Archive for: investment
For the first ever time Flickr has teamed up with a photo printing service for its users to use. Snapfish (owned by HP) will be Flickr’s preferred photo printing service and will be integrated with Twitter to make it easier for the users to export their pictures – and thus make it the preferred service of the users.
At the minute, users have to upload their pictures to an independent printer of their choice. However, because they’ll be able to export whole albums, photo streams etc… at the click of a mouse I can certainly see this being a promising endeavour for SnapFish. However, they will have to give some of their profits back to Flickr obviously – but because they’re available in 22 countries they’ll definitely be turning a profit this year.
Yahoo!, who own Flickr, have come under fire in recent times due to their management of the brand and the controversial decision to include video on the photography site (this has led to several online groups against videos on Flickr being founded). However, they still have over 4 billion photographs on the site and it’s growing by 100 million each month, so SnapFish won’t be complaining.
Michael Yavonditte who was previously an executive at IAC, AltaVista, Ziff Davis, Juno and the CEO of Quigo when AOL bought it for $340M, has launched a new site called RakedIn. RakedIn is a wiki like that provides stock related information on companies and individuals from all over the world.
RakedIn is very similar to WikInvest but has a much cleaner design. RakedIn already have over 5 million pages of statistical data and they are hoping to have 20 million by the end of the year. RakedIn provides information about people, public companies and even private companies. RakedIn aggregates new sources from all over the web, up to the minute stock quotes, financial performance, SEC filings, top executives and even latest trades.
I think this product has a lot of legs but they are competing with any people trying to gain market share in this environment.
It has been reported that sources at a major client of investment house ThinkEquity say that the firm considers a Microsoft (MSFT) link-up with Yahoo! (YHOO) in the search business to be “imminent”. The comments were made by analyst William Morrison. ThinkEquity did not have an immediate comment.
Sources beyond ThinkEquity speculate that under the terms of the arrangement, Yahoo! will be paid $3 billion upfront and will get 11o% of the revenue that its searches provide after traffic acquisition costs in each of the first two years. In the third year, that figure would go to 90%.
Microsoft will then have control of 30% of the US search market if they can close the deal with Yahoo. Given that Microsoft’s own Bing is on the rise also, it will then only be about taking share away from Google. However, I can see how this deal with allow Microsoft to take marketshare from Google, Google has much better technology and a huge amount of brand loyalty. comScore put Google’s US June search share flat at 65%, Yahoo! at 19.5%, down .5%, and Microsoft at 8.4%, up .4%.
For Yahoo!, the transaction would give it the opportunity to lock in a substantial revenue stream from search and potentially save several hundred million dollars over the next three years by cutting development personnel and costs. If the transaction materializes, Yahoo!’s share could jump $4 or $5.
Internet radio has taken off in the last few years. This is because more and more people are using smart-phones and using laptops on the go. Not to mention the fact that you can listen to your favourite radio station whilst holidaying in Australia or backpacking through Europe. Then, along came Internet based radio. This meant that there was no traditional radio station (ie. On a radio) for a particular company – it solely exists on the internet.
Pandora became one of the biggest streaming high quality music and advertisements across the web. Now, they have secured a massive investment from Greylock Partners of around $35 million dollars!
Currently, Pandora plays advertisements in order to make ends meet. Now, after securing this investment there is talk of charging listeners who tune in for over 40 hours every month 99c or an annual premium of $39 for unlimited listening and elimination of all the advertisements.
“New funds will be used toward the continued growth and development of Pandora” said Pandora.
It’s a good move to. Now that people are ditching podcasts more and more in search of radio – investing now would be wise. And when media players and internet speeds improve – internet TV would be no shock appearance.
US based FriendFinder Networks (formerly Penthouse Media Group) has filed a registration statement with the SEC to go public. The story was broken by Techcrunch and this seems like a huge leap for the adult network.
Little known Russian investment bank Renaissance Capital is representing them in the deal. The company hopes to raise $460 million in the IPO.
Penthouse acquired Adult FriendFinder in December 2007 for approximately $400 million. Currently the network has $244 million in revenues from the first three quarters of 2008.
This seems like a very interesting move by FriendFinder Networks. It shows that there is simply just so much money in the adult industry online and now they are looking to move public and grow the services even faster, while cashing out at the same time.
For the first ever time Flickr has teamed up with a photo printing service for its users to use. Snapfish (owned by HP) will be Flickr’s preferred photo printing service and will be integrated with Twitter to make it easier for the users to export their pictures – and thus make it the preferred service of the users.
