Mochi Media, Shanda Launch $10 Million Game Developer Fund
San Francisco – Mochi Media,
an online game publisher unit of China’s Shanda Games (NASD: GAME), announced on
Monday the creation of a $10 million fund for game developers.
A joint effort
between Mochi and parent company Shanda, the Mochi GAME Developer Fund will
support third-party developers through sponsorship, licensing and publishing
deals, with initial investments reaching up to $100,000 per game title.
San
Francisco-based Mochi’s own network includes 15,000 games on nearly 40,000
publisher websites, and counts more than 150 million monthly active users.
Related Links:
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0594062.htm
Web Publishing Platform Posterous Nabs $4.4 Million
San Francisco
– Posterous, the developer of a simple blogging platform that lets publishers
upload new content via email, has raised $4.4 million in its first round of
funding.
Investors included Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures and angels
including SV Angel, Founder Collective, Lowercase Capital, Brian Pokorny, Aydin
Senkut and XG Ventures.
Founded in 2008 as a Y Combinator company, San
Francisco-based Posterous offers a free Web publishing platform, designed for
ease of use, that counts 12 million unique monthly visitors and 25 million page
views.
The company also plans to monetize a professional version of the
platform later this year.
Related Links:
http://blog.posterous.com/posterous-raises-44m-from-redpoint-ventures-t
http://snipurl.com/upm4k
(TechCrunch)
IAC's CitySearch Invests in Search Marketer OrangeSoda
West Hollywood,
Calif. – Citysearch, the online
city guide unit of IAC (NASD: IACI), announced on Monday that it has made an investment in
OrangeSoda, a provider of online search marketing and search engine
optimization services.
Financial details of the investment were not disclosed.
The company also said it partnered with OrangeSoda to launch CityGrid Complete,
a new online ad solution for local businesses that includes search engine
optimization and marketing.
CityGrid is aggregating more than 500,000 paying
advertisers, enhanced listings and content for 15 million businesses, and
reaches more than 140 million unique monthly visitors across 100 Web and mobile
sites.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/uply8
DoubleVerify Raises $10 Million for Online Ad Verification
New York
– DoubleVerify, a provider of online advertising notification services,
announced on Monday that it has closed a $10 million second round of financing,
led by Institutional Venture Partners.
Previous backers Blumberg Capital, First
Round Capital and Genacast Ventures also participated.
Launched in 2008, New
York-based DoubleVerify says it verifies over 25 billion ad impressions per
month for marketers, agencies, ad networks and online publishers.
Related Links:
http://www.doubleverify.com/?categoryId=52161
"American Idol" Contestants Forced to Dump Social Media Profiles
Los Angeles
– Contestants on the current season of "American Idol" have been made
to shutter existing profiles on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, and instead have
posted notes to fans to follow them on the "official" American Idol
feed on Twitter. Several reports speculate that the reasoning was to make it
more difficult to ascertain the popularity of a contestant, based on their
popularity on social media.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/unlh8
(WSJ)
Yahoo Sports Most-visited Winter Olympics Site
Sunnyvale, Calif.
– Yahoo (NASD: YHOO) said on Friday that Yahoo Sports was the most visited online
destination in the U.S. for the recent
Winter Olympics, according to figures from comScore. The site attracted
32 million unique visitors from Feb. 12-28, compared with 19 million each for
NBCOlympics.com and ESPN. Yahoo said that visitors spent 314 million total
minutes on the site during the games.
Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/unlmb
BigBand Names Chairman, Loses COO
Redwood City,
Calif. – BigBand Networks, a developer
of video-networking platforms used by broadband service providers, has named
Mike Pohl as its non-executive chairman, and announced the resignation of COO
David Heard. Pohl, a 25-year telecommunications and cable veteran, has been a
board member since last April. The company said that his appointment will
separate the roles of CEO and chairman. Amir Bassan-Eskenazi will continue in
his role as CEO. Heard will remain a consultant to BigBand through June 30.
Related Links:
http://www.bigbandnet.com/index.php/news-releases/release_id/176.html
