VentureBeat

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The back-story on Jangl’s slow death — Yesterday, we reported on Jangl’s asset sale process. A tipster tells us that Seattle-based WhitePages had offered to buy Internet phone company Jangl for $20 million, but then kept the company in diligence for more than a month and walked away at the last minute — giving Jangl no choice to but throw in the towel when it ran out of time and options. Whitepages flew down from Seattle for regular meetings, and Jangl’s execs flew up to Seattle, but then WhitePages caught wind that Jangl was running out of money and that investors had given Jangl’s team a deadline to sell by May 15. WhitePages whittled down its offer first to half, then cut off a severance agreement to those who would be laid off, and then lowered the offer even more: “They had us over the barrel,” said one Jangl employee. [Update: There are always two sides to the story. WhitePages is denying they ever offered $20M. And that's partly what happens in these sorts of negotiations: There's verbal dancing, and there's written, signed legal offers. If there's no deal, there's no deal.]

Virgin Mobile USA considering merger with Helio — While many MVNOs have simply collapsed or been closed by their parent companies, Virgin Mobile USA and smaller rival Helio have scraped by, if not flourished. The two may solve some mutual problems by undergoing a merger, which would create a bulkier combined company and add to their respective plan and phone options. However, mocoNews suggests that they might still look for a private equity buyout afterward.

VC investment continues to move overseas — Limited partners say they’re still wrestling with the implications of more and more venture capital activity moving abroad. The comments came during the LP panel at the recent meeting of the National Venture Capital Association. VentureWire was there to note some of the most interesting facts and figures. There’s definitely a lot of activity — almost 20 percent of domestic funds were deployed outside the United States in 2007, compared with 7 percent in 1998, according to Bob French of Adams Street Partners. And David York of Paul Capital predicted that within the next decade, as much as 50 percent of global venture capital activity will take place outside the United States.

Yahoo launches regional search variant – Yahoo’s Indian team has put together a search product called “Glue Pages” that integrates traditional search with results pulled from Yahoo’s portal business, including content like recipes, medical information, images and restaurant listings. The feature is undergoing testing on Yahoo India, with no plans as yet to offer it in the United States. More at CNET News.

Warner Music may invest again in imeem — In an encouraging turnaround for the music industry last year, Warner Music dropped a lawsuit against music sharing social network imeem, then followed up with an investment in the company. It may tag along with Sequoia Capital and make another investment this year, according to the Silicon Alley Insider.

RealNetworks spins off game studio — RealNetworks, maker of the most irritating media player ever created, has spun off its games division, which includes recent acquisition Trymedia. The gaming business is one of RealNetworks’ most profitable; it will retain an 80 percent ownership stake, but will allow the new company to forge its own path.

Real Goods Solar prices IPO real low — Solar installer Real Goods Solar, which recently announced plans for an initial public offering, has priced its 5.5 million shares at the bottom of its $10-12 range. Most cleantech companies have held off from IPOs this year due to the current market troubles.

Google achieves coveted “brain drain” status — The BBC has a report on the steady stream of executives away from Google, many of whose departures we’ve also noted, including Chris Sacca, Gideon Yu and Elliot Schrage. Many are headed to Facebook, which is described in the article as “the Google of yesterday, the Microsoft of long ago,” while Google is called a “behemoth” that is “no longer the firm it once was.” Google’s current position, of course, is precisely where Facebook aspires to be.

Forbes.com launches business social network — Following in the footsteps of BusinessWeek, Forbes.com has launched its own social network, the AnswerNetwork. As might be expected from the name, users are expected to ask questions and share answers with each other, in return gaining competence rankings based on their expertise. LinkedIn, which is BusinessWeek’s partner, has a similar feature, although it seems to be only moderately popular with users.

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Helio, the mobile phone service provider, is getting ready to announce a new round of firings this week, a source close to the matter tells us. These layoffs are expected to include senior level officials within the company.

[Update: Spokeswoman Brooke Hammerling has responded, saying the rumors are "totally false."]

This rumor follows Earthlink founder Sky Dayton’s resignation as chief executive of Helio, at the end of last month, and continued evidence company is losing money and shows no sign of stopping the flow or red ink.

Earlier today Helio announced it was significantly lowering the price of its unlimited plan from $145 a month down to $99. While this action alone would seem to be in line with its South Korean parent SK Telecom’s plans to expand Helio’s customer base, when coupled with the job cuts, one can’t help but wonder if another Voce Wireless situation could be just around the corner.

Helio is a so-called MVNO, or a network that uses the infrastructure of other carriers to offer their services. MVNO’s have had a poor track record. Amp’d Mobile crashed last year into bankruptcy, and mobile networks from ESPN and Disney have also failed. Meanwhile, the premium MVNO Voce drastically slashed its prices in the months leading up to last Friday when the company’s service suddenly went out and now appears to have joined the MVNO graveyard.

Helio did, however, receive a $70 million injection from SK Telecom in November. With the investment, SK Telecom gained controlling rights in the company, versus Earthlink.

That $70 million was said to be part of a promised $100 million investment announced in July (see our coverage; scroll down) — another cash injection that became necessary after the company’s continued losses. The company had already soaked up $440 million, and said last year it expected a net loss of $330 million to $360 million, compared with a $192 million shortfall in 2006.

In September SK Telecom announced they would be willing to add another $100 million on top of it all, for both handset development and to expand its customer based worldwide.

How long can these cash injections continue?

We’ve separately heard that Helio may fare better than its erstwhile rivals due to its strategic relationship with SK Telecom — Helio can get cheaper handsets from SK Telecom than rivals could buy cheap handsets from non-strategic manufacturers.

Here’s the latest (ahem) action:

Second Life avatar sues another avatar, over virtual sex bed — We should have predicted this. Second Life entrepreneur Kevin Alderman has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Second Life resident Volkov Catteneo. This is apparently the first time an avatar has sued another avatar in the virtual world. Alderman, who has made money before in Second Life by selling a virtual island for $50,000 (real money), says his avatar, Stroker Serpentine was doing quite well selling a SexGen bed, which allows avatars to have sex, for L$12,000 (US $45.11), but that Catteneo has copied it and is selling it for a third of the price.

Geni uses viral messaging to grow quickly – Family-tree company Geni (our
review) claims five million profiles have been created by users in five months. The secret? Instead of making you sign-up, and then start creating a family-tree, it combines the two steps. Its user interface cleverly inserts your initial data into your first family tree — leading a new user to immediately begin inviting their family members to also build out the family tree. We noted in March that the site had over 100,000 users that had added about 2 million profiles; this was when the company closed a funding round valuing it at around $100 million. The surge in growth since then can only be good news for the investors.

Bill Gates’ investment arm backs Gay.com — His Cascade Investment Group invests $26.2 million into the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender online community PlanetOut, which owns Gay.com. More from John Cook in Seattle.

Russia shuts down Allofmp3.com, or tries to at least — Russia shut the music download website, a leader in music and video piracy, to placate the U.S. concerns about Russia’s copyright protection policies. However, an alternative site run by the same Moscow company has emerged: Mp3Sparks.com.

Netvibes, one of the more popular start-page companies, sees departure — With Google and other big players pushing their own start-pages (pages that you can customize and make your home page as you surf the Web), there’s growing tension at the many start-up companies that launched similar features early on. Paris-based Netvibes has lost Pierre Chappaz, who was co-CEO and said he had disagreements on strategies of “distribution and monetization.” See his post here.

Helio reportedly to get more life-support — Earthlink and South Korea’s SK Telecom plan to pump $100 million each in Helio, their money-losing U.S. mobile telecom network. Helio is a so-called MVNO, or networks that pay to use the infrastructure of other carriers to offer their services, and they’ve had a poor track record. Amp’d Mobile recently filed for bankruptcy, and ESPN’s mobile network failed. Helio is getting costly. It has already soaked up $440 million, and expects a net loss of $330 million to $360 million this year, compared with a $192 million shortfall in 2006.

Netsuite 74 percent owned by Larry Ellison, and it competes with Oracle — Netsuite, software company that just filed to go public, undercuts Oracle by selling dirt-cheap online software for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) for CRM (Customer Relationship Management). And yet it is 61 percent owned by Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle. Ellison owned another 13 percent, which he has given to trusts related to his family. Netsuite’s products sell at a loss. (See WSJ story for more; subscription required).

KKR is latest buyout firm to file for IPO — KKR has filed for an IPO that will let it raise $1.25 billion. This follows the much hyped IPO of another buyout firm, Blackstone. Lately, the sector has drawn scrutiny from lawmakers, who are now considering levying a new tax on buyout professionals. Blackstone’s stock has dropped 4.1 percent since its IPO. Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman and Peter Peterson have pocketed $2.56 billion between them. Now, will individual investors fall for another buyout IPO? Probably.

Yahoo’s personalized SmartAds — Yahoo has released new ad tools that allow for better “behavioral targeting.” Called SmartAds, they let advertisers create custom ads, using information Yahoo has about where the user is located and which sites they are visiting. The NYT has a good description of how it works:

This is how Yahoo’s new system works: the advertiser (or its agency) would provide Yahoo with the components of its display ads — including the logos, tag lines and images. The retailer would share information from its inventory databases that track the items on the shelves in each of its stores. Next, Yahoo would combine that data with the information it has about its users’ demographics and actions online to create a product-specific advertisement. For airlines, SmartAds uses Yahoo’s information about its Web surfers to create display advertisements for each person that feature ticket offers with actual prices listed. In time, Yahoo plans to offer rich media advertisements where users can buy the ticket at that price right within the ad unit, rather than having to click through to another Web site.

Departures at Technorati — The blog search engine, which has lost some of is focus lately, has suffered three more departures. The company’s chief executive Dave Sifry said its top engineers Adam Hertz and Tantek Celik have gone. They had been there for three years, and were responsible for Technorati’s effective evangelizing of its tags and of microformats. Two months ago, the company drew another $1 million from its investors. The departures are a setback; we reached out to Technorati and Tantek for comment, but neither responded. Also, product manager Liz Dunn, who had helped build the company’s latest site, has left, to join Will Farrell’s comedy video site FunnyOrDie, backed by Sequoia.

EBay opens US version of its classifieds site Kijiji — Auction site EBay has quietly opened the cute-sounding classifieds Web site, a clone of Craigslist, in all 50 states (see WSJ story, subscription required). The service had been operating in Canada, Europe and Asia. Its name, though, is harder to spell, and there’s not much difference from Craigslist. Posting is free, but the company will explore ways of charging for display ads and premium services for sellers. This is notable, too, because eBay owns 25 percent of Craigslist. EBay owns a number of other classifieds site in other countries.

Feedburner makes two premium services free — After getting bought by Google, Feedburner is offering for free its Stats PRO service, which provides statistics such as click-through tracking and podcast downloads; and its MyBrand service, which allows users to control the URL of their feed. See Search Engine Land for more details. Danny Sullivan wrote about the importance of owning your feed name here.

Craig Venter’s company transplants entire genome from one bacterium cell to another — This technique could possibly lead to the creation of ‘designer’ microbes producing fuel or help cleaning toxic waste. The company has a way to go yet. The ultimate plan is to stitch together artificial chromosomes, proteins and other building blocks with the aim of jumpstarting their designer microbe to life. (More here.)

T-Mobile’s phone, lost in the iPhone hype — T-Mobile picked a tough week to release its own new phone service. Offered on Samsung and Noka phones, the service lets you place and receive calls over both the regular T-Mobile GSM network and virtually any WiFi wireless network. Called HotSpot@Home, it uses a technology called UMA (unlicensed mobile access). It lets you switch seamlessly between the two networks. It’s quite expensive (minimum $50 a month), so you’d have to be a power user for this to make sense. Calls originating from WiFi zones are free (don’t go against minutes). It works in Starbucks hotspots, without forcing you to log in. It doesn’t work in other areas with registration pages, such as airports, however. Good for use abroad, too, since WiFi calls are free. More details from Larry Magid and the NYT’s Pogue.

Korea’s LG agrees to develop a YouTube-focused mobile phone — LG said the model will allow users to upload, view and share video clips without the need to use a computer. The 3G phone will be offered first in Europe in the second half of this year (Forbes). LG began selling “Google phones” in Europe last month with software installed for directly using the Google service. It offers one-click access to Google’s search engine, Gmail and Google maps.

Videocountner lets you track how may time your video has been watched across various sites — The sites tracked by the service include YouTube, Revver, Daily Motion, MySpace and iFilm (via Techcrunch).

HP’s Presto photo service for elderly isn’t working — It was supposed to be really easy to use, allowing people to set it up for the elderly relatives to receive photos. But the Mercury News’ Dean Takahashi says it doesn’t work. After two tries, his mother gave up. We covered the company here. The Mountain View, Calif. company has $10 million in backing from Kleiner Perkins and Clearstone.