Morningstar France Holding is to acquire Seeds Group

May 17, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Morningstar France Holding, a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc., a provider of independent investment research, is to acquire Seeds Group, a provider of investment consulting services and fund research in France. The companies expect to complete the transaction within the next few months. Terms were not disclosed.

Seeds Group was founded in 2002 and, through its subsidiary Seeds Finance, provides investment consulting services to pension funds, insurance companies, asset managers, banks, and brokerage firms. With more than 30 clients, the company and its affiliates specialize in asset liability management (ALM), manager selection, plan construction, risk, and portfolio management in alternative investments and active strategies.

“Our acquisition of Seeds Group will expand our investment consulting services in France, which has the largest asset management market in Europe,” said Joe Mansueto, chairman and chief executive officer of Morningstar. “Seeds Group has a well-known and well-regarded brand in the French institutional market along with a talented management team, whose expertise in alternative investments will enhance our fund-of-funds investment management capabilities.”

Seeds Group and its affiliates have 12 employees based in Paris. After the acquisition is completed, Jean-Francois Bay and Vianney Dubois, co-founder and managing director, will continue to lead the business and the company will become a subsidiary of Morningstar France.

Location: France, Paris

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Jelli secures $7 million in Series A Funding for Crowdsourced Radio

May 13, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Jelli, a company that puts radio into the hands of its listeners, has closed a $7 million Series A round of funding led by Battery Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital. The funding will be used for radio market expansion, new product development and team growth. Satya Patel, Battery Ventures partner and former Google executive, will take a seat on the company board.

Jelli is a social music service which combines the power of the web with the reach of terrestrial radio. Jelli’s user-controlled radio format enables listeners to vote for songs up (“Rocks”) or down (“Sucks”) to create and alter the playlist in realtime, essentially taking over a radio station using their web browsers. This is enabled by Jelli’s web platform which integrates with radio station infrastructure to transform programming and advertising.

“Jelli’s popularity is driven by the social web and is giving a new voice to millions of consumers,” said Jelli CEO and founder Mike Dougherty. “It’s empowering and also super fun. We’re excited to work with an incredible group of investors to reinvent what is possible with radio.”

Location: USA, San Mateo, CA

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Mobile game developer ngmoco acquires Stumptown Game Machine

May 13, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Mobile internet game developer and publisher ngmoco, has acquired Stumptown Game Machine, makers of the pet simulation Touch Pets Dogs.

“We are delighted to welcome the Stumptown Game Machine team, led by Andrew Stern, to the ngmoco family,” said Neil Young, CEO, ngmoco. “With a proven track record of games that are equal parts charming, fun and accessible, we’re proud to have such terrific AI designers and innovative thinkers expand our growing line-up of games.”

Stumptown Game Machine developed Touch Pets Dogs exclusively for iPhone and iPod touch in collaboration with ngmoco in November 2009. Upon its release, Touch Pets Dogs topped the free app charts on the Apple App Store and was voted the #1 free iPhone and iPod touch game by IGN. To date, the app has been downloaded more than five million times.

Stumptown Game Machine will retain its own name, brand and base of operations in Portland, Oregon.

Headquartered in San Francisco, ngmoco was founded in 2008 Neil Young, Bob Stevenson, Alan Yu and Joe Keene. The company’s investors include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Maples Investments (now FLOODGATE) and Norwest Venture Partners. ngmoco has raised over $40 million in funding.

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BT takes a stake in OnLive Inc., the cloud computing video gaming business

May 13, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

UK telecoms giant BT has taken a 2.6 per cent shareholding in OnLive Inc., a Silicon Valley based, cloud computing video gaming business. The value of the stake is thought to be $500,000. The deal gives BT exclusive rights to bundle the OnLive® Game Service with broadband in the UK. The move by BT into cloud gaming is designed to enhance what the company already offers in the entertainment area with BT Vision its on-demand digital TV service.
 
Onlive will deliver the latest games from many of the world’s leading publishers direct to a customer’s TV, PC or Mac. OnLive works over a wired broadband connection and customers do not need high specification computers to use the service as the complex processing work is done at remote data centres. The service will compete directly with video game consoles.

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT Retail, said: “Entertainment is going to be at the heart of what we offer customers in the future. The partnership with OnLive complements our existing BT Vision service. It’s great for our customers – they’ll have access to a huge catalogue of games, available instantly on their TV or PC without expensive hardware. And it’s great for BT – it will enhance our premium broadband position and we’ll be entering into a market that’s worth more than £2billion.”
    
Steve Perlman, CEO of OnLive, said: “The UK market is extremely important to OnLive and our videogame publishing partners as we expand into Europe. We view BT as the ideal UK partner. As gamers are moving increasingly to online game distribution, OnLive delivers video games as a pure form of online media, playable instantly on almost any video-capable device attached to the internet. The implications are nothing short of transformative to video games and in time, all interactive media. OnLive is delighted to be pioneering this revolutionary technology in the UK together with BT”.

Neither company has revealed a UK launch date for the service. Onlive launches in the US on June 17th.

Location: UK, London

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Mens invite only shopping community Jack Threads has been bought by a publisher, Thrillist.

May 13, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Mens invite only shopping community Jack Threads has been bought by a publisher, Thrillist.

Thrillist publish seperate free daily emails Austin, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC and London. They cover food, drinks, gear, services, entertainment, travel options, and events, like booze cruises. Jack Threads, a social shopping service for men selling apparel, shoes, and accessories.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Location: USA, Los Angeles, CA

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NileGuide acquires Localyte

May 12, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

NileGuide, a website that allows travellers to make recommendations and ptovides planning tools enabling travelers to build their own custom guides, has acquired Localyte’s platform and community for an undisclosed amount. Featuring original travel recommendations from a community of tens of thousands of content contributors around the world, Localyte offers users access to local insights into the best travel experiences available in any destination,. On the Localyte website, users can ask informed locals anything from “what’s the best craft market in Guatemala?” to “what’s the most romantic restaurant in Helsinki?” to “where can I find a good hiking trail outside Cape Town?”

The key assets acquired in the deal include the Localyte website and underlying technology platform, the large and growing community of member contributors, and the Localyte iPhone app, Pocket Sherpa. NileGuide will be integrating elements of the Localyte functionality into the NileGuide website, while also maintaining the Localyte website.

Location: USA, SAN FRANCISCO, CA

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Ad.ly raises $5 million

May 12, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Ad.ly an advertising platform on Twitter where people get paid for tweeting about products and services from brands has raised $5 million.

According to TechCrunch, the round was led by GRP Partners with Greycroft Partners and Matt Coffin (the founder of LowerMyBills) participating.

Arnie Gullov-Singh, previously EVP of product, technology and operations at News Corp’s Fox Audience Network, is appointed as CEO and founder Sean Rad will become President.

Location: USA, Los Angeles, California

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Swipely raises $7.5 million

May 11, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Swipely, an online service that gives users an easy way to turn their purchases into conversations, has completed a $7.5 million Series A round of financing.

On Swipely, every purchase is a “swipe.” Users can rate their swipes and add comments or photos. Many swipes are geo-located automatically to specific store locations. Swipely also supports product details by integrating catalogs and menus from more than 250,000 retail and restaurant locations, allowing users to start conversations around specific outfits, meals, songs, movies, gadgets and millions of other products.

The round was led by Index Ventures, with Greylock Partners and previous investor First Round Capital also participating. Danny Rimer of Index Ventures will join Swipely’s board of directors, and Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners will serve as an observer on Swipely’s board.

Swipely will use the funding to continue to grow the team and explore other benefits for consumers and businesses, including new ways for users to shop, share and save, and new tools to help businesses attract, understand and reward customers.

Other Swipely investors include Lowercase Capital led by Chris Sacca, former head of special initiatives for Google; Keith Rabois, EVP of Slide, and former PayPal and LinkedIn executive; SV Angel led by Ron Conway, legendary investor; Anton Commissaris, previously SVP of revenue and business development at Mint.com and now director at Intuit; Lee Hower, venture capitalist and angel investor; Charles Moldow, former Tellme executive; and Emil Michael, White House Fellow and former Tellme executive. Davis is also a significant investor in the company.

To date, Swipely has raised $8.5 million in funding.
Location: USA, Providence, Rhode Island

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Woozworld raises $3 million

May 11, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Woozworld, a virtual world for tweens (ages 9-14) with over 350,000 members and one million user-generated virtual spaces, has raised $3 million Series A financing round.

With this new funding, Woozworld will be spinning off from virtual world developer Tribal Nova Inc., which incubated and launched Woozworld in December, 2009, to become a standalone entity.

iNovia Capital and ID Capital, a division of Telesystem Group, led the funding. Chris Arsenault of iNovia Capital and Daniel Cyr of ID Capital will be joining its Board of Directors.

Location: Canada, Montreal

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Dice Holdings acquires online and career events business WorldwideWorker

May 11, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Dice Holdings, a provider of specialised career websites for professional communities, has acquired WorldwideWorker, the online and career events recruiter for engineers and professionals in the energy industry worldwide.

“The acquisition of WorldwideWorker delivers on two important parts of our growth strategy: international growth and new vertical expansion,” said Scot Melland, Chairman, President & CEO of Dice Holdings, Inc. “WorldwideWorker is a well-regarded player in the highly-attractive energy sector. The global nature of the energy business allows us to leverage both our cross-border recruiting expertise and our international infrastructure.”

Based in Dubai, WorldwideWorker is widely known for its extensive international resume database and its recruitment events held at industry-leading conferences. More than 400,000 energy professionals have registered with WorldwideWorker and two-thirds of those are based in Asia, Africa or the Middle East.  Nearly half of WorldwideWorker’s candidates have at least ten years experience.  

“Our common goal is to help hiring managers and recruiters find the best possible talent most efficiently. Speed-to-hire is critical in the energy industry,” said Frederik Rengers, CEO of WorldwideWorker.  “Pairing the experienced Dice team with our extensive energy-industry knowledge will drive the growth of WorldwideWorker and deliver significant value to our customers.”

The purchase price consists of initial consideration of $6 million in cash.  Additional consideration to a maximum of $3 million in cash is payable upon the achievement of certain operating and financial goals over the next two years.

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Posted in B2B Services, Conference/Exhibitions/Events, Content Media, Energy & Environmental Services, Internet Media, ~Middle East & Africa, ~North America. Leave a Comment »
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