Thursday, January 8, 2015

1.8.15

Entertainment:
·         The U.K. retail giant (and supermarket) Tesco has offloaded Blinkbox Movies, its movie and TV on-demand service, to local telco TalkTalk
·         Please see below for an interesting article on how Disney’s next acquisition will be to further expand its digital distribution
·         Please see below for a brief overview of Leslie Moonves talking about CBS’ streaming strategy at CES
·         Please see below for an op-ed article on how YouTube will be the Yahoo! of 2015
·         Mike Bloomberg toasted Teddy Schwarzman Wednesday night at a party for the Imitation Game producer thrown by his father, Blackstone Group CEO Stephen Schwarzman and stepmother, Christine Hearst Schwarzman
·         Social-media giant Facebook and its red-hot subsidiary Instagram will have featured roles in Sunday’s Golden Globes, both on the red carpet before the event and backstage during the awards themselves
·         As lead investor and former Facebook General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly today stepped in as interim head of the curated film streaming service Fandor after CEO Ted Hope left for another gig
·         LifeNews, a mainstream Russian TV news channel, aired a segment on Thursday in which a regular guest and "expert political analyst" stated that the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack in Paris had in fact been carried out by United States intelligence agencies
·         Please see below for an interesting article on the benefits of Dish’s Sling TV
·         The ex-Aereo CEO is hiring former employees for a new venture
·         Video processing technology provider ATEME, with partners Kolor and Finwe, has taken the immersive experience of the LiveSphere end-to-end live video broadcast solution to the living room
Tech:
·         Peter Thiel’s VC firm, Founder’s Fund, announced a multimillion dollar investment in Privateer marking it the first time any top tier VC firm has invested in a so-called “cannabusiness”
·         Apple’s App Store billings are up 50% in 2014
·         Starboard Value LP has written yet another letter to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer urging her to consider combining with AOL
·         Duolingo, a data-driven language learning software on web and mobile, is launching Duolingo for Schools today
·         Razer is reshaping its gaming brand to encompass more hardware devices, such as a releasing the Forge TV
·         Google’s slice of the U.S. search market, excluding mobile devices, fell to 75.3% last month from 77.5% in November, while Yahoo's (YHOO) share jumped to 10% from 8%, according to analytics firm StatCounter
·         Following the record launch of its new Hero 4 action cameras over the holidays, GoPro plans to expand its international distribution to include China later this year, reducing its dependence on the U.S. market
·         Facebook has released stats on their video service, which users watch more than a billion clips a day
Deals:
·         Deezer announced today that it has acquired the Muve Music streaming service from U.S. wireless carrier Cricket
Business:
·         Dick’s Sporting Goods suggests that there is ample room for a new private equity owner to generate a nice return
·         European stocks are climbing higher along with U.S. futures, after yesterday's ECB stimulus hopes, strong U.S. private sector jobs data and FOMC minutes
·         Confirming its first year of annual profit decline since 2011, Samsung Electronics announced today that its fourth-quarter profit likely fell 37.4% Y/Y, hurt by falling sales at its smartphone division
·         More than 60% of the roughly $1.1B raised by Bill Gross for Janus Capital came from a Morgan Stanley wealth management office in California - the home to one of Gross' personal financial advisors
Exec Moves:
Retail:
Startups:
·         Dato (formerly GraphLab), which makes a complete platform for using scalable machine learning to build predictive apps, raised $18.5MM in its Series B
Government:
Other:
·         Le Monde, one of France’s major newspapers/broadcasters, plans to keep Charlie Hebdo alive – also please see below for other relevant articles regarding the attacks and in relation to censorship. Charlie Hebdo to publish 1 million copies next week


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