Private equity firm Hellman & Friedman is buying Getty Images for $2.4bn. Getty is one of the largest stock image providers online. Its library contains over 70 million pictures and 30,000 hours of film footage.

Under the terms of the sale agreement, Getty’s stock holders will receive $34.00 in cash for each share of stock they own. The $2.4bn price represents roughly a 50% premium over Getty’s market cap.

Getty’s sale definitely proves that the premium stock photo Industry is alive and well.

TidalTV, an online video provider similar to Joost, has raised $15 million. TitalTV’s chairman is Scott Ferber, a co-founder of Advertising.com. Its CEO, Mollie Spilman, was a top sales / marketing executive At advertising.com.

TidalTV’s platform will be web-based but it will also have the ability to be controlled by a remote. The company will focus on premium video content and shows. It will also provide some exclusive content.

The service seems less like an on-demand Internet video provider and more like a traditional television channel provider. I am not too sure if a company like this can succeed. Joost raised a ton of cash and their traction has nearly disappeared.

Divx is pulling the plug on Stage6. According to Divx, Stage6 is being shut down because of high costs. But the main reason for the shutdown is most likely pirated content. Stage6 was full of pirated content. Its pirated content powered many video piracy sites such as Joox and Quick Silver Screen.

Divx launched Stage6 after seeing the success of video sharing sites such as YouTube skyrocket. Their plan with Stage6 was to push and promote the Divx format.

At the moment, there are no high quality alternatives to Stage6. Although a number of video sharing sites currently offer HD content, the ability to download the HD videos does not exist – mainly because the videos are in Flash format.

Google has partnered up with the Cleveland Clinic to enable some of its patients to store their medical history online. The pilot program is most likely a Google Health initiative. Google hinted at launching Google Health roughly 18 months ago. Through the program, Google wants to enable the free flow of medical records between medical institutions.

If you have ever been to multiple doctors, you know how long it can take for medical files to be sent from one doctor to another. Surprisingly enough, a very small percentage of health records are electronic. Most health records are hand-written and placed in vanilla envelopes. When a doctor requests a patient’s records, someone has to find the records, photocopy them, and send them out via snail mail or fax.

Google’s pilot program at the Cleveland Clinic will allow some of its patients to electronically share their medical records with ease. The patients will (supposedly) have control over who can see their records. The health records will be stored in a secured health profile area on Google. Google hopes that the pilot program’s users will see a benefit in sharing  their health records with insurance providers, physicians, pharmacists, and hospitals electronically.

Google is not the first major player trying to cash in on online medical record storage. Microsoft’s HealthVault lets users store and share information about their health online as well.

Although I think the free flow of medical records is an excellent idea, security and privacy could be a huge concern. We may be trusting Google with too much information.

Remember when eBay used to be a pleasant experience? The eBay rush and the excitement of winning an auction is what built eBay into the company it is today. But on the way up the Internet success ladder, eBay, unlike Amazon, forgot about its users. These days, it seems like eBay cares less about its users. Their recent price “decrease” gibberish was an insult to the intelligence of millions of its sellers. Their technical support is a joke. Their site needs a complete overhaul. Their baggage (Skype) needs to be removed. And whats up with not letting sellers give buyers negative feedback anymore? What kind of genius came up with that idea?

eBay’s listings are steadily decreasing. Its sellers are leaving to open their own ecommerce stores. Auction fraud on its listings is rising. Where did eBay go wrong?

I don’t think eBay will be able to fix its problems. It will eventually become Internet history. That company has no idea what its doing anymore. Maybe it should learn a thing or two from Amazon.

The biggest problem with eBay sucking is the small number of alternatives available. All the eBay alternatives I know of suck more than eBay. Someone out there needs to create a new auction platform, raise a few million, and build an eBay killer. I believe its inevitable that a startup will crush eBay’s monopoly.

United Online, parent company of Classmates.com announced that they are withdrawing their IPO for the school reunion-focused social networ.  Currently Classmates.com is facing a lot of competitive pressures (such as MySpace/Facebook/Friendster/Hi5), but is pulling out due to current market conditions.  United Online still plans on eventually having a Classmates.com IPO according to a 10K filing.

United Online has already capitalized $3.6 million in IPO costs by December 31, 2007 and if they don’t have an IPO for Classmates, then these costs will have to be filed as an expense in a future period.  Classmates.com recently restructured to become its own reporting unit.  Currently Classmates has 3.2 million+ paid accounts.

Other United Online properties include MyPoints, Freeservers, Juno, and NetZero.

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) is makin’ moves online.  In August 2007, the Mickey Mouse and “It’s a small world” creators acquired Club Penguin, a kid-friendly social network for $350 million.  And now the company announced that they will be creating virtual worlds with online games.  As a matter of fact, they hired a team to focus on these specific jobs.  This new team will be part of the Walt Disney Internet Group and will be called Disney Online Studios.

Disney Online Studios will be managed by Steve Parkis.  Parkis studied at Michigan State and Northwestern and then started his career working at Kimberly-Clark.  AFter that, Parkis became a MD at Windhorst New Technologies.  Today Steve serves as the Vice President of Premium Products for Disney Online.

The new Disney Online Studios team will also include Disney Online’s Virtual Reality Studio, Toontown Online, and Pirates of the Caribbean Online.  Disney is also creating a virtual world where kids can control Disney Fairies and characters from the Disney film, Cars.  Club Penguin will continue to report to the Walt Disney Internet Group.

Disney is taking over the market-share for virtual worlds made for children, a market that Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, could have easily done.  Second Life had about 1.3 million users log in around March 2007 [clickz].  I’m not sure what the current number of users are.

[Information Source:  socalTECH]

Kraft Foods (NYSE:KFT), the Northfield, Ill.-based food and beverage company that owns brands like Crystal Light, Chips Ahoy!, Hand-Snacks, Jell-O, Kool-Aid (ohhh yeahhhh!), etc. started their own social network called uPumpItUp.  The site is chaired by pop singer and actress, Mandy Moore.

uPumpItUp’s objective is to help women balance their lives.

“We all struggle with finding time for ourselves between family and friends and work and all those other obligations and we neglect ourselves,” stated Moore.  “Having that sense of balance in life between personal and all that other stuff is kind of essential to leading a happy life,” said Moore.

Registering for the site is easy.  Below is a screen shot:

There are four main features: Express Your Unique Style (fashion), Connect With Others (networking), Get Inspired (health), and Explore Your World (talents/adventure).

Mandy Moore isn’t the first pop star to start her own social network.  Last November, Kylie Minogue started a social network for her fans.