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  • Apptera Raises $10.5 Million To Expand Advertising Platform

    San Bruno, Calif.-based Apptera said it has raised $10.5 million in an undisclosed round of venture funding. Investors in the round include: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Alloy Ventures, and Walden International. The money will go towards investing in the company's audio and visual mobile advertising network. Advertisers can use the company's ad platform and technology to insert audio advertisements within a call, and then follow-up with a visual ad. For instance, a person may call in to a movie phone service to hear when the latest movie is playing. An audio ad for a nearby restaurant may play, and if a person is interested, they can request a coupon or driving directions by text message. The company can also add an audio component to a text ad, which allows a person to click to call from an SMS. Henry Vogel, Apptera's president and CEO: "A lot of people are thinking about mobile advertising as the ability to send a SMS, or a WAP banner, but you are constrained in the richness and whether people have a data plan, but every device absolutely has a phone." Founded in 2001, Apptera already has customers such as AT&T's 1-800-YellowPages, AOL's Moviefone, MovieTickets.com, Bank of America's ATM locator, SaveMart supermarkets, MLB.com, RadioShack, GSI Commerce and SayNow's social music service. The company declined to say how much money it previously raised, and said it had fewer than 100 employees. Our streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. Click here to download .
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  • Mogreet Raises $5 Million To Fund Domestic And International Expansion

    Mogreet's CEO James Citron is trying his best to coin a new term. Yesterday, on a phone call, he enthusiastically opened the conversation by saying "Mogreet!," as a substitution for "hello." It's unclear if the saying will take off, but Citron's convinced that he's found the modern-day version of a greeting card. Citron: "We saw these giant spikes happening with lots of text messages being sent around special occasions and we asked: 'Isn't there away to create a premium way to communicate around the occasions?'" The Mogreet is a video text message that delivers greetings, such as "Happy Birthday," "Happy New Years," "Merry Christmas" and "I'm sorry." A recent spike in traffic happened on election day, following Barack Obama's victory. Citron said one of the most popular greetings was a short clip of Obama declaring, "Yes We Can." Users can send the clips to others via text message. A link in the text, takes people to a landing page to watch the video. Each texts costs 49 cents or 99 cents, depending on the content. Today, the Venice, Calif.-based company is announcing that it has secured $5 million in a second round of capital. New investors include: Ascend Ventures, Black Diamond Ventures, and Spyglass Ventures. Previous investor DFJ Frontier also participated. The company will use the money to obtain more content and expand internationally, including Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Citron wouldn't provide any figures on how popular the service is, but said that 25 percent of the users are repeat customers and they have a library of several thousand greetings. In the near-term, the company will release apps for the iPhone and Android, and is experimenting with its business models, such as ad-supported messages and subscription models. Citron expects the round of funding to take the company to cash-flow break even. Citron: "We were fully...
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  • FCC Votes On Election Day For White Spaces, Clearwire-Sprint Deal And Verizon-Alltel Merger

    In a critical day for the wireless industry, the FCC made three sweeping decisions today, pushing through two mergers and the approval of the controversial white spaces issue, which will allow for an alternative U.S. wireless broadband network. Perhaps, the Republican-led FCC felt it could spend all of its political capital today, especially if the outcome of today's presidential race ends up turning over the White House to the Democrats. Here's our FCC coverage from today: -- FCC Approves White Space Use For Wireless Broadband -- FCC OKs Verizon's $28 Billion Alltel Acquisition And Sprint-Clearwire Deal -- FCC Chairman Drops Vote On Telecoms Reforms Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now!
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  • MoVoxx Raises First Round For SMS Advertising Platform

    MoVoxx , a Santa Monica, Calif.-based company that helps brands and agencies integrate ads into SMS campaigns, has raised an undisclosed amount in a first round of funding. The investment group includes: Greycroft Partners, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital and BV Capital. Founded in September 2006, MoVoxx claims its publishing network already includes 60 million impressions a month, and that in the last year, it has run campaigns for a number of familiar national brands. MoVoxx said it began delivering its publishing partners' SMS traffic at no cost in October, which is a sign of the company's volume. Check out the best business jobs in digital media. Go here for paidContent.org Job Board.
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  • Earnings: RealNetworks Reports Losses For Q3; Mobile-Related Revenues Dip By 3 Percent

    RealNetworks ( NSDQ: RNWK ) announced its Q308 earnings today, and it reported losses for the quarter, though the games division helped shore up the topline. Its Q3 losses were $4.5 million, compared with a net profit of $4.3 million in the year-ago period. Revenues grew 5 percent to $152.0 million compared with $145.1 million for Q308. Division wise: -- a 19 percent increase in Games revenue to $34.2 million -- a 10 percent increase in Music revenue to $41.6 million -- 3 percent decline in Media Software and Services revenue to $24.5 million -- 3 percent decline in Technology Products and Solutions revenue to $51.6 million (which includes wireless carrier services from the WiderThan acquisition). Mobile highlights from the quarter: -- Technology Products and Solutions declined 3 percent compared to the same period a year ago, but grew by 1 percent compared to the prior quarter. -- It launched ringback tones for Vodafone ( NYSE: VOD ) Turkey, which is seeing rapid uptake, and secured the music-on-demand business for Vodafone Spain. -- The Helix DNA mobile handset licenses grew to 43 million, up from 26 million in Q3 2007. -- Real launched its next version of its emoticonSMS service with China Unicom's 10 million mobile subscribers. -- Said its Cutting Tune product, which lets mobile subscribers select the portion of song they want for a ringtone or ringback tone, will be available in Q209 to mobile operators. Release | Webcast | Slides Mark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon & Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. Register now!
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  • BlackBerry Fund Awards $150,000 To Three Companies: Poynt, Strands, Nobex Radio

    The BlackBerry Partners Fund, a $150 million pool of money focused on apps and services for the RIM-made device, had a little contest of its own (a la Google's Android developer challenge) and today awarded $150,000 from its venture fund to three companies: Poynt, Strands Social Player and Nobex Radio Companion. The three were named "Best in Show Grand Prize Winners" at the BlackBerry Developer Conference. The winners will be entered into the BlackBerry Partners Fund "Jump Start" program . The developer challenge invited developers to create BlackBerry apps from five categories: Gaming, Multimedia, Personal Productivity and Lifestyle, Enterprise and Web. The grand prize winners were selected from 15 finalists. But judging by the winners, which all fall into the category of music and entertainment, it is either getting increasingly difficult to get developers attention, or $150,000 is simply not enough to get more than a copycat of something already out there. Release . -- Poynt: The company offers a free local search tool that connects people to business, such as movie theaters and retailers. The service uses targeted site browsing, interactive maps, driving directions, GPS, along with show times and movie trailers. -- Strands Social Player: Developed by Strands, the music player includes a social network, which lets you discover new music and connect with people. It shows cover art and provides artist and song recommendations from over 6 million songs featuring free previews. -- Nobex Radio Companion: Developed by Nobex Technologies, the app shows you what song is playing on any of 2700 radio stations and when you hear a song you like click "Get It!" and it will send you an email with a link to buy the song. More than 100 stations are playable on BlackBerries. Register for Future of Business Media: http://fobm2008.eventbrite.com
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  • @ Mobile NW: VC Tom Huseby Offers Measured View Of The Economy; Downturn Won't Benefit Wireless

    Tom Huseby, a venture capitalist with SeaPoint Ventures , who focuses on investing in wireless companies, shared his thoughts this morning at Mobile Northwest 2008 in Seattle about the economy, and offered a more measured view of how it is affecting venture capital. He said things like the stock market, bank failures and even the memo distributed by Sequoia Capital two weeks ago , which told its portfolio companies to brace for a deep economic downturn, are inflicting undue fear on the start-up community. Last week, he said his mother called from Florida to give him her regards. "She must have thought I was in the midst of total chaos and doom and gloom, but really, I was too busy to notice, other than seeing my net worth diminish. Who would have thought early-stage VC was one of the safer investments? Who would have thought it was better than mortgages?...It's better because no one expects to get money out of it for a long while. We are equity driven..No one borrows money to build a venture fund." Huseby called the "Sequoia Panic Notes," which were paired with a visual of a grave stone with the message R.I.P.: Good Times, "hypocrisy and hearsay." On follow-up, he revised the words to "hyperbole and histrionic." He added while they were spreading a negative message, he successfully conducted a capital call and committed to funding a new startup. "Capital continues to flow." Still, he said there will be an impact. VC's will be less likely to connect the dots and see a company's potential. Anything that was easy, is gone. "It's gone. You won't get a lot of people getting a second round and a third. It's going to be hard. Hope is diminished." On the wireless industry specifically, he said: "The general downturn won't be good for anything. There's nothing that's counter cyclical. I don't think people will buy more games, or spend more on their phones. They are going to...
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  • Fox Creates Mobile Group After Buying Jamba Stake; Will Launch A New U.S. Mobile Brand Next Year

    News Corp ( NYSE: NWS ) is overhauling its mobile operations after paying VeriSign ( NSDQ: VRSN ) $200 million for its remaining 49 percent state in Jamba, the mobile content company. This marks the end to the company's whirlwind history, which succeeded with the rise of ringtones, only to struggle as it faced controversies over billing practices and waning ringtone sales. Going forward, the company known as Jamba will be gone, but the brand will continue under the newly formed Fox Mobile Group, which will be led by Jamba's CEO Mauro Montanaro. Under the new leadership and business structure, the group will enter its next phase, which includes significant investments by launching a new mobile brand in the U.S. and by opening up a new studio to create made-for-mobile content. To understand what's going on, we talked to Fox Mobile Group's new CEO Mauro Montanaro, Jamba's former CEO . Here's a breakdown of the news and highlights from the interview: The New Structure: Fox Mobile Group will comprise of three units: Fox Mobile Distribution, which includes Jamba, Jamster and other consumer brands; Fox Mobile Entertainment, which handles licensing content to third parties for mobile; and the Fox Mobile Studios, which will house the new creative and technology talents and assets that develop original mobile content. New personnel and offices: The Fox Mobile Group has 720 employees in Berlin, Los Angeles, Brazil, and the new Singapore office, where the Fox Mobile Distribution and Fox Mobile Studios for Asian markets will be headquartered. Montanaro who joined Jamba in February has also appointed several new executives, including Kaj Hagros, who has been COO since July; Giovanni Montesanti, who will join the company as CMO in November; Dana Harris, vp of global communications and John Ma, vp of human resources. Mark Anderson and Jamie Samson will continue serving as CFO and EVP of business & legal affairs and general counsel, respectively. The New U...
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  • MobUI Launches To Help Media Companies Go Mobile; Buys Action Engine

    MobUI , a company founded by former Action Engine employees, has decided to buy the assets of its former employer to create applications and mobile Web experiences on new mobile platforms, such as the iPhone and Android. In August, Action Engine mysteriously laid off its employees and closed its doors, saying it was seeking buyers for its mobile platform, which allowed applications to get ported to multiple platforms, such as Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Java and Brew. Before Action Engine started having issues, John Burry left the company to start MobUI with the mission to help media companies quickly build apps and mobile experiences on even newer platforms, such as the iPhone. Burry, who is MobUI's CEO, said his company grew quickly gaining the two customers in the first two weeks. But Burry said they realized they weren't going to be able to focus on a single platform—that companies who built something for the iPhone would want to expand to other platforms. Burry: "We purchased Action Engine because we had a dependency on it." That included one of MobUI's early customers, which was also using Action Engine. MobUI bought Action Engine's assets on Sept. 15, and hired a core set of engineers in order to keep the platform going. MobUI raises funding: To fund the company's beginnings and buy Action Engine, Burry said they raised an undisclosed amount of capital from GlobalNET Mobile Solutions , a wireless application services provider in Latin America, which is also one of MobUI's first customers. Burry said GobalNET is interested in both companies so it can better expand internationally in the U.S., Asia and Europe. MobUI can be pronounced "Mob-U.I." or "Mo-BUI." Explaining Action Engine's demise: Action Engine's sudden closure wasn't as mysterious as you would think, Burry said. The company, which had a long list of big-name customers, such as AOL ( NYSE: TWX ), The Wall Street Journal.com, MarketWatch...
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  • Whoop Buys XOsphere For Undisclosed Sum

    A couple of weeks after saying it raised $2 million in angel funding , Atlanta-based Whoop said it is acquiring the assets of XOsphere, a California-based company with operations also in Latin America. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but said XOsphere's management team will join the new company. Whoop helps people publish mobile web sites through a hosted application. A Whoop Agent resides on the phone and acts as a translator, interpreting content and optimizing it for the device it's running on. The executives joining from XOsphere are: Andrew Dod, SVP of marketing, Demetrio Cuzzocrea, VP of creative services and Manuel Reyna, managing director of Latin America. Release. Our mobile application for Blackberry and other Smartphones brings you the latest headlines when you're on the go. Go here to download .
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  • Interview: Jean-David Begin, BlackBerry Partner Fund: Cautiously Moving Toward 20 Investments

    Two weeks ago we talked to Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers' iFund Manager Matt Murphy about his thoughts on investing in companies building applications for the iPhone. At CTIA, we caught up with BlackBerry Partner's Fund investment team member Jean-David Begin , who was busy traveling between Palo Alto and the convention floor with two other members to meet with a host of potential investments. The BlackBerry Fund was announced earlier this year just after the iFund, and is designed to invest in applications using the BlackBerry platform, as well as a host of other mobile products and services for various platforms. To be clear, the fund is an independent entity, not an investment arm of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion , so Begin has no inside information as to what RIM may or may not be doing. He shared his opinions on the hot sectors in mobile, his desire for cash-efficient companies with a chance of IPO exits, how some mobile companies are overvalued and unreleased Android's need to prove itself. Some highlights from our conversation: Tell me about the BlackBerry Partners Fund : "It's a $150 million fund, and we are a traditional venture capital firm. We aren't a investment arm of RIM ( NSDQ: RIMM ). RIM is one of three anchor-limited partners along with Royal Bank of Canada and Thomson Reuters ( NASDAQ: TRIN ), and we have a couple of other partners with smaller stakes. The thesis is because of the availability of smartphones and the ease of the deployment of applications—the best example being Apple's App store—in the next couple of years, there will be an explosion of wireless applications. The whole thing coalesced earlier this year and then we basically got the support of our anchor partners." Did the formation of the iFund play a role? : "Not really...It often happens that a lot of smart people and experienced people in the industry realize a couple things at the same time ... obviously the iFund was announced...
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  • Connect2Media Buys Israeli-based RayFusion

    London-based Connect2Media , a publisher of mobile content, which just merged with the European operations of Hands-On, said it has acquired RayFusion, an Israeli-based mobile content distributor. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will enable RayFusion to expand its distribution to include carrier accounts in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, Connect2Media said in a release today. RayFusion will operate as a standalone entity with operational independence from Connect2Media. It will retain its name and corporate identity and there will be no changes to its personnel or operations. However Connect2Media will help strengthen RayFusion by assisting in developing new mobile content technology. Release. Related Hands-On Mobile Sheds European Business; Merges With Connect 2 Media As Minority Shareholder Social Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and M&A deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. Visit the ContentNext Reports page
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