Roundup: Feds offering short-term loans, presidential debates live online, Silver Spring gets a big raise, and more
Feds now providing short-term debt — The Federal Reserve will provide money for companies to finance their day-to-day activities, in the government’s latest effort to staunch bleeding in the credit markets.
Live presidential debates hit the web — Hulu will stream tonight’s presidential debate live, something of a breakthrough for Internet TV.
Smart grid co. Silver Spring Networks raises $75M — Rapidly growing energy efficiency startup Silver Spring Networks, which makes communications equipment that connects utilities to electricity consumers, has raised $75M led by Kleiner Perkins’ Green Growth Fund. The company’s $60 million third round was only completed in April of this year.
Social media campaigns have high failure rate — No matter how much you pay your “social media consultant”, your campaign has a 50 percent chance of utterly failing, according to an analyst.
Investors of all stripes hunker down — CNET reports that a recent venture capital meetup held by Northbridge Venture Partners was bubbly on the surface, but worries about survival and changing business models set the real tone. Meanwhile, Fred Wilson points out that major corporations aren’t buying back their own stock, despite seemingly very attractive valuations.
Online advertising may not shrivel, after all — Web startups are plenty worried about an advertising recession due to the credit crunch, an event that could kill many of them off. Blogger Mathew Ingram instead points to a study on the Great Depression, which suggests that advertising was resilient even during the country’s worst financial crisis.
Europeans indicted for US cyberattacks — A pair of men have been fingered for a wave of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in 2003, part of the FBI’s Operation Cyberslam. The FBI shouldn’t crow over its victory, though; five years is ancient history on the Internet, and the majority of online criminals still roam free.
Ad delivery outfit BlackArrow gets $20M — We’ve previously covered BlackArrow, a company that slips targeted ads into on-demand television. The company raised $20 million more from previous investors Cisco Systems, Comcast Interactive Capital, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund and Polaris Venture Partners.
Oberon Media gets $20M from Chinese fund — Mobile and online casual gaming company Oberon, located in New York City, was funded by the Infinity I-China Fund.
Magazines turn to readers for content — A number of consumer glossies are finally turning to user-generated content, including This Old House, which just printed an entirely user-generated issue.
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About the Author, Chris Morrison
Chris Morrison writes about cleantech and environmental issues for VentureBeat, with occasional forays into gaming and semantic technology. He got his start writing about tech for Business 2.0 magazine, but quickly realized new media was the ticket when that institution closed its doors in 2007. Chris has also covered public equities and regulatory issues. He originally hails from southern Virginia, graduated from Evergreen State College in Washington, and now lives in San Francisco.
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