Bleacher Report is a sports website that has raised $22 million in a round led by Oak Investment Partners. Crosslink Capital and Hillsven Capital participated in this round. Oak Investment Partners plans on helping Bleacher Report expand to other verticals where content creation and publishing is encouraged by social engagement.

FirstRain has announced $6.4 million in funding today. This is their fifth round of funding from Oak Investment Partners. Oak Investment Partners are the majority owner of FirstRain as the company recently changed their product focus. “I built a new management team and targeted Wall Street,” stated FirstRain president and CEO Penny Herscher. FirstRain was originally founded in 2000. FirstRain is a “business monitoring engine.”

Plastic Logic is raising $700 million to build a new factory for building next-generation plastic displays. The funding is coming from government-owned Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (Rusnano). Initally the company will receive $150 million and Oak Investment Partners will put in another $50 million.

Ybrant Digital is an Indian based online marketing company that plans on going public this year. The company has raised $48 million in a new round of funding, putting them at a total of about $100 million. This round was a combination of debt and equity. Oak India Investments, an affiliate of Oak Investment Partners participated in this round. Current investors Asia Pacific Capital and ICICI Bank also participated in this round. This is Ybrant’s fourth round of funding.

Greensboro, North Carolina based Internet marketing firm Market America has acquired comparison shopping website Shop.com. The financial details are unknown. Market America will maintain Shop.com’s Pasadena and Monterey headquarters. Shop.com received funding from Oak Investment Partners, Amazon.com, and Bill Gates. [SoCalTech]

Wink.com has been acquired by Reunion.com.  Wink.com is a search engine focused on individuals.  Reunion.com is both a social network and a search engine.  Both Wink and Reunion will be merging and launching a new website.  The new site will be launching in early 2009.

Reunion.com first partnered with Wink.com in April 2007.  Wink’s people profiles became available to Reunion’s members.  Last year Reunion.com acquired ZoomInfo.  Reunion.com was started with $1.4 million in angel funding and raised $25 million Series A from Oak Investment Partners.

Wink’s original investors was Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.  Cambrian Ventures and Greylock invested $6.2 million Series A in Wink around January 2005.

Demand Media Inc. is a Santa Monica, Calif. based company that was founded by Richard Rosenblatt. Roseblatt was the former President of Intermix Media, parent company of MySpace. News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media became the part company of MySpace when they acquired Intermix.

The company has raised a 3rd round of funding at $100 million by investment banking company, Goldman-Sachs. The previous investors include 3i Group, Generation Partners, Oak Investment Partners, and Spectrum Equity Partners [Source: alarm:clock]. Demand Media has raised a total of $320 million as of now.

So what does Demand Media actually do?

Today Microsoft made an announcement that they would be acquiring Parlano. Parlano is a Chicago, Ill. based company that developed software called MindAlign, an enterprise group chat messaging system. Microsoft is expecting to implement Parlano software as a part of Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator. Microsoft Office Communicator is an internal messaging system that works similar to Windows Live Messenger, commonly used among major corporations.

“Parlano has been successful in meeting the rigorous communications needs of companies in financial services and other vertical markets,” stated Gurdeep Singh Pall, the corporate vice president of the Unified Communications Group at Microsoft. “Parlano’s expertise and technology, added to Microsoft’s unified communications offering, will deliver customers the most complete presence, instant messaging and group chat solution on the market.”

Financial terms for the acquisition were not disclosed. Parlano is a spin-off from UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) and has 50 employees. Parlano’s investors include Longworth Venture Partners and Oak Investment Partners.

“Parlano has helped many organizations enhance operations, improve service delivery and increase sales through more effective ongoing group communication, collaboration and knowledge sharing,” stated Nick Fera, the chairman and CEO of Parlano. “The resulting competitive advantage will be further enhanced as we bring Parlano technology together with Microsoft Office Communications Server and Office Communicator.”