Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Time Warner

GetGlue Hits 2 Million Users and Raises $12 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:26:23 +0000

GetGlue is a mobile social networking company that has raised $12 million in a new round of funding led by Rho Ventures. Existing investors Time Warner, RRE Ventures, and Union Square Ventures also participated in this round of funding. GetGlue previously raised $6 million in November 2010. GetGlue launched in 2008 and has been constantly evolving. Currently GetGlue is a “check-in” application for TV shows, books, movies, etc. Users can interact with other people that are reading, watching, thinking about the same thing.

GetGlue is available through the web, iOS devices, and Android devices. Over 30 major media companies user GetGlue through their API to integrate the network’s user activity through their own websites and apps. These networks include Showtime, HBO, DirecTV, and FOX.

GetGlue currently has 2 million users, which is up from 750,000 from about a year ago. By about the end of the year, the company hit about 100 million check-ins. In order to reduce the noise of profane and short comments, the company integration a curation feature using natural language processing to filter. Engagement levels had climbed by about 50% since then.

GetGlue founder and CEO Alex Iskold said that they plan on using the funding for product development. The company will be launching updated apps for the iPad, Android, and Kindle Fire this year.

Sprint and Cable Companies Looking to Acquire Clearwire

Riley Kennysmith — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:51:07 +0000

A group of companies, including Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House, are in to acquire Clearwire. Clearwire recently expressed interest in building a 4G LTE network. Sprint would head the deal with funding from the cable companies, giving Clearwire the means to light up the network and giving the companies access to that network. There is no word yet on what the official agreement would be. [TechCrunch]

Warner Bros. Acquires Flixster, Gaining Ownership Of Rotten Tomatoes In The Process

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 04 May 2011 17:45:12 +0000

Time Warner subsidiary Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. has acquired Flixster. Flixster is a social network that is centered around movies. Through the acquisition, Warner Bros. also gains possession of the valuable Rotten Tomatoes brand. News Corp. sold Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster in exchange for cash and equity last year.

Warner Bros. had an interest in acquiring Flixster since this past March. Flixster’s valuation was rumored to be around $60-$90 million. The company had raised around $7 million in venture capital funding since they launched.

Flixster has a cross-platform movie discovery application and a mobile platform. They saw about 35 million downloads thus far. Rotten Tomatoes receives about 12 million unique visitors per month. Rotten Tomatoes is also heavily integrated into iTunes.

Below is an excerpt from Warner Brothers’ press release:

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group will utilize the powerful Flixster brand and technical expertise to launch a number of initiatives designed to grow digital content ownership, including the recently announced consumer application “Digital Everywhere.” This studio-agnostic application will be the ultimate destination for consumers to organize and access their entire digital library from anywhere on the device of their choice, as well as to share recommendations and discover new content. The Flixster acquisition and “Digital Everywhere,” combined with the Studio’s support of the UltraViolet format are all part of an overall strategy to give consumers even more freedom, utility and value for their digital purchases.

[TechCrunch]

Meebo Raises $27.5 Million In Series D

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:00:48 +0000

Meebo announced earlier this week that they have raised $27.5 million in Series D. The funding was led by Khosla Ventures with participation from Sequoia Capital, DFJ, Time Warner, and JAFCO. Meebo said that they plan on using the funds to continue expanding upon their platform. Thus far the company has raised $70 million total.

Meebo recently launched the Meebo MiniBar browser extension and now they reach 33% of U.S. Internet users. Meebo receives 71 million domestic unique users and 142 million uniques worldwide according to comScore based on November 2010.

[PEHub]

AdaptiveBlue Raises $6 Million From Time Warner, Union Square, and RRE

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 23:10:12 +0000

AdaptiveBlue, the company behind the social recommendations application GetGlue, has raised $6 million. According to the SEC filing, AdaptiveBlue raised the funding from Time Warner, RRE Ventures, and Union Square Ventures.

The GetGlue iPhone application works in a way that is similar to Foursquare. But instead of checking into venues, you check into “Watching a Show,” “Listening to Music,” “Reading a Book,” “Watching a Movie,” “Playing a Video Game,” “Thinking about a Topic,” “Chatting about a Celebrity,” and “Drinking Wine.” You can share this check-in
on Facebook and Twitter. The app has badges just like Foursquare does.

When I first wrote about AdaptiveBlue in May 2007, they were known for making a Firefox plugin that recommends information that is relevant to your web surfing habits.

[TechCrunch]

Yahoo! Hires Wayne Powers As North American Ad Sales Head

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 22:31:12 +0000

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has hired Wayne Powers to head up their North American advertising sales. Powers was an executive at Time Warner Inc. beforehand. Powers, 49, worked as the president of the media group at Time Inc. He will now be reporting to Ross Levinsohn. Powers is replacing Joanne Bradford, who left Yahoo! to join Demand Media. Yahoo! almost considered not replacing Bradford, but the executive she reported to, Hilary Schneider, also left the company. Levinsohn will be replacing Schneider later this year. [WSJ]

BNI Video Raises $16 Million From Time Warner, Comcast, Cisco, Etc.

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 15:50:57 +0000

BNI Video is a company that helps video service providers in the telecommunications industry manage video delivery. This is why some telecommunications companies got together to put money into BNI. Cisco Systems, Comcast Interactive Capital, Charles River Ventures, Castile Ventures, and Time Warner Cable invested $16 million into BNI.

BNI’s software can be used for digital rights management and can be used for transcoding. BNI software can also be used for system maintenance, service delivery, on-demand network upgrades, search, and social networking. BNI Video was founded by former Motorola engineering exec Conrad Clemson and former Unidesk engineering VP Raman Sud.

[TechCrunch]

CNN President Jonathan Klein Fired; Being Replaced By Ken Jautz

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 01:16:54 +0000

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) has fired Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/US. Ken Jautz, president of HLN, will be replacing Klein. Jautz is known for finding Glenn Beck on the radio and putting him on TV.

CNN has had a rough year. Campbell Brown decided to quit and Larry King announced he was stepping down. Rick Sanchez does not have good ratings and Christiane Amanpour quit to join ABC.

[BusinessInsider]

Simulmedia Raises $8M From Time Warner

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:31:53 +0000

Simulmedia has raised $8 million from Time Warner Investments. Other investors include Avalon Ventures and Union Square Ventures. Simulmedia has raised a total of $12 million.

Simulmedia helps TV companies improve their ratings by increasing the effectiveness of their TV promotions. Simulmedia started in 2009 and promises a 50-350% increase of viewers per program. Simulmedia will be using the new round of funding to continue to develop the company’s technology platform. Simulmedia was started by Dave Morgan. Morgan also created ad network company Tacoda, which was acquired by AOL in 2007.

[TechCrunch]

AOL Closes Its First Day As An Independent

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:33:54 +0000

AOL INC. (NYSE:AOL) has finished their first day as an independent company. It actually makes me feel somewhat nostalgic that AOL is on their own again. I actually hope that the company starts mailing me CDs with a free AOL trial once again. Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) might actually start feeling separation anxiety eventually.

The separation has taken place about 10 years after the AOL-Time Warner merger took place. Both Time Warner and AOL still have a long road ahead. AOL has been suffering from a loss of advertising revenue and took a hit as broadband grew to be more popular than dial-up connections. And Time Warner has had to slim down on their cable business.

After AOL’s first day of trading the company stock ended at $23.67 and the company has a market cap of $2.54 billion.