Yahoo! May Acquire Maven Networks For $150 Million+

Yahoo! Inc. is rumored to acquire Maven Networks for over $150 million.  Yahoo! was also previously interested in acquiring Metacafe and previously acquired online video editing company, Jumpcut. 

Maven Networks is an Internet TV advertising platform.  Here is a sample of what they do:
http://www.mediamave.com/foodnetwork/

Maven Networks is based in Boston, Mass. Some of Maven’s clients include FOX, Scipps Networks, Sony, TV Guide, Gannett, Univision, USA Today, CBS, IBM, HGTV, Food Network, and CNET. 

Maven previously raised around $30 million in funding from Prism Venture Partners, Accel Partners, and General Catalyst Partners.  Maven Networks has a partnership with Comcast and had a former advisor that is now the CEO of Brightcove.

[Information Source: NewTeeVee and TechCrunch]

The “SeenThis?” App On Facebook Is Good, But Still Buggy

Loomia Inc. put together an application on Facebook that shares the news stories that users have read on certain publications, most notably, The Wall Street Journal.  The application is supposed to display what other friends and groups read the same articles that another user has.  This is a great concept, but the application is still somewhat buggy.

Below is a screen shot of what the application looks like on my Facebook profile page.

In the above screen shot, I have not read any of listed stories, but it still shows up anyway.  Referring to the above screenshot, the application is supposed to show how many friends, groups, and people in my network have read those same stories.  Those links are all broken.  But when you click on “Click to see more popular articles,” a new page will load and the application appears to be running better there.  See below the below screen shot:

I clicked on the groups link for the MySpace related article and found that the article was popular among 4 groups that I’m a part of on Facebook.  So the application is doing something right, but I’d like to see it populate the articles I read so I can show it off in my profile page.  Not have random articles appear.

Other partners involved with the SeenThis? application includes NBC Universal and CNET.  NBC wants to have this app track what users are watching on their site and having the application show the users’ friends what he or she watched.  I think this is a better use of the application especially since the user is opting in. 

Interesting Strategy: No More Negative Feedback For eBay Buyers

EBay Inc., the biggest Internet auction marketplace and parent company of Paypal and Skype, announced today that it is tweaking its feedback system.  EBay’s feedback system is when buyers and sellers give each other testimonials based on how well the transaction went.  The options are Positive, Negative, and Neutral.

Ever since eBay started its operations in 1995, buyers and sellers have been exchanging feedback since Day 1.  This is a huge change for the company.  But starting February 20, sellers will no longer be able to give buyers negative ratings.

The sellers won’t be happy.  This is a loss of bargaining power for them.  

This announcement is coming shortly after eBay CEO, Meg Whitman announced her resignation and that there have been some price fluctuations.

“When the seller leaves a negative feedback for a buyer, it drives them away from the site,” stated Steve Grossberg, President of the Internet Merchants Association. 

As a side note, there are rumors that eBay may consider selling off Skype if the product does not meet certain performance goals this year. 

With so much happening at eBay, they seem vulnerable for other competition to step-up against them.  Google attacked Yahoo! when they were restructuring as did Facebook when Friendster was restructuring.  Amazon just reported a solid quarter so it will be interesting to see how eBay responds.

[Source: Associated Press via Yahoo!]
 

Microsoft Flexing Ad Muscle Further: Wins WSJ Deal

Microsoft announced yesterday that they are the exclusive provider for advertising on The Wall Street Journal web site.  This is a big win for the Redmond, Wash.-based software conglomerate.  Microsoft has similar deals with Digg and Facebook.

Through this deal, Microsoft will also power the ads for Barrons.com, MarketWatch.com, AllThingsD.com, and other WSJ-owned online properties. 

“Relevant and targeted digital advertising is important to our business and to the quality of the experience that we deliver to our users,” stated Gordon McLeod, President of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. “Microsoft’s state-of-the-art advertising platform will enable us to dramatically improve our revenues from this key sector, and we look forward to working together.”

Altogether, the websites in The Wall Street Journal Digital Network generate 20 million unique visitors per month.  The Microsoft ads will start appearing in February.

“This deal is a significant win for Microsoft for two key reasons. First, it makes the extended Microsoft advertising network the premier destination for advertisers interested in reaching financially minded users, as it complements our offering in this vertical through MSN Money and other syndication partners,” stated Brian McAndrews, Senior VP of Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft. “Second, this deal is a strong indicator that we’re gaining significant traction with our advertising platform. The Wall Street Journal Digital Network is one of the largest financial services publishers in a very dynamic vertical segment, and we’re delighted to add it to our portfolio.”

Microsoft affirmed their position in the digital advertising industry through its acquisition of aQuantive for $6 billion in May 2007.

[Information Source: Microsoft PressPass]

Yahoo!’s Problem May Be With Its Emphasis in Quality

Yahoo!, the number one visited portal with the highest number of users is currently facing new challenges. The company’s stock price is sagging and it is imminent that 1,000 employees will be laid off.

According to the Associated Press, the layoff is the “Sunnyvale-based company’s biggest purge since it was scrambling to survive the dot-com bust seven years ago.” Who is to blame? Google? Terry Semel? Jerry Yang? I would say none of the above.

I’m not a financial expert or anything, but I would say that Yahoo!’s biggest issue is their emphasis on quality. Yahoo! gives all of its users too many quality things for free.

Here are a few examples:
———
Yahoo! Music
Yahoo! Music has two primary features, both of which are free: high-quality music videos and Internet radio. Apple charges $0.99 per video and $0.99 per song. Rhapsody charges a certain fee per month for Internet radio. YouTube is free as well, but the sound and video quality is sacrificed.

Yahoo! Games
Yahoo! allows their millions of users to play games all for free. Many of their games are multiplayer too. Imagine the server costs on this one! Allowing users to play games for free is a quality feature.

Yahoo! Sports
Yahoo! has all sorts of sports fantasy games that it used by millions of users as well. According to Al Pacino’s character in the movie Two For The Money, “You know, networks don’t talk about it. Government can’t tax it. But sports betting is a two hundred billion dollar a year business.”

People all over the world make friendly bets with each other whether its Yahoo! Fantasy Sports or the Final Four NCAA Basketball tournament, why couldn’t Yahoo! somehow make money from this? It’s a quality company and being associated with gambling may be taboo for an Internet company. That didn’t stop PartyPoker though.
———

Yahoo! is losing its search market share to Google, but their quality products keeps all of their users coming back. The company needs to leverage that. When AOL, Friendster, and MySpace realized that their search is not their core competency, they took money from Google to power their search.

This gave the aforementioned companies capital and time to focus on other projects. After all, when it comes to producing quality services for its users, Yahoo! is brilliant. Look at how many services they offer (I couldn’t fit all of the services in one screen shot due to resolution limitations):

Google Testing Out New Search Views

Andrew Hogue, Tech Lead at Google announced on the Google Blog recently that the company is testing out different views on search as part of an experiment.  Currently, Google’s current search results view are 10 results in a vertical list. 

There are 3 different views that Google introduced in their experiment: Map View, Timeline View, and Info View. 

The Timeline View shows a clickable timeline at the top of the results that has content relevant for that year.  Below is a screen shot example of the civil rights timeline.  The higher bars indicate that there are a large number of unique dates.  The search box is to search for specific dates.

The higher bars indicate that there are a large number of unique dates.  The search box is to search for specific dates.

The Map View shows a Google Map with results related to search.  For example, I conducted a search of the term “Elian.”  Elián González is the Cuban boy that was rescued by two fishermen and ended up on U.S. soil.  The screen shot shows the cities that are relevant to the case in the events that shortly followed.

And the last new search view is Info View.  Info View simply has a panel at the right side of the page that has options to instantly display Dates, Measurements, Locations, or Images related to the content that is searched. 

For example, if the user search for “cars” and click on images, it will show pictures of cars.  If the user click on Measurements, it will display some common parameters for various cars such as miles per gallon and a search form will appear asking the user to search for a measurements range.  If the user click on Locations, a search form will open asking the user to search for specific locations to find cars on sale. 

Below is a screen shot of the Info View:

Automattic Launches Prologue, A Twitter-Like Product For Groups

Automattic, the company that created WordPress and was recently funded, announced a new product yesterday called Prologue. The new product can be best described as Twitter for groups. The company said that messages can be sent internally or between groups.

Below is a screen shot from the demo I found on the WordPress blog:

Some of the messages are from the developers of Automattic discussing what part of the project that they are working on. The whole prologue, the individual authors, all of the tags, combinations, or searches has their own RSS feeds.  Also messages can have their own Gravatar.

Prologues can be public or private and each message can have comments.  Comments also have built-in RSS feeds.  Since Automattic’s developers are so wide-spread, this tool is useful to their company internally.  They set up a password-protected Prologue, which is also available for all other users as well.

The code is open source and is available at: http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/prologue/.  The product is also available for WordPress.com users under Presentation.

My guess is that if this product takes off, the company may enhance features for Prologue.  For example, creating a mobile version of the product may make sense.  For example, if I am a developer and want to announce to my team that I’ll be traveling so I cannot work on the site for a while, I can easily let them know without being near a computer.

[Information Source: Matt Mullenwag's blog]