Vidly Raises $500,000 From Ron Conway, Other Investors

Vidly is a service that makes it simple to share videos through Twitter.  Recently the company announced that they have raised $500,000 from several investors, including Ron Conway.  Initially Vidly launched under the name TwitVid.io.  The service started this past May.

For the website to work, users visit the Vidly homepage.  On the Vidly homepage, users can login with their Twitter account and upload a video.  Users can e-mail a video clip to Vidly from their mobile phones too.

Chrys Bader, the CEO of Vidly said that the funding will be used to hire and pay for various costs.  Some of the costs will include domain names and legal fees.  The reason why Vidly changed their name from TwitVid.io is so that they can distinguish themselves from TwitVid.

Leo Laporte, who runs a show called TWiT.tv (This Week in Tech) also sent TwitVid.io a cease and desist letter.  “We wanted to open up our horizons and not get locked into Twitter,” said Bader. “We see a major opportunity to make video sharing easy for mobile.”

FOX TV Series’ Glee and Fringe To Have Live Tweet Commentary

FOX TV show Fringe is adding a new feature to their repeat shows.  The new feature utilizes Twitter commentary to add some flavor to the show.  In each repeated show (“tweet-peats”), there will be an on-screen scrolling of Twitter messages from the cast and the producers.

The first time they will be doing this will be at Thursday at 9PM on FOX.  Josh Jackson (cast), John Noble (cast), Jeff Pinker (producer), and J.H. Wyman (producer) will have their Twitter accounts connected to the show.

On the same day, there will also be a pilot of the show Glee which will also have Twitter commentary from cast and other staff.  To become involved in the “tweet-peats,” check out the Twitter accounts of both shows:

http://www.twitter.com/FRINGEonFOX and http://www.twitter.com/GLEEonFOX.

And also don’t forget to subscribe to the Pulse2 Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/Pulse2DotCom.

Disney Buying Marvel For $4 Billion In Cash and Stock

The Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) has made an agreement to buy out Marvel Entertainment Inc. (NYSE:MVL) today.  The transaction will take place in cash and stock.

As part of the agreement, the transaction will be based on the closing price of Disney stock as of August 28, 2009.  Marvel shareholders would receive $30 per share in cash and 0.745 Disney shares for each Marvel share that they own.

“This transaction combines Marvel’s strong global brand and world-renowned library of characters including Iron Man, Spider-Man, X-Men, Captain America, Fantastic Four and Thor with Disney’s creative skills, unparalleled global portfolio of entertainment properties, and a business structure that maximizes the value of creative properties across multiple platforms and territories,” stated The Walt Disney Company CEO and President Robert A. Iger in a press release. “Ike Perlmutter and his team have done an impressive job of nurturing these properties and have created significant value. We are pleased to bring this talent and these great assets to Disney.”

Disney will acquire the ownership of Marvel and 5,000 of the characters belonging to the franchise.  Perlmutter will continue to oversee the Marvel properties.

The transaction is subject to the clearance under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, non-U.S. merger control regulations, etc.  Marvel was advised by BofA Merrill Lynch.

Seeo Raises Over $8.6 Million

Seeo is a battery manufacturing company that is based in Berkeley, California.  According to a regulatory filing, the company has recently raised over $8.6 million.  The homepage of Seeno just has a logo and the statement “Seeo is developing advanced materials to revolutionize electricity storage and delivery.”

The investors were mostly undisclosed, but peHUB reports that Khosla Ventures is a return investor.  Mohit Singh founded Seeo and serves as a director.  He started the company about two years ago and plans to make lithium ion batteries for consumer electronics less flammable and more stable.

The company has already created a bettery that is based on a nano-structured solid-state structure.  The batteries that Seeno develops also has a higher energy density that lithium ion batteries currently on the market.

Sina.com Building Chinese Twitter Clone

Sina.com is the largest Chinese portal on the web.  The company was founded by SINA Corporation in 1999 and started in mainland China.  Their headquarters are in Shanghai, China.  Now the company has decided to take Twitter head-on in China.

Sina launched a new service called Sina Microblogging earlier this month.  Sina Microblogging allows Sina users to post 140 Chinese characters or less.  Sina allows users to follow “fans.”  Fans are the equivalent of users that you follow or follow you on Twitter.  Topics are also supported by hashtags (#) on Sina Microblogging too. Sina Microblogging users have the ability to update their status message using MMS or SMS too.

Several other Chinese companies have launched Twitter clones too.  Taotao.com launched a Twitter clone and supposedly already has 40 million users.  Jiwai launched a Twitter clone but has been knocked offline for a while now.  Digu and Zuosa have also been taken offline about one week after the Urumqi riots.

Given that the government heavily regulates Internet services in China, it is rather difficult for a micro-blogging service to really take off in the most populated country in the world.  Anyone that is able to by-pass government security usually only publishes angry content thus making the service less appealing to use.

Surely China is ahead of the U.S. in many aspects, but when it comes to innovation on the web they still have a long way to go.

Andy Roddick Is Not Happy About U.S. Opening Restricting Twitter

Andy Roddick wrote on Twitter that he thinks its “lame the US Open is trying to regulate our tweeting.. I understand the on-court issue but not sure they can tell us if we can’t do it on our own time … we’ll see.”

“i definitely respect the rule about inside info and on court, but u would seriously have to be a moron to send “inside info” through a tweet,” added Roddick.

Why Roddick is upset is because the U.S. Open has warned players and their associates to watch what they post on Twitter. There have been signs placed in locker rooms and player lounges that warns players against using Twitter.

The U.S. Open isn’t the only sports league that has decided to restrict the use of Twitter.  Earlier this month, the National Football League warned players to avoid using Twitter during game times, especially during coaching sessions.

NFL player Chad Ochocinco decided to still tweet during games, but would have fans do it for him by using hand signals.  Ochocinco would fly that fan out during the games.

Jeff Rees was hired in August 2008 to head the Tennis Integrity Unit for the U.S. Open.  The four governing bodies in tennis which include the ATP, the WTA, the Grand Slam Committee, and the International Tennis Federation adopted anti-corruption rules.  These rules were referred to when posting the warning about Twitter.

Sun Microsystems Sales Decline $147 Million

Sun Microsystems Inc. has reported a $147 million loss for the April-June quarter.  This is likely the last quarter that the company will have before being absorbed by Oracle.  Oracle agreed to buy out Sun for $7.4 billion back in April, but the deal is pending approval from European antitrust regulators.

The numbers were reported on a regulatory filing but there wasn’t a news release or conference call.  Sun Microsystems invented the JAVA programming language which is a key component for the web, PC applications, and mobile applications.

About a year ago during the same quarter, Sun had a profit of $88 million.  Revenues for this past quarter was $2.63 billion.  The year before, sales were $3.78 billion.  Thomson Reuters analysts expected revenues to be $2.37 billion for the quarter.