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Federated Media hires a banker -- is John Battelle's company up for sale?
John Battelle's online-ad rep firm, Federated Media, has hired a small investment bank, Savvian LLC, to "manage investor interest," according to a source close to the company. What does that mean? Hopefully Battelle wasn't giving interested investors his customary greeting, shown here. FM sells advertising and performs other services for blogs in specific subject areas. It's especially strong in tech, representing TechCrunch, GigaOm, and VentureBeat, among others. Online ad networks are fashionable among investors right now, so it's possible Federated could be entertaining buyout offers. But Battelle's choice of a banker is curious: Savvian is known for helping companies in dire straits. It's also known for getting smaller media companies sold to larger ones — such as BeliefNet, recently purchased by News Corp. with Savvian's help.
Bomb scare at eBay
eBay's campus in Campbell, near San Jose, has reportedly been evacuated due to a suspicious package. No word if this is related to last year's still unsolved PayPal bombing. Have any more details? Please let us know.
eBay's campus in Campbell, near San Jose, has reportedly been evacuated due to a suspicious package. No word if this is related to last year's still unsolved PayPal bombing. Have any more details? Please let us know.
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Container ship strikes Bay Bridge support tower
The container ship Cosco Busan struck a tower of the Bay Bridge in San Francisco in heavy fog. Traffic was not affected and the bridge seems to be fine, though the cargo ship was leaking oil and had a 100-foot gash visible on the side. (Photo by San Francisco Chronicle/Michael Macor)
Scoble retires!
This just in from the wires! "For 18 years, I have had one of the best jobs on the planet," said Scoble. Who knew PodTech had been around so long?
This just in from the wires! "For 18 years, I have had one of the best jobs on the planet," said Scoble. Who knew PodTech had been around so long?
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Ask.com inks $3.5 billion ad deal with Google
In the midst of a call laying out IAC's plans to break up into five separate companies, CEO Barry Diller announced that he'd struck a five-year deal with Google to carry its search ads on Ask.com, an arrangement he says will be worth $3.5 billion. As we'd reported, Diller had little choice but to go with Google, since its competition likely couldn't afford to offer equally lucrative terms.
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Google rushes to open itself up
Mark Zuckerberg, are you feeling scared? Google isn't just moving in on your turf, it's beating you to the punch. By almost a week. Since hiring Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of LiveJournal and a proponent of open standards, Google has been rumored to be working on tools to let developers build software for multiple social networks. An announcement had been expected next Monday. That would have been a day before Facebook plans to unveil a new ad network to compete with Google's AdSense. Instead of being late, as rumored, Google's early. On Thursday, Google will unveil OpenSocial, a set of common software-development standards that Hi5, Orkut, LinkedIn, Friendster, Ning, Salesforce.com, and Oracle have agreed to use. Call them the Google Gang. The Gang, in turn will allow developers like RockYou and iLike to develop one common widget which will work on any of their sites. The goal? To make it unattractive for developers to lock themselves into the Facebook platform. Boo!
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Geeks on fire! Flames close The Lobby
Souther California's not the only area ablaze. Fires have broken out on the Big Island of Hawaii, near the Fairmont Orchid, and the hotel has evacuated its guests. And those guests include many attendees of VC David Hornik's exclusive funconference, The Lobby, who had extended their stay through the weekend. Such a bummer when your poolside-getaway boondoggle gets cut short by Mother Nature, isn't it?
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CNET sells Webshots for $45 million
CNET has sold photo-sharing site Webshots to American Greetings for $45 million — a website it spent $70 million on three years ago. And this in an age when MySpace bought Photobucket for hundreds of millions. An internal memo reads:Today, Webshots was sold to American Greetings for approximately $45 million. This was a tough decision but the right business decision. Selling Webshots allows us to focus our efforts against long term strategic goals, and concentrate on the passion-based categories we believe offer the most promise for CNET Networks.The full internal email from CEO Neil Ashe is after the jump: More »
We are pleased that Webshots can become an important ingredient to American Greetings' business, and we are committed to making this a successful transition over the next several months.
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Facebook takes Microsoft's money -- and its ad platform
Is Mark Zuckerberg in charge at Facebook? That's the first question I asked myself when I saw the press release Microsoft and Facebook issued. Sure, he got his $15 billion valuation — but only $240 million in cash, a less than 2 percent stake. Facebook's investors, in other words, asserted control and prevented Microsoft from diluting their stake. On the other hand, Microsoft, crucially, will remain Facebook's exclusive third-party ad network. It's telling, I think, that Zuckerberg didn't put his name on the press release. Instead, recently demoted executive Owen Van Natta got the money quote. Why not Zuck? I don't think this is the deal he wanted.
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MySpace CEO renews contract for two years
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — "I'm happy to say I'll have a job for the next two years," says Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace, on stage with conference organizer John Battelle and his boss, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, confirming widespread rumors that he and MySpace cohort Tom Anderson had renewed their contract to run the social network for another two years. "I had to go from the nickel-and-dime newspaper culture, to the magazine culture ... to Hollywood and the Internet culture," says Murdoch, nodding to the reported — but unconfirmed — figure that DeWolfe and Anderson would make: $30 million over two years. More live coverage, after the jump. More »
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Has Microsoft snagged a Facebook stake?
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — On stage, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg tells an audience of hundreds that his company is "happy" with its Microsoft relationship. That, of course, would be the relationship where Microsoft has exclusive control of Facebook's display-ad inventory — the relationship that Facebook, insiders say, is desperate to wriggle out of. There's only one logical reading of this response: Microsoft and Facebook have renegotiated their ad deal, allowing Facebook to sell its own ads in the U.S. — most likely in exchange for letting Microsoft take a stake in the company, shutting out Google and Yahoo. Could this really be the end of Facebook's big-money drama? (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
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Facebook financing "almost wrapped up"
WEB 2.0 SUMMIT — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage at John Battelle and Tim O'Reilly's Web conference, and he's proved to be game for questions. Battelle, clearly expecting a nonresponse, asks Zuckerberg about his company's financing — the sale of a small stake that would value the company at as much as $15 billion. Instead, Zuckerberg gamely smiles and says, "Great. It's almost wrapped up." The crowd, a bit shocked, breaks into laughter. Battelle then asks about an IPO. Zuckerberg says, "Definitely years out." (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
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BLACK ROCK CITY — The entire point of Burning Man is, I'll remind the uninitiated, is to gather together in the desert to torch a giant wooden statue called, yes, The Man. But that's supposed to happen this weekend. It's 3 in the morning on Tuesday, and The Man is ON FIRE!! HOLY FUCKING MOTHER OF FUCK! More as it happens!
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Burning Man statue burns -- a bit too early
BLACK ROCK CITY — The entire point of Burning Man is, I'll remind the uninitiated, is to gather together in the desert to torch a giant wooden statue called, yes, The Man. But that's supposed to happen this weekend. It's 3 in the morning on Tuesday, and The Man is ON FIRE!! HOLY FUCKING MOTHER OF FUCK! More as it happens!
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There's a reason most datacenters are located in distant office parks: It's harder for angry customers to line up at your door. And that's what's happening to 365 Main, the downtown-San Francisco datacenter which is suffering a major outage, caused, a tipster says, not by local power fluctuations but by a drunken employee on a bender. (Update: I no longer know whether to trust the source who sent in the tip about a drunk employee.) An eyewitness says that in addition to the customers lining up, bicycle messengers are constantly whizzing by to drop off packages — legal notices, one presumes, informing 365 Main that it has breached customers' service-level agreements. Anyone else on the scene? Drop us a line.
Angry mob gathers outside SF datacenter
There's a reason most datacenters are located in distant office parks: It's harder for angry customers to line up at your door. And that's what's happening to 365 Main, the downtown-San Francisco datacenter which is suffering a major outage, caused, a tipster says, not by local power fluctuations but by a drunken employee on a bender. (Update: I no longer know whether to trust the source who sent in the tip about a drunk employee.) An eyewitness says that in addition to the customers lining up, bicycle messengers are constantly whizzing by to drop off packages — legal notices, one presumes, informing 365 Main that it has breached customers' service-level agreements. Anyone else on the scene? Drop us a line.
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Fire in downtown Palo Alto
The 300 block of University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto is aflame, according to Megan McCarthy, who's on the scene. "Flames are shooting 20 to 30 feet into the air from the rear of the building," reports Palo Alto Online. Threatened by the blaze: The Peninsula bureau of the San Jose Mercury News. A block away: Accel Partners, the VC firm which funded Facebook and BitTorrent, among others. Anyone know of other businesses that might be affected? Leave a comment, and Megan will update us if there's more news.
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EBay building bombed: Exclusive IMs from an eBayer inside the building
Firefighters rushed to eBay's San Jose headquarters last night after an explosion in a four-story eBay building. First thought to be a transformer, the cause is now being reported as a bomb. More »
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