Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Jonathan Miller

Shutterstock Files For $115 Million IPO

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 14 May 2012 15:33:18 +0000

Stock image website Shutterstock.com has announced that they have filed a Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Shutterstock proposed an IPO with a maximum offering price of $115 million. The company is working with Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank Securities, and Jefferies as their IPO bookrunners. RBC Capital Markets, Stifel Nicolaus Weisel, and William Blair will be co-managers of the deal.

Shutterstock’s IPO will be used to help the company raise money for corporate purposes. The proceeds will be used for working capital and capital expenditures. They will also used the money to invest or acquire other companies in their market. The company will be on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol SSTK.

Shutterstock’s revenue for last year was believed to be around $100 million. The company has over 550,000 paying users. Shutterstock appointed four new directors in April: Revlon CFO Steven Berns, former Oracle CFO Jeff Epstein, Bankrate CEO Thomas Evans and News Corp executive Jonathan Miller.

Wal-Mart Acquires Kosmix For Over $300 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 04:10:27 +0000

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE:WMT) has acquired Kosmix for over $300 million according to a source with AllThingsD. Kosmix is a social media platform company that has raised $55 million in funding from Time Warner Investments, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, DAG Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, Jonathan Miller, and Ed Zander.

Kosmix is best known for developing TweetBeat, a website that monitors live events being talked about the most on Twitter. Kosmix will be rolled into a division called @WalmartLabs. Kosmix was founded by Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman. These two built and sold an e-commerce company called Junglee to Amazon.com in 1998.

News Corp Digital Chief Jon Miller Denies MySpace Sale Talks

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:20:49 +0000

News Corporation digital chief Jonathan Miller said that MySpace is not in talks for a sale. “We are definitely not in any ongoing talks for a sale of MySpace,” said Miller at the Allen & Co. media conference. However Miller added that MySpace plans to relaunch with new features later this year. [Reuters]

News Roundup: Twitter Surpasses 1.2B Monthly Tweets and Hires Ali Rowghani, ComScore Buys ARSgroup, GameFly IPO, Scrapblog Raises $2.5M, MySpace CEO Natta Resigns

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 04:21:41 +0000

Twitter Surpasses 1B Monthly Tweets

Twitter has surpassed 1 billion tweets per month. About 1.2 billion tweets were sent out in the month of January, averaging to about 40 million per day [Pingdom]. Twitter has also hired a new CFO. Ali Rowghani will be coming to Twitter from Pixar where he served as CFO [Mashable].

ComScore Buys ARSgroup

COMSCORE, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) has acquired ARSgroup. ARSgroup is an ad research company. The financial details were undisclosed and the deal is expected to close in March. [paidContent]

GameFly IPO

GameFly is a Los Angeles based online video game rental company that has just filed a $50 million IPO on the NASDAQ Global Market. GameFly will trade under the symbol GFLY. Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Piper Jaffray, Cowen and Company, and William Blair & Company are the companies underwriting the deal. GameFly’s investors include Sequoia Capital, Tenaya Capital, and several other investors. The company launched in 2002. [SoCalTech]

Scrapblog Raises $2.5M

Scrapblog is a website where users can create online scrapbooks. The company has just raised $2.5 million from Steamboat Ventures, the VC firm owned by The Walt Disney Company. Scrapblog now has a total of $10 million in funding. [VentureBeat]

MySpace CEO Natta Resigns

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta has resigned after about 10 months on the job. “While this may be a surprising turn of events for some of you, I am absolutely confident that this change is best for all parties involved and–most importantly–the MySpace business,” stated News Corp chief digital officer in an internal memo [WSJ].

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta Talks About MySpace’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Amit Chowdhry — Sat, 30 May 2009 07:29:35 +0000

In the video above, Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg ask newly appointed MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and newly appointed News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jonathan Miller some tough questions.

What makes this interview interesting is when Van Natta was asked what makes MySpace’s strengths and weaknesses are. Van Natta said that MySpace’s strength was that it is a lot more open and people on the network are a lot more interested in sharing information. But the reason why some people may be leaving MySpace for alternatives is because of an innovation issue.

[via BusinessInsider]

MySpace Picks Up Jason Hirschhorn, Owen Van Natta, and Mike Jones

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:01:41 +0000

Last week I wrote about how former Facebook co-founder Owen Van Natta will become the new MySpace CEO. Now it appears that News Corporation will be hiring former AOL executive Mike Jones as the COO of the social networking company as well.

“Michael’s operational insight and knowledge of the social media market will prove to be a valuable asset as we set out to evolve the MySpace product offering,” stated Jon Miller, Chief Digital Officer of News Corporation. “From a product perspective, there’s no better choice than Jason, who is highly regarded as an incredibly talented innovator, media executive and leader, all qualities I know will greatly benefit our team and our users.”

Miller is the former head of AOL which is where he most likely met Jones for the first time. I have a feeling that this won’t be the last time that News Corporation will poach executives from AOL. MySpace founders Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe are still negotiating other leadership roles within News Corporation.

News Corporation has also hired Jason Hirschhorn as the new Chief Product Officer of MySpace. Hirschhorn was President of Sling Media Group before attaining this position.

Former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta May Become New MySpace CEO

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 13:47:10 +0000

Chris DeWolfe is one of the MySpace creators and was the CEO as of yesterday. Now that he is out of the CEO position, there is a chance that former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta will be recruited. Supposedly Natta left Facebook because he wanted to be CEO, but Zuckerberg did not accept that. Sheryl Sandberg ended up replacing Natta.

Jon Miller is working on the details with Natta according to AllThingsD. News Corp. was not planning to have DeWolfe leave the company but then TechCrunch reported that the company was looking for a replacement. DeWolfe and Miller then started negotiating over the phone. Both MySpace founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson will end up on different roles within News Corp.

Below is the internal e-mail sent out to News Corp. (Fox Interactive Media) employees:

To FIM Employees:

I am writing to share the news that MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe will be stepping down from his executive role in the near future. He has agreed to serve as a strategic advisor to the Company and will remain on the board of MySpace China.

In addition, I am currently in discussions with MySpace President Tom Anderson regarding his role within the organization.

I want to take this opportunity to thank them both for their incredible contributions to the Company, and for pioneering one of the greatest social media revolutions of our time. I wish Chris nothing but the best in any new endeavors and, like many in this industry, am eager to witness his next innovations.

I understand the importance of having a dynamic, inspiring and innovative management team, and am dedicated to ensuring that MySpace continues to benefit from the highest levels of passion and enthusiasm.

I also want to thank everyone across FIM for giving me the opportunity to work with all of you. With MySpace, IGN, Photobucket, Fox Audience Network and our Digital Publishing Group, this is an exciting collective of properties and I’m enthusiastic about the opportunities that lie ahead.

I hope to meet and work closely with many of you over the weeks and months to come.

Best regards,

Jonathan Miller

News Corporation Hires Jonathan F. Miller To Oversee MySpace

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:27:51 +0000

News Corporation has announced that they have hired former CEO of AOL, Jonathan F. Miller to head the company’s digital media properties. This includes MySpace.com, the social network that News Corp. acquired for $580 million in cash.

This reorganization is taking place at News Corp. President Peter Chernin is stepping down. Miller will also oversee IGN Entertainment, Photobucket, Hulu, and Jamba.

“Our focus moving forward is twofold: to enable our digital businesses to flourish as individual entities and to bolster the digital strategies of our core media properties by treating them as central to, and not separate from, the enterprise,” stated News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Miller had previously worked at Nickelodeon International and at NBA Entertainment.

Last summer, it was rumored that Jonathan Miller was the top choice for becoming the next CEO of Yahoo! before they chose Carol Bartz. However due to a non-compete agreement that Miller had with parent company of AOL, Time Warner, he was unable to be selected.

[via NYT]