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New Media News Every Morning

Yahoo – News Corp alliance in the works

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news-corp.gifAfter rejecting Microsoft’s “undervalued” proposal, Yahoo is like a damsel in distress desperately hoping for its prince charming named News Corp. to rescue her from a looming hostile takeover.

According to a news article, the ever mysterious “person familiar with the situation” has confirmed that confidential details of this partnership are still in the works.

Then again, this might just be a contrived effort to force Microsoft to up the ante. As of today, the insensitive software giant stands by its “full and fair” bid. Or perhaps Yahoo is asking for a ridiculous bid simply because it doesn’t to sell to Microsoft. Take your pick.

Though News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch once mentioned that they are not interested in acquiring Yahoo, he remains open about a possible collaboration between this company and his social network site MySpace.com.

Originally posted on February 14, 2008 @ 6:40 am

News Corp In Talks with LinkedIn

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new media newsAnother major acquisition is brewing! TechCrunch has an unconfirmed rumor that Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is eyeing the fast growing professional networking site LinkedIn.

Here are some points why News Corp is interested with LinkedIn:

  1. LinkedIn’s strong association with mature professionals complements News Corp’s premier advertising properties aimed at the same market such as Wall Street Journal, The Times, and Sunday Times. Hopefully, this could offset the declining advertising in the newspapers.
  2. LinkedIn’s strong base of 16 million users worldwide, robust growth, and consistent profitablility.
  3. Mature professionals with dry sense of humor do not appreciate its “wackiness” of Facebook. In short, Facebook is more expensive

If the acquisition happens, will News Corp rename it to MyLinkedIn? Just wondering…

Originally posted on November 22, 2007 @ 11:33 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

Dow Jones goes to… Rupert Murdoch

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rupert-murdoch.jpgThe Associated Press (AP) reported that the board of Dow Jones & Co. approved Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion buyout offer. The deal will expand Murdoch’s media and entertainment empire. Dow Jones & Co. is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, a must read for business.

The AP report also reported that Thomas Walker, who worked on the global copy desk at The Wall Street Journal, said that he was quitting rather than see the paper sold to Murdoch. “I don’t want to work for the man,” he said.

Originally posted on August 1, 2007 @ 12:58 am