Friday, December 12, 2014

12.12.14

Entertainment:
·         YouTube has launched its own GIF making feature
·         Please see below for an article on how Amazon and Netflix will be battling it out at this year’s Golden Globes
·         Hearst Corporation and DreamWorks Animation said late Thursday that Hearst has taken a 25% stake in Awesomeness.TV, for $81.25MM, in a deal that values Awesomeness.TV at around $325MM
·         Please see below for emails from the Sony hack about Mark Cuban on ‘Shark Tank’
·         Fox, NBC and CBS along with WME, IMG and ESPN want to see a potentially sprawling legal action filed over two months ago by 10 college football and basketball players tossed
·         CBS just announced that CEO Les Moonves, who's 65, will stay through June 30, 2019, a two-year extension from the deal made two years ago
·         Tribune Media execs told Wall Street today to expect lower profit margins in 2015 as the company spends to built its TV production operation and converts superstation WGN America into a basic cable channel
·         “In a City”, the 4K-resolution short film that Joseph Gordon-Levitt directed/coordinated, using a relatively inexpensive new Samsung camera called the NX1, has arrived on YouTube
·         Two days after Facebook and Google unit YouTube released their 2014 Top 10s, the Google Play online store has come out with its best-selling movies, TV shows, books, apps, music and more – “The Walking Dead” tops the list
·         Fox’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings” has opened solidly with an estimated $1.2 million at 2,500 locations in Thursday night showings in the U.S.
·         ID Leisure, a Chinese investor and associate of Dalian Wanda, is the front runner to buy Australian cinema chain Hoyts
·         Pandora is coming under fire from the Sony/ATV Chairman for its payouts to songwriters and publishers
·         Aided by an acquisition and gains in streaming services, Warner Music Group revenues topped $3B for the first time in five years
·         Nearly 8 million old-fashioned vinyl records have been sold this year, up 49% from the same period last year, industry data shows
·         Becoming the first Mexican operator to offer the whole HBO package in the country, Axtel TV has launched HBO On Demand
Tech:
·         Baidu invested $600MM in Uber
·         Lindsay Lohan’s The Price of Fame debuted at #10 in the App Store yesterday
·         MusiXmatch, the song lyrics database and maker of accompanying lyric-viewing mobile apps, has released a brand new app called ‘Clip‘
·         SendVid is a new startup that lets users upload and send video quickly (Imgur for video)
·         VideoAmp officially launching today, and it’s also announcing that it has $2.2MM in funding from Anthem Venture Partners, Simon Equity Partners, Third Wave Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and ZenShin Capital
·         Amazon’s flagship application’s listing is no longer available via search from within Google Play, though its direct link is still live
·         On-demand ride startup Lyft has been pushing its shared-ride feature Lyft Line, which will now roll out in NYC
·         Ford launched its Sync 3, its next-generation, in-car technology package that’s, as you’d expect, faster, sleeker and much improved from the old one
·         Shuffler.fm wants to move beyond music curation and cure ‘digital obesity’ on the whole Web
·         AwesomeAds is an ad server built for privacy requirements of the kids industry
·         New research from Ipsos indicates that Twitter users are more likely to have a pay-TV subscription, and more likely to watch traditional TV, than people who don’t use the service
·         LinkedIn has unveiled a redesigned home page that includes a few minor changes that should get users connecting with one another more frequently
Deals:
·         Adobe announced that it has acquired Fotolia, a popular marketplace for stock photography and video, for approximately $800MM in cash
·         Oculus VR has made two computer vision acquisitions - it is acquiring Nimble VR, a developer of hand tracking technology; 13th Lab, a developer of technology to acquire 3D models of the real world
·         Permira, which acquired Hugo Boss in 2007, plans to sell 4.9 million shares in a private placement, representing a 7% - it will be left with a 32%
Business:
·         Qualcomm this summer announced plans to invest $150MM in Chinese startups, and it has cracked that new fund open to put $40MM into five different organizations in the country, including voice recognition startup Unisound and games development firm Chukong
·         The price of Brent crude oil plummeted to its lowest level since 2009, after the International Energy Agency cut its 2015 demand forecast
Exec Moves:
·         SeaWorld CEO Jim Atchison is stepping down as head of the company and named his chairman David D'Alessandro as interim leader until a replacement is found
·         Kim Williams, formerly of CORE Media Group, will be the new Warner Bros. CFO
Retail:
Startups:
Government:
·         Please see below for an interesting article on why the Federal Reserve should copy Bitcoin and create its own digital currency
·         Europe (Oslo, Norway) has passed on hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics
Other:
·         James Corner Field Operations was announced this week as the firm chosen to redesign the New Presidio Parklands Project in San Francisco

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