eBay Inc. announced that it has acquired StumbleUpon, an early-stage company that helps people discover and share content online, for an aggregate transaction value of approximately $75 million. This acquisition will provide eBay with in-depth exposure to a fast-growing community-based service with approximately 2.3 million users. StumbleUpon gives people a new way to discover relevant and entertaining content based on personal preferences and community recommendations.
“StumbleUpon is a great fit within our goal of pioneering new communities based on commerce and sustained by trust,†said Michael Buhr, senior director, eBay. “StumbleUpon’s downloadable toolbar provides an engaging and unique experience to its users, but it is the similarities in our approaches to the concept of community that make it such a compelling addition to eBay.â€
Buhr will serve as general manager of StumbleUpon effective immediately. StumbleUpon’s current founders and management team will remain in their respective positions and will work with Buhr to enhance the user experience, evolve its unique product and grow the community.
Apple Inc begins selling unprotected digital music from EMI Group Plc on its iTunes store, an event that will most likely set the trend for music businesses online.
This came about when Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs requested EMI, Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music to allow them to take off the digital rights management (DRM) restriction from iTunes tracks sometime February, as it prevents people from playing songs on mediums other than the iPod. Among the four top-selling music labels, EMI took the first step and partnered with Apple as they launched iTunes Plus, providing DRM-free tracks at $1.29 apiece, with better sound quality than regular copyright-protected songs that are priced at 99 cents per download.
To start off, iTunes Plus’ DRM-free roster includes songs from Coldplay, The Rolling Stone, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Pink Floyd, and several Paul McCartney’s classic albums.
With this new setup, Apple projects to sell more than half of the 5 million DRM-free songs on iTunes by the end of the year.
“Jeopardy! and Google are the perfect complement to each other. America’s top-rated quiz show provides the answers, and the Web’s No.1 search engine helps you find the correct question,” said Jeopardy! executive producer Harry Friedman.
The Jeopardy! Google Daily Challenge Sweepstakes features an extra clue from one of the categories in that day’s Jeopardy! TV broadcast. Watch Jeopardy! and then visit Jeopardy.com each weekday from June 4th to July 13th, to play a new clue and you’ll have a chance to win one of the daily $100 giveaways. By entering every weekday, you’ll increase your chances of winning $5,000, $10,000, or the $25,000 Grand Prize!
Remember, you must enter the correct response for your sweepstakes entry to be valid. Not sure what it is? That’s where the powerful Google Search engine comes in.
BBC has launched “BBC World News” in YouTube. The news channel is part of a non-exclusive partnership between BBC, BBC Worldwide, and YouTube.
Around 30 news clips, gathered from the BBC’s 58 international news bureaus and its 250 correspondents worldwide, will be made available every day. Users can select which of the latest BBC breaking news stories of their choice. They can also comment on clips, rate them and post their own video responses.
“The BBC has more journalists in more places than any other broadcast news organisation in the world. As part of our mission to find new ways to engage audiences around the world, we are delighted to be able to offer a dedicated BBC World News channel on YouTube that gives viewers the freedom to see our first-hand reporting whenever they want,” BBC Global News Development Senior Vice-President Michele Grant said.
News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media, parent company of social networking site MySpace, is currently negotiating for acquisition of Photobucket, a popular Web site for storing personal photos, graphics, slideshows and videos, for an estimated amount $250 million. However, official figures are not yet disclosed.
After operating for about 4 years, Photobucket contains approximately 2.8 billion images coming from 41 million registered users worldwide. Ranked as the 22nd most visited Web site in US, it is a dominant market leader in the US online photo market with about 40% market share.
Recently, there had been a friction between MySpace and Photobucket over some technical disputes. MySpace accused Photobucket of violating some of its house rules, prompting them to block traffic from its site to Photobucket. Last April 23, both companies made peace and established procedures to prevent the same situation from happening again.
Based on Hitwise stats, Photobucket is the third most popular destination for MySpace users after Google and Yahoo.
UPDATE: Fox Interactive Media, a division of News Corporation, announced separate agreements to acquire Photobucket and Flektor, Inc.. Terms of the deals were not disclosed.
MingleNow, the online/offline social network that connects users to their favorite nightspots and the people who go there, is making its presence felt in Los Angeles with a launch set on May 31.
MingleNow is designed to connect people with their favorite places and friends and events before they go out, while they’re out and after they return home. MingleNow launched on the West Coast in December 2006 and has rapidly built a presence in markets across the country. Due to its hot nightlife scene, Los Angeles is a perfect place to continue that expansion and build a user base.
“In its first five months, MingleNow has grown to nearly a million users per month and become the fastest growing niche social network,” said Gurbaksh Chahal, CEO of MingleNow. “MingleNow lets people get the vibe of a club before they go there. It’s perfect for a geographically spread out market like LA, where you don’t want to drive 20 miles to a club just to be disappointed.”
Microsoft Corp. unveiled its new computer called Surface. It’s a coffee table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.
Surface is essentially a Windows Vista PC tucked inside a shiny black table base, topped with a 30-inch touchscreen in a clear acrylic frame. Five cameras that can sense nearby objects are mounted beneath the screen. Users can interact with the machine by touching or dragging their fingertips and objects such as paintbrushes across the screen, or by setting real-world items tagged with special bar-code labels on top of it.
CBS Corp. announced its acquisition of Last.fm for $280 million. The social network, organized around musical tastes, leveraging each user’s musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, among others. The company claims more than 15 million monthly users, including more than 4 million in the U.S.
“Last.fm is one of the most well-established, fastest-growing online community networks out there. Their demographics also play perfectly to CBS’ goal to attract younger viewers and listeners,” CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves said.
Google acquires GreenBorder Technologies, an Internet security firm known for creating “virtual machines” that allows users to read emails and surf the web without being harmed by viruses and malware. The move was Google’s first step into the anti-virus business.
Interestingly, the GreenBorder technology makes use of a secure zone called “sandbox” where data is stored each time someone uses the net, then discards these resulting data when surfing is done. (much like the Google sandbox where web pages are evaluated before they can be completely visible in the result pages).
Aaron Zamost, Google’s spokesperson, talked about their plans to use the GreenBoarder software with various Google products and applications. Founded in 2001, GreenBorder Technologies Inc is based in Mountain View, California, and was bought by Google mid-May. Terms and details of the acquisition was not disclosed.
GoDaddy.com, the world’s leading domain name registrar, announced that it has reached an agreement with RegisterFly and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to transfer over RegisterFly’s portfolio of website names to GoDaddy.com. The move will help resolve problems involving hundreds of thousands of domain names around the world.
RegisterFly customers have been affected by recent problems and the impending loss of RegisterFly’s accreditation as a domain name registrar. GoDaddy.com will notify RegisterFly customers of the switch and automatically move their domains for them. Customers can get support and answers to any questions they have at a dedicated GoDaddy.com hot line and a designated welcome Web page. Once the switch is complete, more than 850,000 domain names will have been moved.
“We worked with ICANN to effect a migration of the RegisterFly domains to GoDaddy.com and help those customers left in limbo. It’s what many RegisterFly customers asked us to do. After they are moved over to GoDaddy.com, all RegisterFly customers will once again be able to manage and renew their domain names with confidence and will also enjoy the world-class support we provide all our customers. We expect the move to be completed over the next week,†GoDaddy.com CEO and Founder Bob Parsons said.
eBay Inc. announced that it has acquired StumbleUpon, an early-stage company that helps people discover and share content online, for an aggregate transaction value of approximately $75 million. This acquisition will provide eBay with in-depth exposure to a fast-growing community-based service with approximately 2.3 million users. StumbleUpon gives people a new way to discover relevant and entertaining content based on personal preferences and community recommendations.
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