Thursday, June 14, 2007

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for June 5 - 13

Lijit to Close on $3.3M in Second Round of Funding
Lijit , the personal network search tool, reportedly has plans to close on a $3.3 million venture round this month. The company had already raised $900,000 in venture capital and angel funds earlier this year (covered here ), with investors including Colorado Fund, Brad Feld, Seth Goldstein and Paul Berberian. It also landed a partnership with Feedburner to provide search services for Feedburner’s network.

Kyte Gets Investment from Nokia
Kyte , the video-sharing and distribution site, has received investment from Nokia Growth Partners for an undisclosed amount. See our initial review of Kyte here . The deal hits at an upcoming mobile distribution strategy for the video content, which is designed to offer more control from the user and a way of broadcasting multimedia content across the web.

PodZinger, Now EveryZing, Raises $10M in Funding
PodZinger, the search engine for podcasts and videos, has been renamed EveryZing, and has raised $10 million in funding led by Fairhavent Capital, Accel and General Catalyst, bringing the company’s total funding amount to $15 million.


Rifftrax Acquires Cuts
About four months since launch , web video editor Cuts.com has been acquired by Rifftrax, a site featuring DVD commentary by Michael J. Nelson of MST3K . No word on the price. The online video editing space has become increasingly competitive. Click.tv recently joined the deadpool , with plans to reorganize.

Openads Opensource project Raises $5 million
Openads , the developer of a popular seven year old opensource ad server , have spun out of London based ad network Unanimis and raised $5 million in capital to fund their business. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Index Ventures’ Saul Klein joined the company’s board of directors. Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital also mentioned their investment it on his personal blog.

Team and Concepts Raises $1.25million Series A
Team and Concepts Limited , the Hong Kong based company behind online spreadsheet service EditGrid , has announced a $1.25 million Series A investment from the WI Harper Group . WI Harper’s previous investments include Laszlo Systems and Maxthon.

Me.dium Lands $15M in Funding
Me.dium , the social browser add-on, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding , bringing its funding to total $20 million, and coming from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Spark Capital, Appian Ventures, Brad Feld and Elon Musk. Read here for our initial review.

ESPN acquires Cricinfo website
Leading cricket website Cricinfo has been acquired by ESPN as part of the US broadcaster’s push to grow its global presence in online sports reporting. The site, much loved by statistics-obsessed cricket fans across the world, has been bought from The Wisden Group, publishers of the sport’s ‘bible’ the annual Wisden Cricketers Almanac, for an undisclosed fee.

PayPerPost Raises $7 million More
Controversial pay-per-post startup PayPerPost has raised $7 million in a second round of financing , bringing their total raised capital to just over $10 million. Like their previous round from last October the financing was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures. New investor DFJ Gotham, a fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated.

PermissionTV Gets $9M in Third Round of Funding
PermissionTV , an online video platform for creating branded Internet television channels, has closed on its third round of funding for $9 million. The round was led by Castile Ventures and Point Judith Capital. Existing investors include Common Angels, CramerOnline, inflection Point Investors, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., SAS Investors and the Venture Capital Fund of New England, bringing the total amount raised for PermissionTV to $18 million.

CBS Invests in TicketReserve, Plans to Integrate On and Offline
CBS has announced its investment in TicketReserve , the online marketplace offering consumers the option to purchase advanced tickets to events at face value. TicketReserve lets you buy tickets for a specific team, artist or event, guaranteeing them the ability to get tickets at face-value, with a FanForward reservation.

ThisNext Raises Round of Venture Debt
ThisNext , the shopping and discovery website, has raised a round of venture debt for an undisclosed amount. The round was backed by Western Technology, Inc. See our initial review of ThisNext here . This round of funding will go directly towards an extension prior to the company’s Series B funding in the fall, giving ThisNext a better position to boost valuation in preparation of raising additional funds.

MeetMoi Gets $1.5M in Funding
MeetMoi , the mobile dating site , has raised $1.5 million in funding in its first round of financing .The funding was provided by Acadia Woods Partners. MeetMoi is a service that operates in a similar manner to Dodgeball or Rabble , where you can find someone in your local proximity to meet up with you right now. But with MeetMoi, you can find a date, not just an existing friend.

Amazon May Be Looking To Acquire Netflix
Netflix stock jumped up 5.66% today on rumors that the company may be in acquisition talks with by Amazon. The funny thing about public company rumors: when they affect stock prices, it becomes AP-reported news…

FameCast Raises $4.5M in Funding
FameCast , the online talent show , has raised $4.5 million in funding from Austin Ventures. FameCast hands out $10,000 in cash prizes to the winner of each of its twelve ’stage’ contests, spanning art genres such as spoken word, animation, and stand-up comedy, along with the expected music categories for Pop, Country , R&B, etc. Contestants submit videos of their work to their respected ’stage’. Users vote for who they like best, and the contests last for an entire ’season’. FameCast’s recent funding will go towards expanding its marketing efforts in the U.S. and around the world.

PeakStream Trail Leads To Google
Google’s acquisitions are usually pretty smooth deals; at most, a ‘welcome, Google!’ statement shows up on the lucky company’s homepage. Now, a report indicates that PeakStream has been bought by Google, yet the company no longer even has a front page - the whole site is gone.

Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint
Scribd , dubbed the ‘YouTube for Documents’, was the dark horse of their Y Combinator class, but the social document sharing site now gives its critics pause to think. Since launching, traffic to the site scaled quickly to 75-100,000 uniques per day with a little help from popular link aggregation sites like Digg. This past month they logged 1.73 million unique visitors. Today Kinsey Hills is back, investing another $210,000 alongside $3.5 million from Redpoint, with Geoffrey Yang joining the company’s board.

VCs re-up SocialText
SocialText, a startup that makes collaborative wiki platforms for enterprises, has raised $3 million toward a $6.5 million Series C venture financing , according to a regulatory filing. The company is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP and the Omidiyar Network, from which it has already raised $3 million in its Series B. Other backers include tech executives Mark Pincus, CEO of Tribe.net which sold the majority of its assets to Cisco earlier this year, Reid Hoffman, the Chairman of LinkedIn.

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