AOL completes the acquisition of Huffington Post

March 7, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

AOL has closed its acquisition of The Huffington Post.

AOL will integrate The Huffington Post with all AOL Media and AOL Local properties to create the Huffington Post Media Group, a source of news, opinion, entertainment, community, and digital information. Arianna Huffington will lead the overall editorial direction of the new group as President and Editor-in-Chief.

USA, New York, NY

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Google acquires BeatThatQuote.com

March 7, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Google has acquired BeatThatQuote.com, a UK based price finance companies price comparison site, for £37.7 million.

The notice on BeatThatQuote.com reads as follows:

“BeatThatQuote.com today was sold to Google for £37.7 million. We think this deal is a tremendous opportunity for our company to develop new and innovative options for personal finance in the UK.
Our team is excited about becoming a part of Google. We look forward to working with their engineers to create new tools making it easier for consumers to choose the right financial products. We think we can offer more transparency and better pricing information than existing online offerings.

We are confident that by combining BeatThatQuote.com’s expertise in UK financial products with Google’s technology, we’ll accelerate innovation in this field, benefiting consumers and the companies offering these products. We plan to keep working with our current partners and look forward to working with new ones, too.

John Paleomylite
Managing Director”

UK, London & USA, Palo Alto, CA

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Hefner completes purchase of Playboy

March 7, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Playboy magazine founder Hugh Hefner completed the purchase of Playboy Enterprises, meaning the company will once again be private owned. Icon Acquisition Holdings, an entity controlled by Hefner, paid $6.15 per share, or $207 million.

(See previous DigiNet report)

Affiliates of Rizvi Traverse Management and Jefferies & Company provided equity and debt financing, respectively, for the transaction. Hugh M. Hefner will remain Editor-in-Chief and Chief Creative Officer of Playboy, with Scott Flanders continuing in his role as CEO.

Mr. Hefner said, “Today marks the beginning of an exciting era for this company and our iconic brand. I believe this new ownership structure will allow us to further capitalize on the unique and global appeal of the Playboy brand, and I look forward to our future success.”

Mr. Flanders added, “Our partnership with Rizvi Traverse brings Playboy new resources and expertise, which will help us more quickly and efficiently execute on our strategy to transform Playboy into a brand management company. With this transaction completed, we can now turn our full focus on the effective management of our existing operations and the development of new business opportunities.

“Ben Kohn, Managing Partner of Rizvi Traverse’s Los Angeles Office, stated: “We are pleased to partner with Mr. Hefner and Mr. Flanders as this legendary brand enters a new chapter. We believe this team has the right strategy and vision, and now the right ownership structure, to fully realize its potential.”

Lazard is acting as financial advisor and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is acting as legal counsel to Playboy Enterprises. Raine Securities LLC is acting as financial advisor and Kaye Scholer LLP is acting as legal counsel to the Special Committee. Moelis & Company LLC is acting as financial advisor and Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP is acting as legal counsel to Mr. Hefner.  Jefferies & Company, Inc. is acting as financial advisor and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP is acting as legal counsel to Rizvi Traverse.

USA, Los Angeles, CA

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Twitter has no plans to go public and the JP Morgan investment story is made up

March 4, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Reuters is reporting Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter,  as saying that Twitter has no plans to go public any time soon and does not need additional funds.

The conversation took place at a business forum in Seoul when Stone was asked about the prospects of an IPO. Stone also dismissed speculation that JPMorgan Chase & Co was in talks with Twitter to buy a 10 percent stake for $450 million, saying the story was “made up”. this would have valueed the company at $4.5 billion.

Read the full story

USA, San Francisco

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Disney acquires Rocket Pack

March 4, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

TechCrunch is reporting that Disney has acquired an HTML5 gaming engine startup called Rocket Pack, based out of Helsinki, Finalnd. Rocketpack will report into Disney Interactive Media Group.

Terms of the deal have not been released, but TechCrunch are suggesting a price of between $10 and $20 million. It’s a fast acquisition – as of Feb 1, Rocket Pack was still developing the engine.

Read the full story

USA, Burbank, CA & Finland, Helsinki

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Axel Springer acquires majority interest in kaufDA

March 3, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Axel Springer AG has acquired a 74.9 percent equity interest in online brochures and mobile couponing company, kaufDA.

Formed in 2009, the Berlin-based company offers retailers the ability to advertise their products and services in the mobile and stationary internet on a location-based service, making it possible for consumers to conveniently plan their shopping from home or away from home, using their mobile phones. Together with more than 80 partners and major internet companies like t-online.de and meinestadt.de, the kaufDA network reaches more than eleven million users in 12,000 German cities and towns.

Dr. Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer AG: “We are pleased to have made this investment in kaufDA, as the most promising online marketing company for stationary retail sales. In the last two years, kaufDA has successfully established its innovative approach and business model in the market; and working together, we want to continue growing the company’s business on that basis. We are especially pleased that the company’s founders Christian Gaiser, Tim Marbach and Thomas Frieling will continue to manage the portal on a long-term basis as ‘entrepreneurs within the company.’”

Christian Gaiser, CEO of kaufDA – Juno Internet GmbH: “With its decades of expertise and success in traditional reach marketing, our new majority shareholder Axel Springer is unrivalled among media companies. It is also setting new standards in the digital business. That will create outstanding networking possibilities for kaufDA in the future. For that reason, Axel Springer was always our ‘dream investor.’”

kaufDA already counts more than 120 large corporations as its customers. It offers Internet users access to brochures, special offers and opening hours of approximately 200,000 German retail outlets. Currently, kaufDA reaches eleven million Internet users, including one million by way of mobile apps for the iPhone, iPad and Android.

Germany, Berlin

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Guardian News & Media acquires UnLtdWorld

March 3, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

TechCrunch is reporting that UnLtdWorld, the three year-old social network for social entrepreneurs, has been acquired by Guardian News & Media Limited.
TechCrunch say terms aren’t being disclosed and UnLtdWorld are being tight lipped, which suggests it wasn’t a major pay day.

Read the full story

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Demand Media acquires CoveritLive

March 3, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Demand Media has acquired CoveritLive. Brands like ESPN, Ford, News Corp and BBC use CoveritLive to engage event audiences with real-time commentary, instant reader polling and question and answer capabilities. Events hosted on CoveritLive attract an audience of over 60 million people every month, 60% of which comes from outside the United States.

“CoveritLive really reflects our mission as a company – publishing what the world wants to know and share. Consumers around the world are tuning in by the millions to participate in live events powered by CoveritLive, collectively spending over a billion minutes on the platform each month” said Richard Rosenblatt, Chairman and CEO of Demand Media. “CoveritLive’s live event platform helps us continue to work towards that mission, building on both our social publishing model and our social media product offering with a platform that offers proven value to both brands and consumers.”

CoveritLive has grown rapidly as major brands increasingly use its live event platform. For instance, last weekend CoveritLive powered conversations during Sunday’s Oscar ceremonies on properties like People, TMZ, Entertainment Weekly, Variety and the Daily Beast. According to Google Analytics, on Oscar Sunday over 2 million people viewed event coverage powered by CoveritLive.
Demand Media and CoveritLive have worked together since 2009, when Demand Media made a strategic investment in CoveritLive. With that investment, Demand Media secured a minority interest in CoveritLive. With today’s acquisition, CoveritLive will become part of Demand Media’s portfolio of social solutions, along with its integrated community platform Pluck.

“Like Demand Media, we started CoveritLive to help fill the gaps in online content. We saw an opportunity to cover live events in a way that no one had before by combining talented writers, multimedia and two way engagement via comments and polls” said Keith McSpurren, President and Founder of CoveritLive. “As a Demand Media partner, our joint customers have seen the value of combining our service with Pluck’s integrated community platform. It’s a powerful combination that helps marketers engage consumers before, during and after an event.”

USA, Santa Monica, CA

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Yahoo in talks to sell its share of Yahoo Japan for $8 billion

March 2, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

Reuters is reporting that Yahoo! is in advanced talks to sell its 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan to Softbank Corp, which already controls 42 percent of the unit. It will free up as much as $8 billion to fight Google and Facebook.

It is not clear what Yahoo is likely to do in China, where it owns about 40 percent of prominent Internet company, Alibaba Group, the parent company of Alibaba.com. Softbank also owns a stake in Alibaba.

Read the full story.

Japan, Tokyo

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Kenergy Scientific to acquire online game show iwonitlive.com

March 2, 2011 — Fusion DigiNet

NJ-Kenergy Scientific has completed a Letter of Intent to acquire all of the assets of I Won It Live Enterprises. These assets include all intellectual property, including trademarks, domain name and an operating on line game show that offers both unique advertising opportunities and revenue generating opportunities for Kenergy.

The website, http://www.iwonitlive.com is believed to be the first website to offer members instant prizes for winning on line games where players play live against other contestants. Mr. Michael Johnson, a successful pioneer in creative internet businesses, developed the concept in 1999 and recently developed and expanded the site. The current membership is growing daily and the site is expected to generate positive cash flow this year. The site affords Kenergy a continuous advertising opportunity to promote both the http://www.greensmartstore.com website, as well as store advertising. Kenergy and other companies will provide prizes and receive additional advertising at the games in the form of promotional presentations. Other companies will pay small advertising fees per game that are expected to grow rapidly.

Ken Glynn, President of Kenergy Scientific, stated that he would not attempt this venture without new personnel on the team and he also announced that two of the founders and the technical support team of I WON IT LIVE Enterprises will be coming on board to fully operate the website. Mike Johnson will be serving as CEO for the website and salaries will be based solely on commissions from site revenues. The acquisition costs will be payable over one year and will likely be fully paid from the site revenues. Glynn welcomed Johnson and his support team to the table and expects the transaction to be completed shortly.

USA, Flemington, NJ

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