Big moves in the video game industry arose yesterday, as media giant Vivendi announced plans to take a controlling stake in Activision. They plan to call it Activision Blizzard.
The real strength to Vivendi’s hand is having Blizzard Entertainment in their small portfolio of game companies.
Continue reading Activision Blizzard: Vivendi Games And Activision To Merge
The UK football club that is being bought by Web site, MyFootballClub has been announced today.
MyFootballClub (MyFC) is a revolutionary Web-based idea that will see the decisions of the management of the club – transfers, player selection and all major decisions – carried out by the paid-up members of the site – perhaps one of the only true forms of democracy still left. Thinks of it as fantasy football, but with a real team.
Continue reading MyFootballClub Announces Team They’re Buying
Mydeo, a UK company that lets people securely share video clips on the Internet, has today announced a partnership and investment by electronics retailing giant Best Buy.
Best Buy sell 40% of all camcorders sold in the US, a major benefit for Mydeo, putting them right in front of the people who will be shooting video and looking for a place to host it. The deal was kicked off by an introduction by Microsoft’s Emerging Business unit.
Continue reading Mydeo/ Best Buy: Investment And Partnership
We received a newsflash from the Wall Street Journal (I guess they would be the first to know) at 4:27 this morning that the Dow Jones board had voted in favour of the News Corp take over, with only Leslie Hill, a member of the Bancroft family, and Dieter von Holtzbrinck abstained from the vote.
Christopher Bancroft – who it is understood is actively seeking alternatives to the News Corp. bid – left the meeting early.
It’s reported that News Corp. was “grateful” to Dow Jones board for its vote.
News Corp have been trying to get their hands on Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, to add to their already large portfolio of highly influential media titles and companies around the world.
The next, and possibly final stage, is for the Bancroft family to approve the boards approval. Given the family has asked for more than $60 per share in the past – the current News Corp offer, valuing the company at $5Bn – it’s anyone’s guess which way it will go.
There’s been considerable concern voiced about how good an idea it is for Rupert Murdoch to be in control of a major force of financial reporting in America.
ChinaCache, a Beijing-based provider of Content Delivery Network services, has received an additional $31.5m dollar investment, from Western companies, including Intel Capital, reports the China Daily Newspaper.
They’ll be using part of the investment to further expand their current 50-city strong network to cope with the growing demands for audio and video, with the rest of it to purchase competitors to maintain its market position.
Continue reading ChinaCache, Dominant Chinese CDN, Gets $32m Investment
Ericsson has bought 100% of Drutt, a dominant player in providing Mobile Service Delivery Platform’s (MSDP) that is headquartered in Sweden.
This is another purchase by Ericsson who have set themselves up as a provider of complete solutions for mobile operators and content producers who want to have their content distributed over mobile networks.
Ericsson are building a service they call Ericsson IPX which is an end to end service that lets any content producer sell their material through the system, splitting the revenue.
Speaking to senior people close to the division who have bought Drutt say that parts of the system the Drutt has built will fill in a number of functions that they are missing.
UK music service last.fm has been sold to US media giant CBS, whose empire covers TV, radio and Web.
Last.fm is the darling of the ‘new’ Internet kids, as it is based on buzzword-tastic technology. While that’s true, it doesn’t take away from the fact that it is really rather good, using the listen preferences of everyone else on the service to automatically pick the tracks that probably match the music that you like.
Its major strength is that it throws in tracks that you may well have never found under your own volition – vital in a world where personal playlists can kill variety.
At £140m ($280m) the BBC are calling it the “largest-ever UK Web 2.0 acquisition.” Quite how that’s defined is anyone guess, but it is a lot of lolly, so trebles all round.
One of the founders, Martin Stiksel told the BBC that “this move will really support us to get every track ever recorded and every music video ever made onto Last.fm,” quite an ambition, but as he added, “with a strong partner like CBS, this is now within our reach.”
It’s planned that the site and company will continue to operate separately under it’s own branding.
Stiksel also bigged up the UK’s capital city, by saying “being in London has helped us; it’s the best place to do things with music full stop. It’s the place that leads the world.” Hurrah!
(Via)
Long-lasting interactive TV and new media company, Two Way TV has just announced that Ingenious Media Active Capital Ltd (IMAC) have bought 84.3% of their shares – a controlling stake – which Two Way TV are reporting as costing “up to £5.34m.” This would value the company at approx £6.33m.
Two Way TV pioneered interactive TV in the UK, describing themselves as “a leading interactive TV production company,” supplying many of ITV’s red button services on major shows like X Factor and Dancing on Ice, as well as SMS premium text games on shows such as Love Island.
When we spoke to Two Way they said they were pleased to be working with Ingenious, particularly because of the other companies under Ingenious’ wing.
The investment will be used to expand its creative and production teams for interactive entertainment shows and open a new office in Los Angeles to target the rapidly emerging US market.
Continue reading Two Way TV Acquired By Ingenious
The UK Department of Trade and Industry has referred Rupert Murdoch’s Sky purchase of nearly 18% share holding in major UK broadcaster ITV.
In the words of Alistair Darling, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, “My decision reflects consideration of the reports I have received from both the Office of Fair Trading and Ofcom and of other representations I have received about this matter.”
This action won’t be unexpected at Sky, Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading recommended this back on 27 April this year.
Sky has released the following statement
NetGear have announced the execution of a definitive agreement to acquire the privately-held Infrant Technologies, Inc, maker of RAID and NAS technology.
Netgear will be putting $60m cash on the table, with a chance for the Infrant shareholders to gain an additional $20m in cash for over the next three years if, in the oft-used phrase, “specific revenue targets are reached”.
Continue reading NetGear Buying Infrant, RAID & NAS Vendor: UPDATED