Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) has acquired DailyCandy, a newsletter service that sends daily e-mails and text messages to subscribers interested in activities happening at major cities. 

There are specific city editions that include Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, and D.C.  There are kid versions available for all of these cities as well.  DailyCandy also sends out Travel deals and coupons everyday to subscribers. 

DailyCandy wrote a book called The DailyCandy Lexicon: Words That Don’t Exist But Should.  One sample lexicon used in the book includes “textual frustration: a late-night text exchange that fails to result in old-fashioned lip-locking [CNET].”  DailyCandy employs about 55 people and Pilot Group Ventures owned a majority of the company

DailyCandy has also expanded to six additional categories that includes: fashion, beauty & fitness, lifestyle, house & home, food & drink and arts & culture

The acquisition price for Dailycandy was $125 million.  Bob Pittman of the Pilot Group stated that DailyCandy was close to hitting $25 million in revenues this year and well over $10 million EBITDA. 

“I have been associated with the start-up, turnaround or acceleration of many companies and major brands, and rarely have I seen the kind of creativity, commitment and passion I’ve seen day in and day out at DailyCandy,” stated Pittman.  “And the results speak for themselves: since we made our investment in 2003, subscriptions have grown from just over 200,000 to over 2.5 million.”

Rumor also has it that Comcast beat Viacom for this deal. 

Related Links:
1. DailyCandy
2. Silicon Alley Insider
3. paidContent

 
Often times I am irked by policies and bills laid out by the government such as telecommunication company immunity for wire tapping, but today I was actually impressed by a government decision made.  The FCC told the Associated Press that Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) was wrong for interfering with BitTorrent traffic.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers access to the Internet,” stated FCC Chairman, Kevin Martin. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

Comcast indicated that they block BitTorrent traffic when there were heavy periods of Internet traffic, but it turns out that this was a façade.  Comcast blocked upstream BitTorrent traffic all the time. 

Comcast denied the allegations.  Sena Fitzmaurice, a spokeswoman for Comcastcast stated that the company “carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network are a reasonable part” of making sure that customers get quality service.

Marvin Ammori, General Counsel at Free Press filed the complaint with the FCC.  In response to the FCC decision, Ammori stated “The FCC now appears ready to take action on behalf of consumers. This is an historic test for whether the law will protect the open Internet. If the commission decisively rules against Comcast, it will be a remarkable victory for organized people over organized money.” 

The whole investigation started when Robb Topolski, a barbershop quartet singer attempted to share legal music files with others.  Robb found that Comcast was blocking his uploads.  Check out the video below to hear Robb speak about his evidence on Comcast.

Related Links
1. Associated Press
2. TorrentFreak

“We think the combination of Plaxo and Comcast together can supercharge both of our products,” stated Sam Schwartz, EVP of Comcast Interactive Media. “Comcast is looking at Plaxo to become the social media backbone of its products.”

Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA), the $66 billion U.S. cable operating company is acquiring Plaxo Inc. Comcast will be taking Plaxo technology and encourage their 24.1 million clients base to synchronize address books and socialize on the network. The Plaxo social network will be integrated in other Comcast properties: Comcast.net, Fancast.com, and Fandango.com.

Plaxo is based in Mountain View, Calif. and has previous investments from Cisco Systems Inc. and former Yahoo! CEO, Tim Koogle.  Comcast will allow the team to maintain operations in California even though the cable company is based in Philadelphia.

The acquisition price was undisclosed, but it is rumored thatt the amount was around $150-$170 million.

Plaxo technology is already running on Comcast.net.

“Right now on Plaxo you have a lot of people who are sharing photos,” stated Plaxo CEO, Ben Golub . “On Comcast, you … also share them with your grandmother when she turns on the TV.”

ValleyWag was the first to speculate the acquisition possibility in February 2008.

Information Source:
[1] Associated Press:  Comcast to acquire contact manager Plaxo by Deborah Yao

Wasserman Media Group is rumored to be in talks with Comcast, ESPN, and FOX about a potential acquisition or investment for Sportnet.  Sportnet started in 2005 and is one of WMG’s subsidiaries.  WMG is one of the largest sports agencies with offices based in Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C., Charlotte, Carlsbad, and London. 

Sportnet was founded to aggregate websites and advertisers across various sports websites including motocross.com, and ryansheckler.com.  Montgomery & Co. has valuated Sportnet at $50 million.  WMG has also previously invested in Prep Sports Online and TAKKLE, two high school sports networks.

Information Source:
[1] paidContent: Wasserman May Sell Or Get Invetsment For Sportnet Online Sports Network

Intel Capital, Mayfield, Comcast, and Polaris Venture Partners has provided BlackArrow $14.75 in venture capital to promote the development of BlackArrow’s advertising technology ideas. The idea behind BlackArrow is to provide advertisements on the Internet and on television. The difference between BlackArrow’s insertion of advertisements into TV compared to other TV advertisement companies providing the same service is that BlackArrow will prevent TV watchers from skipping the advertisements even though the TV watches may have a fast-forward button on their digital video recorders (DVRs).

An example that VentureBeat provided about the BlackArrow service is that if someone attempts to forward a TV show playing on ABC, “The 30-second TV spots are removed and replaced with a group of pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll ads, as well as companion ads” are displaying in these playback modes. I assume that they would be still images since it would be difficult to implement uninterrupted video advertisements on these playback modes, but you never know what is going on behind the scenes at BlackArrow.

BlackArrow is based in San Mateo, CA. BlackArrow’s origins date began in 2002. Tom Morgan and Pat Dunbar founded the Digital Media and Advertising (DiMA) Group. Through these investments in the Group, various lead programmers and advertising experts came together to solve problems in the on-demand TV market. BlackArrow was the result. Denny Wilkinson is the President and CEO of BlackArrow Inc.

[Source: VentureBeat]