Tracking202 Acquisition

Boosting its global reach as well as its position in the affiliate marketing arena, multichannel marketing service Bloosky Interactive has acquired PPC analytics firm Tracking202 and its subsidiaries in an all-cash transaction.

Tracking202’s technology and 22,000-plus member base will be integrated with Bloosky’s agency functions. Tracking202’s executive team will stay on to build the company’s services with the added resources of Bloosky, and the company will continue to operate from San Francisco.

“Bloosky’s vendors and partners are the ones who will reap the greatest reward from this acquisition,” said Bloosky CEO Matt Cook. “Our relationships and broad-based reach will translate into high-volume response rates, sustainable revenue and high-quality customer transactions.”

This is Bloosky’s fifth acquisition in the last two years.

A full blown teenage trend.

US teens ages 13 - 17.

Teens are still developing their communication habits. So why is texting a teen trend? It’s efficient, and it’s private. Teens can text silently in a car’s back seat or in the family room without parents listening in on the conversation. The texts might be coded — maybe a simple emoticon or a LOL (laugh out loud), but it’s a way for young people to maintain a connection throughout the school day.

Not that teens are the only texters. About 65% of adults send or receive texts as well. Texting is convenient, fast and doesn’t require full attention.

Texas Dept. of Transportation officials confirm a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street in Austin was hacked into last week. Tampering with portable road signs is illegal and potentially dangerous to drivers. It is a misdemeanor in Texas, with penalties ranging from fines to potential jail time.

Transportation officials in Texas are scrambling to prevent hackers from changing messages on digital road signs after one sign in Austin was altered to read, “Zombies Ahead.”

Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for the Texas Department of Transportation, confirmed that a portable traffic sign at Lamar Boulevard and West 15th Street, near the University of Texas at Austin, was hacked into during the early hours of Jan. 19.

“It was clever, kind of cute, but not what it was intended for,” said Lippincott, who saw the sign during his morning commute. “Those signs are deployed for a reason — to improve traffic conditions, let folks find better methods of getting to work.

She said she did not know whether any other signs in the area had been altered.

According to the blog i-hacked.com, some commercial road signs, including those manufactured by IMAGO’s ADDCO division, can be easily altered because their instrument panels are frequently left unlocked and their default passwords are not changed.

“Programming is as simple as scrolling down the menu selection,” i-hacked.com reports. “Type whatever you want to display … In all likelihood, the crew will not have changed [the password].”

I-hacked.com warns readers not to try to alter the signs, which cost roughly $15,000.

ADDCO Chief Operating Officer Brian Nicholson told FOXNews.com that the company is sending out notices to customers on the potentially dangerous security flaw.

“It’s incumbent upon users to change the default password and secure the sign with a padlock,” Nicholson said. “We’re having our engineers review this information.”

In the meantime, if you’re driving in Austin, you can rest assured: There are no zombies ahead.

Chief executive Eric Schmidt said that Google was “concerned” about a deal and said it could have implications for the “openness” of the internet.

Last month Microsoft proposed a buyout of Yahoo for $44.6bn deal that was rejected by Yahoo’s board.
experts said that the buyout was an attempt by Microsoft to challenge Google’s dominance.

“We would be concerned by any kind of acquisition of Yahoo by Microsoft,” Mr Schmidt said at a conference in Beijing.

“We would hope that anything they did would be consistent with the openness of the internet, but I doubt it would be.”

He highlighted the software firm’s past history and “the things that it has done that have been so difficult for everyone”.

In 2004 the European Commission fined Microsoft 497m euros for abusing its market dominance, a ruling the US company finally lost on appeal in September last year.

Yahoo has tried to fend off the bid from Microsoftand The Commission has since launched two new competition inquiries against Microsoft.

“We are concerned that there are things Microsoft could do that would be bad for the internet,” said Schmidt.

His comments echo those of David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, who has previously said that any deal could exert an “inappropriate… influence” over the internet.

“This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the internet: openness and innovation,” he said in a company blog earlier this month.

Earlier this month, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the company would gain market share against Google in search and advertising, even if led to his “last breath” at the firm.

Last week a contingent of Microsoft executives met up with their Yahoo counterparts in California.

No investments bankers attended Monday’s meeting, nor was there any discussion about whether Microsoft was willing to raise its offer, according to reports.

Yahoo has been exploring different ways to fend off Microsoft since the bid was first launched six weeks ago. Possible alliances include with social networking site MySpace, web portal AOL or even Google.

Rupert Murdoch, the chief executive of News Corp, which owns MySpace, has downplayed interest in Yahoo whilst AOL has outlined plans to buy social network Bebo, making a deal more complicated..

Any deal between Google and Yahoo, could fall foul of antitrust regulations, according to analysts.

However, reports suggest that Yahoo is in no rush to make any decision.

The firm had been given a deadline of 14 March by shareholders to nominate candidates to supplant its current board. Last week, Yahoo postponed the deadline from Friday to 10 days after it announces its annual meeting.

The meeting will not be announced before April and may not be confirmed until after the firm’s first quarter results are released, according to reports.Microsoft has threatened an attempt to oust Yahoo’s 10 directors if it can’t broker an amicable takeover.

Bebo has 40 million members worldwide

Time Warner’s AOL internet division is buying the social networking site Bebo for $850m (£417m) in cash. Bebo is the third-biggest social networking site in the US, behind MySpace and Facebook.

AOL says that Bebo has more than 40 million members worldwide who view an average of 78 pages per day each.

The price-tag is tiny when compared with the valuations of similar websites. Microsoft bought 1.6% of Facebook last year for $240m.

Online advertising

News Corp bought MySpace for $580m in 2005 but now estimates that it is worth more than $15bn.

TOP NETWORKING SITES   MySpace Facebook Flickr Hi5 Friendster Perfspot Orkut Dada Bebo Skyrock Network Source: ComScore

Social networking sites are seen as a valuable location for online advertising, because members post information about themselves and can then be targeted with products and services likely to appeal to them.

The transaction comes at a time when Time Warner is considering splitting its business to part company with its AOL unit.

Bebo was the world’s ninth most popular social networking site in January, according to the internet statistics provider ComScore, which also ranked it as the second most visited in the UK.

It was founded in California by Michael Birch, a British entrepreneur, who still owns a big stake in the business and so will make a great deal from the sale.

While Facebook made all the media noise last year, Bebo was in some ways more innovative

Alex Burmaster, European Internet Analyst for Nielsen Online, said: “It comes as no great surprise to see another traditional publisher buying in to the power of the social networking phenomenon.

“Microsoft did it with Facebook, News Corp did it with MySpace so Bebo was the next logical target.”

He added: “Bebo has an incredibly strong brand identity, particularly with the teenage and young adult market, so it will be very interesting to see how AOL makes best use of their new youthful Trojan horse.”

]]> http://www.hypeline.com/n/2008/03/14/aol-acquires-3rd-largest-social-network-bebo/feed/ 2 http://www.hypeline.com/n/2008/02/12/yahoo-rejects-microsofts-attempted-takeover-bid/ http://www.hypeline.com/n/2008/02/12/yahoo-rejects-microsofts-attempted-takeover-bid/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2008 00:15:51 +0000 hypeline http://hypeline.com/n/2008/02/12/yahoo-rejects-microsofts-attempted-takeover-bid/ Yahoo’s board unanimously decided to spurn Microsoft after concluding the offer as expected, worth $44.6 billion or $31 per share — “substantially undervalues” one of the Internet’s prized franchises. The cash-and stock deal is now valued at about $40 billion, or $28.91 per share, which a reflects a drop in Microsoft’s market value.

But Yahoo didn’t raise antitrust concerns about the proposed deal and added language that seemed to invite a higher offer from Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker. Analysts are convinced Microsoft will raise its bid because it needs Yahoo to close Google’s widening lead in the lucrative online search and advertising markets that are rapidly reshaping the technology and media industries.Meanwhile, Yahoo finds itself in a bind because its stock was near a four-year low before the Microsoft bid surfaced and its management already has said things are unlikely to get significantly better until 2009.

Just two days before Microsoft made its bid, Yang warned Yahoo faced “headwinds” in 2008 and laid out plans to eliminate 1,000 jobs, or about 7 percent of the company’s work force, to boost profits.

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