VentureBeat

German Internet entrepreneurs, the Samwer Brothers, have become the latest new shareholders in Facebook, according to a Reuters story that cites one of the brothers, Alexander Samwer.

Samwer said the brothers have taken an undisclosed stake in the company and that they’ll be Facebook’s strategic partners in Europe.

This is notable because the brothers previously bankrolled StudiVZ, the Facebook in Germany, in 2005, shortly after Facebook became a major success. StudiVZ was sold last year to Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH — a German publishing group that had previously invested in the company. The brothers have also earned a reputation of backing rip-offs of successful U.S. companies. One of their companies, Frazr, was an almost an exact duplicate of Twitter, for example, another was Hitflip.de, a clone of Peerflix.

But the relationship with Facebook is apparently warming up, and we’re wondering if this heralds a deeper partnership, or even merger between Facebook and StudiVZ, one of the largest college-based networks in Europe, popular mainly in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and reporting more than four million members mid-way through last year.

The brothers’ stake in Facebook is likely quite small. Microsoft got a mere 1.6 percent of Facebook, in return for its $240 million investment. The Samwer Brothers are typically angel or early-stage investors in companies, and invest nowhere near that amount in their deals.

1) We’re hearing rumors that AOL and News Corp. were looking to acquire ValueClick
2) TubeMogul to sell online video analytics
3) German Facebook-clone investors back again
4) Facebook settles New York child-safety probe
5) Mochi Media launches MochiAds for casual games
6) Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all reportedly courting Facebook
7) AdMob poaches Google engineer
8) California adds a further $125M to clean transport
9) San Francisco’s New Resource Bank receives $10M kick-start

We’re hearing rumors that AOL and News Corp. were looking to acquire ValueClick – We checked with the companies last week, and they declined to comment. ValueClick’s value, and thus attractiveness, has just tumbled now that the online-ad company has said it will bring in less revenue than expected.

TubeMogul to sell online video analytics – The Berkeley, Calif. start-up supplies video-viewing data to Web publishers, so that they can track what videos are being watched. It a sort of Google Analytics, only for video. It has raised a seed round from NetService Ventures.

German Facebook-clone investors back again — The Samwer Brothers, famed for their propensity to back German companies that copy American models, have invested in Jimdo, the website creation tool. Not surprisingly, Jimdo’s tool (coverage here) looks quite similar to Weebly. This comes shortly after their investment in a Scibd copycat, Dotkus.de.

Facebook settles New York child-safety probe – Facebook, like MySpace, has been in the spotlight because pedophiles have used these social networks to contact children and expose them to porn. While a working group of attorney generals from all 50 states is still looking into the issue, New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo announced today that his office had reached a settlement with Facebook. Cuomo had announced his own probe of Facebook’s privacy measures last month (previous coverage here). Under the agreement, Facebook will begin addressing complaints within 24 hours of being notified, responding to the the aggrieved party within 72 hours; it has also agreed to let an independent examiner oversee how it handles complaints.

Mochi Media launches MochiAds for casual games – The San Francisco company lets casual video game developers embed ads within their video-game creations, and includes analytics for measuring how much money the ads are bringing in (see screenshot, below). The company is just now launching to the public but it has already accumulated some impressive numbers. While in private beta, says it has already been working with 1000 game developers, serving over 100 million ads per month that have reached over 50 million gamers in total, worldwide. The company announced an undisclosed amount of funding from Accel Partners in August.

Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all reportedly courting Facebook – All are reportedly offering to invest in Facebook at a valuation of $15 billion. Details here.

AdMob poaches Google engineer — The stream of employees leaving Google has turned into a river. Google’s stock price has broken $600, we’re at the top of an advertising market cycle, and smart employees have to wonder how much short-term upside there’s left in that stock. Kevin Scott, a former engineering manager in search and advertising at Google, is now managing both the software and hardware infrastructure at the San Mateo, Calif., mobile ad company, Admob. The steal comes just as Google is starting to offer mobile Adsense.

California adds a further $125M to clean transport — California’s Governor Schwarzenegger signed a bill that will provide a further $125 million each year to clean vehicle and fuel technologies. The money could go towards new startups or existing companies like Tesla, which is based in the state. The bill, AB 118, follows a package Schwarzenegger signed into law last Friday which, among other initiatives, encourages the use of solar water heaters and attempts to cut energy usage.

San Francisco’s New Resource Bank receives $10M kick-start — The New Resource Bank, a so-called “green bank” that will provide loans for new cleantech projects to either consumers or businesses, has also benefitted from California’s embrace of all things cleantech. Treasurer Bill Lockyer approved an initial state investment of $10 million in the bank. Earlier this year, the new business passed $100 million in assets.

Frazr, a German-language clone of online messaging service Twitter, has not been growing fast enough to suit its founders.

Its solution: Partner with a company named Onlinetvrecorder, that plays in the legal gray-zone by allowing people to make free recordings of broadcasts from German TV stations, P2P Blog reports.

It works like this: OTR users can get updates about their favorite TV shows via Frazr. If they sign up for Frazr and send a couple messages, they’ll get easier access to OTR downloads.

Many German TV stations have already gotten injunctions against OTR, P2P Blog says, which explains why the company has moved its corporate headquarters to Vanuatu.

Germany is already gaining an international reputation for ripping off successful web sites, with Frazr in the lead. We have to wonder if this will expose the Samwer Bros. — an investor in Frazr (our coverage) — to copyright lawsuits.

Hey Frazr, was machst Du?

Imagekind is a Web site that lets artists upload their artwork for sale, and gives them the freedom to sell it at whatever price they want.

The six-month-old Seattle start-up has just raised $2.6 million in venture capital, which gives it ammunition to go after the industry’s leading site, Art.com. It will announce the funding tomorrow.

Art.com dictates prices more rigidly — it doesn’t let artists set their own price, and apparently only pays them a 10 percent royalty. Imagekind is more new-school, taking only a charge to cover the cost of printing, framing and shipping and small profit ($8.99 is the base price), but letting artists charge however much they want. Some artists are marking up to $300.

VentureBeat heard rumors that Art.com, of Emeryville, Calif., had expressed interest in buying Imagekind. Amazon.com actually made an offer. However, Imagekind decided to go it alone. Art.com, a 12-year-old company backed by Benchmark Capital and Polaris, has more than 500 employees worldwide and reportedly has $150 million in revenue. Imagekind is tiny in comparison. It struggled to get its first 100 artists last year, but now 6,000 artists have uploaded art. Sales have hit 1,000 pieces a month.

We spoke to President Kevin Saliba, who wouldn’t elaborate on the purchase offers, but said the intent is to carve out a No. 2 position behind Art.com, while focusing on higher quality printing paper than Art.com. To that end, it also does its own printing, and has a partnership with a large frame retail chain, Northwest Framing. The site is built with AJAX and Flash.

Imagekind’s funding comes from some high-profile investors. The round was led by Holtzbrinck, the German publisher that recently bought the German version of Facebook, Studivz, and which has become more active in the U.S. recently. Also participating were Crosslink Capital, the Samwer brothers (early investors in eBay Germany), Erik Blachford (former Expedia chief exec), Nick Hanauer (first investor in Amazon.com) and Bill Trimarco (of Larsen-Juhl, a framing company). Saliba said the 15-person Imagekind raised the money in order to do more marketing and expand to places like Europe.

Rumor is the valuation is in the $5- to $7 million range.