Viacom buys Atom, adding this to their other recent purchases, XFIRE, Y2M, GameTrailers.com, IFILM and Neopets, placing them all under MTV Networks. Atom has very interesting short films and gaming properties, but none of the sizzle and growth rate of YouTube, for example. The one thing still missing from their portfolio is a MySpace-like social
Google + MySpace = ~ 1 Billion Dollar deal. MySpace already makes $350 Million a year in revenues, but a Google deal will add a great deal of structure to their advertising. Of course, this just pushed the valuations of FaceBook and YouTube up another notch as well. Some exits are in the wings for
Here’s Om Malik speaking my mind on the Business Week cover story on Digg. Paper net worth is vapor net worth, as many of us have experienced in the past!
Yahoo will co-invest with Canaan Partners in an Indian Matrimonial site, Bharatmatrimony.com. This is, likely, indicative of a trend that Yahoo will take a stake in each promising segment of the Indian Consumer Internet industry (Travel, Jobs), as well as in the emerging web and mobile content industry. For an overview of the deals done
Techcrunch has an interesting piece on Eons, a MySpace for older users, so to speak. The comments are very interesting. My thesis is that the concept of social / professional networking and community building in a targeted mode will filter down to every aspect of society. This means, your alumni association will have its own
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) has become both essential, as well as extremely complex these days. What keywords should you buy? How should you distribute your budget against keywords? What frequency? What messages? Blah blah blah …Needless to say, in the midst of difficulty, entrepreneurs tend to smell opportunities. The market has also become crowded with
Yet another India fund was announced today. Matrix Partners has set up a $150 million fund to invest in consumer-focused industries mainly in the Internet, telecoms and media space. The fund will be co-managed by Avnish Bajaj, former founder/CEO of Bazee.com and after it sold to eBay, its chairman of Indian operations. (via Rafat Ali).
IMAX is up for sale. As home entertainment becomes increasingly more immersive, with large screen flat panel displays, or even projection systems, the movie-going audience is declining. We routinely make trade-offs such as “Is this a DVD movie, or is it truly worth going to the cinema for?” In recent memory, films that obviously made