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Social Networking - Friday, June 20, 2008

German Kinder Site Smoodoos Raises First Round

Thumb Community sites for kids have proven to be a winner. Just ask the founders of Club Penguin or Webkinz. But it has to start out in a genuine way. It cannot be the product of corporate AOL's Q4 goals. With that, it seems that Smoodoos is off to a good start as the startup was founded by a husband/wife duo who say they were inspired by their children's behavior online. Smoodoos was founded in in 2006 by Saskia and Justus Schneider (he was Head of Global Marketing at Mercedes-Benz Passenger Cars). Like Webkinz, Smoodoos is an online/offline double-threat. Kids are welcomed to the site with safe chatting and play, and then encouraged to buy toy pets offline. The German VC firm Earlybird says that is has made an investment in Munich-based Smoodoos, although the amount is not disclosed. The plan is to grow Smoodoos outside of Germany. Smoodoos is dropping some Marks on commercials like these. View - site... Continue...

Tech stocks - Thursday, June 19, 2008

Giving The Pink Slip To Taleo

Thumb In uncertain economic times, two areas that often feel the brunt of layoffs are marketing (this includes public relations) and human resources. That shouldn't be a major revelation to anyone who reads this column but why would anyone invest in a company that offers "on demand talent solutions"(aka hr software). This brings us to Taleo (TLEO:Nasdaq), a Dublin-based company that is trying to be the leader in E-recruitment software. Immediately the company is placed under a certain amount of scrutiny as CEO Michael Gregoire and two other senior VPs are PeopleSoft alumni. We at tech:stocker feel that everyone at PeopleSoft should still be sending Larry Ellison holiday cards as without him and Oracle, they were doomed to an existence of mediocrity and underperformance. Even though we can't find any whitepapers on Taleo's site stating the cost savings of their software once implemented, at the very least it saves company employees from having to read the farewell emails from disgruntled hr employees when they are shown the door. So why bet against Taleo? First, the company referred its first quarter 2008 diluted earnings of $0.06 as "strong". While the number may have excited the IR people who wrote the release,... Continue...

More Recent Articles

ThumbSoulTrain Bought-out. To Get Digital Makeover

Wednesday June 18, 2008

MadVision Entertainment has acquired the Soul Train franchise from founder Don Cornelius. No financial terms were disclosed. MadVision is an online/TV/print company focused on urban content. It is backed by private equity firm InterMedia Partners. They produced the Showtime stand-up comedy series “White Boyz in the Hood.” One founder, Kenard Gibbs, is the group publisher of Ebony and Jet magazines. Another, Anthony Maddox, worked as a producer at NBC and ran Sean Combs’s Bad Boy Films. The third, Peter Griffith, founded a hip-hop Web portal and worked with Vibe Magazine. The great Don Cornelius founded Soultrain in 1970 and it had a 37 year run. Its new owners say that Soul Train has never been distributed in home video, broadband and VOD. Moreover, its Web site has barely been updated since 2006, when Cornelius stopped producing new episodes. “ The Don Just awesome View - site...

ThumbLinkedIn's $1B Valuation Spot On

Wednesday June 18, 2008

Visiting LinkedIn this week, a Microsoft video ad took over our screen targeting small business people.. We can only imagine the exorbitant CPM that Redmond paid for that ad. But where else can one reach millions of businesspeople in the act of doing their job? LinkedIn is a marketers and recruiters dream. And no other online business network can lay a finger on LinkedIn. Sure it has some annoying quirks and has not innovated as quickly as possible but it is dependable and growing like a weed. Today LinkedIn announced that is is raising $53M at a $1B valuation. Investors are Bain Capital, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners. Let's compare the valuation to others: + Facebook at $15B. Unlike LinkedIn, Facebook has yet to nail its revenue model. Facebook will have just ad revenues whereas LinkedIn also has paid recruiting and premium membership models. + Ning and Slide valued at $500 to $560. Great traffic and growht for these sites but again the business models are shaky. LinkedIn says that it has 23M members with about 1.2M new members per month. Founder Reid Hoffman on CNBC recently View - site...

ThumbCisco Stock Is A Good Friend of Our Portfolio

Tuesday June 17, 2008

With the economy looking uncertain and many investors looking to lock-up large amounts of their portfolios in "stable staples", technology stocks may seem like a leap of faith to those who are risk adverse. In these uncertain economic times, the risk associated with Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) and their human network is minimal. What impresses tech:stocker the most about Cisco is its ability to know when to make strategic acquisitions and when to build it themselves. Buying Iron Port for $830M in cash and stock may have seemed like a lot of money to many critics but in hindsight it was a steal and little more than weekend spending money for John Chambers. Valid enterprise security has the potential to save Global 2000 companies millions of dollars in lost man-hours each year. Equally impressive is their Enterprise TV platform and their decision to build it within the company instead of over paying for the well-publicized Veodia. Rising costs associated with travel will help Cisco quickly sell to the Global 2000 and even smaller companies. And the video surveillance component should find its way to smaller business that need to need to store their footage for legal reasons, let alone casinos who...

ThumbGlam Media Unloads Warchest. Buys UK Ad Rep Firm Monetise

Tuesday June 17, 2008

Glam Media has bought Monetise, an online media sales rep in the UK. They are not putting a price on the deal at this point, but Glam had closed financing to do M&A. Glam plans to buy more content companies but buying a regional ad network like Monetise makes a lot of sense. Monetise says it plans to do $25M to $45M in gross revenue next year. In addition to picking up this new revenue and growth, Glam also gets a currency hedge with Monetise primarily earning a living in Euros. Monetise specializes in entertainment and lifestyle categories and represents both UK and US premium niche properties such as Flixster, WAYN and ARTISTdirect. Monetise was founded in 2004 by Joel Cymberg and Jon Walsh who was with rival eType. View - site...

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