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New Media News Every Morning

ContentNext acquired for $30 Million

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Rafat Ali announced that Guardian News & Media (GNM) of UK-based Guardian Media Group (GMG), has acquired ContentNext, the company behind paidContent.

“This starts the 2.0 phase of our company ContentNext Media: we will remain a stand-alone business under GNM. This also marks a major expansion of Guardian’s U.S. presence….it already runs the Guardian America website, focused on U.S. audiences,” Ali said in a blog post.

Financial details were not disclosed but reports had it that ContentNext was bought for $30 million.

Originally posted on July 11, 2008 @ 8:00 am

NBC Universal, Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group to Acquire The Weather Channel

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NBC Universal, Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire The Weather Channel properties from Landmark Communications. The Weather Channel will be operated as a separate entity, based in Atlanta, with management services to be provided by NBC Universal. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The transaction includes The Weather Channel Networks, the third-most-distributed cable network, seen in more than 97% of cable television homes in the U.S.; The Weather Channel Interactive, which includes weather.com, the nation’s leading weather website, with nearly 40 million unique visitors per month, and a leading mobile business; and Weather Services International, a global leader in weather forecasting, with more than 5,500 clients worldwide.

Originally posted on July 7, 2008 @ 8:04 am

NowPublic acquires Truemors

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NowPublic, the participatory news network, has acquired Truemors, a website dedicated to the free-flow of the news rumor mill, and the brainchild of venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki. In the immediate term, Truemors will continue to operate as a standalone site and Kawasaki will join NowPublic as Chair of the Advisory Board. The editorial team of Truemors will remain intact. Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Originally posted on July 10, 2008 @ 10:02 am

MediaWhiz acquires ScribeFire, launches QuickAds

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Online advertising company MediaWhiz has acquired ScribeFire, the blog editing technology for Firefox. MediaWhiz also announced the release of a beta version of ScribeFire QuickAds, online advertising’s first point-and-click advertising optimization technology.

ScribeFire enables users to easily drag and drop formatted text from the web into their blogs, as well as post entries and take notes, directly through the Firefox browser. ScribeFire currently has over 150,000 active users, and is compatible with all major blog services.

ScribeFire QuickAds’ ‘point and click’ ad optimization technology, the first to enable web publishers to serve fully optimized banner ads without the hassle of adding additional code, greatly facilitates online advertising integration on blogs. Web publishers can add IAB-standard in-page ad formats (e.g. Leaderboard: 728×90, Wide Skyscraper: 160×600, and Medium Rectangle: 300×250), and in-text advertisements to their blogs via an easy three-click process.

ScribeFire QuickAds’ ad optimization decision engine automatically selects the highest revenue producing banner to display on the user’s website. Ads are selected from the MediaWhiz ad inventory pool, which is fueled by MediaWhiz’s experienced sales team and relationships with over 100 ad networks. Web publishers can access comprehensive ad inventory performance and earnings data on the ScribeFire website.

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Originally posted on July 3, 2008 @ 10:20 am

Hi5 acquires PixVerse

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hi5 Networks has acquired PixVerse, Inc., provider of rich, real-time interactions within social networks. Built on its breakthrough Flash-based, no-download virtual world platform, PixVerse developed the popular and highly interactive Pix Chat and Pix Wall applications, which run on hi5 and other social networking services through platform integration.

PixVerse is one of thousands of third-party software developers that have written applications to run on top of the hi5 Platform since its launch in April 2008. Ranging from enhanced friend interactions to games, applications on hi5 provide a popular way of extending the social networking experience and enhancing end user engagement.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Originally posted on June 30, 2008 @ 4:51 pm