Just days after reports that Google and Facebook were interested in partnering with, and possibly buying VoIP company Skype, comes a claim from the Wall Street Journal that Microsoft is planning to buy the company for $7 billion, in a deal worth closer to $8 billion after Skype’s debts are considered. This mirrors an earlier rumor of a Microsoft-Skype deal published by GigaOm. An annoucement could be made as early as Tuesday.
Update: It’s now being confirmed by AllThingsD; a deal valued at around $8.5 billion, with a press release expected at 5 AM Pacific time.
Last year, Skype had revenue of $860 million on which it posted an operating profit of $264 million. However, it overall made a small loss, of $7 million, and had long-term debt of $686 million. A $7 billion purchase price would represent a huge premium over the $3-4 billion conjectured in the Facebook and Google deals.
Technology. An ever-changing beast! So much so, that the sinfully thin iPad 2 packs the same power as the jumbo-sized four-processor version of the Cray 2, a supercomputer, which was the world’s faster computer in 1985.More »
A civil war of sorts has been raging inside the ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous, culminating today in a hostile takeover of the Anonymous IRC servers.
The splinter group that has attempted to seize leadership of Anonymous, led by someone known only as Ryan, says that they seized control of Anonymous websites and IRC servers because they felt that AnonOps had become too centralized. Ryan also believes that Anonymous leadership had become more interested in destroying things for destruction’s sake than fighting for a cause, according to an exclusive interview on thinq_.
The original leadership of Anonymous still has control of anonops.in, where they’ve published updates on recent events on a subdomain.
“We regret to inform you today that our network has been compromised by a former IRC-operator and fellow helper named “Ryan”. He decided that he didn’t like the leaderless command structure that AnonOps Network Admins use. So he organised a coup d’etat, with his “friends” at skidsr.us . Using the networks service bot “Zalgo” he scavenged the IP’s and passwords of all the network servers (including the hub) and then systematically aimed denial of service attacks at them (which is why the network has been unstable for the past week).”
AnonOps ‘netstaff’ goes on to advise users to avoid AnonOps.net and AnonOps.ru, and it seems to be a prudent suggestion as the splinter group has created a Google Site where they’ve published the IP addresses of many Anonymous members involved in the DDoS attack group.
At this stage it appears that the Anonymous leadership believes they can regain control of the network.
As online video advertising continues to grow, and expands to mobile, brands are looking for ways to get more bang for their advertising buck, and viewers continue to yearn for and expect video advertising that is more personalized, targeted, and relevant. And obviously the same is true for brands and advertisers — they, too, want to be able to customize their ad experience to reach consumers that they know will care about their products. So, as technology and the web tools we use on a daily basis continue to get smarter, so should advertising, right?
AdGenesis, a New York-based video advertising startup, wants use the dating, or match-making game, to make the serving of video advertising a more intelligent arrangement. It hopes that its service will bring consumers and brands together for a rewarding, lifetime relationship of loyalty and happiness — not just in a marriage of convenience. In other words, the startup is a white label video advertising platform that partners with publishers to match branded content to a large network of eager, opt-in customers.
And, today, the startup today announced that it is launching a new API that will enable Web and mobile publishers to deliver stand-alone video advertising service to their perfect user. As we all want to be rewarded for having to sit through advertising, the service naturally incorporates a points, badges, and rewards into a program that gives viewers incentive to watch the video, and, in turn, giving advertisers the satisfaction of knowing that they are reaching their target consumer — and that those consumers are actually watching their videos.
So, how does this all work? In the case of publishers, they tell AdGenesis what type of consumer they want to view their video, based on demographics, future purchase intentions, interests, hobbies, and so on prompted by AdGenesis once a publisher joins the service. They then provide AdGenesis with a video, be it 15 seconds to 10 minutes-long, which then loads the video into their system. Based on the data AdGenesis has gathered from its 4 million registered users, it then notifies consumers with corresponding interests via SMS or email that they’ve been “matched”.
Let the swooning begin. These viewers then watch the video, on-demand on mobile or desktop, and confirm that they’ve watched the video in its entirety by entering 2 digits that are overlaid in the video’s content. If the viewer doesn’t enter those digits, the advertiser doesn’t pay. If they do, then the brand pays once for that unique view, but only once, even if the viewer watches the video 80 times.
The advertisers are then asked to present some kind of reward to the viewer for watching the video. This can be credits on AdGenesis, which viewers can later redeem for gift cards, etc, or the brand can enter the viewer in a contest to win a trip to Hawaii, or offer discounted coupons, and so on.
For the consumer, AdGenesis is totally free to join, it’s opt-in, so you’re not forced to do or see anything you don’t want to, and the more you tell AdGenesis about yourself, the more targeted the ads it serves you become, and the more videos you watch, the more rewards you earn.
It sounds a bit like being in a focus group or being paid to do medical testing on a new line of shaving cream, but AdGenesis has become very popular among coupon clippers and aggressive savers. Four months from its launch, AdGenesis has served 1.6 million viewed-videos and generated more than 150K click-throughs to advertiser websites, Facebook pages, etc.
Online video has not been a particularly successful source of click-through rates, and many advertisers have become wary of it, because it’s hard to measure the ROI of video advertising. (Same as it ever was.) AdGenesis, on the other hand, has been demonstrating a fairly impressive click-through rate (an average of 11 percent), which is much higher than the average of about 1 or 2 percent, according to AdGenesis CEO Richard Smullen.
AdGenesis has also announced a partnership with PARADE Magazine, the first publisher to launch with the full array of AdGenesis’ functionality, and Smullen tells me the startup has several big partnerships in the pipeline, both on the publishing side and the rewards/points side.
With many, many advertisers struggling to come to terms with significant spend on advertising campaigns without tried-and-true measures of customer retention, click-through, etc., advertising loyalty solutions are popping up across the Web. AdGenesis is an interesting take, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the match-making, brand-dating game proves to have some traction. After all, I’ve always wanted to date Nike.
Evernote rival Springpad is announcing support for Android Honeycomb tablets and is also debuting offline access via its popular chrome web app.
Similar to Evernote, Springpad serves as a multi-platform digital notebook. The service allows you to jot down notes, save websites, images and more. Springpad will then categorizes your saved content, and allows you to share your notes, set reminders and more. The app goes a step farther to analyze your content and then serve you alerts to relevant news, offers and deals. The app’s semantic data technology allows you to save products, books, movies, recipes and more, and automatically get enhanced information, including price drops, local availability and coupons.
The support for Honeycomb includes features such as optimized display for the larger screen size and configurable widgets to create, save and view their notes for immediate access on the tablet homescreen. The app delivers cross browser and app sharing making it easy to save information from other sites and apps. Springpad’s Chrome web app, which is ranked as one of the top 20 most popular apps in the Chrome Web Store, allows users instant and universal access to their Springpad account, even when offline.
Honeycomb tablet support is significant for Springpad because the app’s growth has been fueled by mobile adoption. Nearly half of its users are using its Android app and a third are using Springpad via an iOS device.
Evernote has around 9 million users now and SpringPad just passed the million mark so the startup definitely has a ways to go. But the company’s ability to add intelligence to notetaking and possibly monetize off of users with personalized deals, content and more could help boost usage.
