venture capital posts

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer

Twitter out hunting for VC

by Chris Gilmer Jun 29th 2007

Could we soon see some crazy new developments from Twitter? Maybe not, but we might see some increased usage.

Twitter's cofounder Biz Stone recently said that Twitter is on the road to raising its first round of venture capital funding. Big news from a company who's traffic rate has leveled off, and is not yet profitable. Twitter has attracted about 226,000 unique visitors in May, compare that to 94,000 in April, but down from 397,000 in February. Still not bad for a company that only launched last winter. Twitter is extremely focused on growing their network of users before making money, and they really don't have an evident business model as of yet.

As Stefanie Olsen mentioned, could Twitter be snapped up by Google before funding goes through, as Blogger was?

Tags: biz stone, BizStone, business, ev, obvious, traffic, twitter, users, vc, venture capital, VentureCapital

Filed under: Business, Finance, Internet, Video, Web services

NewCo ramping up to battle YouTube

by Chris Gilmer Jun 28th 2007

NBC and News Corps NewCo shopping for financing

Not happy with how YouTube deals with copyrighted materials, NBC and News Corp. have been on the move to create a joint venture that would crunch YouTube for what seems like ages. Now they are shopping around to raise cash for their currently unnamed product.

NewTeeVee has the scoop on the NewCo team hitting up VC's from New York to Silicon Valley to fund their venture, and reportedly looking to get at least $100 Million, on a $1 Billion valuation. So far, no luck on investments for, what was believed by these companies, to be a killer online video channel showcasing their own material.

Will this new company be able to come close to the popularity of YouTube? Chances are no. YouTube's traffic is increasing daily, and growing across all markets, while this new company is still having troubles even getting started.

Tags: capital, channel, nbs, newco, news corp, NewsCorp, online, raise, vc, venture capital, VentureCapital, video, youtube

Filed under: Business, Internet, Video

Joost raises $45 million

by Brad Linder May 10th 2007

Okay, we're getting about as tired of writing Joost news as you are of reading it. But this is kind of big. The internet television platform started by Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström has raised $45 million in capital.

Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures, Li K-shing, and CBS have all put some money in, although that's not a comprehensive list. So far, Joost had been funded primarily out of the pockets of Friis and Zennström.

Given the game-changing nature of the duo's last project with Skype, it shouldn't be a huge surprise that Joost is gaining momentum as it nears an official release. The company continues to sign major content partners, overcoming one of the earliest criticisms: that there was nothing worth watching.

And while Joost has experienced some server overload since widening its beta test group in recent weeks, the overall user experience is pretty innovative and nothing at all like YouTube, which is what most people think of when you mention internet video these days.

Tags: funding, iptv, joost, skype, venture capital, VentureCapital

Filed under: Internet, News, Social Software

Xuqa social network is actually making money

by Ryan Carter Sep 14th 2006

Xuqa is a sort of social experiment game idea thing. Looks weirdly interesting. TechCrunch reports they have stopped accepting venture capital since they have turned a profit, these days an elusive and hard thing to do, especially for web 2.0 start-ups. Currently the game played on the site is Poker, though there are plans to introduce other games as well. Players play against others and prizes are awarded to the top players. The other "game" is a virtual "hot-or-not" catwalk where people can judge each others hot pics to see who is the best looking based on social votes. Heck, CollegeClub and tons of other sites have been doing these hot-or-not things for ages as an added thing, so why Xuqa made money on it, and the others didn't I don't know, but it is impressive. Honestly I had never heard of the site before this, but it ~~may have~~ has some potential if it's making money already.

Tags: money, social, VC, venture capital, VentureCapital, xuqa

Featured Time Waster

Civiballs is a beautiful, soothing physics puzzle Time Waster

I have an absolute weakness for physics games, and while Civiballs isn't the strongest physics-based game, what it lacks in the physics department it makes up for a few times over in style and fun.

In Civiballs, you are presented with a few colored balls, and your goal is to get those balls into the same-colored urn on the level. The "civi" part of Civiballs is that there are 3 sets of levels to play, each representing a different civilization. While the civilization doesn't affect gameplay, the artwork for each level is beautifully themed to it's appropriate era.

To play the game, you are given only one tool - a sword with which to cut the chains that are holding the balls. The puzzle part of the game is in figuring out what order, and with what timing to cut each chain. Do it right, and all the right balls end up in the right urns, with no stray balls entering an urn (a no-no). Do it wrong, and you get to start over again.

Civiballs is not terribly deep on gameplay; the entire game can be completed in about 15 minutes. But if you enjoy this type of game, it will be a very enjoyable 15 minutes.

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