VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Facebook suspends RockYou’s Super Wall – The social networking site has turned off the Facebook application’s viral aspects, like invitations and notifications, presumably as part of its efforts to crack down on spammy app activity. RockYou chief executive Lance Tokuda says he’s working with Facebook to get the suspended features restored soon. The move follows the shutdown of RockYou competitor Slide’s Top Friends application at the end of June due to a security issue. (Top Friends is back up now.)

Vinod Khosla joins Obama — The famed venture capitalist spread his bets during the primary season, giving the maximum amount to Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama. But now he has taken sides, in a way, by joining Obama’s India Policy team. The alliance makes even more sense because Khosla has been a big booster of biofuels like ethanol, and the Obama campaign is closely linked to ethanol, at least financially.

VeriSign brings back Jim Bidzos as interim chief executive –  Bidzos, who was the company’s founder and first chief executive back in 1995, is replacing William A. Roper, who resigned early last week. VeriSign manages the .com and .net domains, and Roper had been working to pare the company back down to its core focus. As for why Roper left, Bidzos says, “I don’t think it was fair to have him around while we were looking for a replacement, so he chose to leave.”

Leapfrog launches its web-based portable gaming system — With the Didj, educational gaming company Leapfrog is targeting 6- to 10-year-olds, the demographic that has embraced the Nintendo DS game system.

Vodafone buys a controlling stake in Ghana Telecom — Vodafone is buying a 70 percent stake from the local government for $900 million. The mobile network company says Ghana is one of the most attractive markets in Africa, because of its young population and low mobile penetration.

Privacy advocates like Google’s new privacy link — Google’s privacy policy hasn’t changed, but the search giant is linking to it from its main page. A number of privacy groups praised Google’s decision, albeit rather faintly. For example, Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum called privacy policies an “important tool” and noted that displaying such policies is standard practice among most Web sites. In other words, everyone’s glad Google made the move, but the company probably shouldn’t spend too much time patting itself on the back.

Study shows airports are a prime hunting ground for laptop thieves — Apparently, more than 10,000 laptops are reported lost each week at the United States’ 36 largest airports, and 65 percent of those are not reclaimed. In fact, VentureBeat’s own Eric Eldon had his laptop stolen at SFO earlier this year.

Sequoia Capital makes three more hires — The additions include Warren Hogarth, who will focus on cleantech; Christopher Lyle, who will focus on public market investments; and Michael Dixon, who will focus on systems and software investments. Meanwhile, David Su, one of the founding partners of Kleiner Perkins‘ China Fund, has left the venture firm for reasons unknown.

PlyMedia raises $6 million for video layers — The company, which adds interactive layers such as speech bubbles to online video, has raised $6 million from Greylock and Elron Electronic Industries, according to TechCrunch’s sources. Other interesting companies in this space include ad company Veeple and commenting company Omnisio.

Lifestream.fm relaunches with new features and German support — The lifestreaming site was acquired by the social bookmarking company Mister Wong back in April, and now it’s relaunching in invite-only mode with new support for comments, filtering, more comprehensive searches and German.

Vodafone has acquired a Danish mobile startup called ZYB for 31.5 million euros ($48.7 million).

ZYB combines a back-up service for your mobile contact and calendar info with social networking tools that allow you to share the info with your friends. Its service also allows you to send images and messages from your computer to multiple mobile devices.

Now, there are plenty of mobile social networks out there, and web heavyweights Facebook and MySpace also have mobile sites. But as others have noted, ZYB has been smart in the way it has grown from a back-up service into something approaching a full social network.

Vodafone says its larger strategy is to grow revenues through fixed broadband services, mobile advertising and integrated mobile/PC Internet services, so it’s easy to see where ZYB fits in. The startup will remain in Denmark and become a part of Vodafone’s Internet Services division.

ZYB chief executive Tommy Ahlers says ZYB will remain free to everyone, even if they’re not Vodafone customers.

The world’s largest mobile phone seller, Vodafone, today announced that it has a deal in place with Apple to sell the iPhone in 10 new markets around the world. These are: Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. This major push continues Apple’s global expansion for the device following announcements of a launch in Canada, and evidence that the company is working hard to get to the device into the Chinese market.

There is something else interesting in today’s news. While Vodafone will sell the iPhone in Italy, another carrier, Telecom Italia, will as well. This marks the first time that Apple has allowed more than one distributer of the iPhone in any given country. Vodafone apparently does not want to share revenues on the device in Italy because it is concerned about how it will sell, according to Times Online.

This has been a concern in other European countries as well. Given that many of these countries already have advanced mobile devices, it’s probably a safe bet that it will be the upcoming 3G version of the iPhone. The new version, almost certainly coming this summer (possibly as early as June), would be out in time for a roll out to these countries later in the year.

Rumors are starting to circulate that Apple may be reconsidering its one carrier stance in the U.S. as well. It seems a bit odd that AT&T and Apple would allow the 3G iPhone to be subsidized after not allowing that for the first version. One thought is that AT&T is doing that in an attempt to gain as many customers as possible before Apple back away to sell the device on multiple carriers — or simply sells it completely unlocked.

Amobee Media Systems, a San Francisco company building advertising technology for large wireless carriers, has won investments from two large carrier groups, Vodafone and Spain’s Telefonica.

The move reflects how Vodafone and Telefonica are taking steps to defend themselves from players like Google and Yahoo, which also see the huge potential in the emerging mobile advertising market. Increasingly, ads are being used to deliver everything for free over the mobile phone, from games, movies, SMS services to other applications.

So far, most venture-backed start-ups, including Admob, Third Screen, have been building technology and ad networks for mobile content that is obtained by users “off-deck,” or for content that isn’t offered directly by the carriers.

But as carriers move to strike partnerships with publishers to offer content directly from the phones (without users having to navigate away using a Web browser), they’re looking for ways to bake ads into the content. Amobee is focused on doing just this, meshing its ad delivery software with a carrier’s customer management technology. For example, it will know where a customer might be physically located, what their preferences are — in order to serve more targeted, and thus lucrative ads.

Google and Yahoo have growing clout in this area, because they can bring advertisers to the table too. They’re delivering more sophisticated mobile location technology, and have unleashed a wave of mobile platform initiatives. Wireless operators feel threatened, especially by Google, which has been making noises about bidding on wireless spectrum in order to force more competition in the industry. Google and Yahoo are Amobee’s toughest competitors, says Bruce Golden, a partner at Accel, a venture firm that backs the company.

Amobee said that Vodafone and Telefonica will be recommending Amobee’s service to the various regional carriers they own and operate. However, Vodafone and Telefonica are working with other providers too. Just last week, for example, Vodafone said it selected another company, Rhythm New Media, to provide ads for video. Rhythm, of Mountain View, Calif., is backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners and others. Vodafone also uses Enpocket, another ad network company, bought by Nokia recently for a reported $150 million. AdInfuse and others also play in this market.

Aside from Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Globespan are previous investors in the two-year-old Amobee. They all participated in the most recent round, the amount of which was undisclosed. Amobee raised $5 million in 2005.

The company’s software supports digital ad delivery to all mobile content and communication types, including WAP and mobile web, mobile games, mobile video and mobile messaging. The company launched its first live consumer trial in March of 2006 and has now says it has several commercial operator launches including Vodafone in Greece, Czech Republic and Spain.
Vodafone, not well known here in the U.S., is actually the largest mobile phone company by revenue worldwide.

Industry forecaster Informa estimates the global mobile ad market will be worth $11.35 billion by 2011. According to Pyramid Research, by 2010, one billion new mobile subscribers will today’s 2.8 billion subscribers.

Let the land-grab continue.

The big social networks are looking for ways to reach more people, and they’re having to partner. MySpace.com, the giant social network, will enter the European mobile phone market with an exclusive relationship with Vodafone, they just announced. This comes just as Facebook announces an agressive move into video, with Comcast. MySpace’s grip on the European market is more tenuous than in the U.S., where players like Bebo and others are tougher competitiors.

In a statement, MySpace said Vodafone users will be able to edit profiles, find and add friends, post photos and blogs and send messages while on the move.

MySpace Mobile will be pre-loaded on future, selected Vodafone handsets, the companies said.

Vodafone says it has 200 million customers worldwide.