When Google Buzz launched three weeks ago, the product wasn’t ready. There were basic privacy issues that still needed to be hammered out (and were quickly addressed by Google), but beyond that Google Buzz simply did not work smoothly enough to force feed it to 175 million Gmail users without any warning. ( MG covered some of the usability issues last week). So why was Google Buzz pushed out the door too soon? I have three interrelated theories: Google still wants to buy Twitter, and putting Buzz into Gmail might be enough of a threat to bring Twitter back to the table .  Buzz did not launch in some Google Labs backwater.  It is placed front and center in Gmail.  Buzz is Google’s strongest effort yet to enter the stream .  If Buzz can gain traction it would certainly help Google’s negotiating position with Twitter. Independent of any pressure it may place on Twitter, Google needs to have its own realtime micro-messaging communications system.  The micro-message bus is just a more efficient way to communicate than email for many types of messages so it makes sense to add it as a layer to Gmail: broadcast your public messages via Buzz, and keep private ones on email or chat, all from the same place. The other reason Google needed to establish its own social stream pronto is that links passed through social sharing are beginning to rival search as a primary driver of traffic for many sites.  Part of Google’s prowess stems from the fact that it is the largest referrer of traffic to many other Websites. It doesn’t want to lose that status to social sharing streams such as Facebook or Twitter.  Already, Buzz is helping to  boost sharing through Google Reader .  While Google doesn’t benefit directly from that traffic (yet), simply knowing what links people are sharing and clicking on is valuable data which can help it improve its search results. Google needed to get into this game as fast as it could, even if there were bumps along the way.  The question now is whether Buzz can keep building. Photo credit: Flickr/ Chelseagirl CrunchBase Information Google Buzz Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase

This one slipped under our radar this week, but it’s interesting nonetheless: Apple’s filed for a “Magic Trackpad” trademark, which would seemingly indicate that there’s a companion to the Magic Mouse in the works. That’s all we know for now, but recall that John Gruber at Daring Fireball hinted that Apple was working on a “multi-touch trackpad gadget for desktop Macs” back in October just before the revised white MacBook was released. Obviously nothing’s come of that yet, but it all seems to fit — either that, or Apple’s trademark attorneys are just trying to cover their bases. We’ll see what happens. Apple files for Magic Trackpad trademark originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink   MacRumors  |  USPTO , Daring Fireball  |  Email this  |  Comments

Editor’s note : Guest author Ashkan Karbasfrooshan is the founder and CEO of video site WatchMojo . Below are his picks for the ten most likely M&A deals in online video. Previously, he wrote a series if posts about the state of online video (Part I , II , III , and IV ). Which online video companies will get bought in 2010?   Venture capitalists are desperately looking for exits while the usual suspects are sitting on more than $80 billion in cash: Microsoft ($20B), Apple ($40B), Google ($15B), Amazon ($3B), and Yahoo! ($3B) just to name the cash positions of a few potential acquirers.  Theoretically, it should be a match made in heaven, but the sheer number of venture-backed video startups is staggering so when the music stops, not everyone will find a dancing partner. Once you assess what drives companies to merge or acquire one another, however, it seems like we’re about to enter a period of mergers between video competitors and see a series of acquisitions by larger companies looking to accelerate their video strategies, with a common theme being increasing both monetization and margins. Right now, as the chart above shows (click to enlarge), there are two types of online video companies: those with sky-high ad rates but fairly limited inventory (company A) and those with huge inventory but woeful monetization (company B). Companies can extend profitability through technology, ad solutions or content. With that in mind, let’s look at those 10 potential deals. 1. Demand Media will acquire Tremor Media Demand Media has raised $355 million but to this day still generates the bulk of its revenue from its domain registrar unit, eNom. However, it is trying to move into the content business, with its “Content Farm” strategy getting a lot of attention . Demand Media’s existing content lends itself better to an arbitrage strategy built around Google marketing and monetization, but over time it will want to do a better job entering both display and video advertising and it will do that by buying one of the many, many video ad networks out there. Brightroll, which is focused on brands, is one option.  Tremor is another, focusing on reach.  That strategy should fit well with Demand Media’s modus operandi.  Tremor Media’s ads reach 177.6 million uniques, or 85% of internet users. 2. Lagardere Groupe will acquire Dailymotion At first glance, French media conglomerate Lagardere seemingly sees no value in communities as a marketing platform: “There is no clear business model because you have a huge, massive audience, but it is not a marketing community,” says to Lagardere’s Chief Financial Officer Dominique D’Hinnin. Monsieur D’Hinnin might be right, but never underestimate France’s sense of nationalism. Dailymotion is France’s answer to YouTube and it has taken steps to reduce its share of user-generated and pirated content in favor of professional videos. (Disclosure: Dailymotion is also one of WatchMojo’s distribution partners). With $68.5M in funding—including a tidy sum from Le Fonds Strategique d’investissement, which is an investing arm of the French State—you can imagine that one of the pillars of the French media landscape, Lagardere Groupe could eventually step in and acquire Dailymotion despite its admitted monetization problems: “At the moment, we are poor at monetising our audience,” admits Dailymotion CEO Cedric Tournay. Lagardere could help with that provided Dailymotion can continue to de-emphasize its less advertiser-friendly content. Additionally, Lagardere will be able to leverage Dailymotion’s audience to promote its own content: the company owns Hachette along with numerous other media entities. 3. Scripps will acquire 5Min When 5Min (another one of our distribution partners) launched, it focused on user-generated how-to content. Thankfully for them, they have since moved away from that and currently mesh a) aggregated premium and super premium content with b) their monetization engine, a strategy which has propelled 5Min to become a Top 10 comScore video company. Scripps is a producer of super premium content, and like Discovery Holdings, it might prefer to distribute its programming through TV and cable. But, with consumers viewing more and more videos on the Web, it will need more content for its sites and will look for more inventory online. The two companies already have a strategic deal in place, so they have some familiarity with each other. 4. Google will acquire Ooyala Last year it was rumored that Google was going to acquire Brightcove for $500-700M. That was always unlikely because many of Brightcove’s financial backers are the very same media companies that view Google as the bane of their existence.  Moreover, Google makes a lot of acquisitions but rarely are they large (YouTube, DoubleClick and AdMob being the exceptions). A more logical fit to expand its video foothold would be Ooyala , which competes with Brightcove and includes Glam Media and others as clients… and was founded by a former Google executive. Google has the consumer video market cornered with YouTube.  Iit could leverage Ooyala to go after the corporate market by undercutting Brightcove. 5. Microsoft will acquire Brightcove The consolidation in ad services peaked with Google’s $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick and Microsoft’s $6B acquisition of aQuantive. After selling ad agency unit Razorfish, today aQuantive is Microsoft Advertising , and as advertising continues to move into video, MSFT will probably want to offer a video content management to go along with the Atlas ad serving platform.  That is where Brightcove fits in. If you think about it, Google owns video search by way of its YouTube acquisition. Microsoft wants to push into cloud computing and at least conceptually, owning Brightcove would give it a legitimate cloud computing foothold in professional video content with no real threat to any of its core businesses. It could also better integrate Brightcove (which increasingly powers media companies’ videos) into Bing’s video search, helping it kill many birds with one (albeit expensive) stone. 6. Yahoo! will acquire Freewheel After acquiring Blue Lithium and Right Media, Yahoo! got a shot in the arm and grew its advertising reach across the Web, outside of the Yahoo.com property. Freewheel is founded by former DoubleClick employees but Google (which bought DoubleClick) might have less interest than one would think in augmenting its video advertising reach across the Web considering it owns YouTube which accounts for 40% of online video consumption. YouTube only monetizes a small share of the billions of videos on the site. Freewheel, which allows marketers and publishers to manage campaigns across a variety of distribution sites, would be a nice fit with Yahoo!, which might want to extend its Audience Network in video offerings. 7. Gannett will acquire Livestream Gannett already invested $10 million in Livestream (then known as Mogulus). The fit is a natural: print media will want to bolster its video offerings (be it content or technology). The main challenge here is that media companies have grown wary of buying technology firms, but news organizations will have a natural predisposition for all things live and the investment sets the stage up for an all-out acquisition. 8. Nielsen will acquire TubeMogul TubeMogul provides analytics to countless marketers and publishers (we use them at WatchMojo). Nielsen and comScore are both looking at adding video capabilities and TubeMogul has done a good job of getting wide adoption, providing Nielsen with a quick entry into the burgeoning video space. Also, David Toth, former president, CEO, and co-founder of the NetRatings service joined TubeMogul’s board. 9. AOL acquires Howcast AOL’s recent acquisition of StudioNow is a sign of things to come: When AOL was spun off from Time Warner, it was shackled with restrictions on its use of cash and thus the size of the deals it could complete. But AOL wants to create content, lots of it. AOL’s Tim Armstrong is an investor in Howcast ; he was also an investor in Patch, a local startup Armstrong acquired after joining AOL (to his credit, he simply recouped his initial investment and did not participate in the capital gain). Howcast creates videos themselves, lets users create and upload videos and aggregates other professional content (Howcast is one of our distribution partners as well). While Howcast might have proven redundant with the StudioNow acquisition, AOL has a history of doubling up when it focuses on a space (think ad services: Tacoda, Advertising.com, and Third Screen Media) and Howcast is more focussed on how-to videos. 10. News Corp. acquires Break Media from Lionsgate, spins off NewCo News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch is in the process of divesting from the Web: first selling Photobucket , then chucking Rotten Tomatoes to Flixster while retaining a stake in the new venture.  I see something similar happening with Acquisition #10. Break Media is one of the so-called YouTube clones who has managed to differentiate itself by focusing on the men’s 18-34 market and creating content, be it videos and now video games.  Back in 2007, Lionsgate invested $21 million in stock for a 42% stake in Break.com. At the time, it also got a call option (basically, the right to buy) which is “exercisable at any time from June 29, 2007 until the earlier of 30 months after June 29, 2007 or a year after a change of control, to purchase all of the remaining 58% equity interests (excluding any subsequent dilutive events), including in-the-money stock options, warrants and other rights, of Break.com for $58 million in cash or common stock, at the company’s option.” The 30 month window expired on December 29, 2009, and despite Break’s momentum, I don’t see any major incentive for Lionsgate to exercise its call option. I do, however, see the following happening (well, maybe…). Lionsgate might be more willing to trade its 42% stake in Break Media for a smaller share in a NewCo. that houses both Break Media and News Corp.’s IGN Entertainment, another leader in the men’s 18-34 space. (again, bothh Break and IGN are distribution partners).  This NewCo. would then be a more likely candidate for an IPO and would allow both Lionsgate and News Corp. to focus on their core businesses and cash out their investment over time. Needless to say, all of the above deals are idle, if informed, speculation on my part.  What do you think are the most likely video exits this year? CrunchBase Information Ashkan Karbasfrooshan Information provided by CrunchBase

Fujitsu’s LifeBook UH900 started shipping to Americans just over a fortnight ago, and now one has landed into the capable hands of Pocketables . Boasting a 2GHz Atom CPU and some of the most unsightly adapters we’ve ever seen, this flip-open handheld — which just looks too lovely to be saddled with the “UMPC” moniker — strangely stirs something within our heart. It’s one of those “I know I don’t need it, but I just have to have it” things. Don’t agree? Hit the source link, scroll all the way down, think about the upcoming weekend, and then see how you feel. Oh, and feel free to check out those size comparisons if you need extra encouragement in the “ooh” and “aah” department. Fujitsu’s LifeBook UH900 gets unboxed, sized up against the competition originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 28 Feb 2010 07:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink    |  Pocketables (unboxing) , (size comparisons)  |  Email this  |  Comments

I was out of the country for much of 2009, so it wasn’t until I spent two months back in San Francisco that I noticed a big change in the Web community. Babies. I’m not talking about whiny Millennials coming out of college and demanding venture capital for their iPhone app. I’m talking about actual babies. The ones that crawl around the house wearing diapers. In 2006, I co-wrote a BusinessWeek cover story on the then-burgeoning Web 2.0 movement, and one the hallmarks of the scene was a sense of having been burned by the dot com boom and bust. That was when many of the leaders, investors, and foot soldiers of the Web 2.0 movement had moved to Silicon Valley and had their first taste of startup life. As a result many of them, like Max Levchin of PayPal and Slide or Evan Williams of Blogger and Twitter, had lived a rollercoaster of wild life experiences when it came to business—takeovers, ousters, commanding millions in venture capital, but not much in the way of traditional “life experiences.” You know marriage, kids, and the like. Despite having net worths in the millions of dollars, many of them didn’t even own a house. Many didn’t think they had time. My, how that has changed. The 30-something Valley generation that moved to the Valley fresh after college, stuck out the crash and got in early on the Web 2.0 movement are now married and having babies. Lots of them. Examples include not only Levchin and Williams, but Jeff Veen of Adaptive Path and now Small Batch , Narendra Rocherolle of WebShots and The Start Project , James Hong of HotorNot , Jason Calacanis of “ the Jason Nation ,” Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr and now Hunch, Ben and Mena Trott of Six Apart and more. At a recent dinner party at our house, my husband and I looked around the table and realized for the first time in a decade in the Valley we were the only ones without a babysitter. Recently married Phillip Kaplan of FuckedCompany.com / AdBrite / Blippy told me he had big news at lunch the other day and my immediate question was, “Are you having a baby?” “No,” he replied. “But given my friends, good guess!” (A few others are expecting but I’m not outing them here. That’s private. RIP Valleywag.) I’ve asked a few people what caused this about face, at a relatively late stage of life compared to elsewhere in the US. Many said it’d taken them a while to find “the one” and once they did, a baby felt right. Many others had gone through the insanity of the dot com bubble, the brutal crash, and then jumped back on the treadmill for Web 2.0. Now in another recession, it just seemed like there should be something more. This kind of thinking would be anathema a few years ago, but several entrepreneurs have said in private conversations, “This current company could go under, but I still have my family.” To anywhere else in the US, this may sound “So what? People have babies all the time.” But in the Valley, this is a staggering injection of work-life balance into the 24/7 Web space. Perhaps it’s just the reality of this generation getting older. After all, the still early-20s Mark Zuckerberg isn’t having kids, neither is the still-acting-in-his-early-20s Kevin Rose. But given the supernova of the late 1990s, it’s a big population of Web influencers and taste-makers that are all of the sudden cooing and speaking in baby-talk. What does this mean? For people like me, who live here, lots of little things, like kids birthday parties and chats about diaper rash. But for the Web, it means something too. This generation has always designed out of need, they’ve built things they’d like to exist. My bet is that in the next five years we’re going to see a boom of baby and kid Web and gadget ideas, as the people with the most clout (and in some cases, money) in the Web world start to realize how the rest of 30-somethings in America live.