AOL has hired Allen & Company along with Morgan Stanley to try and find a buyer for ICQ. ICQ is an instant messaging software that competed with AOL Instant Messenger before being bought out. There are supposedly two non-U.S. based firms that already have an interest in buying out ICQ from AOL. The deal will most likely take place when AOL spins off from Time Warner in December.
AOL is seeking around $300 million for ICQ according to a source with AllThingsD. AOL bought ICQ for $287 million in 1998 with about $125 million in earnouts. Tel Aviv based firm Mirabilis was the company that originally developed ICQ.
ICQ has lost quite many users in the United States since they launched originally, but their service is still strong in countries such as Germany and Russia. AOL Instant Messenger still has a strong user base in the United States.
Analytics company Quantcast is seeking a $50 million round of funding which would put them at a $300 million valuation according to PEHub.
The company is rumored to have received several term sheets, but the identities of the investors is not yet known. Quantcast monitors the traffic and demographics of about 10 million web sites and they are finding ways to monetize the service through a Media Program. The Quantcast Media Program gives advertisers the ability to select the audience they want to reach by having access to demographic information.
So far Quantcast has raised $25 million in total funding. Allen & Company invested $20 million Series B in 2007. Other investors include the Founders Fund, Polaris Venture Partners, and Revolution Ventures.
Gather.com is a service focused on making new friends and forming new social circles. The company is based in Boston, Mass. and has announced that they have raised $5.3 million in funding from Allen & Co., American Public Media, Jim Manzi (former CEO of Lotus), Jack Connors (former CEO of Hill Holiday), Kevin McClatchy, Andrew Tobias, and the Gerace family.
Gather had increase sales of about 49% in the first quarter over the same period about a year ago. Gather raised VC funding because they needed additional capital to help fund operations. Based on the current run rate, the company expects to be profitable by early 2010.
This round of funding puts the company’s total at about $25 million. Most of the investors that participated in this round had participated in previous rounds as well.
The Business Insider is a blog that recently relaunched under one brand. The Business Insider was founded by Henry Blodget and this is the third round of funding. Although Blodget never announced himself how much was raised, it is rumored to be around $5 million.
The participants in this round of funding is believed to be Allen & Co., Marc Andreessen, Jim Friedlich, and Matt Luckett. Previous investors may have also participated. The last round of funding was around July 2008.
It is not known what The Business Insider plans to do with this round of funding, but it is expected that they will be revamping their entertainment section.
Athena von Oech announced today that Ning has hit 850,000 registered social networks. Ning is a service that allows users to create social networks on-the-fly. The service is free for basic social networks, but premium social networks are charged. Ning was founded by Netscape founder Marc Andreesen and Gina Bianchini. Ning has over $104 million in funding and is valuated at about $500 million based on their investments. Legg Mason, Allen & Company, and Andreesen are the primary investors in the company.
“We just passed 850,000 social networks on Ning and we couldn’t be more excited,” stated Oech. “We love checking out the new and interesting social networks popping up – at the rate of over 3,000 each day, and about 100,000 in the past month alone. Wow!”
Ning plans on launching new features next week including improvements to chat and redesigned media players. Below is a video demo of the new features:
SB Nation is a sports startup that was started by Jim Bankoff, former AOL EVP of Consumer and Publisher Services. Bankoff is also a Senior Advisor with Providence Equity Partners. Bankoff was one of the AOL execs that pushed for the development of TMZ.com.
Although it is not known exactly how much SB Nation has raised, TechCrunch pegs it at around the “mid-seven-figure sum.” The funding was provided by Accel, Allen & Co., and several other angel investors. The other angel investors include Ted Leonsis (former AOL Vice Chairman and Washington Capitals owner), Brent Jones (former San Francisco 49ers player and MD of Northgate Capital), Dan Rosenweig, Jeff Weiner, and other executives from Providence Equity Partners.
SB Nation is short for SportsBlogs Nation. About 150 team sites are linked together by local writers within the SB Nation network. All of these bloggers share in advertising revenue. SB Nation sites combined receive about 2 million unique visitors per month.
CityVoter.com is user-generated website that is driven by users voting and submitting items to be voted upon. Such as what is the best restaurant in Detroit. CityVoter has recently raised $2.6 million in Series B. Allen & Company and Dace Ventures participated in this round of funding. Through this round of funding, Curt Viebranz (former CEO of Tacoda), Bradley Wechsler (co-CEO of IMAX), and Vivi Nevo joined the Board of CityVoter.
CityVoter works with FOX, Gazette Communications, Hearst-Argyle, McGraw-Hill, and Post-Newsweek to integrate into social media. CityVoter started in 2005 in Cambridge, MA.
“We are thrilled to be working with Allen & Co and our other investors,” stated Joshua Walker, CityVoter.com founder/CEO. “This group brings rich media experience to CityVoter.com. With these trusted advisors, we are well positioned to accelerate our growth and realize our vision.”
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is rumored to be acquiring Powerset. Powerset is a semantic search engine company that raised over $12.5 million in funding a couple of years ago with a valuation of $42.5 million. Powerset at one point claimed that their technology had a few steps up on Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG): the ability to decipher the full meaning of phrases while searching.
Two years later, Powerset’s first product was a Wikipedia-search feature.  Â
I’m sure Powerset could have come up with a better way to show off their technology. Powerset’s Wikipedia search just doesn’t seem exciting. Especially since Wikipedia already has a built-in search engine and Google works even better for finding things on Wikipedia.
Powerset is now ready to flip though. They’ve specifically hired Allen & Co. to help them find someone to buy them for a price that is about $100 million or more.   Is Microsoft actually going to pay that price? We’ll find out next month. VentureBeat broke the news of the acquisition rumor.
