“Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist’s board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions,” stated Mike Jacobson, eBay’s General Counsel. “We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay’s stockholders and preserve our investment.”

One of the worst things that can happen to a company is if the owners do not get along.  eBay owns a portion of Craigslist.  eBay bought 28% of Craigslist in 2004 for $13.5 million.

eBay started a Craigslist competitor called Kijiji, a free classifieds web site.  Craigslist mentioned that this action nullifies eBay’s rights as a shareholder.  In response, Craigslist found a way to dilute eBay’s share in the basic classifieds site.  In the Craigslist blog, eBay claims that eBay is using their power to dominate the classifieds market.  eBay launched Kijiji in 2005.

eBay has an interest to acquire the rest of Craigslist if they offer according to former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman.  A former Craigslist executive sold his or her shares in the company to eBay directly.

Information Source:
[1] Craig Newmark’s blog: Tainted Love
[2] Associated Press: EBay makes public its complaint against Craigslist by Amanda Fehd

Microsoft Corporation management met today to strategize what to do about Yahoo! Yahoo! believes that the offer that Microsoft is offering is too low to accept. Microsoft may be willing to spend $32-$33 per share. The original offer is about $29.12 per share. It’s rumored that Yahoo!’s board wants $35-$37.

CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer and Bear Sterns’ CEO, Alan Schwartz are working with major Yahoo! shareholders to figure out what the options are. Microsoft may walk away from the offer which could cause the search engine company’s stock plummet.

Yahoo! is still thinking of merging with AOL. Maybe even an ad deal with Google.

Information Source:
[1] Wall Street Journal: Microsoft Board Mulls Yahoo Bid But Price Remains Key Issue by Kevin J. Delaney, Robert A. Guth and Matthew Karnitschnig

Found via TechCrunch’s Twitter

“We’re absolutely convinced at Cox that online revenue is continuing to grow,”stated John Dyer, EVP of Cox Enterprises. “If you look at Cox’s history, we’ve not necessarily been the first into a space… But we’ve prided ourselves in the course of history in being early investors.”

Cox Enterprises, the communications company that owns a large number of TV, radio, and newspaper companies is planning to acquire Adify Corporation. Adify is an advertising company that brokers ads for publishers and spreads advertisements for marketers. Cox plans on acquiring the digital advertising company for $300 million.

Adify’s clients include Martha Stewart Living Omimedia and several finance web sites created owned by Forbes Inc.

Early investors in Adify include NBC and Time Warner.  These companies will cash out and won’t have any further influence on Adify’s operations.  NBC will still be a customer.  Cox also owns Autotrader.com.

“UDC has a monolithic team that can guarantee fast growth and be successful in putting all pets in the world to the web.”
-Tauno Tats, CEO of ASI

United Dogs and Cats, Ltd. (UDC) made a call to the Skype founders for an investment. And Ambient Sounds Investments (ASI), the company formed by the 4 engineers behind Skype answered the call. Ambient invested about $235,000 into the pet social network company recently. United Dogs and Cats runs UnitedDogs.com and UnitedCats.com, a couple of social networking companies for pet owners.

Between both sites, there are only 40,000 users. This is not a whole lot. The design of the homepage is pretty sloppy too. If I was United Dogs and Cats, I’d hire a user interface expert. UnitedDogs and UnitedCats has profiles, blogs, and photo sharing.

United Dogs and Cats will be opening a new platform and languages over the next few weeks.  UDC also has a Facebook Application and allows users to find each other via Google Maps if interested.

Ragnar Sass is the CEO of Estonian-based UDC.

Competitors include Dogster, Catster, My Dog Space, and My Cat Space, Petster, Pawspot, Fuzzster.

Information Source:
[1] UDC Blog: Pet Owner’s Social Network Secures Additional Funding from ASI by Ragnar Sass
[2] TechCrunch: Skype Co-Founding Engineers Invest In Pet Social Network by Duncan Riley

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZayaW979j_g[/youtube]

Information Source:
[1] 1938 Media: Shel Israel Interviews The Other Guy From Diggnation by Loren Feldman

Other useful information:
[1] Wikipedia bio of Shel Israel

Warning: Graphic language.

There is a lot of hype in the Web 2.0 community revolving around setting up an ideal homepage. Within the last decade, a simple search engine was common to have as a browser starting point. But today’s web users want widgets quickly telling them what their stock values are, how much money they’re making on AdSense, who wrote on their Facebook walls, what their favorite blogs wrote about today, and how to dress to plan for today’s weather. We want all this information consolidated and fast because we’re all an executive in some way and don’t have time to look at each page individually.

Now developers can apply for sandbox, a plethora of OpenSocial APIs available for developing applications on iGoogle. OpenSocial is a Google initiative where many other social networks and mobile companies are coming together to create a united platform. Some see this initiative as a way to compete against Facebook Applications.

When a user updates information in their social network, it can be connected to an Updates widget within iGoogle. iGoogle is an RSS and widget consolidation web site to enable users to get personalized information faster.

Below is a sample of what the OpenSocial APIs can do from an Updates standpoint. It works very similarly to the Facebook profile Mini-Feed and homepage news feed.

Facebook’s response will be interesting. With OpenSocial emulating one of their ideas and all of the investment Facebook has received for building the company to a bigger level, I expect more interesting things to come out than just an IM platform.

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Hints of iGoogle Turning Into Its Own Social Network by Erick Schonfeld

Dilbert.com, the United Media cartoon authored by Scott Adams has upgrade it’s web site to the styles of Web 2.0. Each reader can share, embed, subscribe to the RSS, and and embed widgets of today’s strips into social networks of blogs. The widgets support MySpace, Facebook, MyYearBook, Vista, Yahoo!, iGoogle, Netvibes, Live.com, and Hi5. Users can also comment on and vote for each strip as demoed below.

Below is a screen shof of the new Dilbert homepage. You’ll notice several features such as animation and mash-ups were added.

Mash-ups will have 3 features. The first feature is for the user to submit their own punchline. Next month, users will be able to write the dialogue for the entire strip.

The Animation section is a quick humorous piece of a Dilbert sketch through the use of Adobe Flash. The animation is produced by Scott Adams and produced by RingTales.com. These animations have a share button that can be sent to Digg, Facebook, and/or del.icio.us.

The mashup system has filters to prevent users from profanity when creating the comic dialogue. With these new features, United Media and Scott Adams want to make Dilbert more viral and encourage readers to keep coming back to the web site.

To see Scott Adams take a beating in Second Life, click here.

Information Source:
[1] Dilbert.com relaunches with Web 2.0 flavor by Daniel Terdiman

“We think there is a chance to grab a sizable chunk of the market.”
-Isaac Garcia, CEO of Central.

Central Desktop is a web-based tool intended for project collaboration. Some of the tools available include online docs and spreadsheets, creating databases online, abilities to set up web meetings, calendar software, the ability to build charts, tasks, reports, etc.

Central Desktop is based in Pasadena, Calif. in 2005.  Central Desktop made about $2.5 million in sales per year from 2,000 subscribers.  They are anticipating $100 million in sales within the next 5 years.

OpenView Venture Partners provided this round of funding.  Managing partner, Scott Maxwell and partner, Mark Berry stepped up to Central Desktop’s Board of Directors.

Below are a couple screen shots of the software’s capabilities.  The dashboard looks pretty cool.

Information Source:
[1] Red Herring: Sharepoint Assassin Snags $7 Million by Scott Martin

Blogs have important role in corporate affairs. The upper management of major corporations have started their own blogs to show that they are transparent. The importance of content published in blogs in epitomized by an occurence of when Engadget published an article related to iPhone and Leopard operating distribution delays, instantly knocking down market cap by $4 billion. After it was announced that the delays source was untrue, the share price went back up.

Google Finance aggregates blog posts that are relevant to the companies that they have profiles for. However, for Sequoia Capital, I noticed that there are irrelevant blog posts showing up. Blog posts that Google Finance aggregates for Sequoia Capital are primarily related to the Toyota Sequoia automobile.

What does this mean? Google Finance needs a new way to aggregate blog posts to filter out irrelevant content. Perhaps only detecting blog posts with the words “Sequoia” and “Capital” used consecutively. After all, if Sequoia invests in a company that they think is the next YouTube, I don’t want to be reading about Tundra/Sequoia/T100 New TRD LSD for sale/trade on YotaTech Forums.

“Wow! We offered 31 bucks a share.”
-Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) was attending a technology conference in Seattle recently.  At the conference, the head of Microsoft asked the audience to raise their hands to find out how many people used Yahoo! as their search engine of choice.  Only a few hands were raise.  Even fewer than Windows Live Search.  When asked about Google, a majority of the room raised their hands.

“Wow! We offered 31 bucks a share,” stated Ballmer jokingly in response to the poll.  Early this year, Microsoft made an offer to acquire Yahoo! for about $42.3 billlion through an unsolicited bid.

Before you pull out the dictionary:
Cognitive Dissonance: “Cognitive dissonance most often occurs after the purchase of an expensive item such as an automobile. A consumer who is experiencing cognitive dissonance after his or her purchase may attempt to return the product or may seek positive information about it to justify the choice.” [Source: via Answers.com]

Information Source:
[1] Reuters Blogs: Ballmer’s remorse? by Adam Pasick

“I finally am getting to combine a passion of mine, helping women in business to succeed and lead with a company of smart, savvy visionaries paving the way for how business will be conducted in the future.”
-Kate Rodler, the new VP of Advertising Sales of Ladies Who Launch

Kate Rodler worked at Entrepreneur Media as the VP of Sales over the last year.  She helped the Entrepreneur achieve $13 million in profit.  Rodler spent time working as The George Lucas Foundation, Fast Company, Businessweek, and Grey Advertising.  She is a Stanford University alumna as well.  These are the credentials that she brings to Ladies Who Launch, an incubation company that connects women entrepreneurs.

According to the About Us page, there are ‘close to 11 million women entrepreneurs in America.  Women are launching businesses at twice the rate of men, and they are doing it primarily for lifestyle reasons–they want more freedom, flexibility, and control over their lives.’

Ladies Who Launch joins a niche of several other competitors such as Glam, TeamSugar, SheZoom, Yahoo! Shine, Carolyn & Co, and DivineCaroline.

Information Source:
[Press release submitted to Pulse 2.0 by Full Picture]

In the movie Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridias is quoted as saying, What we do in life echoes in eternity. Now that LiveUniverse has acquired PageFlakes, I’m modifying that expression to be What PageFlakes Does In Life Echoes In A LiveUniverse. This article is about the acquisition.

PageFlakes is a custom RSS aggregation web site that is a direct competitor of Netvibes and Google reader. PageFlakes can aggregate RSS feeds with news, sports, finance, videos, technology, music, games, movies, TV, food, and gossip. The possibilities are endless.

PageFlakes will still be led by CEO, Dan Cohen, but will be rolled into LiveUniverse’s LiveVideo. The acquisition amount was undisclosed.

Pageflakes has roughly 250,000 Flakes and over 130,000 Pagecasts. The company was launched in 2005 in Germany but relocated to San Fran. Balderton Capital provided PageFlakes’ initial investment. The technology was built with ASP.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET AJAX along with JavaScript [source: Wikipedia].

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Pageflakes Acquisition Confirmed by Erick Schonfeld

“We’re excited to confirm that Farecast has been acquired by Microsoft! This acquisition creates tremendous opportunities for the Farecast team and our customers. We look forward to sharing more details in the weeks to come. On behalf of the Farecast team, thank you.”
-Hugh Crean, President/CEO of Farecast [via Farecost Blog]

Farecast, the flight comparsion search engine was just acquired by Microsoft for $115 million. Farecast is also based in Seattle, a city near Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash. headquarters. The amount that Farecast was acquired for was $115 million. MSN Travel and Farecast often partnered before the acquisition.

Before the acquisition, Farecast raised $32.7 million in funding. Farecast is a competitor of Kayak.com, a company funded by Sequoia Capital.

How did the software conglomerate convince Farecast that it’s time to be acquired? My guess is that Steve Ballmer walked into a room with Crean and gave the following pitch:
“In a sense, the bedrock of Microsoft has been… now it’s travelers… but the bedrock of Microsoft had been… getting after developers to extend our platform… because I think it’s all about the developers, developers, developers… but not anymore, baby!! It’s travelers, travelers, travelers!!!”

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=HTkA9L2J2gY[/youtube]

“We raised the money to enable us to keep scaling given our accelerating growth (over 230,000 networks on Ning now, growing at over 1,000 per day) and to make sure we have plenty of firepower to survive the oncoming nuclear winter. At current growth rates, we don’t need it to get to cash flow positive, but having lived through the last crunch, it’s good to be conservative with these things.”
-Marc Andreessen, founder of Ning [quote source: VentureBeat]

I have to admit that when I started writing for Pulse 2.0 about a year and a half ago, I used to think that another bubble would happen again. So many companies were getting funding again like we were back in the late 90’s. Since then Facebook became valuated at $15 billion, Feedburner got bought for $100 million, YouTube got bought for $1.7 billion, and the list goes on. Just when we thought VC spending was slowing down again, Ning raised $60 million and is now valuated at a half-billion dollars.

Ning is a company that builds custom social networks for a large client-base. The company was started by a co-founder of Netscape, Marc Andreessen. Allen & Company is investor that plugged in the $60 million. Ning’s third round was $44 million, provided by Legg Mason. Legg Mason also is a major shareholder in Yahoo!

Ning plans to use this funding to build it’s infrastructure for scaling purpose.

In an interview that Peter Thiel (early investor in Facebook) had with Kara Swisher of AllThingsD, he stated with confidence that there’s absolutely no bubble in technology.  At first I was a skeptic of this quote, but now I’m a full believer.

Information Source:
[1] VentureBeat: Social network creator Ning raises $60M at $500M valuation by Anthony Ha
[2] AllThingsD: Kara Visits Founders Fund’s Peter Thiel by Kara Swisher