VentureBeat

Here’s the action that you missed over Thanksgiving break:

1. Silicon Valley becoming mobile innovation hub
2. Why Google bought Jaiku
3. LinkedIn drawing suitors?
4. IAC to spend $100M in China
5. NeoEdge launches ad network for casual games
6. Feds may subsidize broadband access

Silicon Valley becoming mobile innovation hub — Despite the U.S. being the laughing stock of the world for its backward mobile networks, Silicon Valley is becoming a center for mobile innovation anyway. Nokia, the large Finnish mobile phone maker, is boosting its activities in Silicon Valley, because of the action here. Nokia’s head of research here, Bob Iannucci, has even been promoted to Nokia’s chief technology officer. The Mercury News has a good story about the emergence of the valley’s strength in mobile, from Apple’s iPhone phenom to Google’s launch of its Android platform, to the surprising number of Finnish companies — BBS, Codenomicon, EB, Navicron and Tracker — that have established offices in the region. After its move to the valley, Nokia bought an intriguing company called Pixto, which lets consumers point a camera phone at an object — a building, an automobile, or a product in a store window — and with a single click call up Web data linked to the image. It uses GPS and image-matching algorithms to recognize the subject. The Mercury News argues Silicon Valley has become more important with globalization, not less.

Why Google bought Jaiku — Speaking of cool Finnish companies getting sucked by Silicon Valley, you’ll recall the Jaiku was recently bought by Google. Jaiku is like Twitter, in that it lets people post short messages about what they are doing. So why did Google chose Jaiku, instead of the homegrown San Francisco company, Twitter. Jonathan Mulholland says its because Jaiku offers location awareness, and that this fits in with its designs for its Android platform:

…when posting status updates Jaiku has the ability to capture and share the location information (neighbourhood, city, country) of the poster in real time. So in addition to a message post Jaiku can provide real time location awareness of users… And how does Jaiku do this? An integral part of the service is a client application for Symbian S60 platform mobile phones. The client uses location APIs within S60 devices to triangulate the handset (and the users) location based on nearby cellular network towers. The Jaiku client was in fact originally conceived as a ’status aware address book’, and as such integrates into compatible S60 phones to the extent that it also shares the phones (and again the users) status availability (General, In Meeting, Outdoor etc). So in addition to a message post AND location awareness you also have deep mobile integration sufficient to identify the status of a user as well…Jaiku potentially gives Google the Holy Grail - time relevant, location based targeting of information, personalised to a very high degree. Google + Jaiku is not a million miles away from being able to push appropriate advertising to individuals based on their profile, their location and their availability.

LinkedIn growing quickly, attracting suitors — LinkedIn is growing quickly, seeing 189 percent growth over the year through October, faster than the other top ten social networks, according to Nielsen. Now there are rumors that News Corp is looking at buying LinkedIn. Both parties told us “no comment,” though LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman’s response to Techcurnch was one of the most bizarre “no comments” we’ve ever seen.

IAC to create a new business in China — IAC CEO Barry Diller said Saturday that he’ll spend $100 million on a new business in China, and he’ll  also take its search engine, Ask to the fast-growing country. It’s little wonder such initiatives are being taken now that U.S. economy may be slipping into zero growth, or even recession. Diller admits that IAC screwed up eLong, a travel site in China. The initiative will raise IAC’s China investments to $300 million. Details in Wall Street Journal.

NeoEdge launches ad network for casual games –Mountain View, Calif.-based startup NeoEdge, officially launches its ad network for casual games this week, according to GigaOm, but the company doesn’t make clear how its offerings are any different from competitors. We mentioned the company raised $3 million back in June.

Feds may subsidize broadband access — Policy makers overseeing the federal Universal Service Fund have recommended that it be used to offset costs of deploying broadband Internet services in rural areas of the U.S., according to the WSJ. This is something Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign also supports (see our coverage here ).

Plenty of moves by big companies in today’s action:

1) Yahoo expands stake in Chinese search portal
2) AT&T buys up $2.5 billion worth of 700mhz spectrum
3) Facebooks FBfund chucks initial applications
4) Twitter’s first attempts to monetize
5) More details on Google’s plans for Orkut
6) E.ON blows another $1.4 billion into wind power
7) Vlaze may be today’s MTV

Yahoo expands stake in Chinese search portal Alibaba – As China’s Alibaba.com prepares to go public next week, Yahoo has invested another $100 million into the company, raising its overall ownership stake to about half. The latest investment represents about 10 percent of the company; Yahoo already owned about 39 percent. The move reflects a growing realization by both Google and Yahoo that the Chinese search market is culturally different enough to make competition against entrenched local sites difficult.

Yahoo has also bet on Baidu.com, which went public in August 2005. Baidu is the largest search portal in China. It has captured enough market share to rank third overall in the world market, according to a comScore study. Alibaba, which folded Yahoo China into its site under the original deal, is China’s second largest search engine.

AT&T picks up spectrum from Aloha Partners — A $2.5 billion deal by AT&T will deliver 12 megahertz of spectrum in the lower end of the 700 mhz range to the telecom giant. The seller was Aloha Partners LP, parent of mobile TV company HiWire. The 700 mhz spectrum is important to AT&T’s plans for mobile video offerings: The 700 mhz spectrum is particularly effective for long range transmission, and penetrates walls and other obstacles more easily than other wavelengths. The acquisition also helps hedge AT&T’s bets, in case a rival like Google wins the FCC auctions for other parts of the spectrum. However, the news may not be the best for entrepreneurs: AT&T is not known for being open to innovation, and its dominance over mobile TV might spell slow growth for the market.

Facebook’s FBfund asks developers to resubmit applications – Last month, the company announced a $10 million fund that will award seed grants to third-party developers (our coverage). The company now says all interested developers need to resubmit their applications. It says it needs to make sure applicants understand the requirements of the application, as the company had been receiving applications with “similar or even identical ideas.” In the company’s own legalese:

As a result, and in order to protect other developers and us from claims that we or anyone else copied material without the creator’s permission, unless we agree otherwise in writing, we can’t promise that any materials or information you submit here will be kept confidential, or specifically that we or others might not develop similar or identical products or services.

You can apply here.

Twitter appears to be gearing up mobile ad unit — Some users, including CNET’s Caroline McCarthy, have noticed text ads slipping into Twitter’s mobile notifications. The text “tips” take the form of small, single-line advertisements slipped in between posts by users. The news of the new ads comes just as Jaiku announces its acquisition by Google (our coverage). it appears that Twitter may intend to remain independent, gearing up to protect its position and begin monetizing the service.

More on Google’s plans for Orkut, social networking – Google has been rumbling for months with secret plans to introduce more interesting social networking features across its web properties. Now, more specifics are leaking out. A Businessweek article yesterday confirms an earlier report that Google will be introducing a number of new features on November 5th. The article suggests, for example, that Google may let third party developers run applications for Orkut from their own servers — applications that also let developers provide Orkut data within other social networks.

E.ON lays down big bucks for wind power — Despite criticisms of wind turbines, including problems with their low output and unattractive appearance, it appears that investments in wind are paying off. Two big European players who both have operations in the United States made a $1.4 billion swap, with Ireland-based Airtricity trading off its US subsidiary to Germany’s E.ON. The acquisition adds 210 megawatts to E.ON’s total wind production, which will now be about 850 MW, with another 4.6 gigawatts still in production. Government subsidies have made the US market one of the world’s most attractive for wind power, with an expected growth of about 10 percent per year, and the field is wide open for entrepreneurs: Growth would be even higher, but production of the actual turbines used to generate wind power has not yet scaled to meet market demand.

Vlaze, an internet TV site and social network, shows impressive growth – If you combine social networking features with live shows that broadcast 14 hours every weekday, you might go from 10,000 unique visitors a year ago to more than 8 million last month. Well, at least if you’re Vlaze, the site formerly known as MusicPlusTV. The Los Angeles company is no longer just focusing on music-related content, but it compares itself to “MTV back in the old days,” back when MTV had more music and less lame reality TV shows. Vlaze shoots its videos in a huge studio in LA, but lets users contribute their own footage as well.

Jaiku, the popular service that lets you blast short blog updates to friends about you’re doing, has been snapped up by Google for an undisclosed amount.

Jaiku, based in Helsinki, Finland, has been a fierce rival to Twitter, a San Francisco company that is a favorite among the Silicon Valley digerati. During the summer, Jaiku picked up users almost as quickly as Twitter lost them, leaving the latter with only a marginal lead over Jaiku, according to comScore statistics.

Both services have enjoyed the success of a micro-blogging fad that caught on in spring. Jaiku today said it has closed its service to new users, noting that it wants to “focus on innovation instead of scaling.” According to Jaiku’s blog, Google engineers will be assisting the company in rebuilding the new service. Closing services to new users is something Google has done quite often. It did the same for a wiki company, Jotspot, for example.

The fact that Google appears to have bought Jaiku instead Twitter, whose founder also started up Google’s Blogger, is notable. Although Twitter was first to the micro-blogging scene, more than one startup has since encroached on its territory; besides Jaiku, the most successful example is Pownce, co-founded by Kevin Rose.

The possibility that Twitter turned down an offer from Google is cast into doubt by the traffic statistics mentioned above. A three-to-one lead held by Twitter over Jaiku in June had narrowed to a 37% lead by August, as Jaiku almost doubled its user base and Twitter shed close to 100,000 users (see graph at bottom).

A more likely scenario is that Twitter, which has raised venture capital funding from Charles River Ventures, Union Square Ventures and others, held out for a higher price from Google due to pressure from their VCs, making the search giant turn to a smaller competitor.

Twitter also has its own plans, with an open API already available to developers. Co-founder Biz Stone told us that projects on the API are bringing in ten to twenty times as much traffic as the site itself. “Momentum is strong right now and we’re really focused on building a company and culture around the idea of Twitter,” he said in an email, but also declined to comment on whether Google had approached Twitter.

A frequently asked questions page about the acquisition, put together by Jaiku, can be found here. Google’s post on the acquisition is here.

Update: The purchase price may have been $12 million, although our only source for this so far is Valleywag.