VentureBeat

Online entertainment network LiveUniverse has purchased struggling video site Revver, according to NewTeeVee.

The purchase price was substantially more than the $500,000 to $1.5 million Revver was supposedly asking for, says NewTeeVee’s unnamed source, but it was also under $5 million. Revver’s staff will continue to work under the new ownership.

The deal isn’t a huge surprise — more than a month ago, Contentinople reported that it was in the works, and since then, plenty of other blogs have reported their share of Revver-related rumors. When the rumors started, a Revver spokesperson said: “We’re constantly pursuing content and business partnerships, and that activity seems to invariably generate acquisition conversations and rumors. … If we commented on all the rumors, we wouldn’t have time to focus on our core business.”

Los Angeles-based LiveUniverse is run by former MySpace exec Brad Greenspan. The company owns LiveVideo, and apparently wants to add Revver to its network.

Revver, meanwhile, has been going through some shake ups, with chief executive Steven Starr stepping down last June, following the departure of cofounders Ian Clarke and Oliver Luckett in December 2006. The company appears to have suffered from the same problems afflicting plenty of other video sites: Difficulty making money from its content, as well as competition from video giant YouTube.

In the past two years, Revver raised around $13 million from venture firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III.

Here’s the latest action:
1. Data centers floating in the SF Bay?
2. CEO of search engine Ask goes to Redpoint
3. Xobni’s Outlook plugin enhanced
4. Microsoft dealmaker Bruce Jaffe to join startup life
5. Yahoo’s browser-based player now public
6. Readburner lets you see what’s shared on Google Reader
7. Nextreme keeps chips cool
8. Planting hairy plants may help prevent global warming?
9. Intel to launch WiMax PC card by June
10. LiveUniverse buying video sharing site Revver?
11. Terry Semel restarting investment company, Windsor Digital?

Data centers floating in the SF Bay? – Some of the stranger news we’ve heard, but apparently true. A Silicon Valley start-up called IDS (International Data Security) is planning to build up to 50 data centers on de-commissioned cargo ships, the first of them docked at Pier 50 in San Francisco. Image at left is an oil tanker in the Bay carrying some of these data centers, according to Silverback Migration Solutions. Apparently, this keeps the data center secure from “natural disasters” according to a company brochure, and the sea water helps cool the servers. Speaking of disasters, we recall a bad one two months ago when a tanker hit the bridge and spilled all kinds of oil. Are servers really going to be safer floating on the water? We couldn’t find too much information about this company, so still trying to confirm this one.
CEO of search engine Ask goes to Redpoint — IAC/InterActiveCorp’s Jim Safka becomes chief executive of IAC’s search engine, Ask.com, which has remained steady at around 4 percent market share since its controversial advertising campaign, a small bump up from 3 percent, but down from 5 percent several years ago. Safka will remain CEO of Primal Ventures, IAC’s investment arm. He replaces Jim Lanzone (pictured left), who joins Silicon Valley venture capital firm Redpoint Ventures as an entrepreneur-in-residence. More here.

Xobni’s Outlook plugin for better email processing gets upgrades, expands test group – The San Francisco company impressed us at launch. However, it had to shut off access, due in part to high demand. It has spent the last few months making a range of improvements, including faster data processing and design changes. Today, Xobni invited the more than 14,000 people on the company’s waiting list. Each person will be able to invite up to five more friends. Xobni is most popular among those needing to track of a lot of work email, as you’d expect: Sales and marketing people, and project managers. Users are clicking on the application an average of more than eleven times per day, and internal surveys show more than 90 percent of its users are happy, the company said. Enhancements include right click actions, adding pictures, drag and drop of files, copy and paste of text etc. See here for more.

Microsoft dealmaker Bruce Jaffe leaves for Valley startup life — Jaffe was part of the team that acquired advertising firm aQuantive and invested $240 million in Facebook. He’s been interviewing at jobs in Silicon Valley, but has instead decided to start his own company, according to Valleywag’s scoop. Marketwatch confirmes the news.

Yahoo Tech Ticker: A tech TV we may just watch — It’s a select group of pundits, as TechCrunch reports: Sarah Lacy is a BusinessWeek reporter with a book on Silicon Valley slated to hit shelves later this year (you can get it on Amazon, here). Henry Blodgett is a fallen analyst turned successful blogger at Silicon Alley Insider. Paul Kedrosky is an investor, entrepreneur, blogger, and talking head. These people know a lot, and their attitudes are just as sharp.

Yahoo’s second iteration of its browser-based player is now public — It lets you link to MP3s on any web page. Details here.
Readburner lets you see what is shared on Google Reader — Readburner is the latest meme-tracker, this time on what are the most popular items shared via Google’s RSS reader. See image at left, which showed that our own Eric Eldon’s piece today was the third most popular item shared as of 10:30pm Wed eve. Mashable has more.

Start-up Nextreme keeps chips cool — The Durham N.C company, a spinoff of research institute RTI International, says it lowers temperatures in the specific areas of chips that get too hot. Excess heat has caused chip giants like Intel and AMD to find alternative methods to speed up their processors, for example creating multi-cores chips. WSJ has more.

Wiki-style website to help speed up U.S. broadband access? – Analyst Drew Clark of Washington DC will launch BroadbandCensus.com later this month, letting people enter where they live, the price of their service and how happy they are with it. A speed test will measure connection quality — and put pressure on the federal government to improve service where it is poor.

Planting hairy plants may help prevent global warming — More here.

Intel to launch WiMax PC card by June – Details at GigaOm.

LiveUniverse buying video sharing site Revver in a stock swap? — That’s the rumor. Los Angeles’ LiveUniverse, run by former News Corp. exec Brad Greenspan, owns LiveVideo, and it apparently wants to add Revver to its network of video sites. Greenspan mentions taking a 30 percent stake in LiveLeak in his blog. LiveUniverse also bought video search site Flurl in Oct. 2006. Revver took $13 million over the last two years from venture firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Benture Partners, Draper Richards and William Randolph Hearst III.

Terry Semel restarting his old investment company, Windsor Digital? — Semel, who exited from Yahoo after that company’s anemic progress over the past couple of years, is reportedly joining up with former Yahoos Drew Buckley and Jeff Karish. PaidContent has the news.

Here’s the (updated) latest action:

Marc Andreessen getting taste of what it’s like to be a blogger – The Netscape co-founder launched a blog last week. The NYT ran a story about one of his earliest posts. Then he did a good piece about how to hire. And now all the attention has him racing out more posts, including a three part series on The truth about venture capitalists, all very good reads (here, here and here). I recommend reading the last of these, to understand why the debate about the bubble will continue. Marc, welcome to the blogger treadmill.

Video-sharing site Revver’s CEO Steven Starr steps down — This is the second shakeup in six months. No more details given about the change, other than the obvious context: Lots of competition. The company has been losing executives. (CNET)

Xing to buy Plaxo? – Unlikely. A rumor at Techcrunch says Xing, the German version of professional networking site LinkedIn is buying Plaxo, the contact updating service. However, we’ve been told that this isn’t happening. There could be big announcement over next week or so from Xing, though.

Eye-Fi raises $5.5M for camera Wifi — We have the story on VentureBeat NewsWire (for our hard-core readers, here’s another reminder to check that left-hand column).

Apple in talks with major Hollywood studios to get more new films for rental service — The WSJ has details: Will be launched in the fall, and cost $2.99 for 30-day rental of movies. Details are still speculative, though, on who will be participating.

Yigg.de, a remarkable rip-off of Digg.com, gets funding — This is German clone, in both name and presentation. The amount raised is undisclosed but comes from angel investor Roland Metzger and Baytech Venture Capital, the German company says on its blog. It reports 1.4 million unique users a monthly.

SplashCast, the multimedia Flash player, raises angel funding from poker celebrity Phil Hellmuth — Its funding is now about $2 million, according to NewTeeVee

Chris Yeh takes CEO job at Ustream — The company is a competitor to Justin.TV, which is the permanent webcam of a guy named Justin. Ustream wants to let anyone do that. We’ve mentioned them before in our story about Justin.TV’s move to try to do the same. (See Yeh’s blog)

Google worst on privacy? – If you read this report by Privacy International, you should also read the response by search expert Danny Sullivan, who tears it to shreds. Obviously, Google has its own issues with the report, quite emotionally so.

What happens when you piss off attorneys? – Well, you get sued. We reported how Avvo, a site that rates lawyers, had launched, and that some lawyers were upset. Now, one of them is close to suing.

Internet radio station companies fight back — The U.S. Copyright Royalty Board ruled to increase royalty rates earlier this year, starting July 15. RealNetworks, Yahoo, Pandora and Live365 say they’ll be paying more than $1 billion per year.

Gamemaker of popular Desktop TD leaves to run company full-time — He’s joined with another guy, Kottke reports. They’re blogging here.

Private equity riches, will you be picking up the tab? — Blackstone Group, the high-profile buyout firm that plans soon to go public, filed more papers with the SEC that show it could be valued as high as $33.62 billion. Also, the filing shows Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman pulled down $398.3 million in 2006 which, according to Dan Primack, would place him only behind Steve Jobs on the Forbes list of highest-paid public company CEOs. So, as Blackstone issues shares to the public at the top of the private equity bubble, will you be the public investor to buy shares?

Yourminis, which are the widgets offered by Goowy Media, are now more easily compatible with desktop — Previously, you had to download Apollo from Adobe and a widget manager from Yourminis to use that company’s widgets on your desktop. Now, they’re compatible with Micrsoft’s Vista sidebar, without that step. Yourminis’s widgets can easily go anywhere, from blogs to social network pages to personalized homepages like iGoogle Pageflakes, Netvibes and now your Vista desktop. The interface for adding widgets, however, is a bit confusing, and could be simplified by reducing the number of necessary clicks. Goowy CEO Alex Bard assures us that improvements, including support for OSX, are in the works. More here.

(Updated with substantial clarifications from Juice co-founder Nick Desai)

Juice Wireless, the New York mobile video-sharing start-up, is still on hunt for financing, raising questions about its prospects amid a retrenchment hitting the video sharing industry in the new year.

Juice is raising a roughly $3.5 million round of financing, now calling it a “bridge” to raise even more capital — in recognition that competition has raised the stakes, and will require more resources.

A month ago, the company told GigaOm it was wrapping up the funding, but VentureWire reports today (sub required) it is still in the process of doing that. Moreover, even after soaking up $5.5 million in previous funding, and raising this next $3.5 million, Juice now plans to raise an additional $7.5 to $12.5 million.

Even after the gigantic success of YouTube (sold to Google for $1.65 billion), it isn’t clear just how these video companies will make money. Some even question whether YouTube would have survived without Google. Granted, video-sharing on the mobile phone, where Juice is more active, is a somewhat different market, but YouTube and others are already expanding there. It isn’t clear how Juice Wireless’ product, JuiceCaster is doing. It also isn’t clear whether its delay in raising venture capital is due to the lack of takers, or a search for venture backers willing to give it money on better terms.

Casualties are mounting. Last month, Mojungle, a site that lets you deliver photos and video to blogs and web sites from your mobile phones, listed itself on ebay for $60,000 (scroll down). It let users deliver video via SMS, MMS and email, but that wasn’t enough to lift it above all the competitors doing similar things (Shozu, Veeker, Mywaves, etc).

Guba, a San Francisco video-sharing start-up that bootstrapped itself and so doesn’t need to answer to investors, has hit rocky times too — even after signing several deals with Hollywood and boasting 300,000 subscribers paying $15 a month. Chief executive Tom McInerney (pictured left) has just stepped down, with the astonishing admission: “I think we can all acknowledge that YouTube has won the big prize….Guba is at a crossroads, and we’re deciding whether to look for funding or to sell. I think we’re inclined to sell.” He said other execs might follow his exit as the company figures out its future. “The billion-dollar opportunity has kind of passed,” McInerney said. “(The executives) are bright, and they’re interested in going for the gold.”

Just a few days ago, we reported the departures of two co-founders of Revver, another video competitor.

As for Juice, the company now says the $3.5 million round will close in late January and will come mainly from existing backer and angel investor group 21Ventures. The continued announcements suggest the company is fishing for other investors (a very public approach, when compared to YouTube’s secretive fund-raising).

21 Ventures’ David Anthony said Juice Wireless has signed deal with AOL in the U.K. and Cricket Communications in the U.S., and has a number of deals with other carriers being finalized, according to VentureWire.

[Update: Co-founder Nick Desai tells VentureBeat that VentureWire's reporting was misleading, and that David Anthony did not say -- or at least did not intend to say -- that the $3.5 million round would be raised by the end of this month. It will close this week, and was easy to raise, Desai said. Moreover, he said Juice is attempting to raise as little capital as possible each time, to be efficient. The $3.5 million will last through most of 2007, he said, and the additional round of capital will only be raised if the company can not find a buyer sometime this year. By raising less cash, Juice can ensure its primary investors a solid return, he said. He said 21 Ventures' Anthony referred to the additional financing in response to a question from VentureWire about what Juice will do if it takes longer than expected to find a buyer. Finally, Desai said he concurs there' s retrenchment underway in video sharing, but that Juice considers itself in a different industry, letting people upload photos and videos to their channel on Juice, but also to friends and other sites. Juice does not seek to be a destination site.]