Friday, May 18, 2007

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for May 17 - 18

Rumour: Google to buy Feedburner
I have just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the acquisition deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal. If true this deal makes a lot of sense for both parties. Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts.

Microsoft to buy Web ad firm aQuantive for $6 bln
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Friday it would acquire aQuantive Inc. for about $6 billion, or $66.50 a share, an 85 percent premium to the online advertising company’s closing price on Thursday. Shares of aQuantive shot to $63.95 in pre-opening trade, following news of the deal. The all-cash deal tops a dramatic one-month consolidation spree across the online advertising market sparked when Google Inc. agreed to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

Calacanis, who is starting a new company called Kokua (scroll down) , has gotten funding from Sequoia
The Insider has learned that Jason Calcanis’ stealth start-up backed by Sequoia Capital has closed on a round of funding from Sequoia, News Corporation and CBS. The undisclosed funding is interesting. Two strategic investors and the hottest Silly-con valley VC.

Fabrik raises $24.9M more for file storage and sharing
Fabrik , a company that offer online storage and easy sharing of big files, has just closed a $24.9 million funding deal and added Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive Media, to the board. Its financing came primarily from 3i , with a small chunk from ComVentures.

Club Penguin In Acquisition Talks With Sony For $500+ million
It’s been rumored for a while that Montgomery & Co. is representing virtual world Club Penguin in a sale transaction. It looks like the company is locked in talks, possibly exclusive, with Sony, and the price is ‘at least half a billion’ says a source close to the deal. AOL Acquires ADTECH AG
AOL announced today that it has acquired a controlling interest in ADTECH AG, a leading international online ad-serving company based in Frankfurt, Germany. The acquisition provides AOL with an advanced ad-serving platform that includes an array of ad management and delivery applications enabling website publishers to manage, traffic and report on their online advertising campaigns.

mTracks Gets Funded, Launches Beta Site
mTraks, the online music community and digital music marketplace, announces its public beta launch and the $550,000 it has raised in angel funding represented by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati.

Veotag Gets $750K in Angel Funding
Veotag, the video tagging service, has raised $750,000 from professional angel investors . See our initial review of Veotag here . Veotag’s deep tagging service lets you create an interactive table of contents for your video clips, perfect for finding the exact portion of the video you’re looking for.

WPP Acquires 24/7 Real Media for $649mOnline advertising services firm 24/7 Real Media is to be acquired by the WPP group for $649 million. The old time internet advertising firm had its origins serving ads for Yahoo! and Netscape in 1994 and was formerly founded the following year as Real Media. After numerous acquisitions it took its current name and grew to have 20 offices in 12 countries, serving over 200 billion advertising impressions every month.

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