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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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Raising money in a tightening venture climate can depend on who you know as much as what you’re company is doing.  Based on these factors, set top box developer Sezmi may be in a pretty good place.    The company aiming to potentially reshape television distribution counts among its board members a past president of the National Venture Capital Association, a prior president of Bell Labs and another executive whose resume credits include roles as CEO of NBC and Sony BMG music.

According to regulatory filings reported at PEHub, since August, the company has drawn $28m out of a possible $50m in Series C financing.  Prior investors including Morgenthaler Ventures and Omni Capital Group both participated.

UPDATE Nov. 25: Sezmi has confirmed the financing and issued a press release. A total of $33m was reported. Click to Read More

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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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

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

Started in 1888.  Financial supporter for the first expedition to the North Pole.  Photographs from the first flight over the South.  Presence on the first orbital space flight.  Present on the moon -  from the Far East to the home front, from the icy north to the deepest ocean depths, in its first hundred years National Geographic was a pioneer of exploration.  It the last fifteen, it’s been a pioneer in the evolution of media.

Today, there are 31 local language editions of the National Geographic magazine reaching forty million people a month.   The TV shows, distributed on branded cable channels, beam to 250 million households in over 160 countries.  The website hosts more than ten million people a month.  National Geographic is available in Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, Hebrew, Chinese, Greek, Italian, Arabic, Spanish, even Serbian. 

In September, embracing technology, a Mobile division was launched.  In early October, the brand’s website National Geographic.com launched a portal for user-generated video.   Today, a gaming division was added to the expanding digital media mix.

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Jerry Yang took the helm of Yahoo a year and half ago with a plan to restore the then struggling company he co-founded to its former glory.  Amidst mounting pressure from major shareholders, he’ll step down with the task far from complete.

Yahoo announced Monday evening that executive search firm Heidrick and Struggles has been retained to help them find a new CEO.  Jerry Yang will stay in the roll until a replacement is found.  He’ll then revert to his role as “Chief Yahoo.”

Running Yahoo has never been an easy task.  As demonstrated in historical stock charts depicting the stewardship of each of Yahoo’s CEO’s (shown here split adjusted), despite the company’s amazing audience growth, there’s been a consistent ebb and flow to the valuation of the company since its public debut. All of the executives saw value erode in the later periods of their tenure.

Jerry Yang’s short term was particularly tempestuous.  From February 2008 until May, he went to head to head with Steve Ballmer and Microsoft. Through the spring and summer, he faced off with shareholder Carl Icahn over board seats and corporate strategy.    Into the fall, he’s faced defecting staff and an economic environment not before seen in the lifespan of the company.

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