Youku is a YouTube replica in China that has recently raised $40 million in additional funding.  Thus far, Youku has raised $110 million in total private equity funding.  Youku also has $10 million in venture debt funding and expects to bring that up to $40 million more.  Youku launched in 2006 and is exploring an option to host professional content like TV shows. Youku is currently working with about 1,500 license holders.

Youku plans to launch a mobile portal using proceeds from the funding round.  There are about 10 million 3G mobile phone users in China and Youku is the most visited video website in that area.  Youku will make roughly 200 million yuan ($29 million) this year.  To prevent copyright infringement, Youku uses digital fingerprinting technology.

Tapulous hit a rough patch in September 2008 when the company lost their whole development team, but they were able to quickly recover.   Today the company has about 20 employees and makes about $1 million per month.  This further proves that game developer companies can make some solid revenues from the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) App Store.

Tapulous’ game Tap Tap Revenge has been installed about 20 million times and has been played by gamers around 600 million times.  comScore even predicted that Tap Tap Revenge has been installed by about one-third of all Apple application users.  Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem believes that mobile app commerce is going to see tremendous growth over the next two years.

“It’s going to be big and all of a sudden people are going to say, ‘holy cow, where did those guys come from?’” stated Decrem in an interview with Reuters.  Tapulous raised a total of $2.8 million from venture capitalists.  Khosla Ventures and Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com CEO) are two major investors in Tapulous. Tapulous earns revenue through the game purchase prices and in-app song downloads.

Earlier this month, Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) was rumored to be making an acquisition deal with Yelp.com. Google was willing to pay about $550 million, but now there are reports surfacing that Yelp has turned down the acquisition offer. This is surprising considering that Yelp has a reputation for bullying local businesses over negative reviews.

Yelp raised a total of $31 million from VC firms and is going to earn roughly $30-$50 million in revenue this year. This places the company at a valuation of $200 million, another reason why turning down $550 million from Google seems like an illogical move.

Why would Yelp turn Google down? Clearly Yelp believes that they could grow at a faster pace as an independent company. If the company made roughly $50 million in 2009, then I would not be surprised if they make at least $75 million in 2010.

When Twitter first started out, many people scoffed at their lack of revenue model. Twitter grew over the last 3 years without making any money, but the company raised about $155 million in total funding. Venture capitalists knew that Twitter’s strategy was to grow its user base first and then figure out a monetization plan later.

Now Twitter has a monetization plan. The company expects to make a profit of about $25 million this year. Of that $25 million, Twitter will make $15 million from Google and $10 million from Microsoft.

Google and Microsoft struck similar deals with Twitter in late October. Twitter would power real-time search for Microsoft’s Bing.com and Google.com. This means that Twitter was profitable in the year 2009, but the exact details of the deals are unknown. It is uncertain whether Microsoft and Google will be paying Twitter for multiple years. Twitter’s search engine was built through the acquisition of Summize in July 2008.

Fusion Garage has responded to a lawsuit that was filed by TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington against them. For previous coverage of the CrunchPad in regards to the lawsuit, visit: http://pulse2.com/category/crunchpad-inc/.

Michael Arrington filed a lawsuit against Fusion Garage for “Fraud and Deceit, Misappropriation of Business Ideas, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Unfair Competition, and Violations of the Lanham Act.” And below is the full statement that Fusion Garage has made against the lawsuit:

FUSION GARAGE RESPONDS TO TECHCRUNCH LAWSUIT AND
DECEMBER 11 BLOG POST BY MICHAEL ARRINGTON
COMPANY STATEMENT
DECEMBER 17, 2009

The lawsuit filed by TechCrunch against Fusion Garage and accompanying December 11, 2009 blog post by Michael Arrington are without merit. We will vigorously defend ourselves against the suit’s claims in court. The December 11 blog post by Arrington makes several hollow allegations including:

Lack of Viable Funding/Our Shareholders/Cash Flow:

Fusion Garage is a properly capitalized start up that has received $3M in funding to date and is preparing to announce a new round within the coming weeks. The Company is a viable concern whose financial status more than enables it to fully develop and bring to market its intellectual property commercialized in the form of joojoo. Fusion Garage has various angel investors that are well-respected business people in the Singapore community. Like many international angel investors, Dr. Bruce Lee is a successful entrepreneur with several profitable ventures. Additionally, Fusion Garage is proud of the other investors on its rosters – many of whom have invested in previous ventures founded by Rathakrishnan. Fusion Garage went out and secured funding – tangible proof of Fusion Garage’s “doer” status relative to the alleged yet intangible claims of investment by TechCrunch. Pre-sales have indeed begun and, with or without them, the Company has sufficient funds to bring the joojoo to market and defend itself against the baseless claims of TechCrunch.

Pegatron IP Ownership:

Another example of Fusion Garage “doer status” in bringing the joojoo to market is the Company’s now defunct relationship with ODM Pegatron. Fusion Garage established this relationship after Arrington’s promises of hardware development support proved to be hollow. Fusion Garage is now working with another top tier ODM to develop a completely new board and mechanical layout that is the basis for the joojoo. To state, as the lawsuit and accompanying blog post do, that Fusion Garage’s joojoo is based on any Pegatron IP is false.

As for the ongoing personal attacks against Rathakrishnan, they do not deserve a point by point
response. Arrington’s attacks on Rathakrishnan’s past business activities are unfounded. The points he raises are old news and raise the question of why he would want to do business with Rathakrishnan if his past was so controversial. Dredging up old and nebulous material only reflects his desperation for material.

Fusion Garage is proud to have introduced the joojoo last week and is equally proud of the positive feedback the product received by industry influencers and media. We have received more than 6,000 email inquiries to our website and pre-orders to date have exceeded our expectations. We have no reason to believe that the legal action taken against Fusion Garage will prevent the joojoo from reaching market.

Since our first public statements on the joojoo, we have taken the high road regarding past interactions with Arrington and TechCrunch. We find Arrington’s ongoing attempts to bully public opinion and members of the media to be the sad rants of a person championing a losing cause.

GM’s next electric car on the market after the Chevy Volt arrives in 2010 will be the Cadillac Converj roadster. The announcement of the Converj was made at a presentation to the GM board of directors last month. The hybrid electric vehicle will use a Voltec electric propulsion system that was originally designed for the Volt and will consume 40 miles on electric power before the gas system kicks in. GM has reportedly spent over $1 billion on the Chevy Volt production and research.

The date of the hybrid Converj release has not been made, but the industry analyst speculation is that it will arrive in 2013 or 2014.

Research In Motion Limited (USA) (NASDAQ:RIMM) has had a great third quarter as the number of BlackBerry units sold increased substantially. The company had earnings of $628 million and sold about 10 million BlackBerry devices. RIM also made a deal with China Telecom for additional distribution of BlackBerry devices in China. The deal is similar to an existing deal RIM has with China Mobile. There are currently about 75 million BlackBerry devices being used in the market today.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Yelp are rumored to be in advanced acquisition negotiations according to a source with TechCrunch. The source reports that the deal could be worth over $500 million. Yelp is a local business review website that has become very popular since starting in 2004. Yelp receives about 9 million monthly unique visitors (comScore). However Yelp reports themselves that they receive 25 million monthly unique visitors.

Yelp’s annual revenues is roughly $30-$50 million. The company raised $31 million from venture capital firms, spread out in about four rounds of funding. Based on the venture capital investment, Yelp’s valuation is around $200 million. There is about an 80% chance that the deal will go through.