5 O’Clock Roundup: GM kills eBay plan, Microsoft’s tablet leaked, Dogster / LOLcat ad network can has planet
GM ends its experiment with selling new cars on eBay — The General committed seven weeks to testing eBay as a sales channel for new cars in California. Neither company has a lot to say on the record, but the Wall Street Journal reports that dealers were put off by buyers who sat at home, or at Starbucks, and lobbed lowball offers for cars posted on eBay. Car salesmen and saleswomen still pride themselves on… Continue Reading
Dogster still has its bite despite the downturn
Dogster, the social network for dogs and their owners, just converted $425,000 in bridge funds into additional first-round financing, reports VentureWire. After a profitable 2008, raising a second round isn’t as pressing, the company says — citing a broader trend of success for sites catering to pet enthusiasts.
The San Francisco company, which also operates Catster.com, has enjoyed high advertising CPMs for a while now — with a $2 floor, CPMs on its homepage range from… Continue Reading
Where was Sock Puppet’s bailout?
Sock Puppet was the well-known marketing mascot for the iconic dot-com bubble company Pets.com. The climax in the company’s two-year boom and bust was its $1.2 million Super Bowl commercial, where Sock Puppet introduced mainstream America to its online pet-supply ordering and home delivery service.
The rock-ribbed libertarians over at Reason.tv have put together an unsubtle video mocking the bailouts happening now in other industries: Sock Puppet goes to Washington, looking for a $25 billion government… Continue Reading
Roundup of action: Opus Select, Boobik, Branson’s space warming & more
1. Yandex, Russian search engine, grows quickly
2. Opus launches hedge fund in New York
3. Matrix goes to China
4. Dogster takes $400,000 in financing
5. Semantic search engine Powerset raises $2M
6. Pubmatic, draw ads from all networks
7. Boobik, the Twitter clone, but for sex
8. Branson taking global warming to space
9. Oversee.net gets $150M to monetize domains
10. Google’s Palimpsest hosts terabytes of raw data
Yandex, Russian search engine, grows quickly — Yandex did more than a million billion searches last month,… Continue Reading
Pet site rivalry begins: United Dogs vs. Dogster
United Dogs & Cats, a company that manages the social networking websites for pet owners, Uniteddogs.com and Unitedcats.com, has raised an undisclosed round of funding from Ambient Sound Investments.
The Estonian company is the latest European clone of a U.S. Internet company. It competes against Dogster, the San Francisco company that launched in 2004 and runs popular sites Dogster, Catster and other sites.
Dogster has been growing steadily, having last year raised $1 million from angel investor… Continue Reading