Articles of the Day
Ballmer Promises 20 Acquisitions a Year - Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer says that the company plans to acquire about 20 companies a year for the next five years, with deal sizes ranging from $50 million to $1 billion, according to VentureBeat.”We will buy smaller companies. We will buy smaller companies that make some use of open source software,” said Ballmer, according to a report from CNet News. “We don’t want to discourage people who would talk with us just because they do some open source.”
Google Wows Market With 46% Q3 Earnings Gain - Google recovered from its “wobbly” second quarter and announced a 46% year-over-year increase in Q3 earnings, beating many analysts’ expectations.
Viacom Opens Door To Complete Daily Show Library - On its own terms, Viacom has decided to give fans of “The Daily Show” on-demand access to every minute of every episode since Jon Stewart took over in 1999. AT&T, Hyundai and TiVo are among the launch sponsors.
Media Giants Team On Content Piracy Measures - Banded together by a mutual fear of Google and YouTube, a group of digital media heavyweights on Thursday issued a set of guidelines on copyright protection. Included are Viacom, Disney, Microsoft, News Corp. and NBC Universal.
Eyeblaster Releases Scalable Video Ad Solution - Intent on simplifying the delivery of video advertising online, Eyeblaster has released a new scalable and integrated solution dubbed Channel Connect.
Dow Jones Revs Up 19.6% In 3Q, Thank The Web - Dow Jones saw revenues jump 19.6% to $493.3 million in the third quarter of 2007 compared to 2006, due largely to big increases in Web advertising revenue, the company reported on Thursday. Better: Web revenues may offset print losses.
Irrational Exuberance And Facebook’s Social Graph - A new fad has taken hold in Silicon Valley, but it lacks substance. We’re not necessarily talking about the astronomical valuations placed on companies that don’t warrant them–we are, but only indirectly. It’s the open platform and the social graph, two ideas popularized by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg when he announced in May that third-party developers could create programs for his site.
Will Social Features Work for Email Providers? - Social networks, focusing instead on email providers like Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL, have started encroaching on the territory of MySpace and Facebook. If social networking is all about loyalty and personalization, then email and instant messaging are–in theory–the perfect place to mine that data. So why not combine all these services and let users stick a profile on their account? Google’s Gmail, it seems, is already headed in that direction, allowing its users to chat with contacts from inside their in-boxes.
EA Calls For Open Video Game Platform - Electronics Arts, the world’s largest third-party developer of video game software, called on hardware makers Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to abandon the console wars and help build a common gaming platform. EA believes that an open video game platform would not only drive innovation by enhancing competition, but help developers cut costs. Third-party software makers currently have to develop three versions of the same game to reach as many gamers as possible. Hardware makers, meanwhile, typically lose money on consoles, anyway, as most of the revenue is recouped through software sales.
Big Three Fatigue? Try One of These Alternative Engines - Yes, Google rules the search world (and just released ridiculous earnings), and yes, Yahoo and MSN just launched major upgrades to their crawlers. Let’s not forget about Ask.com, the search engine that seemingly gets no credit for the whole “Universal Search” craze … But searchers are constantly exploring the Web, and while the big three (or four?) engines snag the majority of traffic, there are an infinite number of choices users have for search — and getting listed with these “alternative engines” can give one site a previously unknown advantage over competitors.
Discovery Does Its Biggest Online Buy: HowStuffWorks For $250 Million - Discovery Communications (NSDQ: DISCA) has made its biggest online acquisition till date: it is buying Atlanta-based online reference site HowStuffWorks.com for $250 million. The purchase also includes a number of digital properties, such as a map database and ConsumerGuide.com, owned by HSW, which isn’t yet profitable, reports WSJ.
Local Business Directory Site Smalltown Acquires Local2Me - San Mateo-based Smalltown, a directory site for local businesses, has acquired seven year-old Local2Me, which offers community-based user forums (via VentureBeat). The purchase allows Smalltown to solidify its position in the Bay Area, where Local2Me has an active, though small, userbase (VentureBeat says it has about 8,000 users across the country). The goal is to build up synergies between the user community and business directories. Smalltown, which raised $3 million last year from Formative Ventures, also said that the move will help it gear up for a national launch of its service. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Private BuyOut Of Ancestry.com For $300+ Million - Today it was announced that privately owned The Generations Network is being acquired by Spectrum Equity Investors for $300 million. The asking price was $500 million. The Generations Network is the company that runs Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com and other geneology web sites. It’s based in Provo, Utah. The company is pulling in $150 million or so in yearly revenue and is hugely profitable according to our source.
