Mood Media Announces Acquisition of Technomedia Solutions

January 5, 2013 — askhabra

moodmedia-purpleMood Media Corporation has acquired the assets of Technomedia Solutions and its sister company GoConvergence for approximately $23 million in cash. In addition to the $23 million purchase price is a contingent consideration payable in 2014 dependant on the profitable growth of operations.

Technomedia Solutions and GoConvergence create and deliver media and technology for a range of projects including displays, kiosks and interactive content for multiple industries such as retail, hospitality, theme parks, performing arts, museums, special venue, education among others. The firm, formed in 2001, operates a turn-key model and has clients including Abercrombie & Fitch, Hard Rock Café International, Cirque du Soleil, Wanda Group as well as other global entertainment and education clients.  In 2012, Technomedia is expected to generate annual revenues of US$43 million and EBITDA of US$5.7 million.

“The transaction will be immediately accretive to Mood Media’s shareholders while accelerating the growth profile and competitive positioning of the combined businesses. We are excited about the opportunity ahead and look forward to utilising our combined strengths to build on what Technomedia has established in concert with Mood’s initiatives to help our customers achieve their goals,” stated Lorne Abony , Chairman and CEO of Mood Media.

CA, Concord, ON & USA, Orlando, FL

Posted in Conference/Exhibitions/Events, Content Media, ~North America. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Dyn acquires website monitoring startup Verelo

January 4, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

dynDyn, a Internet Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) business, has acquired Verelo, a Toronto-based startup that provides uptime and performance analytics, as well as malware detection and site health monitoring services.

Dyn does not intend on selling the Verelo services long term and instead will offer its performance-orientated tools as a free service to their customers and as a sales tool for prospects.

Verelo, founded in early 2012 by Andrew McGrath and Michael Curry, made its official public launch in June after graduating from Toronto’s Extreme Startups incubator program.

Verelo’s monitoring services allows customers to check their websites from multiple locations around the world. If downtime, database connection errors or other problems are detected, customers are notified by SMS, phone or email.

Dyn CEO Jeremy Hitchcock said, “Our mantra is ‘Uptime is the Bottom Line’ so we are always looking for great opportunities to prevent downtime,” said Hitchcock. “Acquiring Verelo allows us to offer more innovative services to our customers. We don’t want to just fix downtime. We want to prevent it.”

USA, Manchester, NH & Canada, Toronto

Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, ~North America. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »

Rumour: Shutterfly to acquire ThisLife

January 4, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

this lifeTechCrunch is reporting a rumour that Shutterfly is to acquire online photo sharing and storage startup ThisLife an online photo storage and sharing service. The price is rumoured to be around $25 million.

This life raised $2.75 million seed funding in June 2012, led by Madrona Venture Group.

USA, Redwood City, CA

Related articles:

 

 

Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, ~North America. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

BuzzFeed closes $19.3M series D funding

January 4, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

buzzfeedWeb social publisher BuzzFeed, has completed a Series D financing of $19.3 million led by NEA. Previous investors RRE, Hearst, SoftBank, and Lerer Ventures participated. Michael and Kass Lazerow, serial entrepreneurs and co-founders of Buddy Media, joined the round as new investors.

“We have the senior management, board, and investors we need to build the next great media company: socially native, tech enabled, with massive scale. We are all focused on that big goal and raised this capital to move even faster,” said Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed Founder and CEO.

In December, the company passed 40 million unique monthly visitors (Google Analytics), with growth driven by social (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest) and mobile (over one third of all BuzzFeed traffic). The company also grew revenue more than threefold in 2012, exclusively from content-driven, social advertising, and grew staff to 180 employees.

The company will use the capital to further mobile development, expand geographically, grow its editorial team, invest in video, and work on new initiatives that will be announced later in the year.

USA, New York

Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, Publishers, ~North America. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

Adobe acquires creative social media platform Behance

January 3, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

adobeAdobe Systems Incorporated has acquired privately held Behance, an online social media platform that enables creatives to showcase and share their work.

According to TechCrunch, Adobe paid slightly more than $150 million in cash and stock, with certain growth goals to attain over multiple years.

“When we launched Creative Cloud earlier this year, we committed that we would give members new value on an ongoing basis.  Last week, we launched new training features, file synchronization and sharing capabilities, digital publishing services and significant updates to a number of our tools, including Photoshop,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Adobe. “Behance will play a key role in Adobe’s efforts to serve the creative world in the years to come and will accelerate our efforts to enable a more open and collaborative creative behancecommunity.”

In the last 30 days, portfolios on Behance-powered sites have received over 90 million views and today there are over 3 million projects hosted on the Behance platform.

As well as providing a showcase for creative work across industries and disciplines, Behance also powers the portfolio display for thousands of other websites around the Web, including AdWeek, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and The Smithsonian National Design Awards. As Behance has grown, it has evolved into more than a destination that creatives use to forge connections. Behance has now become a place where creative professionals also find work and market their unique skills.

Adobe plans to integrate Behance’s community and portfolio capabilities with Adobe Creative Cloud, allowing members to seamlessly create content, seek feedback, showcase their work and distribute it across devices.

Further details

USA, San Jose, CA

Related articles:

Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, Marketing/Advertising, ~North America. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

WPP’s GroupM acquires majority stake in PLAY Communication

January 3, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

group m_0WPP‘s wholly owned operating company, GroupM, WPP’s global media investment management arm, has acquired a majority stake in PLAY Communication Pty Ltd, a leading experiential marketing agency based in Sydney, Australia.

Founded in 2002, PLAY offers activation, sponsorship, digital and branding services. The company employs around 23 people and clients include Optus, Volkswagen, Qantas, Coty, Tourism Queensland, Charles Darwin University, ASOS and others.

PLAY’s unaudited revenues for the financial year ended 30 June 2012 were approximately A$4.1 million, with gross assets at the same date of approximately A$2.8 million.

UK, London & Sydney, Australia

Related articles:

Posted in Marketing/Advertising, ~Europe, ~Oceana. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

WPP acquires stake in Globant

January 3, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

wpp-globantWPP is to acquire a 20% stake in Globant S.A. Globant provides both technical expertise and design and creative capabilities in the development of software products that can be applied to digital marketing campaigns on a global scale.

Headquartered in Buenos Aires, Globant is a rapidly growing business employing 2,700 engineers, marketing specialists and designers in 21 offices across 14 cities in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The company’s approach is unique in that it provides clients with both the infrastructure and technical support that drive digital marketing campaigns, combined with the creative and design skills usually found alone in digital agencies.

Globant’s net revenues for the year ended 31 December 2011 were US$90 million and net revenues for the six months to 30 June 2012 were US$56.9 million with total assets of US$69 million as of 30 June 2012. WPP will invest approximately $70 million in acquiring the Globant stake.

“Increasingly, clients want better coordination between their IT departments and their marketing departments, between their Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and their Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs),” said WPP Chief Executive Sir Martin Sorrell. “There are many consulting companies or digital agencies that are expert in one function or the other. Few, if any, do both and even fewer can integrate deep technical and creative capabilities on a global scale as Globant does. Partnering with Globant will allow our companies to increasingly provide our clients with insights and skills that will make their digital marketing efforts even more effective and simpler to manage at both the front and back ends.”

Globant has deep experience in working in state of the art digital marketing spaces including, but not limited to, mobile, gamification, social networks, cloud computing, big data and e-commerce. Globant’s clients include American Express, JP Morgan Chase & Co., LinkedIn, Electronic Arts, Google, Coca-Cola, National Geographic, Zynga and Sabre Holdings, as well as a number of WPP companies, such as JWT, Young & Rubicam, Grey, GroupM and Kantar.

UK, London & Argentina, Buenos Aires

Related articles:

Posted in Marketing/Advertising, ~Europe, ~Latin America and Caribbean. Tags: , , , , . Leave a Comment »

Thomson Reuters to acquire Practical Law Company

January 3, 2013 — Fusion DigiNet

Thomson Reuters LogoThomson Reuters is to acquire Practical Law Company, the London-based provider of practical legal know-how and workflow tools to law firms and corporate law departments. Practical Law Company has more than 750 employees, with principal operations in London and New York, and will be part of the Legal business of Thomson Reuters. The acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2013.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The Telegraph reported senior industry sources speculating that Thomson Reuters is likely to have paid between £200m and £300m given PLC employs 750 people and generated pre-tax profits of £18.1m on revenues of £48.2m in the year ending April 2011.

Practical Law Company, with its wide range of expert-authored, up-to-date practical legal resources and software tools, is seen as a PLCpowerful complement to the Thomson Reuters portfolio of respected legal software and information products including Westlaw, which offers the broadest and most comprehensive collection of primary and analytical content for legal professionals.

Commenting on today’s announcement, James C. Smith, chief executive officer of Thomson Reuters, said, “Practical Law Company will uniquely position Thomson Reuters to deliver a comprehensive suite of compelling productivity solutions that marry world-class legal information, expert know-how resources and software tools to help in-house lawyers and outside counsel respond to client demands to work faster and smarter.”

“The combination of Practical Law Company and Thomson Reuters will create unique capabilities for a legal market segment that has seen significant changes over the past several years,” continued Mr. Smith. “Quality and effectiveness have always been key to successful law firms and corporate legal departments. Efficiency has become equally critical. Together, we’ll provide a full range of resources and tools to help our customers deliver the best advice quickly and efficiently, keep on top of regulatory and market developments, and better control costs.”

Practical Law Company’s unique resources, such as its practice notes, standard documents, checklists and What’s Market tools, reflect the experience and insight of the company’s team of expert attorney editors, many of whom have worked at the world’s leading law firms and corporate legal departments. Their practical know-how covers a wide variety of practice areas in the U.S. and the UK, such as commercial, corporate, employment, intellectual property, finance and litigation, among others.

Robert Dow, Practical Law Company chairman and co-founder, said that this collection of expert know-how, which is updated continuously to reflect changes in law and practice, is highly respected and valued in the legal marketplace. With more than 100,000 lawyers worldwide accessing their materials, Practical Law Company’s subscribers include 96 percent of the top 200 UK law firms and 86 percent of UK FTSE 100 corporate legal departments, as well as 80 percent of the AmLaw 200 firms and more than 700 corporate legal departments in the U.S.

“We share many values with Thomson Reuters, most notably a passion for innovation in the legal marketplace and for providing lawyers with the best possible resources so that they can spend more time adding value to clients and less time reinventing the wheel,” Mr. Dow said. “We also share a commitment to helping our customers evolve to meet changing demands. We are delighted to be joining Thomson Reuters, and firmly believe that together we can create an integrated solution that changes how lawyers practice.”

USA, New York, NY & UK, London

Related articles:

Posted in Content Media, Market Data & Information, Publishers, ~Europe, ~North America. Tags: , . Leave a Comment »

IBM to Acquire StoredIQ

December 29, 2012 — askhabra

ibm-logoIBM has announced that it plans to acquire StoredIQ, an e-discovery software vendor. This acquisition is part of a move to expand its position in the “information governance software” space. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

StoredIQ, the privately held, Texas based firm is primarily involved with providing software solutions for the legal exchange of electronic information in civil cases (known as e-discovery). It helps its clients by assisting with indexing, storage, de-duplication and deletion of unstructured (unclassified) data. Its clients include companies in the “financial services, healthcare, government and manufacturing industries.”

StoredIQ is the latest in a number of acquisitions IBM has made in the information management space. IBM purchased e-discovery vendor PSS Systems in 2010 and enterprise search vendor Vivisimo in 2012. The press release for the transaction states that IBM hopes the acquisition will reduce “information risk by automating privacy, e-discovery, and regulatory policies.” Phil Myers, StoredIQ CEO has stated that prior to the transaction two firms were already “longstanding partners with existing integration,” with the press release continuing that the transaction should help with “aligning cost to the value of information.”

USA, Armonk, NY & USA, Austin, TX

Related Articles:

Posted in Information Management, ~North America. Tags: , , , . Leave a Comment »

NYSE Euronext to be sold to IntercontinentalExchange

December 29, 2012 — askhabra

ICENYSE Euronext has agreed to be bought by IntercontinentalExchange (ICE), an operator of Internet based marketplaces. The acquisition will add to ICE’s current operation of energy and commodity contracts, and derivatives markets worldwide. In the deal, ICE is to pay $33.12 per share; a premium of 38% of its pre-announcement share price, with two thirds of this being paid in stock and one third in cash. NYSE Euronext shareholders will hold 36% of the stock in the new company after it closes. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2013.

NYSE Euronext is the operator of many securities exchanges (most notably the New York Stock Exchange) and is currently headquartered in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The firm itself was formed in 2007 from a merger of NYSE Group and Euronext, following a merger of NYSE and Archipelago Holdings in the year prior. The firm’s share price has increased by 31% since the announcement.

ICE Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Sprecher will maintain his role in the new company, whilst NYSE Euronext chairman and CEO Duncan Niederauer will become president of the company.

The press release for the transaction states that “As a result of the transaction, ICE clearing will be more capital efficient and provide operational efficiencies for clearing members” and that “ICE is committed to preserving the NYSE Euronext brand.” The transaction is expected to be achieve earnings accretion of over 15%.

View the press release here.

USA, Atlanta, GA & USA, New York, NY

Posted in Content Media, Market Data & Information, ~North America. Tags: , , . Leave a Comment »
« Older posts
Newer posts »