FanSnap is a web startup that focuses on ticket searches.  Earlier this week, the company announced $5.2 million in funding led by Highland Capital Partners.  Richard de Silva of Highland will be joining the FanSnap Board of Directors as a result of the funding.

Thus far FanSnap has raised about $15.7 million after receiving $10 million in Series A from General Catalyst Partners last year.

To find the best deals on tickets, FanSnap searches through StubHub, eBay, and RazorGator.  FanSnap claims to have over 13 million tickets indexed in their search engine across over 30,000 events.

One of the cool features FanSnap has to offer is that there is an image of the venue, such as a stadium with different hot spot images that correlate with the tickets that are selling.  Below is an image of how it works.

[via TechCrunch]

Boxee is an open source software company that developed a platform that integrates your own personal media with social media.  This means that the service broadcasts what you are listening to or watching with other friends on social networks.

New York based Boxee raised $6 million in Series B funding, led by General Catalyst Partners.  Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures also participated in this round.  The company now has a total of $10 million in funding.

Avner Ronen said that he plans to use the capital to add more content and make the software more friendly for indie developers.  The company also takes Internet video from the web and makes it more presentable for watching on TV.  Boxee already works with Netflix, YouTube, and MLB.com but they had struggled to add Hulu.com to their service.

Ronen believes that content creators would have an easier time doing a deal with Boxee over other vidoe websites because of its unique applications and social features.  Boxee accumulates hundreds of video services in one.  Boxee claims to have about 600,000 users.

[via NYT]

Tudou is the largest video sharing network in China.  The company has recently raised $57 million in Series D.  Tudou has rasied $85 million in total.  With the funding, Tudou is able to power the H.264 high definition videos spread across their site.  Tudous receives 100 million video clip views and 10 million unique hits every day.

Previous Tudou investors were involved with this additional round of funding.  Tudou’s investors are IDG Technology Venture Investment, Granite Global Ventures, Capital Today, General Catalyst Partners, KTB Ventues and JAFCO Asia.  Family and venture funds came in from the U.S. and Singapore as well.  Tudou will soon be having the their first Film Festival.

Tudou generates a lot of traffic from AllUc.org, a site that links to full length movies, cartoons, and music videos.  The company is now valuated at $150 million.

OLX is a classifieds site that has listings of vehicles, services, jobs, real estate, personals, and classes.  OLX makes it easy to quickly design HTML listings, send and accept PayPal payments, promote classifieds on social networks and blogs, search for items around various cities and view the site in different languages.

The company has raised $13.5 million Series B from DN Capital, Founders Fund, General Catalyst Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners.  OLX has raised a total of $23.5 million to date.  The same venture capitalists that provided OLX with the second round of funding were also a part of the 1st round.

About 11 months ago, OLX announced a partnership with Friendster.  This was around the same time that Facebook announced that they are launching a classifieds section as well.

OLX is a New York-based private company that launched in March 2006 by Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford.  Fabrice previously started a company called Zingy, a mobile ringtones company–which was acquired by For-Side for $80 million in 2004.

About 1 million new classifieds are added to OLX per month and the website receives over 200 million pageviews per month.   OLX solely depends on Google Ads to make money since adding classifieds are free.

Information Source:
[1] TechCrunch: Craigslist Competitor OLX Raises $13.5M by Mark Hendrickson

Yahoo! Inc. is rumored to acquire Maven Networks for over $150 million.  Yahoo! was also previously interested in acquiring Metacafe and previously acquired online video editing company, Jumpcut. 

Maven Networks is an Internet TV advertising platform.  Here is a sample of what they do:
http://www.mediamave.com/foodnetwork/

Maven Networks is based in Boston, Mass. Some of Maven’s clients include FOX, Scipps Networks, Sony, TV Guide, Gannett, Univision, USA Today, CBS, IBM, HGTV, Food Network, and CNET. 

Maven previously raised around $30 million in funding from Prism Venture Partners, Accel Partners, and General Catalyst Partners.  Maven Networks has a partnership with Comcast and had a former advisor that is now the CEO of Brightcove.

[Information Source: NewTeeVee and TechCrunch]

The return on investment made on YouTube’s funding through the acquisition definitely has whetted the appetite of investors. YouTube took in two rounds of funding from Sequoia Capital for a total of $11.5 million. So how come Brightcove, a lesser known Internet TV website is receiving such substantial funding? Brightcove started with $5.5 million and then received $16.2 million. Today, it was announced that Brightcove raised $59.5 million. This comes to a total of $81.2 million of total funding. The investors include Maverick Capital, The New York Times Company, Transcosmos Investments, Accel Partners, Allen & Company, America Online, General Catalyst Partners, The Hearst Corporation, IAC (InterActivCorp), and Brookside Capital.

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity outside the United States for Internet TV,” stated Adam Berrey, the VP President of Marketing of Brightcove. “We think this market will consolidate. It’s time for the leaders to emerge. This puts us in a good position.” Berrey didn’t mention what Brightcove is planning on doing for future plans, but according to TechCrunch, Brightcove did acquire metaStories on March 20, 2006. metaStories is a Seattle based company that has the tools that creates Flash content.

“Brightcove’s early success in partnering with media companies that are driving the transition of television and video distribution to the Internet puts the company in the right position as Internet TV takes off on a broader scale,” stated Jamie Kiggen, senior VP President of AllianceBernstein. “We’ve looked at many opportunities in this area and believe that Brightcove is well positioned for success in creating solutions that both media companies and consumers will embrace.”

With this new funding, Brightcove plans on growing the company and to provide Internet TV tools to media creators so that it would help them monetize as well as distribute their own videos. Brightcove is planning on launching ad revenue sharing soon.