Yahoo’s M&A deal-makers are deciding right now whether or not to buy super-hot location-based startup Foursquare for ~$100 million, says a source close to bankers involved in Foursquare’s current fundraising efforts.A source close to Yahoo told us a Foursquare-owned Yahoo “would be nice.” This source told us “we’ve had discussions,” but cautioned: “We talk to everybody.”
Posted: April 6th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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News Corp. Throwing Away The Crown Jewel: Fox Audience Network
News Corp. isn’t beating around the bush with its digital assets. Rotten Tomatoes has been sold off to Flixster. Photobucket went to Ontela. IGN had 20% staff cuts, and MySpace is dealing with co-presidents.Fox Audience Network, the advertising arm for News Corp.’s digital assets has trudged stoically through all the drama. Under President Adam Bain the entity has grown and now powers the ads not only for MySpace and other News Corp. websites, but also a fairly robust set of third party partners.
Fox Audience Network is the 8th largest advertising networks according to Comscore, with nearly 150 million U.S. unique visitors a month. And it’s a close race. AOL is first with 185 million, and Google is second with 178 million.
Posted: March 23rd, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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For Apple, which has enjoyed enormous success in recent years, “build it and they will pay” is business as usual. But it’s not a universal business truth. On the contrary, companies like Ikea, H. & M., and the makers of the Flip video camera are flourishing not by selling products or services that are “far better” than anyone else’s but by selling things that aren’t bad and cost a lot less. These products are much better than the cheap stuff you used to buy at Woolworth, and they tend to be appealingly styled, but, unlike Apple, the companies aren’t trying to build the best mousetrap out there. Instead, they’re engaged in what Wired recently christened the “good-enough revolution.” For them, the key to success isn’t excellence. It’s well-priced adequacy.
Posted: March 23rd, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Why Investors Should Never Bet Against Founders, Even If They Want To Sell Before You Do
So what is this “entrepreneur thesis?” It’s the view that I back great entrepreneurs and help them pursue their dreams no matter what. Sometimes this will mean we collectively double down and try to build a bigger business and sometimes it may mean selling earlier than I had thought we would. I know this sounds Polly Anna-ish. I’m not just writing that “I love entrepreneurs” to curry favor with startup CEO’s. Anyone who has ever worked with me knows that I’m no pushover and I’m certainly not a wallflower. I’ll argue my point vociferously. But I don’t believe in betting against founders.
Posted: March 2nd, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Texting App Textfree Has Handled Over A Billion Messages
Textfree, Pinger’s core app, lets users send and receive unlimited texts for a year for the $5.99 download price. The company also offers an ad-supported free version that limits users to 15 texts per day.
Posted: February 17th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Veoh, one of several well-funded startups that have tried and failed to cash in on the Web video boom, is finally calling it quits. The company let go of the remainder of its workforce yesterday, and sources say it plans on filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection in the near future.
Posted: February 11th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Lessons From Google’s Own Paid Search Campaigns: Forget The “Rules”
It might be that Google simply isn’t trying to optimize the performance of their ads on their own website (since they don’t change their own bottom line by charging themselves for clicks). But it seems harder for me to believe that Google isn’t trying to optimize the ads they place on Yahoo and Bing. Even if money isn’t an issue, certainly setting a good example and maintaining the appearance of competence are.So, I decided to examine Google ads on Yahoo and Bing further to see what lessons we can learn from Google about writing good ad creatives:
Posted: February 10th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Twilio’s Telephony API Now Lets Applications Send And Receive SMS Messages
Back in November 2008, we covered the launch of Twilio, a startup that’s akin to an Amazon Web Services for telephony apps. After signing up for a phone number, Twilio lets you integrate phone services into your application using intuitive tags like Dial when you want your app to place a call. Today, the company is expanding to include support for the world’s most popular data channel: SMS messaging.
Posted: February 10th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Grown Ups Obsess Over Facebook While Teens Are Sick of Blogging And Twitter
More good news for Facebook: Among adults, Facebook is currently the most commonly used online social network, according to a new study.Among the aged 30 and over crowd, 73% have a profile on Facebook. As for 18-29 year olds, 71% of them have Facebook profiles, too.
Posted: February 5th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Sun CEO’s Lame Twitter Haiku Is Precisely Why He Had To Sell To Oracle
“Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more
Posted: February 5th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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