People Media is the parent company of several niche social networks.  Some of the social networks include LatinoPeopleMeet.com, SeniorBlackPeopleMeet.com, RepublicanPeopleMeet.com, and AsianPeopleMeet.com.  Match.com will be buying all of the properties for $80 million in cash.

People Media got a big break by powering AOL Personals.  The company started in 2002 and runs about 27 social networks.  Altogether the social networks have about 255,000 paying subscribers.

The biggest niche social networks that People Media owns are BlackPeopleMeet.com, BBPeopleMeet.com, LDSPlanet.com, SingleParentMeet.com, and SeniorPeopleMeet.com.  In 2008, the company made $11.6 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

People Media is run by CEO Josh Myers, a former general manager of Yahoo! Publisher Network.  People Media is owned by private equity firm American Capital.

[via AlarmClock]

Late last month, Mike Volpi was replaced as CEO of Joost, but remains as Chairman.  Another position that Volpi will be taking since his CEO duties have been relieved is partner at Index Ventures as AllThingsD revealed in an interview.  Index Ventures invested $45 million in Joost several years ago and Joost brought in Volpi, a former Cisco exec as the CEO.

Index Ventures participated in a $45 million round in Joost a couple of years ago.  Volpi will be working out of the London office at Index.  “In a market downturn, it is a good time to invest,” stated Volpi. “There are a lot of great opportunities out there now.”

NTT DoCoMo has bought 35% in PacketVideo, a NextWave Wireless subsidiary for $45.5 million in cash earlier this week.  Over the last 10 years, DoCoMo and PacketVideo have been partners on mobile multimedia solutions.  PacketVideo plans to use the investment to advance their music and video technology.

“We are building on our unique and highly successful relationship with DoCoMo to further strengthen PacketVideo’s position in developing the best in class media experience, regardless of format or platform,” stated PacketVideo CEO James Brailean.  The PacketVideo CORE multimedia pvPlayer has been integrated into 90 DoCoMo phones since 1998.

[via InformationWeek]

Talking Points Memo is a politics blog that was founded by Josh Marshall in 2000 during the Florida Recount.   Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the new $300 million tech fund Andreessen Horowitz has invested some of his own personal money into TPM.  This round of funding is not substantial and is rumored to be between $500,000 and $1 million.  Given the low cost of operating a blog, this round of funding could keep the company running for quite some time.

Several other unknown angel investors participated in this round of funding as well. Last month Andreessen invested in Alley Insider, a blog network that focuses on technology, finance, politics, and celebrity news.

TPM previously kept the website running from advertising and three fundraising events.  The company has 11 employees and is profitable.  The website receives about 1.5 million unique monthly visitors and about 15 million page views.  One of the groundbreaking stories that gave TPM a lot of attention was when eight U.S. attorneys charged with political circumstances.

Amazon.com has filed for a couple of patents that imply that there will be books supported by advertising available for download.  The e-books that have advertising built in would be free or discounted.

The advertising patent that was filed earlier this month was entitled “Incorporating Advertising In On-Demand Generated Content.”  The other advertising patent was called “On-Demand Generating E-Book Content With Advertising.”

Amazon.com subsidiary Amazon Technologies filed for a patent called “Method and system for access to electronic version of a physical work based on user ownership of the physical work” back in December 2006.  The patent was approved last month.  This allows buyers of a physical book to receive an e-book bundle.

One of the reasons why consumers may be resistant to purchasing a Kindle is the price-per-book cost on top of the already high price of the Kindle.  Having books available for free may encourage more people to buy the Kindle.

[via CNET]

Dick Costolo is the founder of Feedburner.  After he graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.S. in Computer Science, he went three-for-three in co-founding start ups and selling them off.

The companies he found and sold off included Burning Door Networked Media which sold to DKA LLC.  And then he co-founded Spyonit.com which sold to 724 Solutions.  Finally he co-founded Feedburner which sold to Google for $100 million.  Perhaps Costolo wants to go for a fourth.

Feedburner was based in Chicago when it first started out.  After being acquired, the employees of Feedburner worked on several other projects within Google such as advertisements.  The Feedburner service and user base was rolled into Google’s own RSS system.  When working at Google, Costolo reported to Neal Mohan.

[via TechCrunch]

Considering all the attention that cable TV shows are getting from being available on Hulu and YouTube, HBO programs are sometimes forgotten about.  But now HBO has lauched a new website called ComedyFetish.com which features video clips from all of the seasons of HBO’s TV shows such as Entourage and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The clips are short enough in length so that it does not take away from the show and psychologically makes the consumer want to buy the DVD to relive those moments in the show.  Around the clips are links to BarnesAndNoble and iTunes for those specific episodes.

“We’ve assembled an impressive group of comedy clips and a variety of fun ways for consumers to sample and enjoy these terrific HBO shows before committing to a purchase,” stated HBO VP of Marketing Meredith Ketchum.

One of the mistakes that ComedyFetish makes right off the bat is the ability to embed these videos on to other websites.  How else will the content spread and traffic grow on their website?

[via VideoBusiness]

Someone just buy Data Domain already!  First EMC was looking to buy DataDomain and then NetApp quickly made a bid to buy the company first at a price of $1.5 billion.  And then EMC offered $1.8 billion in cash.  NetApp matched the $1.8 billion offer and DataDomain decided to go with that offer.

EMC has come up with another offer, $33.50 per share based on 62.9 million shares outstanding in cash amounting to $2.1 billion.  EMC would also remove a breakup fee from its offer for Data Domain and was prepared to complete a deal within the next two weeks.

Last month EMC even created a full page ad in The San Jose Mercury Times in an attempt to persuade Data Domain employees that they would be better off under the EMC umbrella instead of NetApp.

[via DealBook]