Amazon.com to acquire Twitch

August 25, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

amazonAmazon.com is to acquire Twitch Interactive, Inc., a live video platform for gamers. Twitch was launched in June 2011 to focus exclusively on live video for gamers. Amazon is paying $970 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2014.
“Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month – from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3. And, amazingly, Twitch is only three years old,” said Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com. “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”

USA, Seattle, WA

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Ask.com acquires Ask.fm

August 14, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

Ask.com, an operating business of IAC, has acquired Ask.fm, the Q&A social network. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

“This acquisition extends Ask.com’s Q&A brand leadership to Ask.fm’s massive mobile-focused social platform,” said Doug Leeds, chief executive officer, Ask.com. “It’s a natural entry into a market segment and platform where Ask.com has been looking to expand.”

Ask.fm was not previously affiliated in any way with Ask.com or its parent company IAC. In connection with the transaction, existing outside Ask.fm investor Rubylight will retain a minority interest in the business. Ask.fm’s founders will no longer be involved in its operations or retain any equity. Catherine Teitelbaum, former director of global safety and product policy for Yahoo!, has been appointed Chief Trust and Safety Officer at Ask.fm. Annie Mullins will lead Ask.fm’s safety efforts in the United Kingdom and Europe, working closely with Teitelbaum.

In connection with pursuing the acquisition, Ask.com partnered with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler in the creation of parallel agreements under which Ask.fm will implement a set of best practices focused on increasing the safety of its services. Announced today, the agreements underscore Ask.com’s commitment to partnering with government and law enforcement in an effort to create a safer and more engaging product experience.

“Today’s agreement shows once again that regulators can work with technology companies both to encourage innovation and protect consumers, including our youngest digital citizens,” said Attorney General Schneiderman in a statement today. “I applaud Ask.com’s leadership in working with our office to design a program that protects Ask.fm users from cyberbullying and other harmful content. We would hope that this collaboration serves as a useful model for other companies in the digital space.”

USA, Oakland, CA

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Bauer Media sets up €100M fund to be invested in European digital businesses

August 5, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

bvpBauer Media, one of the biggest media companies in Europe , has set up a €100 million fund to be invested in European digital businesses over the next ten years. The fund will be operated via a new VC arm, called Bauer Venture Partners (BVP).

BVP is looking for best in class tech companies and do not exclude any specific branches. They also say they are “We are stage-agnostic”. They will finance businesses in different stages (seed, early-stage, growth). They are looking for highly scalable business models in Europe.

Andreas Schoo, Member of the Executive Board of the Bauer Media Group, said the fund will give them access to “new technologies, teams and innovations in the digital field.”

Thomas Preuss, previously of German early-stage VC firm Neuhaus Partners, will act as managing partner for Bauer Venture Partners.

Germany, Hamburg

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NewBay Media acquires AV-IQ from InfoComm International

August 4, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

New bay mediaMagazine and website publisher, NewBay Media has acquired AV-IQ from InfoComm International,  the international trade association representing the professional audiovisual and information communications industries.

AV-IQAV-IQ is a comprehensive online resource for the pro-AV industry that includes equipment database, case studies, local service directories, product comparison tools, and more. It features My-iQ, a personalised, cloud-based industry information resource that allows users to select sources, choose their own content, decide when to receive alerts, manage their own project lists, and search current and historical data by brand, product type, or date.

“We are excited to have this unique, valued resource join our industry-leading AV and IT focused portfolio of brands and services,” says Steve Palm, CEO, NewBay Media. “The addition of AV-IQ immediately strengthens our ability to serve the commercial AV market, and expands NewBay’s data, analytics and lead generation capabilities.”

The AV-IQ team has joined NewBay and will continue to be based out of its Minneapolis, MN offices. Management of AV-IQ will be handled by Adam Goldstein, EVP/Group Publisher, NewBay Media AV/Pro Audio, and Robert Ames, VP/Corporate Director of Digital Media.

USA, New York & Minneapolis, MN

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UBM acquires cruise and maritime media business Seatrade Communications

August 1, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

UBM plc Michael Duck Chris HaymanUBM has acquired Seatrade Communications Ltd.  Seatrade is a brand serving the international cruise and maritime community.  Its publications, events, management training, award schemes and websites cover all aspects of cruise and maritime activity. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Seatrade’s cruise sector events include Seatrade Latin America Cruise Convention and Seatrade Middle East Cruise Forum, supported by Seatrade Cruise Review and the online portal Seatrade Insider. General Maritime events include Sea Asia in Singapore and Seatrade Middle East Maritime in Dubai, supported by the online Seatrade Global portal and Seatrade Magazine. In the Offshore Marine space it organises Seatrade Offshore Marine and Workboats Middle East in Abu Dhabi.

UBM’s events in the sector include Cruise Shipping Miami, Marintec China and Sea Japan.

Seatrade has been led by its Executive Chairman and owner Chris Hayman since 2003. Hayman will remain with the business as Chairman, ensuring continuity of relationships, content and strategic guidance. The business will remain headquartered in Colchester, UK, with its offices in Dubai, Singapore and China continuing to drive growth in these regions.

Michael Duck, UBM’s Global Maritime Director and Executive Vice President of UBM Asia said:

“We have enjoyed a successful partnership with Seatrade for many years, and are delighted to now bring UBM and Seatrade together as one business to better serve our community of customers, delegates and readers across the maritime world. The unified portfolio and management structure will create a simplified, coherent and stronger global offering for our clients. From both a company and personal perspective, I am delighted that Chris Hayman – who is widely known and respected throughout the maritime industry – will be staying with the business. We look forward to working with him and the world class teams at both UBM and Seatrade over the coming years.”

UK, London & Colchester, Essex

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RTL Group buys 65% of video advertising platform SpotXchange

August 1, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

RTLRTL Group, the European entertainment network, is to acquire a 65 percent majority stake in the Denver-based video advertising platform SpotXchange. RTL, which is controlled by German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, will pay $144 million for the company which was founded in 2007 by Michael Shehan (CEO) and Steve Swoboda (COO and CFO).  RTL Group also has the opportunity to acquire the remaining shareholding in the future.

spotxchange-logoSpotXchange provides a comprehensive video advertising monetisation platform to hundreds of publishers including such as The Atlantic, Hearst Corporation, Meredith Video Studios, Mail Online, NDN and Adaptive Media. Over one billion auctions for video advertising impressions are transacted through the SpotXchange platform daily, with ads delivered to 335 million people in over 100 countries per month. The company currently has 180 employees with headquarters in Denver, Colorado, and offices in several US and international locations. SpotXchange’s current investors include H.I.G. Growth Partners, the dedicated growth capital investment affiliate of H.I.G. Capital.

The joint statement from Anke Schäferkordt and Guillaume de Posch, Co-CEOs of RTL Group said, “Following our investments in non-linear TV services and in multi-channel networks on Youtube, RTL Group has already become the leading European media company in terms of online video views. The logical next step in our strategy is a structural move into the area of digital monetization – improving our skills by adding innovative data- and technology-based competencies. SpotXchange is the perfect fit for RTL Group for such a move: it has a first-class management team that has built a leading, state-of-the-art platform for programmatic selling of online video advertising. With its impressive growth story and strong positioning in the United States, SpotXchange also represents a unique opportunity to enhance RTL Group’s presence in the world’s biggest and most advanced media market.”

RTL Group will appoint three of five members of the Board of SpotXchange. Michael Shehan and Steve Swoboda will continue to manage the day-to-day operations of the company, reporting to its Board.

RTL Group and the management team of SpotXchange have developed a joint growth plan to keep SpotXchange on its current growth path in the US and Asian-Pacific region, while simultaneously focusing on an accelerated roll-out in Europe.

Luxembourg & USA, Denver, CO

 

 

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Twitter acquires Mitro Labs

August 1, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

twitter3Twitter has acquired Mitro Labs, a company that is developing a secure, password manager for individuals and groups.  This appears to be a talent hire. Twitter is allowing the service to continue to operate and Mitro has released all of its server and client code under the GPL license on Github.

Here is the announcement on the Mitro website.

We’re excited to announce that the Mitro team is joining Twitter’s location team in New York, focusing on a variety of geo-related projects! As we transition to Twitter, we want to provide you with some updates on our product.

Mitro is now open-source.

mitro labs1As of today, we are releasing all of Mitro’s server and client code under the GPL license on Github. We’ve been working hard to build a secure, easy-to-use password manager for individuals and groups. We’ve made great progress and we believe that the community can help us accomplish even more. With that in mind, we’re excited to be receiving advice and assistance from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in transitioning Mitro to a sustainable, community-run project (see the EFF’s announcement). The service will continue to operate as-is for the foreseeable future. To learn more and to see how you can help, please join the discussion on the mailing list.

We want to thank our users, institutional investors (especially Stan Reiss at Matrix and Rich Miner at Google Ventures), and angel investors for helping us build a product that is both secure and usable. We’d also like to thank Twitter for their support as we make this transition.

USA, San Francisco, CA & New York, NY

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UBM results for the six months ended 30 June 2014

August 1, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

Highlights

  • Reported revenue of £361.0m (H1 2013: £391.8m), down 7.9%; broadly flat at constant currency (0.3%), with underlying growth of 2.0%
  • Adjusted operating profit up 8.7% to £87.4m (H1 2013: £80.4m), margins up by 3.7%pts, driven largely by non-recurring gains of £11.0m
  • Events underlying revenue growth of 4.8%(2), led by Emerging Markets with operating margins up 0.4%pts to 28.8% (H1 2013: 28.4%)
  • Other Marketing Services adjusted operating profit up to £4.4m (H1 2013: £3.6m) on reduced revenue of £48.5m (H1 2013: £66.4m)
  • PR Newswire revenue up 2.6% (underlying) at £98.3m (H1 2013: £105.0m) at an operating margin of 22.8% (H1 2013: 22.4%)
  • Adjusted diluted EPS up 12.1% to 24.0p (H1 2013: 21.4p)
  • Interim dividend of 6.8p (H1 2013: 6.7p) up 1.5%, in line with policy
  • Net Debt up at £452.1m (2013: £443.4m); Net Debt/EBITDA steady at 2.2x (2013: 2.2x)

Tim Cobbold, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

“UBM has had a solid first half and remains on track to meet expectations for the full year. Although the reported performance was adversely impacted by currency headwinds, the Group performed well with good underlying revenue growth in both the Events and PR Newswire businesses and with higher operating margins in each of the three businesses.”

During my first three months as UBM’s CEO I completed the first stage of my review of the business. We will host a Capital Markets Day late in the year to present the plan for UBM’s future development.”

Read the full announcement here.

UK, London

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Twitter acquires Madbits

July 30, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

twitter3According to an announcement on the Madbits website, Twitter has acquired image search startup Madbits. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Madbits was founded by Clément Farabet and Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari, two former students of Facebook AI Lab director and New York University professor Yann LeCun.

The announcement:

Today, after a tremendous year of development and iterations, we are excited to announce that we are joining Twitter.

Over this past year, we’ve built visual intelligence technology that automatically understands, organizes and extracts relevant information from raw media. Understanding the content of an image, whether or not there are tags associated with that image, is a complex challenge. We developed our technology based on deep learning, an approach to statistical machine learning that involves stacking simple projections to form powerful hierarchical models of a signal.

We prototyped and tested about ten different applications, and as we’ve prepared to launch publicly, we’ve decided to bring the technology to Twitter, a company that shares our ambitions and vision and will help us scale this technology.

We are excited to join the folks at Twitter to merge our efforts and see this technology grow to its full potential.

Clément Farabet, Louis-Alexandre Etezad-Heydari
& the MADBITS team

Earlier this month, FusionDigiNet reported that Twitter had acquired CardSpring, an application platform that lets developers build card-linked digital coupons, virtual rewards, and loyalty programs that work with credit cards and other types of payments.

USA, San Francisco, CA & New York, NY

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Apple to acquired radio app Swell for $30

July 30, 2014 — Fusion DigiNet

swell-appApple is acquiring the personalised talk-radio app Swell, adding to its existing iTunes radio music streaming service and Podcast app. The story was broken on Monday by Re/Code. According to Re/Code the The deal is worth around $30 million.

Swell is a product out of Concept.io, a startup founded back in 2012 in Mountain View and led by CEO and co-founder G.D. “Ram” Ramkumar. Swell had raised $7.2 million from investors including DFJ, Google Ventures and InterWest Partners.

For now the Swell app and the Swell.am websites just display a “Thank you” message. No mention is made of the Apple acquisition, nor if the service will be switched back on.

USA, Cupertino, CA & Mountain View, CA

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