Thursday, September 25, 2014

9.25.24

Entertainment:
·         Disney has moved the manufacturing of its princess and ‘Frozen’ dolls to Hasbro from Mattel
·         AfterBuzzTV, an online channel, has recently been signed by Collective Digital Studios
·         Discovery Communications and Hasbro announced that ‘The Hub’ will become ‘Discovery Family Channel’
·         Universal has lost its bid to toss the ‘James Bond’ copyright suit from MGM
·         John Oliver’s talk show ratings match those of HBO’s Bill Maher
·         Janet Yang and Bruce Feirstein are assembling a film about Alibaba’s Jack Ma
·         FAA is expected to permit the use of drones on film sets
·         The 5th Annual US-China Film Summit will hit LA this November
Tech:
·         A team of former Pixar colleagues banded together to launch ToyTalk, a mobile game developer that allows kids to have conversations with animated characters through speech recognition
·         Manual is an iPhone app that allows users to better control their camera using focus, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation and more
·         Hootsuite, a platform that lets businesses and individuals monitor and manage their social media interactions, has acquired Zeetl to integrate voice to its services and the company has raised an additional $60MM at a $1B valuation
·         Orange, the French telecom provider, has launched its own startup accelerator dubbed Orange Fab with partnerships from Visa, Moet, and LG
·         Facebook plans to launch a new mobile ad platform to better compete against Google
·         Twitter to launch targeted ads for movies
·         Valve has released a Steam Music Player for all of its users
·         Please see below for an infographic of the best and worst times to post on social media
·         Ello is a new invite-only social network that has no advertisers – it is quickly becoming popular in the LGBTQ communities
Deals:
·         DirecTV shareholders approve of the $48.5B AT&T takeover deal
·         Former Telstra Exec is seeking to raise as much as $9.6B for the Telecom Italia bid
Business:
·         Stella is the first 4 seat vehicle that runs off of solar power
·         Larry Ellison has boosted Oracle’s credit line to $9.9B
·         A group of Wall Street firms, led by Goldman Sachs, might buy and implement Perzo, which would challenge Bloomberg LP
·         Yahoo! agrees to wait a year before selling more Alibaba shares
·         The Moto X will be coming to Verizon Wireless tomorrow
Exec Moves:
·         AssetAvenue, the LA based peer to peer lending site for commercial real estate, has added Eddie Prosser as its SVP of Real Estate Investments
·         Eric Holder is resigning as the Attorney General
·         Stephen Blyth will now run Harvard’s $36.4B endowment
·         ESPN has suspended Bill Simmons for his NFL comments
·         Bill Carr, Amazon’s Head of Digital Music and Video, is leaving the company
Retail:
·         Buck Mason, a men’s clothing focused exclusively on basics, has raised $300k in seed funding
·         Dwayne Wade has shared a ‘Dexter’ inspired shoe on his social media accounts
Startups:
·         Dollar Shave Club has recently raised $50MM in its Series C from Pritzker Group Venture Capital and Venrock
Government:
·         The Ebola death toll nears 3,000
Other:


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