Greystripe is a mobile advertising company that has recently raised $2 million from NBC’s Peacock Equity Fund. Peacock Equity Fund is a joint venture between GE and NBC Universal. This is Greystripe’s Series C round of funding. Greystripe now has about $17.6 in total venture funding.
Greystripe previously raised funding from Incubic Venture Capital, Steamboat Ventures, and Monitor Ventures. Greystripe will be powering the advertising on the applications for several media companies including Sci-Fi Channel, Bravo, and MSNBC.
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has invested in Move Networks, Inc. to help support the company’s initiative to develop video technology using Microsoft Silverlight. The official announcement should be released soon on Microsoft PressPass.
Although it is not known how much was invested by Microsoft, a source claims that it was an add-on investment on a $46 million Series C that closed last summer. Other investors that participated in Move’s Series C includes Comcast, Cisco Systems, Benchmark Capital, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and Steamboat Ventures. Move is now valuated at around $150 million.
PopularMedia is a company that helps clients make content go viral. It is a similar concept as ACS SEO. However PopularMedia is a fully-funded social media company. To date, PopularMedia has raised over $12 million in funding across three rounds.
The latest round of funding was $8 million. VentureBeat reported that the funding was provided by DAG Ventures, Sequoia Capital, and Steamboat Ventures. PopularMedia is run by CEO Jim Calhoun.
PopularMedia also released a new product called SocialNotes. SocialNotes is a widget that can be placed on blogs to get feedback. SocialNotes looks like a floating sticky note. The datasheet is available here.
Passenger is a Software-as-a-Service company that allows customers to interact with their customers and announced today that they have raised $8.3 million. in Series B. According to Dan Beldy of Steamboat Ventures, Passenger allows “companies redefine their customer relationships by fundamentally changing the way consumers are able to communicate with their brands.”
Some of Passenger’s clients include ABC, Coca-Cola, and Sara Lee. These clients pay Passenger to set up networks for them and get the users to sign up via email invitations or banner ads. According to Red Herring, ABC Studios used Passenger software to “gather viewer opinions on the plotlines of Ugly Betty and Lost.
Passenger enables clients to set-up live sessions where users can engage in conversation with brand reps. Passenger also allows easy to setup Discussions, Polls, Activities, Message Centers (allows members to exchange files), client dashboards, and a social network.
References:
[1] Red Herring: Passenger on Board with $8.3M
56.com[1], a Chinese video start-up company has raised $10 million in funding from Steamboat Ventures. Steamboat is the funding company subsidiary of The Wall Disney Company. 56.com will use the funding to upgrade hardware, add new features, and increase marketing efforts. Steamboat Ventures previously invested in UUsee.com, a Chinese P2P video website. The funding provided to 56.com and UUsee.com validates Steamboat’s interest in Chinese video companies.
Another interesting effort made by The Walt Disney Company is the efforts that they are making in video fingerprint. Disney and YouTube are teaming up to develop tools that are used to identify certain attributes in video clips. “The technology was built with the Disney’s and Time Warner’s in mind,” stated Chris Maxcy, a YouTube VP of Development.
56.com[
