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Six Apart’s Berkowitz steps down, turns over CEO post to Chris Alden

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Six Apart‘s Barak Berkowitz is stepping down and turning over his post as Chief Executive Officer to Chris Alden, after leading the company for almost four years.

Chris Alden, who headed the company’s software unit after its acquisition of Rojo Networks, has been with the company for a little over a year. He was the former CEO (and co-founder) of Rojo.

San Francisco-based Six Apart is widely known for its TypePad content management software, now catering to over 40 million users a month, with about 150 employees.

“As we’ve brought the business to scale, the board and I have been talking about my desire to take on a smaller role,” Berkowitz said in a statement. “With the company so stable and on a great growth track, it’s a natural time to make a transition.”

Originally posted on September 15, 2007 @ 2:40 am

Hulu acquires video startup Mojiti

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NBC / News Corp acquires Beijing-based video startup Mojiti to use their platform for its much awaited $1 billion video project, Hulu.

With a mission to “allow you to tell your own story in any online video”, Mojiti, interestingly, do not host or distribute video content themselves. Instead, they take existing video content online (for example, from YouTube or Google); integrate their technology to these videos in the form of interactive features such as speech bubbles, arrows, shapes and texts, etc; allowing users to personalize the videos to their liking. With this quiet acquisition of Mojiti, one can’t help but assume that this is the format Hulu’s going to take as they launch the site that was said to trample YouTube.

There is no confirmations yet, as of this writing, how much the deal was. However, there were rumors that the acquisition amounted to around $10 million.

Via TechCrunch

Originally posted on September 13, 2007 @ 4:40 am

Google announces official acquisition of Postini

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In its continuous initiative to stretch their applications and business product offerings, internet giant Google announces its official acquisition of Postini, a company that delivers on-demand web security solutions, amounting to $625 million.

Google states that they acquired Postini “in order to create a more complete Google Apps solution that addresses the information security and compliances issues facing businesses of all sizes.” With Postini’s spam and virus protection products, Google aims to continue their initiative against unwanted and malicious messages, and in turn, enhance their applications, as well as security and corporate compliance.

Now a fully-owned subsidiary of Google. Postini products as well as employess will be integrated to the Google family within the next couple of months. With Postini having over 35,000 customers worldwide, and Google with over 100,000 businesses on Google aps, Postini being a part of Google family is definitely an asset on both ends.

Via GB.

Originally posted on September 13, 2007 @ 10:09 pm

MTV launches social network tonight

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So the buzz is true, MTV is indeed launching a social network in the form of Flux.com and it’s going to be launched, surprise surprise, tonight.

While MTV already has various networks across the web, the Flux.com technology will connect them all together in one platform, allowing members to create one single profile page for all their MTV accounts. Flux.com is developed by Tagworld.

Much is still yet to be seen, but it won’t be long before MTV reveals how they’ll go about this new social network. Let’s see. Tonight.

Originally posted on September 14, 2007 @ 4:53 am

Filed Under: MTV

Lulu sues Hulu

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The big fuss on NBC’s chosen name for its much awaited YouTube rival, Hulu, has still not died down. And I don’t think it’s going to die down anytime soon.

Towards the end of August, CEO Jason Kilar, announced the launch of Hulu.com, after five months of being simply known as NBC’s “New Site”. Kilar did not do much explaining as to the origin of the name but simply stated in the site’s official release that they picked Hulu because it’s “short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and rhymes with itself.” Furthermore, he said that “Hulu strikes us as an inherently fun name, one that captures the spirit of the service we’re building.”

A lot of us would have just let it pass and watch from the sidelines how Kilar’s team would pull it off. After all, Hulu.com is still in private beta and has not laid down its aces just yet. Then again, that was before we knew what “Hulu” means in different translations, and that in Swahili, it means “cease and desist”.

The raised eyebrows following the announcement of Hulu.com should have been warned them enough. Apparently, a small internet publishing firm called Lulu Enterprises took NBC’s naming Hulu an unfair play. Filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against Hulu, Lulu’s founder Bob Young complains that “widespread consumer confusion will occur and Lulu will be irreparably harmed.” Team Hulu declined to comment as of the moment.

Now, Lulu vs. Hulu is up on the courts while the rest of the web awaits. Is the Swahili translation of Hulu really prophetic? Is this the point where NBC decides to let Hulu “cease and desist” and rename this much-awaited online video venture?

Via NYTimes

Originally posted on September 10, 2007 @ 11:09 pm