Articles of the Day
Google Profits up 30%, Squashing Fears Of Online Ad Slowdown — Google says profits rose 30% to USD1.31bn in the first quarter this year, soothing market fears of an online advertising slump sparked by past analyst reports. The company reported revenues of USD5.19bn in the quarter, a 42% year-on-year increase and a 7% growth from Q4 2007. For the first time, overseas sales accounted for just about half of revenues, with Google blaming a slump in the value of the dollar for driving down US income. Google re-iterated the drop in the value of its paid-click search ads, which it says fell by more than 20% from the year before. The search giant says the drop was caused by a restructuring of its advertising systems to minimise the number of accidental clicks reported and by a cleaning out of low-quality advertising.
eBay CEO: Skype Could Be Sold If Synergies Fail — eBay CEO John Donahue has made his first comments directly addressing a possible sale of Skype, acquired by predecessor Meg Whitman for $2.6 billion in 2005. He told the FT that this would be the year of testing synergies between Skype and the core business and that “If the synergies are strong, we’ll keep it in our portfolio. If not, we’ll reassess it.” Of course, synergy between Skype and eBay’s other businesses-PayPal and auctions-was part of the original rationale for the deal, but that’s been slow in coming. Donahue: “What we know is, Skype is a great stand-alone business.” He predicted that Skype will do at least $500 million in revenue this year. That shouldn’t be tough to reach, since yesterday eBay reported quarterly Skype revenue of about $126 million. As for PayPal, Donahue said there’s no reason to sell the unit.
AOL Plans Site Geared Toward Younger Women — AOL is planning to launch a new women’s lifestyle site skewing toward a younger demographic than its existing AOL Living property. Expected to launch in the next two to three months, the site will serve as the women’s counterpart to AOL’s Maxim-like “Asylum” site for men, launched last December. As of March, Asylum had built an audience of 3.1 million, according to comScore. While AOL declined to comment, an ad the company is running on JournalismJobs.com for an editor for the planned site says it will cover topics including “style (fashion, makeup and home décor), pop culture, food, health, female-focused politics, bargain tips, relationship advice, sex, how-to and humor.” Many of the categories mirror those found on Asylum, which AOL described as “a fun, sarcastic, trendy and sexy site for men” in announcing its launch. The forthcoming lifestyle site will presumably use a similar editorial template, except tailored to women.
CBS Interactive Overhauls Management, Plans For Acquisitions — Under pressure to offset losses at its parent company, CBS Interactive on Thursday announced a broad management overhaul including the seating of Bryon Rubin as its new chief financial officer. First and foremost, the unit needs a better acquisition strategy, according to CBS Interactive president Quincy Smith. “This is the perfect team to figure out new acquisitions in the space,” Smith said. “We’d like to do more, and Bryon’s presence is going to help.” Rubin, who most recently served as senior executive of CBS’s corporate development and mergers & acquisitions group, has also been given the title of executive vice president at CBS Interactive.
Yahoo’s Open Platform Plans — According to several sources close to Yahoo, the company will outline in much more detail its open-platform strategy next week, in its efforts to keep its cred as a big supporter of openness and also show it has a clear path to reinvigorate itself despite current turmoil. Yahoo has been accelerating its open activities of late, mostly related to its search and ad infrastructure. But, in his appearance at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco next Thursday morning at a keynote speech titled “Yahoo and Open Platforms,” sources said Yahoo CTO Ari Balogh will sketch out a more significant broadening out of its open platform plans, which would touch consumers more directly.
Flip Video Maker Plans To Go Public — It might well be the “it” electronic device of the moment, and it’s not Apple’s iPhone or Amazon.com’s Kindle e-book reader. It’s a low-cost, easy-to-use camcorder for the YouTube age, made by an outfit called Pure Digital Technologies. The San Francisco-based company’s Flip Video camcorder has dominated the sales charts at Amazon (NasdaqGS:AMZN - News) since its debut last year. It’s also attracted a host of positive reviews and some competing product releases from the likes of Sony (NYSE:SNE - News). Pure Digital says it’s grabbed a 13% share of the camcorder market.
MySpace Officially Launches In India; COO Kapur: No Exclusivity With News Corp — Yesterday, MySpace CEO Cris DeWolfe launched the South Korean version of MySpace; today, COO Amit Kapur is in Mumbai officially launching MySpace India, which has been live since January. Unlike the Korean site, which is in Korean primarily and has been localized considerably in style, MySpace India so far looks like MySpace Anywhere. Nikhil Pahwa, editor of our ContentSutra site in India, interviewed Kapur and Tarun Tripathi, director of marketing and content for India, about the decision to expand in India-and to publish in English-among other topics. To get a sense of how economical expanding these sites can be, consider this: MySpace has a 5-person team in India right now and plans to expand to 20. The full interview is here.
AOL Buys Contextual Blog Service Sphere — AOL has acquired blog search and display platform, Sphere, for an undisclosed amount. The deal, which TechCrunch estimates to be worth USD25m, establishes Sphere as a wholly-owned AOL subsidiary and part of AOL’s programming division. The deal builds on existing ties between the two companies. Sphere worked in the past with AOL to provide widget technology for AOL News and for personalised homepage site MyAOL. AOL’s COO Ron Grant says the deal will allow AOL to distribute content on Sphere’s third party network and gain advertising inventory. San Francisco-based Sphere was founded in 2005 as a blog search engine. With competition from similar rivals, including Google Blog Search, the company developed a widget which allows blogers and publishers to intelligently link to related blog sites. The firm raised USD3.75m in venture funding in May 2006 and claims its network has more than 50,000 content publishers and blogs.
Farecast Sold For USD75m To Microsoft — Airfare search engine Farecast has sold itself for more than USD75m, says the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quoting “a source with knowledge of the situation”. Farecast CEO Hugh Crean declined to comment on the matter. The buyer is not known, but a market insider quoted by the Seattle P.I suggests it could be rival Expedia. Expedia, however, refused to comment on “rumours and speculation”. Based in Seattle, Farecast secured USD12.1m last year in a round led by Sutter Hill Ventures, alongside return backers Greylock, Madrona and WRF Capital. If confirmed, the deal would mark the second major merger in the online travel sector in less than six months. Last Dec, market leader Kayak bought rival SideStep for an estimated USD200m. The takeover consolidated Kayak’s dominance of the online travel sector. According to comScore data from Jan, Kayak was the most popular travel site in the US with more than 4m unique users, while SideStep ranked third with nearly 2m. Farecast came in fourth with 966,000 unique users.
Radio One Acquires Community Connect — To more effectively reach African-American consumers, Urban radio broadcasting company Radio One has acquired social networking startup Community Connect for about $38 million dollars. Community Connect owns and operates a number of social-networking brands under its umbrella including BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com, and AsianAve.com. With over 23 million members, CCI is a comScore Top 50 Social Networking Web publisher and category leader for building niche online communities/destinations for U.S. ethnic groups.
Live Universe Acquires PageFlakes (Rumor) –Online entertainment network, Live Universe, has acquired homepage customisation tool, PageFlakes, reports TechCrunch. Under the agreement, PageFlakes will stay based in its German and San Francisco offices and will report directly to Live Universe founder Brad Greenspan. Live Universe reportedly outbid RSS startup NewsGator to complete the deal, which was signed for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition is yet to be officially announced. Pageflakes is a free widget-based service that allows users to create customised homepages that can be published online. Users can take content from various websites and combine it onto one page. This can include news, email, music and videos. Pageflakes was founded in 2006 and took and undisclosed amount of Series A funding in May of that year.
Digital Marketer iCrossing Acquires 3GNet — US digital marketing company iCrossing has acquired competitor 3GNet, one of Germany’s longest-established digital marketing agencies. Financial details were not disclosed. The German company specialises in natural and paid search marketing. It also supplies affiliate marketing services to brands such as eBay, ESPRIT and O2 Germany. The deal marks iCrossing’s first acquisition in continental Europe, coming just over a year after it purchased Spannerworks, now iCrossing UK. 3GNet will be renamed iCrossing Germany. iCrossing’s global client base includes Coca-Cola and Toyota, among others. The deal brings iCrossing’s headcount to 620 employees across 15 offices in the US and Europe.
Buzznet Inc. Has Acquired Music Blog IdolatorFrom Gawker Media — Los Angeles-based social media community focused on music and pop culture, has acquired music blog Idolator from Gawker Media. No financial terms were disclosed. Buzzznet also recently acquired music blog Stereogum and social media company Qloud. It also reportedly raised $25 million in new VC funding from Interscope Records, Redpoint Ventures and Anthem Venture Partners.
SGN Beefs Up App Acquisitions Amid Fundraising — Casual applications network, Social Gaming Network (SGN), is ramping up its portfolio by acquiring Facebook apps Esgut, Free Gifts, Nicknames, Oregon Trail and Friend Block, for undisclosed sums. The network, which was spun off from web hosting firm Webs.com, is also rumoured to plan a funding round of roughly USD10m, according to various online reports. Buying applications allows SGN to boost its traffic and user base. The network’s 70-plus apps are installed by a total of 48.5m Facebook users, behind Slide (97.7m) and RockYou (72.6m), but above rival Zynga (34.7m). However Zynga, which is also creating a network of casual apps by buying Facebook games, claims 1.9m daily active users, above SGN’s 1.1m.
Dow Jones Acquires Business Networking Tool Generate — Dow Jones has started its acquisitions again, now as part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS). it has bought a much-talked about company in the business social networking space: the Boston-based Generate Inc. Financials of the deals were not disclosed. As part of the acquisition, DJ will form a new business unit called Business & Relationship Intelligence in its Enterprise Media Group (which is headed by Clare Hart) that will focus on bringing Generate-powered solutions to market in the enterprise sales and media segments. Generate co-founder Tom Aley will lead this new group as SVP and managing director, while co-founder Darr Aley will become VP, marketing and business development, of the new unit. All Generate employees will join Dow Jones.
