Entertainment:
·
Nickelodeon will soon take its shows directly to consumers
with the launch of a subscription streaming service in March, according to
comments made by Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman on the company’s earnings call on
Thursday
·
Facebook has roughly 3 billion video views per day
·
Takehollywood, a new startup offering up online short form
videos around different topics about acting has partnered with Venice-based
Mobli, the developer of a social sharing app
·
NBCU's EVP of Sales and Sales Marketing Seth Winter announced
that all of this Sunday's Super Bowl on-air and online ad units are now sold
out
·
HBO tech execs are leaving HBO is preparing to sell a
standalone service over the Internet for the first time, in one of the most
closely watched moves in pay TV history
·
Earlier this week, ex-intern Camille Demere and her lawyers
filed a jury trial-demanding complaint against CBS Corporation and CBS Radio
·
CBS Corp and Canada’s Bell Media have entered a long-term
exclusive content licensing and trademark agreement to bring Showtime to the
Great White North
·
WME | IMG has acquired Dixon Talent Inc., James Dixon's
boutique firm that represents some of the top late-night and comedic talent,
including Stephen Colbert, Carson Daly, Jimmy Kimmel, Bill Simmons and Jon
Stewart
·
Mercedes-Benz USA collaborated with Robert Stromberg – ‘Maleficent’ director and a two-time Academy
Award winner for Best Art Direction for ‘Alice In Wonderland’ and ‘Avatar’
– for its Super Bowl ad this year
·
Lionsgate is in advanced discussions with China’s Hunan TV,
the country’s second largest broadcaster, to partner on film production and
distribution
·
Starz on Wednesday unveiled a deal with Amazon, its first-ever
U.S. subscription VOD content licensing deal with the company, for ‘The White
Queen’
·
Australian airline Qantas has paired up with Samsung to start
offering the company’s Gear VR headset to first class passengers on long-haul
flights
·
Oscilloscope Laboratories has joined a Kickstarter campaign to
digitally restore “River of Grass,” the rarely-seen 1994 debut feature by Kelly
Reichardt
·
Last year's digital performance royalty distributions by
SoundExchange rose 31% to $773MM and have climbed 207% over the last four years
·
Listen Up, the London promotion company that is home to Tiesto
and Avicii, is opening an L.A. office on Sunset Boulevard
·
Tom Petty has issued a statement about his recent settlement
with Sam Smith, in which Smith will pay him royalties for "Stay With Me”
·
Sony has made major enhancements to its PlayStation Network,
with Sky adding to the platform's content roster
Tech:
·
Microsoft today launched Outlook for Android and iOS phones
and tablets, based on the application it acquired when it bought Acompli last
December
·
Imgur has released a fast video-to-GID converter
·
Google Wallet — the search giant’s payments business that
competes against PayPal and Apple Pay, among others — is today taking its first
step outside of the U.S., in the form of money transfers
·
Tumblr is rolling out a series of updates to its online
blogging platform designed to make the service more attractive and useful for
content creators, and specifically for those writing long-form content
·
Snapchat launched a new feature called Snaptags that creates a
unique QR code for every Snapchat user
·
Amazon has a new product called WorkMail debuting today (via
Forbes), which is an email and calendaring service that aims to provide those
tools for corporate customers
·
Yeti, an app that is essentially Tinder for places, released
an update today that makes it easier for users to use the app for local
searches
o
http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/28/with-new-update-yeti-hopes-to-compete-with-google-in-local-search/
·
RunKeeper is introducing support for Spotify today, meaning
runners, walkers, and cyclists can control their music directly from inside the
RunKeeper iPhone app
·
Live-Bet sports app lets you bet on the next play in a
football game
·
Whisbi, which for the past seven years has been providing
online video calls from salespeople to help website visitors, is now extending
that service to virtual store visits through wearable video devices
·
The Ventura County Sheriff's department reported this morning
that it arrested two suspects in Thousand Oaks, who were using Uber to help
conduct drug deals
·
Samsung declared that it wants an entirely open ecosystem for Internet
of Things devices, so they’re pledging $100MM in a IoT funding pool
·
Apple is now the 24th largest retailer in the U.S. by store
sales, as of the end of 2014
·
Video game streaming site Twitch, now owned by Amazon, said
today that it has crossed 100 million monthly unique viewers — versus 45
million at the same time last year and 20 million the year before that
Deals:
·
Whistle is expanding its position
with the acquisition of a competitor in the pet wearable space, Tagg, and
adding another $15MM in a Series B round
·
Shareholders of Reynolds American,
the maker of Camel cigarettes, approved its $25 billion acquisition of Lorillard,
a deal which would combine the second- and third-biggest cigarette companies in
the United States
o http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/28/us-lorillard-reynoldsamricn-meeting-idUSKBN0L11S220150128
Business:
·
Facebook reported yet another quarter where its revenue rose
to a record high. Most significantly, mobile ad revenue doubled compared to the
same time last year, breaking $2B for the first time
·
Samsung Electronics reported its lowest annual profit since
2011 during its earnings call today as its smartphone sales continue to suffer
from increasing competition
·
After Yahoo completes the spinoff of its $39B stake in the
Alibaba Group, the Silicon Valley stalwart may not have much time to turn its
core Internet businesses around as it could become a takeover target
·
TPG Capital has sued its former spokesman, Adam Levine,
contending that he took confidential documents and distributed them to The New
York Times and other media after being denied a promotion to a partnership
position
·
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. revenue missed estimates as the
e-commerce giant’s push into mobile curbed its advertising sales growth - the
shares fell
·
The London Stock Exchange Group is looking to sell Russell
Investments in mid-February, after buying Frank Russell from insurer
Northwestern Mutual last year for $2.7B
·
Viacom’s U.S. advertising sales were down 6 percent amid lower
ratings, while international ad sales rose 60 percent helped by the acquisition
late last year of U.K. broadcaster Channel 5
·
The Federal Communications Commission has closed its auction
of AWS-3 wireless spectrum licenses, raising a record $44.9B in the process
Exec Moves:
·
Shasta Ventures has promoted Sean
Flynn to Managing Director - Flynn sits on the boards of Los Angeles-based
startups TigerText and ZEFR
·
McDonald’s announced on Wednesday
that its president and chief executive, Don Thompson, would step down,
effective March 1, just days after the fast-food restaurant chain posted one of
its worst financial performances in years
·
Univison says that CEO Randy Falco
now will stay at least through January 2018
·
Box has tapped a retail veteran to
run its Box for Retails business - Josh Chernoff, who led the Americas retail
practice at Bain & Company
Retail:
Startups:
·
Giphy has just raised $17MM in
Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from
General Catalyst and previous investors such as Lerer-Hippeau, betaworks, RRE
Ventures, and CAA Ventures
·
Tune, a company that bills itself as
“the enterprise platform for mobile marketing,” is announcing that it has
raised $27MM in Series B funding
·
D-Wave Systems, a company building
what it calls quantum computers, is announcing today that it has taken on
around $23.1MM in additional funding
·
Meta, which offers users a total augmented
reality (AR) experience, raised $23MM in its Series A
·
Mashable, the leading media company
for the Connected Generation and the voice of digital culture, just raised
$17MM in its Series B led by Time Warner Investments
Government:
Other:
·
Joe Lonsdale, the technology executive best known as the
co-founder of Palantir and a partner of venture capital firm Formation 8, has
been accused of gender violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and other
charges in a civil lawsuit filed this week in San Francisco
·
A children’s hospital in Mexico City was nearly leveled when a
gasoline tanker truck exploded Thursday, killing at least seven, including four
children
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