Seth Gilbert, 12-2-2008
It takes strength or ingenuity to swim upstream and navigate a strong current. More often than not, companies raising sizable venture rounds in this economic climate are relying on their strength (at least when measured by the scale of prior capital commitments). Last week it was hopeful television visionary Sezmi confirming reports of a $33m round. This week, it is aspiring media empire Huffington Post that’s claiming their due.
In a series C round committed singly from Oak Investment Partners, Huffington Post has reported a $25million draw.
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Seth Gilbert, 11-30-2008
Black Friday is usually a day of bargain shopping. The gift giving comes later. This year, for Yahoo shareholders, a small present came a little early. Friday, in an SEC required “insider” filing, Yahoo director and major shareholder, Carl Icahn, disclosed he’d acquired an additional 6,778,804 shares of Yahoo stock in three transactions between Monday and Wednesday. The news, which many took as a positive forward-looking omen, helped elevate Yahoo’s stock price.
Trying to look behind Icahn’s decision making, some are speculating his timing may indicate a new CEO announcement is on its way sooner than later. Others have posited different theories.
Assuredly, one certainty is he’s not trading on actual knowledge of a CEO succession plan. Though he’d be in the know as a board member, trading on that kind of insider advantage is illegal.
So maybe, this is a sign Icahn believes liquidity will come sooner now that Jerry Yang has lost his grip? Or perhaps it could be a signal Icahn is hunkering down for the long haul?
Trying to get inside Icahn’s head has never been an easy task.
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Seth Gilbert, 11-26-2008
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"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence." ~Ansel Adams |
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"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man."
~Edward Steichen
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Life magazine was born of the great depression and through much of the 20th century itserved as a key benefactor to the development of modern photojournalism. The magazine chronicled the civil rights movement, the lunar landing. It was in the offices of presidents and the cells of pariahs. It was the stage of actors and activists. Its pages host to famed writers and legendary photographers – from Ernest Hemingway to Gordon Parks.
Through the years, Life survived some of the world’s most violent upheavals. It soldiered through two world wars, a presidential assassination and a shamed resignation. What the magazine couldn’t outlive, or keep pace with, was western society’s evolution to a media culture. First diminished by the image-overload of the television age, then crippled by an influx of competitive image centric and niche-specific magazines, Life Magazine finally succumbed to the Internet Information Age last year.
On April 20th, 2007, after four years on life support as a newspaper insert, Life Magazine quietly passed. In the media, we said our goodbyes and delivered our eulogies.
Fortunately, in the information age what’s gone need not be lost or forgotten. And that is the case with Life’s image library of more than 10 million pictures.
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Seth Gilbert, 11-24-2008
When a company goes public it inherits the responsibility of regularly disclosing its financial performance in SEC mandated filings. Usually this burden is a willing sacrifice in exchange for new monies or the liquidity of a public trading market. Every now and again, however, a private company can be forced to register and report even when it’s not in their near-term plans. Facebook has just managed to avoid stepping into this minefield.
The securities law, specifically Section 12(g) of the Exchange Act, requires companies to register if the number of shareholders or the value of the corporate assets exceed certain thresholds. Per a rule that went effective December 7, 2007, these thresholds for employee stock plans were set at 500 option holders, or assets in excess of 10 million (SEC Rule: http://www.sec.gov/rules/final/2007/34-56887.pdf).
Facebook’s stock plan was apparently nearing the 500 person boundary.
Facebook’s attorneys petitioned the SEC for an exemption. In a letter first reported by BusinessWeek, the SEC agreed to provide it.
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Seth Gilbert, 11-20-2008
If you want to irritate consumers, one way is to try and interfere heavy handedly with how they can use the product’s they’ve purchased. An even more surefire way to rankle them and draw their wrath is to fail to disclose your practices or cover them up.
Sony BMG found this out the hard way with their now infamous “root kit” music DRM fiasco in 2005. That violation of consumer trust brought them a tremendous amount of bad PR and plenty of time in front of a judge before the lawsuits were settled. Electronic Arts currently, though to a lesser degree, is dealing with a similar parade of customer backlash thanks to their own poor disclosure over DRM. EA’s facing down a handful of class action lawsuits.
Now, it seems, Apple and other PC vendors could, if they’re not careful, get a foot partially snagged in a similar but far less toothy version of the same kind of bear trap too.
According to reports from Wired and Ars Technica, new Macbook computers have quietly been gifted a restrictive anti piracy technology called High Bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) (or a related system called Display Port Content Protection (DPCP)). These technologies are DRM systems that add a layer of encryption to the distribution of some content between its source (your computer) and certain peripherals and displays (your external monitor).
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Seth Gilbert,
Chalk up another Web 1.0 movie delivery service to the fire-sale files. Last year, it was Blockbuster stepping in to salvage Movielink for pennies on the dollar, $6.6m to be precise. This year it’s Sonic Solutions sweeping up CinemaNow for even less.
Announced Thursday, the media authoring software company known as a leading maker of DVD and Blu Ray encoding tools is buying the assets and assuming the liabilities of the movie download service for a reported $3m.
Cinema Now was founded in 1999 to offer online movie rentals. As studios became more accepting of Internet delivery mechanisms, downloadable sales were added to the mix. CinemaNow was the first website to offer pay-per-view movies from major studios. They were also the first broadband distributor of HD content.
Investors including Menlo Ventures, Cisco, Transcosmos and Lions Gate fueled the company with more than $40m in funding. A fifth round totaling more than $20m was closed in 2006.
The investors money helped build both the delivery mechanism and a catalog of TV and film titles more than 6,000 strong but it wasn’t enough to buy a sizable audience. Consumers never really embraced the service. Click to Read More
Seth Gilbert, 11-19-2008
Today, hundreds of Microsoft shareholders converged on Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Center to hear the state of their union. Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates talked Azure while shareholder votes for board seats were tallied. Yahoo wasn’t a subject on the annual meeting’s agenda, but the prospect of a new Microsoft bid for the struggling web giant was on the minds of many.
The very first question of the open Q&A put it out there: “What’s happening with Yahoo?” Is Microsoft still interested? Steve Ballmer answered assuredly. Click to Read More
