Entertainment:
·
Disney is planning around the possibility of including Marvel
and/or Star Wars-specific offerings in Dish’s new Sling TV Service
·
CNBC and analyst outfit Crowdnetic are partnering to release a
new crowdfinance index, aiming to give the investing public a window into how
this new market is evolving
·
Starting with the live broadcast on Sunday, animators at the
UK-based A+C Studios embarked on a mad dash to re-create nine of this year’s
Super Bowl ads entirely out of Lego bricks—and the result, “Brick Bowl,” has
just gone live
·
Sony Pictures division took an estimated $15MM hit in
“investigation and remediation costs” over the quarter to deal with the
cyberattack
·
Tribune’s announced that its 42 TV stations will use Rentrak
to provide audience measurement data —
including for their TV Everywhere streaming efforts
·
Netflix has released a full-size trailer for ‘Daredevil’, the
first in a four-series superhero package from Marvel
·
MiTu, the Latino-oriented online-video network, said it has
raised 50% more than it initially had announced in a Series B round that now
totals $15MM
·
Kingdom Holding Company, the investment vehicle of Prince Al
Waleed bin Talal, cut its stake in Rupert Murdoch’s company to 1 percent from
6.6 percent
·
More than 21,000 online-video creators are generating at least
1 million views a month of their work, and some 16,000 individual videos are
grabbing at least that many views each per month, according to Tubular Labs
·
Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary's Revelations Entertainment signed
a multi-year first look deal with CBS Television Studios
·
China's Heyi Pictures has unveiled a slate of six feature
films it is to co-produce
·
A new YouTube feature allows users to upload multiple camera
angles for a video, along with the audio track, and YouTube will then
automatically stitch the camera feeds together so that viewers can toggle views
while watching
·
Sony has become the first TV maker to offer YouView built-in
to a TV set, available in its new 2015 BRAVIA range
·
Viacom joins Latin America's advertising council
Tech:
·
Please see below for an article penned by FCC Chairman Tom
Wheeler on net neutrality
·
Twitter announced a new feature today aimed at small and
medium businesses it’s referring to as “quick promote“, which will let SMBs
select their most popular Tweets and boost them directly
·
Instagram videos now loop, just as they on Vine
·
CrunchBase is partnering with Compass (the minds behind the
2012 Startup Genome Project) on a new study to provide a taxonomy for global
startup ecosystems.
o
http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/04/crunchbase-and-compass-partner-to-rank-global-startup-ecosystems/
·
A new report from security firm Avast out this morning reveals
the discovery of a new form of malware on the Google Play store, which begins
to display advertisements disguised as warning messages to end users when they
unlock their Android smartphone
·
Amazon has unveiled Kindle Convert, a program for Windows that
turns print books into digital versions fully compatible with Amazon’s Kindle
software
·
China is to require that the country's 650 million Internet
users use their real names when registering online
o
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/china-to-require-real-name-registration-on-internet-1201423378/
·
YouTube trounces Facebook in Super Bowl ad views, but not
shares
Deals:
·
Staples has agreed to acquire Office
Depot for $6.3B in cash and stock, a deal that would unite the two biggest
providers of office supplies if approved
·
Hem, the Berlin-based home
furnishings company that Jason Goldberg created last year as a pivot out of his
flashy-but-challenged e-commerce portal Fab.com, is close to acquiring
Discipline.eu
·
RentLingo, an apartment review and
listing site that launched in 2012, today announced that it has acquired
RoomHunt, a service that also aggregates listings, but with a focus on helping
you find roommates for those listings
o http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/03/rentlingo-acquires-rental-listing-aggregator-roomhunt/#tZicGQ:Rgr
·
Equity crowdfunding platform
Fundable is announcing that it has acquired Clarity.fm, the Dan Martell-founded
startup that connects entrepreneurs with mentors like Mark Cuban, Brad Feld and
Eric Ries over the phone
Business:
·
Microsoft today launched the first part of its Office for
Windows 10 in preview. You can download the new Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
apps now from the Windows Store Beta that ships with the latest Windows 10
build
·
Walt Disney's quarterly profit blew past Wall Street's
estimates as its blockbuster animated film ‘Frozen’ heated up home
entertainment and toy sales.
·
Another $11.6B flew out of the Pimco Total Return Fund in
January, as retirement plans withdrew more commitments from the world’s largest
bond mutual fund
·
LinkedIn is a “buy” before earnings later this week as new
products take hold and mobile advertising improves, according to Goldman Sachs
·
Sky, led by CEO Jeremy Darroch, reported higher first-half
earnings of $1.65B (1.09 billion pounds), up from 411 million pounds in the
year-ago period
·
Yahoo said it would use its Yahoo Small Business unit as the
“active trade business” needed to create the public company in which it is
spinning off its 384 million shares of China’s Alibaba Group
Exec Moves:
·
ITV Studios America has hired
Lucienne Papon as SVP Scripted Television, joining from Martin Campbell
Productions, where she helped launch the company’s ABC Studios-based TV
division
·
Don Kingsborough, the PayPal
executive who spearheaded the online payment giant’s move into the physical
retail world, has left the company
Retail:
·
Macy’s agreed to pay $210MM for Bluemercy Spa and Beauty Chain,
which operates 60 stores in 18 states and has a growing e-commerce business
Startups:
·
Techlist a new reliable data startup that tracks the tech and
startup industry in Asia
·
Taboola — the recommendation
platform that provides 200 billion content suggestions to 550 million users
each month, and analytics to publishers and brands about what’s getting people
clicking (and what is not) — is today announcing a huge funding round of $117MM
on a valuation just shy of $1B
·
BucketFeet, a startup that just
raised $7.5MM in Series A, the company is using the multitude of artists
looking to distribute their work to build a new shoe brand
·
Meadow, a startup that helps medical
marijuana users order a delivery through its mobile app, is in Y Combinator’s
current batch - the startup is announcing the launch of CannabisMD, an
on-demand service for at-home medical cannabis evaluations by a licensed
physician
Government:
·
Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is making
fun of Chinese accents on Twitter while on official business in the country
·
Greece has now started negotiations with the IMF over a plan
to exchange its sovereign debt for growth-linked bonds, as new PM Alexis
Tsipras and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis continue a European tour to drum
up support for their proposal
Other:
·
A TransAsia Airways plane crashed into a river in Taiwan's
capital city on Wednesday - at least 26 on board were killed – please see below
for dashcam footage of the crash
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