 things [with MySpace] but that doesn’t mean you’re going to do any of
the 20," said Carey, adding that offloading MySpace "would have been
largely a pretty tough sale process" before the recent rebranding was
completed.

"I think those options would have been pretty limited and I
think probably would have undervalued it against what we think it can be."

 

Related Links:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AS3R920101130

European Commission to Investigate Google Antitrust Claims

0

Brussels – The European Commission announced on Tuesday that
it will open an investigation into allegations of anti-competitive behavior by
Google (NASD:  GOOG) in Europe. The Commission will examine charges that Google manipulated
its rankings to demote offerings from U.K. shopping site Foundem; French search
engine Ejustice.fr; and Microsoft-owned search engine Ciao.

The Commission will
also look into a charge that Google is imposing exclusivity obligations on
advertisers, demanding they create unique ads for serving via Google that
cannot be used on competing search engines.

"We respect their process and
will continue to work closely with the Commission to answer their
questions," Google said in a blog post.

The company additionally told CNET
that both Google and independent sources have found the services making these
complaints to "generally be of lower quality," noting that Foundem’s
content is duplicated from other websites, while Ejustice.fr actually uses
Google’s own search service to provide results — both factors that would lead
to a lower ranking by Google.

 

 

Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/257bxyp

(European Commission statement)

http://tinyurl.com/3aaawvj
(Google blog)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20024100-93.html