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For a superstitious company, taking the same office space formerly used by YouTube isn’t a bad omen.  Yesterday, Bluepulse, a provider of mobile social networking services from Australia stepped onto that four leaf clover and also announced it had closed a $6m financing. 

The company, which was founded in 2002 in Australia launched a beta version of its services last year in December.  They are now global.  Their social networking features are functional on most Internet enabled cell phones provided a customer has an appropriate data plan.

To date the company has reported more than 2million downloads of their application. In usage, they are generating more than a 100 million monthly page views.

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D2C Games, a San Mateo California publisher of downloadable games, appears to be the latest company to join the lists of recently funded. Appears is the key word as there  is some confusion as to the details.  Most reports are saying the company, which as its name suggests is focused on direct to consumer casual sports games for consoles , mobile and PC environments, closed a $6m Series A financing.  The confusion surrounds whether this was in fact an A or a B round, and when it actually closed.

Past reports noted on Paid Content and elsewhere have said the company previously took in a million dollars in seed money, and professional Series A round worth another $1.5m last year.  Click to Read More

Concerns about a credit crunch and further erosion of mortgage related securities may put a damper on debt based private equity deals, notably leveraged buy outs (LBOs) but it remains to be seen if the related interest rate and capital allocation costs will impact cash based or corporate deals.  It’s actually even possible that they’ll increase the rate of corporate transactions (as private equity deals slow and sellers consider alternate buyers).

In the media industry, NBC Universal apparently isn’t concerned.  According to rumors first reported Sunday, and now confirmed, NBC will go ahead with a buyout of international television player Sparrowhawk Media.

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From earnings announcements to press releases to interviews, they said it. Collected recent quips and clips from the executive suites On Gaming, On Mobile, On Internet Video, On Advertising and On Business:

“Video-game consumers are the single most sophisticated shoppers in the entertainment industry, despite their age and what you might think. People go to a movie or buy a book on a whim. But buying a video game is a much more methodical and judicious process. Next time you’re in an airport, look at how many magazines are dedicated to video games. And they’re not writing about the sex lives of game designers. They are writing about the content.” –Jeff Brown, vice president for corporate communications at Electronic Arts (New York Times)

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Score a small victory for Fair Use and the rights of cable TV viewers (at least indirectly). Today, in an obscure agreement, administrative oversight consortiums representing cable companies (CableLabs) and electronics makers (5C), and with the approval of the content industry (TV/Film studios),  agreed to support an encryption and data management standard for streaming content within home networks.

At issue is the ability to watch and record digital programming within your home and then stream it from one device to another on a local network.   Imagine, record a TV show on your DVR, stream it live, or delayed, to your home office computer, or shift it to the TV in your bedroom.  Store it on a network hard drive rather than the drive on board your Tivo box.  Watch it in one room, while recording something else in another.

But wait you ask? Isn’t place shifting technology already here?  Isn’t this already possible?  The answer is, yes, it is available but with caveats. Click to Read More

There’s been a lot of activity on the financing front lately.  With big deals like Metacafe’s $30m round, and smaller deals with celebrity investors like,   Exabre (The Filter) some other smaller round deals haven’t gotten a lot of press.  Two that were almost overlooked are game company Conduit Labs and discovery-agent software company uPlayMe

Conduit Labs:
Conduit Labs has raised $5.5m in a first round for an internet gaming site.  Click to Read More

Eight figure funding rounds for net video companies are starting to become frighteningly familiar.  Joining Joost, Brightcove, and Veoh,  Palo Alto based Metacafe has become the latest winner of the high-valuation funding lottery.

It was announced today that the company closed a $30m 3rd Round of financing.  The deal was led by Highland Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.  Previous investors Accel and Benchmark also participated (Accel has also invested in Brightcove).  The cumulative investment in the video portal now exceeds $50m. Click to Read More