Wednesday, February 25, 2015

2.25.15

Entertainment:
·         Chris Hemsworth has been booked to host NBC’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ on March 7, with the Zac Brown Band as musical guest
·         In a conversation on Reddit today, the Magic Leap CEO (augmented reality startup that raised $542MM) is looking for ways to showcase its technology to the public before it launches. “Stay tuned,” Abovitz wrote, “gold tickets coming.”
·         In its final season, ‘Parks and Recreation’ jumped forward to 2017, setting the stage for more than a few digs at the influence of tech culture on America's communities
·         Netflix just announced the expansion of its kids programming with the addition of five new shows: Danger Mouse, Inspector Gadget, Some Assembly Required, Bottersnikes and Gambles, and Super4
·         More evidence of TV Everywhere's momentum today, as FreeWheel's Q4 2014 Video Monetization Report found that 56% of long-form and live ads were viewed via authentication
·         DreamWorks Animation swung to a loss in the fourth quarter even with advance writedowns on films The Penguins of Madagascar, Mr. Peabody, and Sherman
·         Lady Gaga to star in season 5 of ‘American Horror Story’
·         Broad Green Pictures said it has acquired a 45% stake in David Garrett’s London-based sales and distribution outfit Mister Smith Entertainment
·         Writer-director Judd Apatow is headlining a benefit tonight at Largo in Los Angeles for The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
·         When Lady Gaga hit the high notes on four songs as part of a 50th-anniversary tribute to ‘The Sound of Musi’c and shared a hug with its star Julie Andrews, Facebook and Twitter experienced their highest activity of the night
·         ‘The Lego Movie’ is set to return in 2018 with Rob Schrab (Community and Parks and Recreation) making his feature directorial debut
·         The official talking points around Sling — both for Dish Network and their programming partners like ESPN — is that Sling is a Web-TV service targeted at millennials who have never signed up for pay TV. So it can help them work their way up to a traditional pay-TV subscription, or at least give the pay-TV guys a new revenue source
·         Digital video's growth is now being driven by the crown jewels of the TV industry, namely first-run shows and live events, according to the latest FreeWheel video monetisation report
·         Fortified by its recent $24MM cash injection, Machinima has sealed a deal with Vimeo to bring its network of over 30,000 creators onto the latter's open selfdistribution platform.
Tech:
·         Airbnb is partnering with T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom to preinstall its app in Android smartphones sold across 13 markets in Europe, including DT’s home market of Germany
·         China has dropped some of the world's leading technology brands from its approved state purchase lists in what could be a response to revelations of widespread Western cyber surveillance
·         Media Temple, the popular GoDaddy-owned web hosting service, today announced an expansion of its dedicated WordPress hosting service
·         Layer, the company making it possible for developers to add rich messaging capabilities to their apps without having to build their own infrastructure from the ground up, is today making its service available to the public, following its beta period
·         Thanks to a brand new IFTTT channel, Scout can now interact with everything from your phone to your Jawbone Up, and from Google Docs to Facebook
·         Only a month ago, Tumblr upgraded its writing interface to better compete with newer blogging platform Medium, best known for its long-form content. Today, Medium is turning the tables and moving into Tumblr’s territory instead with a series of changes that encourage writers to share stories of any length
·         Facebook’s Oculus VR division announced it will hold its Mobile VR Jam on April 13 with $1MM in prizes
·         Apple has been ordered to pay $532.9MM in damages after a federal jury decided its iTunes software infringed three patents owned by Texas-based licensing firm Smartflash
·         Pinterest  is projected to have just more than 47 million monthly active users in the U.S. this year, and top 50 million next year, according to a new estimate from researcher eMarketer
Deals:
·         Please see below for the 9 largest startup funding rounds of the last 2 years
·         Toro, a startup that helps developers promote their apps on Facebook, just announced that it’s been acquired by Google
·         Xero, which provides cloud accounting software and services for accounting professionals and small businesses, with over 400,000 global customers, raised $110.8MM in PE money
·         In a new S-1, GoDaddy declared plans to list on the NYSE under the symbol "GDDY" and announced IPO underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citi and others
Business:
·         The Dow and S&P 500 hit new records yesterday, closing at 18,209 and 2,115, respectively, as investors attempted to infer a subtle change in emphasis from Fed Chair Janet Yellen's testimony
·         Target today said that it has booked $162MM in expenses across 2013 and 2014 related to its data breach, in which hackers broke into the company’s network to access credit card information
·         Charles W. Ergen, the billionaire who controls the satellite TV provider Dish Network, and his company are about to make a cool $3.25B — courtesy of the American taxpayer
·         Cushman & Wakefield, one of the world’s biggest commercial real estate companies, is seeking a buyer, according to people briefed on the matter
·         Please see below for an interesting article on how hyper-luxury cars are selling faster than normal ones
Exec Moves:
Retail:
Startups:
Government:
·         Yesterday, President Obama put a veto on a bill to approve the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline
·         The Austrian parliament has passed a controversial bill that bans foreign funding for the religion in Austria, as well as foreign Imams, many of whom are paid by neighboring Turkey
·         Saudi Arabia sentences a man to death for tearing up the Koran
·         Three Republican governors with an eye on the presidency—Chris Christie, Scott Walker, and Bobby Jindal—are facing fiscal challenges at home as they lay the groundwork for national campaigns
·         Rahm Emanuel will face a runoff election to keep his seat as mayor of Chicago
Other:


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