More news from the social network Friendster. The site, which was acquired in December by Malaysian payments company MOL Global, has struck a deal with Yahoo Southeast Asia. The purpose of the deal is to integrate product features and cross-promote across both Friendster and Yahoo. Both Friendster and Yahoo stand to gain from the partnership as Friendster has a significant Asian audience and Yahoo also has a steady following in the regional area for certain web services.
Friendster, which was sold for just under $30 million, has over 90 million registered users and 90 percent of its daily traffic coming from Southeast Asia today. The partnership will involve a a new social application built by Friendster that will be prominently displayed on Yahoo Southeast Asia properties and a cross-promotion of Yahoo products on Friendster. → Read More
Time to save the date! Word is out that the sequel to the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie will be out on July 29th, 2012. What we don’t know as of yet is exactly who the director will be. That’s right, despite the fact that JJ Abrams pretty much made the Star Trek relaunch work through pure force of will, he will not be returning to direct. That’s a bit worrisome, considering the quality of the script that he was able to polish up a bit. Of course, it’s just a little bit early to start being cynical so we should probably just sit back and wait it out. [via ScifiSquad] → Read More
Mochi Media, a Flash game advertising network and payments platform funded by Accel Partners and Shasta Ventures, has been acquired by Shanda Games for $60 million in cash and $20 million in equity. The company has raised $14 million over two venture rounds.
The deal will be announced shortly.
Shanda is China’s largest operator of online games, with nearly 10 million active accounts. The company hosts so-called MMORPGs, or massively multi-player online role-playing games, under which users pay monthly subscriber fees as well as purchase items within the game. The company went public on NASDAQ late last year and has the enviable ticker symbol GAME.
As of June 2009 100 million people were playing games that included Mochi Media. They also launched a payments platform for game developers last year. → Read More
Gentlemen, start your Photoshopping! Here we have the first of the iSlate fakes, similar to the older iSlate fakes. What makes this fake? All the icons are distorted and its showing ugly people in iPhoto. Apple never shows pictures of ugly people. → Read More
Nyko, proprietor of fine gaming peripherals, showcased several new items at CES. For the Wii we have the upgraded Wand+, the Type Pad wireless keypad, the Perfect Shot pistol grip attachment, and the Charge Base Quad charging station. We also have a media hub for the PS3 Slim, and a new personal headset/speaker combo for the Xbox 360. → Read More
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9/22881388001?isVid=1&publisherID=22717159001 There are no words. This is the most egregious product-biting I’ve ever seen. Even worse than Super Shrek Brothers. Just watch the video and be amazed at the dedication that Chinese knockoff artists have to their craft. Apologies if there’s an ad before, that’s not us. [via 1up] → Read More
Watch the trailer inside and tell me that you don’t want to see the movie. Yeah, you can’t. → Read More
Party like it’s 1999?
Online video is where search was in 1999: a major part of the digital media ecosystem is desperately looking for a business model and a leading ad format. We know what happened in search, while the early leaders ditched search-as-a-business for portaldom, Google stayed the course and built a $200 billion company.
Search captures intent, video captures interest. Intent offers advertisers a short-term benefit, interest a more long-term value. Perhaps that is why it is taking longer for online video revenues are materialize in a major way.
Yet, over the past year, online video consumption has soared threefold and it appears that this might be the year that the medium grows up and sees its revenues take off too (fingers crossed). This explains why in boardrooms large and small, everyone is trying to crystallize their online video strategy.
This guest post is written by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan, the founder and CEO of WatchMojo, a leading producer of premium, informative and entertaining video content. The company’s catalog of 5,000 videos has generated over 105,000,000 streams since 2006. Today, WatchMojo streams nearly 10 million videos each month and reaches 20,000,000 consumers online and offline. → Read More
Oh Nextel. The insults continue. First, your service continues to hemorrhage users, and now you get subjected to phones that look like the Motorola Brute. It’s almost enough to make me feel a little sorry for you. → Read More
Do not expect UFC to look the other when it comes to online piracy of its various pay-per-view events. Dana White, the company’s president, recently told the Vancouver Sun that he and the UFC will do whatever it takes to eliminate piracy. “It’s gonna cost us a lot of money, but guess what, it’s gonna cost them [pirates] a lot of money. It’s gonna get to the point where it’s like, fuck it, maybe we shouldn’t pirate MMA anymore.” This is not a very forward-thinking way of looking at the problem, no. → Read More
I question the actually utility of this, except for in corporate ID badging. It is cool though, combining OLED, RFID, and 3D into an ID. Plus, how is that for an alphabet soup of acronyms? Thanks to NetbookNews for the tip. → Read More
Earlier today, The Rumpus published a very revealing interview with someone claiming to be a Facebook employee. The interview covers a variety of subjects, including privacy restrictions at the world’s largest social network and some of the technological hurdles the site has to deal with. The biggest revelations? That Facebook collects more data about your habits than you may realize, and that there was once a ‘master password’ that would grant employees access to anyone’s Facebook profile — a password that some employees abused.
The interview wasn’t authorized by Facebook, and there are many who are doubting its authenticity. We’ve heard some rumors that the interview is legit, and The Rumpus’ editor stands behind it. For what it’s worth, much of it rings true to me — none of the ‘facts’ revealed are surprising or difficult to believe. Here are some of the highlights: → Read More
Every day I troll SEC Form D Filings to discover new startups, fundings and investments. I put everything I find into CrunchBase. For everyone else I give you the daily digest, a quick hit of the latest and greatest SEC Form D filings in the TechCrunch sphere:
Nicira – Virtual Data Center Control Software
TopTenREVIEWS – Product Research and Reviews
Tangerine Solar – Community Solar Power Project
Powered – Social Media and Marketing → Read More
I honestly don’t understand what’s going on here nor do I particularly condone this tomfoolery. → Read More
Remember that OLPC design that had two touchscreens joined at the hip, kind of like we saw with the Courier later? Yeah, it got canned, but the basic design seems to have lived on in this MSI concept. → Read More
Private equite firm TA Associates announced this morning that it has signed a definitive agreement for a majority investment of over €60 million in eCircle, a decade-old email marketing service provider headquartered in Munich, Germany.
Founded in 1999, eCircle specializes in a range of digital marketing solutions, but it’s mostly known for its high-end email marketing software and related services. The company says more than 550 enterprise clients, including Argos, Nintendo and Samsung, are currently using its eC-messenger Web-based email marketing software, and the company has a transmission volume of over 5 billion emails per quarter.
eCircle has over 200 employees, spread across offices in Germany, the UK, France and Italy. → Read More
If this makes you smile, you’re probably a nerd and there’s nothing wrong with that. [via GeekCulture] → Read More
One of the key features of the Nexus One has nothing to do with its hardware. The latest and greatest Android phone also is the first device to come with the new Android 2.1 OS. And while other phones, like the Droid, are going to get it too (likely later this month), for now, if you want to play around with it, you’ll need a Nexus One. Or, starting today, you can also download the Android 2.1 SDK.
As noted on the Android Developers Blog, the team is releasing it before most devices have it so that developers can play around with and build for the new features introduced in 2.1. Though Google calls 2.1 a “minor platform release” over Android 2.0, there are a number of new elements such as voice recognition, live wallpapers, a new launcher, more home screens, and some WebKit changes. Those who have ported it over to the Droid note that the new OS is also faster. → Read More
It took a little while, but Digg finally has a new head of PR. The company has hired Michele Husak, who previously held the same job at Pandora, the streaming music recommendation engine. According to her LinkedIn profile, she started the job last month, but they’re just announcing it now.
Husak takes the official title of Director of PR, which is the same position vacated in November by Kiersten Hollars, when she stepped down as Digg’s Director of Communications. Hollars left Digg to re-join her former boss, Brad Garlinghouse who is now helping to re-build AOL. Hollars and Garlinghouse both left Yahoo around the same time in 2008, which is when she went to Digg. → Read More
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