Ajax Girl

TV advertising doesn’t have to be just on TV. That’s the premise behind BlackArrow, a startup that caters to the cable industry by offering a way to place ads on broadband Web video, on-demand TV, and digital-video recorders (with unskipable ads). The company is announcing a new $20 million round of funding from existing investors Cisco Systems., Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners.

BlackArrow lets cable companies and TV networks show the same ads on the Web and on other platforms as they do on TV, making it easier to do bundled sales.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/T21_QUtoCik/

It took iTunes nearly three years to get to 1 billion song downloads. MySpace Music streamed a billion songs in just a few days after it launched on September 25. And while this isn’t a fair comparison (songs on MySpace are free to stream; on iTunes users were paying $0.99 each), it’s an incredible milestone.

What MySpace won’t say for some reason is what the billionth song was, or when exactly it was streamed (which would be nice for trivia purposes). But they are confirming that the billionth stream was initiated sometime last week, just a few days after launch. They are also issuing a rather convoluted statement:

We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience on MySpace. We’ve hit some incredible milestones in only a few days—some of the numbers you’re reading about are already out of date.

We can confirm that we hit a milestone of one billion music streams in only a few days after launching the new product however because this number may be inflated by the high profile launch and accompanying promotional push, we will be looking to our metrics on engagement and unique users which will tell a much richer story on how positively the community is responding to the new music experience. We will continue to keep you posted on the response to MySpace Music.

MySpace Music’s impact on the music industry won’t be fully understood for months or years (here’s our prediction). But one thing is certain - they are streaming a ton of music to users. The labels, which own part of the joint venture and are also paid per stream, must be very happy.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kS3t2NmMMpY/

Only three months after the British newspaper publisher The Guardian Group bought Rafat Ali’s ContentNext Media and his collection of blogs for a reported $30 million, one of those blogs is sputtering badly. The blog in question is contentSutra, the Indian counterpart to its bigger and better known brother, paidContent (both cover the business of digital media). Until recently, contentSutra was ContentNext’s second biggest blog, even beating out mocoNews.

But if you look at it now, traffic has dropped off a cliff. Posts are sporadic, and mostly consist of news roundups or the occasional post from the editors at paidContent. ContentNext and the Guardian are currently in talks with media companies in India for possible syndication and cross-promotion deals. Rumors are going around that ContentNext has been in talks with HT Media (publisher of the Hindustan Times), 9.9 Media, and others. We also received a tip that the Guardian is trying to unload contentSutra all together, but Rafat Ali says that is not true.

In any event, the site is not doing as well as it once did. The editor who built up contentSutra for two years, Nikhil Pahwa, left at the end of May, and launched his own competing blog, Medianama, a month later on June 27. Pahwa didn’t have any equity in ContentNext and was frustrated by the lack of a plan to take it to the next level. The Guardian deal was announced two weeks after he launched Medianama. Pahwa tells me:

About the Guardian deal: I found out about the deal, like everyone else, on the day that it was announced. All I knew before that is that ContentNext was raising another round of VC funding. The interest in the market is evident from the fact that contentSutra was number two among the ContentNext properties in terms of traffic at one point in time.

One of the reasons (but obviously not the main driver) for the deal was the international exposure that contentSutra would provide. In an interview on paidContent, Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall explained the appeal of ContentNext’s Indian media property:

International plans: The common interests the companies have in UK, US and India are a major part of the fit. McCall: “India is an emerging market and doing incredibly well, I should think, and there are great opportunities there … I think we could help each other in India because we’ve been looking at that market long and hard.”

After Pahwa left, Ali started looking for a new editor for contentSutra. He is still looking. Meanwhile, Medianama is putting out more posts a day (and better ones) on the Indian digital media scene than contentSutra. A blog is only as good as its writers.

That’s the thing about blogs. They are incredible efficient from a labor standpoint. You can launch a media property covering an entire sub-continent with one editor. The flip side is that when you build a brand or sub-brand around one person, that brand takes a hit when that person walks out the door. (This is an issue all blogs have to deal with, and is why giving out equity to writers and editors is a good idea).

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/fDWdM0kd7JU/

Did someone declare that startups would have a hard time raising money? Not for some of them. Paris Based Inspirational Stores will announce tomorrow a 10 million euros series B round lead by Atlas Ventures and OTC asset Management. Inspirational Stores offers famous high-end brands without online retail activity a full turn-key solution to give them a second life on the web starting from web presence to full logistical and customer support service.

The company was created last year by the founders of PhotoWays.com, one of the largest online pictures retail service in Europe. Since its ignition in 2007 the company has convinced 12 brands among which La Durée, you are probably aware of if you passed by their famous shop on the Champs Elysées. The whole model is based on the fact that the brands or the products are already well known and those assets are strong and unique enough (think of the “art de vivre” kind of brands) to generate interest and purchase intention/conversion. Obviously this does not put aside the basic rules of ecommerce. This is where the expertise brought by Insipirational Stores adds value specially in online marketing and customer service.

On their site the company declares having raised a total of 13 million euros - 3 more than the current round previously raised in a series A. The founders own still a majority stake in the company: so the current valuation of the round is not that bad given the current “crisis” context.

This is probably the major round table made those past years in an ecommerce startup in France and maybe one of the most important in Europe. The company is currently based in France but the next step is to expand abroad, so expect an Inspirational Store “near” you soon.

More on Fred Destin’s blog, a partner at Atlas Venture joining the board of the company or on TechCrunch France (if you read French)

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/2-qlqpvo47s/

Bitwine, a service launched in late 2006 that lets people ask questions to experts for a fee. Originally the service was tethered to Skype; more recently it began letting users connect to experts via Skype, other VoIP service, or normal phone lines. Experts can charge their clients either by the minute or a simple flat fee. Clients pay by PayPal and the money gets sent to experts as soon as the sessions end. The service is also available as a white label product.

Monster Venture Partners will announce tomorrow that they have acquired a controlling interest in the startup, and are replacing CEO Elad Baron with a former Expedia Exec, Ronnie Gurion (Baron will remain on as President and CTO). The acquisition price was not disclosed; Bitwine had previously raised $1.5 million in a round of financing from Crossbar Capital.

MVP says Bitwine will power online consultation features that are in development across several other portfolio companies, including Questions.com, Careers.org, Patents.com, Traveler.com and Slideshow.com.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/J2zmsgCedrI/

Everyone has their favorite way to predict who will win the Presidential election. Amazon likes to keep track of Halloween mask sales. Supporters of either candidate can buy rubber masks of each to wear for Halloween. So far, 57 percent of the masks Amazon has sold have been Obama masks, versus 43 percent for McCain masks.

The weird thing is that is right around the same number that McCain is getting in the latest tracking polls (Obama is tracking closer to 50 percent support). If you want some real helpful stats and links, check out Google Director of Research Peter Norvig’s Presidential Election 2008 FAQ page. He’s got links to all the latest polls, election prediction markets, truth scorecards, and studies measuring media bias.

Or you can just buy a mask. I’m not sure if they’ll let you in the voting booth with that, though.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/zmg0ZQNBoHk/

When we commissioned the statuettes for the Crunchies Awards last year, we hoped to create something a little more memorable than the typical plastic tombstone. We opted for a plastic monkey holding a bone aloft instead. While it does have a certain menacing quality to it, we never expected anyone to turn it into weapon.

But now you can find “The Crunchie” in the online game Duels. Our award has been re-stylized as a deadly mace with a power rating of 631 (which is massive, a run-of-the-mill mace has a power rating of 50 or less). There appears to be only one, and it is owned by a player named Loki (aka Andrew Busey, CEO of Challenge Games, the maker of Duel). You don’t want to mess with him. He’s got a Crunchie.

Here’s the description of the Crunchie on its dedicated Duels weapons page:

This stylized mace was crafted to capture a snapshot of history. The rise of tools, followed quickly by an escalation in both productivity and violence, heralded the dawn of a new age. The foundation of what became civilization, tools quickly became weapons. This mace memorializes the quest for dominance that transition brought. Raw competition and a battle to the top are captured in the simple bone weapon used by the savage. Today the competition may be more civilized, but it can still be just as brutal.

That sentiment sounds familiar. Here’s our description of why we went with the original design for the award:

The inspiration comes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the movie a tribe of prehistoric ape-men interact with a black monolith that appears near them. The monolith inspires one of them to create the first use of technology - a bone used as a tool and a weapon. The video clip of the segment is in our original post on the award.

We are honoring startups that have innovated in technology; thus, we feel the award is symbolic culturally and appropriate. The additional flourishes, such as the baseball cap and jersey, were the idea of the artist to modernize the setting. And the ape is beating on old technology with his bone - a symbol of the disruptive nature of the technology world, where young startups often feast on their older, slower siblings.

Stay tuned for details about next year’s Crunchies Awards soon.

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Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/oybPUdl9M9M/