pFiled under: a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/ps3/" rel="tag"Sony PlayStation 3/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/wii/" rel="tag"Nintendo Wii/a, a href="http://www.joystiq.com/category/xbox360/" rel="tag"Microsoft Xbox 360/a/pdiv align="center"a href="http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=351964"img vspace="4" hspace="0" border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.joystiq.com/media/2008/12/gh.world.stage.490w.jpg" alt="" //a/div Activision has released the December DLC set list for emGuitar Hero World Tour/em featuring four consecutive weeks of releases (that's a certified steak!). And did we mention the reggae rock is free? Let's strikesmoke/strike emtoast/em to that! Details below -- music videos after the break.br / br /strongThe Smashing Pumpkins Track Pack/strong (Dec. 4th): ul li"G.L.O.W."br //li li"1979"/li li"Everlasting Gaze"/li /ul strongNirvana Track Pack/strong (Dec. 11th): ul li"You Know You're Right"/li li"Negative Creep"/li li"Sliver"/li /ul strongThe Eagles Track Pack/strong (Dec. 18th): ul li"One of These Nights"/li li"Life in the Fast Lane"/li li"Frail Grasp on the Big Picture" (from emLong Road out of Eden/em)/li /ul strongFree Reggae Rock Track Pack/strong (Dec. 23rd): ul li"Jimi" - Slightly Stoopid/li li"Your Face" - Pepper/li li"Sacrifice" - Expendables/li /ul Note: All premium track packs are priced as follows: 440img border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.xbox360fanboy.com/media/2007/11/microsoftpointslogosmall.gif" alt="" / (XBLM); $5.49 (PSN); not available on Wii. Individual tracks are sold for: 160img border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.xbox360fanboy.com/media/2007/11/microsoftpointslogosmall.gif" alt="" / (XBLM); $1.99 (PSN); 200 Wii Points.pa href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/guitar-hero-world-tour-dec-dlc-the-eagles-nirvana-smashing-p/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emGuitar Hero World Tour Dec. DLC: The Eagles, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins amp; free reggae rock/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/guitar-hero-world-tour-dec-dlc-the-eagles-nirvana-smashing-p/"Guitar Hero World Tour Dec. DLC: The Eagles, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins amp;amp; free reggae rock/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.joystiq.com"Joystiq/a on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:04:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./pp style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"nbsp;/ppa href=http://investor.activision.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=351964Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/guitar-hero-world-tour-dec-dlc-the-eagles-nirvana-smashing-p/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/forward/1390184/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.joystiq.com/2008/12/03/guitar-hero-world-tour-dec-dlc-the-eagles-nirvana-smashing-p/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/3KF-I6f_qbJsrhwE4YWb2ui8Ws4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/3KF-I6f_qbJsrhwE4YWb2ui8Ws4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=ddyaMmfi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=ddyaMmfi" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?a=foVsjQ6w"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/joystiq?i=foVsjQ6w" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/joystiq/~4/ax-rR75Bj2A" height="1" width="1"/

The beleaguered Australian infrastructure investor secured an 11th-hour reprieve after a syndicate of 25 international banks agreed to extend it a A$150m emergency loan

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div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"Nvidia officials on Tuesday reiterated the company#39;s interest in the mini-laptop space but said it would wait for the market to mature before jumping in./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Earlier this year, the company made#160;a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/26/Nvidia-to-make-graphics-chipsets-for-Via-processors_1.html"a deal with Via Technologies/a #160;to make graphics chipsets to work with Via#39;s Nano processors, which are designed for laptops and mini-laptops. Mini-laptops, also called netbooks by Intel, are inexpensive laptops with screens of 10 inches or less./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ For more on products in the hot mini-notebook category, check out our hands-on looks at a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/03/Hands_on_with_Asuss_Eee_PC_901_and_1000_1.html?source=fssr"Asus#39; Eee PC 901 and 1000/a and the a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/14/Hands_on_with_the_Asustek_N10_netbook_1.html"N10 netbook/a, the a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/02/Hands_on_with_the_Cloudbook_Max_netbook_1.html?source=fssr"Cloudbook Max netbook/a, a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/30/Hands_on_with_Elitegroups_G10IL_minilaptop_1.html?source=fssr"Elitegroup#39;s G10IL mini-laptop/a, a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/19/Hands_on_with_MSIs_Wind_lowcost_laptop_1.html?source=fssr"MSI#39;s Wind low-cost laptop/a, a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/09/Hands_on_with_Gigabytes_M912X_minilaptop-IDGNS_1.html?source=fssr"Giga-byte#39;s M912X mini-laptop/a, a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/08/07/Hands_on_with_HPs_MiniNote_netbook_1.html?source=fssr"HP#39;s Mini-Note netbook/a and a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/07/14/Hands_on_with_Acers_Aspire_one_netbook_1.html?source=fssr"Acer#39;s Aspire one/a. ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The netbook market is growing, and it could branch out into product categories such as smartphones and multimedia netbooks that can handle graphics effectively, said Marv Burkett, the company#39;s chief financial officer, on a webcast from the Credit Suisse annual technology conference being held in Scottsdale, Arizona./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"quot;We#39;re not saying we#39;re not interested; it#39;s a matter of how the market will evolve,quot; Burkett said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Most netbooks today contain Intel#39;s Atom processor and are not capable of handling video games or multimedia effectively, said Michael Hara, vice president of investor relations at Nvidia. Netbooks offer good battery life and are good for basic programs like Web applications, but they don#39;t have the graphics capabilities to effectively play video games or video files, he said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Netbooks could have integrated graphics in the future to better handle graphics, Hara said. Though they were tight-lipped about plans for the netbook space, Nvidia executives said the company prefers to watch the market evolve before getting involved./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The company#39;s most likely move in the netbook arena would be to provide integrated chipsets with better graphics than most netbooks offer now. The graphics giant already provides integrated chipsets for laptops and next year will ship the Tegra system-on-chip for smartphones. Tegra puts an Arm processor core, a GeForce graphics core and other components, including a high-definition video decoder, onto a single chip./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Integrated chipsets is just one focus of the company as it tries to grow in these tough economic times. Nvidia also is trying to push further into the supercomputing space through its Tesla platform, which includes graphics processing units (GPUs) with 240 cores as well as the CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) programming architecture, a set of development tools that allows programs to be executed on its graphics processors./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"The company is now developing Tesla-based quot;personal supercomputersquot; in partnership with PC makers including Dell and Lenovo. It already offers such systems with Penguin Computing and Velocity Micro. Nvidia claims the systems can process data as much as 250 times faster than standard PCs, with 960 processing cores in four GPUs./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"#160;/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=fed9af52d78f59cda5ab4db748f7bfd7amp;p=1img style=border:0; src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=fed9af52d78f59cda5ab4db748f7bfd7amp;p=1 border=0 //a

A few months ago Sequoia Capital doused the ever ebullient Silicon Valley with a bucket of ice cold reality when it laid “good times” to rest. Today, one of Sequoia’s all time stars laid a big wreath on that grave in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. Google. And while it didn’t implicitly state that it might face tough times next year, comments by its CEO amount to a proverbial bear call which could mean bad news now only for Google but also for rest of the media and advertising sector.

“We have to behave as though we don’t know what’s going to happen,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal. It seems like a prudent move. But I see it as a big red flag and I think Schmidt is preparing us for what could be a terrible 2009. The WSJ says that Google executives have been preparing for slower growth for a year but “the economic crisis is forcing them to step up their efforts.”

According to conventional wisdom (and investors) Google is the best positioned company to survive and perhaps thrive in the current advertising slump. If the leader of the pack is feigning ignorance about its chances, what can one say about mere mortals.

I find it hard to believe that a company that keeps world famous economist like Hal Varian (who muses on economy and Google’s prospects often on the investor calls), doesn’t know. As a company Google collects enough data on a daily basis that it can take a fair pulse of the broader economy. Remember, they could accurately track the spread of flu across America just based on searches, so why can’t the track the economic-sentiment? Additionally it sells ads to everyone from mom-and-pop shops to consumer durable giants and it has a fair idea on the degree of tightness people are holding their billfolds. They have enough intellectual horsepower on campus to put two-and-two together.

Beyond Schmidt’s statement, one has to look at their other moves such as plans to slash 10,000 or so of their contractors, slowing cap-ex investments and killing off projects. These point to tough times for the company that has lived a lush life so far.

Projects that are too pie-in-the-sky are going to be killed. Schmidt calls it the “dark matter.” Google Lively and Google SearchMash are two of the many projects, which will soon not matter. Google is contemplating killing of Google Notebook and Google Audio Indexing as well. Google Page Creator has given way to Google Sites. In that vein, Google is going to prune overlapping products. No more the 20-percent time for pet projects for engineers, though it might come back once the economic wheel churns. These are smart and prudent moves even if they are prompted by desperate need to control costs and meet their numbers.

I know it might sound hokey but rich don’t stop driving their Aston Martins just because the price of gas is going up. They do so when they are not as rich! The same analogy holds for Google and its cost cutting efforts. Just remember how much of PR they milked out of their 20-percent philosophy. They are essentially eating a cow-pie on that. They wouldn’t be doing this unless things are really really and REALLY tough.

Google needs to keep its sales machine going at a time when it is facing the same malaise as that of broader market – slowing spending on marketing and advertising. There is some argument that Google is going to win because of their performance-based advertising system.

While that is true to some extent but what happens when the economy goes into a deep freeze? If you don’t have money to splurge on a large screen Plasma TV, there is little chance you are going to search for that, and fewer the opportunities for Google to sell more ads against those searches. Of course, if there is no intent to buy amongst the searchers, then there is less inclination to click on those ads as well. And that is not good news for Google.

Google, of course is going to try and meet its targets by taking more out of the pocket of its “adsense” partners and undercutting competitors. WSJ points out that the company is focusing heavily on display, mobile and other ad-opportunities, which can only mean bad news for their rivals.

Related: Why Silicon Valley Should be Worried

pWebsite analytics firm a href="http://www.iperceptions.com/" title="iPerceptions"iPerceptions/a has secured $3.65 million in a round of funding. Montreal-based VC firm Telesystem Ltd and private investor Skuli Mogensen provided the financing, which iPerceptions will use to continue to expand internationally and roll out a new version of its 4Q Website survey product. The NY-based company also has offices in Toronto, Montreal and London, and counts clients like InterContinental Hotels, GM and LG Electronics (SEO: 066570) in its roster. a href="http://iperceptions.com/en/news/iperceptions-secures-365-million-in-funding" title="Release"Release/a. /p piSocial Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and MA deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. stronga href="http://www.paidcontent.org/reports/"Visit the ContentNext Reports page/a/strongi/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=dBhWuD"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=dBhWuD" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=aqq0O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=aqq0O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=FGRYO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=FGRYO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=AKJRo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=AKJRo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=XMFFO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=XMFFO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=OGXmO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=OGXmO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/473211388" height="1" width="1"/

pSocial media company a href="http://www.theport.com/media.asp" title="ThePort Network"ThePort Network/a has raised $4.1 million in a second round led by American City Business Journals. Existing investors Lee Enterprises (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=LEE" class="ticker" title="LEE"NYSE: LEE/a), Atlanta-based start-up investor Imlay Investments, and angel investor Robert Jetmundsen also participated. Co-founder and CEO Bob Cramer, who is also an angel investor, told me, "This is our first major round of investment (all the money coming at one time)." He declined to provide a total amount raised, saying the funding, until now, was angel but that some of the investors went into a first round. The company started in 1999 as an XML developer and evolved into a social media platform supporting community building for non-profits, associations and media companies, including investors ACBJ and Lee. It also has its own network. /p p According to Cramer, other clients include Easter Seals and the Sierra Club. Cramer told the a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/12/01/daily36.html" title="Atlanta Business Chronicle"Atlanta Business Chronicle/a, which first reported the funding, the company earned $800,000 in revenue last year and would use the money to develop sales, marketing and business development along with platform improvements. /p piOur streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. a href="http://m.paid.mwap.at/"Click here to download/a./i /p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=oyvCcq"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=oyvCcq" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=RB1fO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=RB1fO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=KEXYO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=KEXYO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=wecuo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=wecuo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=j5Z9O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=j5Z9O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=DkmnO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=DkmnO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/473044928" height="1" width="1"/

Germany-based myON-ID Media has raised an undisclosed seven-figure sum in a second round of funding from T-Online Venture Fund to expand its online reputation management platform. MyON-ID is actually more of a combination between a people search engine and an alert service for keywords mentioned across the web.

I quicky tried out searching my own name on the English version of the search application, and the results were a bit messy to say the least. From what I understand, all the engine does is perform a meta search on services like Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, LinkedIn etc. along with traditional and blog search engines like Technorati. MyON-ID aims to make money from offering a premium version and advertising on the free service.

I’m not so sure what prompted a reputable investor like T-Online Venture Fund and previous backer Nexum to fund such a simple service, unless I’m missing something here. The Munich-based company claims it’s very strong in Germany, and hopes to repeat this success with other localized versions (in English, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Spanish and Turkish).

There are far better tools out there for online reputation tracking and management, in my opinion. One example is Trackur, which offers advanced tools to monitor social media. Other providers off the top of my head include Brandseye, Radian6, Attentio, Buzzcapture and Chatterguard.

The people search engine market on itself is already a crowded one: alternatives include Wink, Spock, Naymz, PeekYou and Pipl.

I have serious doubts if myON-ID has what it takes to compete on an international level.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Never before have Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales been so carefully tracked as they were this year. The scrutiny makes perfect sense, for the outcome of this shopping season will directly impact our collective economic future. But while there were numerous reports claiming that sales on those two crucial days were better than most had been expecting, my friend Barry Ritholz, a respected Wall Street contrarian, is skeptical — and says as much on his blog.

Later this week, we should get Master Card’s ShopperPulse data. It is the actual measurement of what people spent (via their MC Credit Card) and has proven to be more reliable than either foot traffic, surveys and other biased sources.

While we wait for that data, here are some facts from various sources which show that things are not as sanguine as people might think.

• comScore says Black Friday e-commerce sales were $534 million, up 1 percent from last year’s sales of $531 million.
• The number of page and product views across the online retail sector in general was down 8.55 and 8.29 percent, respectively, compared to Black Friday 2007, according to Coremetrics, which also points out that there was an 18-percent drop in average session length — a clear sign that retailers are struggling to keep customers on their sites. In addition, the number of people who actually completed a purchase dropped by 1.69 percent to 3.49 percent. In other words, there is a lot of hesitation on the part of consumers when it comes to spending.
• That 1-percent gain in online sales may not translate into profits for etailers. People are buying more per order (4.56 items vs. 4.45 items in 2007), but paying less for it. The average value of their orders dropped by more than 6 percent, to $126.04 from $134.29. It also points to people opting for lower-priced items.
• On the web sites of department stores, Coremetrics data finds a 12-percent increase in order sessions, a 30-percent surge in average items per order, and a 10-percent rise in average order value — none of which is good news for specialty retailers.

Who Buckled Under the Buying Rush?

Our friends at Gomez, a company that tracks the technical performance of web sites, sent us a long list of sites that went down and/or couldn’t keep up with consumers.

• On Monday, Victoria’s Secret had major problems. It was unable to complete shopping cart transactions (2:15pm ET) and was down completely between 10:06 am-12:00 pm ET, with a message on its site saying it was “down for maintenance.”
• Availability (defined as the percentage of times that a shopper’s end-to-end transaction is accomplished without error) was not up to par among major brands on Friday. Amazon’s availability was 73.49 percent, while Apple came in at 87.35 percent and Circuit City at 63.75 percent.
• Sears had just over 61 percent availability, but turned in a performance of 100 percent on Saturday.
• Dell saw downtime of around 35 minutes between 9:40 am and 10:15 am ET.
• Staples availability was somewhat off, at 84 percent, on Friday, but rose to 95 percent by Saturday.

What Was Hot — and What Was Not

• HDTV’s were the hot item this season, thanks to prices that literally nosedived. According to Retrevo (see disclosure below), a Sunnyvale, Calif-based company that tracks the consumer electronics market, by Black Friday, interest in HDTVs had surged by more than 250 percent compared to interest at the beginning of November. Indeed, Samsung’s LN52A650 52″ LCD TV was the fourth best-selling product over the web on Black Friday, according to PriceGrabber.
• Nintento Wii topped PriceGrabber’s list of Black Friday products, followed by Ugg boots, the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player, Samsung’s LN52A650 52″ LCD TV and Nintendo’s Wii Fit. According to PriceGrabber, year-over-year interest in Blu-ray/HD-DVD Players was up 147 percent.
• The Wii was a big winner on Cyber Monday as well, according to Price Grabber. In their list of top products, the Sony BDP-S350 1080p Blu-ray Disc Player came in at No. 3, Apple’s iPod Touch 8GB MP3 player was No. 4, followed by Samsung’s LN52A650 52″ LCD TV in the No. 5 spot. Apple’s iPod Nano 3rd Generation 4GB MP3 Player and the Apple iPod Touch 16GB MP3 Player were ranked No. 10 and No. 11, respectively, followed by the Samsung LN46A550 46″ LCD TV (No. 12), the Sharp AQUOS LC42SB45U 42″ LCD TV (No. 14) and the PanasonicTH-42PX80U 42″ Plasma TV (No. 16).
• According to RBC Captial Markets analyst Mark Sue, consumer electronics retailers used navigation devices as a lure this holiday season. The Garmin Nuvi 200 was available for $97, the TomTom One 125 for $99, the Garmin Nuvi 260w for $189, and the Magellan 1212 for just $79. Sue points out that Garmin’s mid- to higher-tier products were being discounted as well. While this might mean good news for consumer electronics retailers in the short term, I get the feeling they might have pulled too much of their sales forward and will struggle in the coming months.

Image courtesy of tshein via Flickr.

Full disclosure: Retrevo is backed by Alloy Ventures, an investor in Giga Omni Media, the parent company of this blog.

pa href="http://flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/50185856/"img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/24/50185856_99b6867d40_m.jpg" align="right" border="0"/AJon Miller, former CEO of AOL and now one of the founders of VC firm Velocity along with Ross Levinsohn, is in the process of raising funds to try and buy Yahoo, a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122823988574372899.html" title="reports WSJ"reports WSJ/a, citing sources. The story says he has been trying to do it for months. Our sources say that WSJ might be reading too much into this: he and his partners at Velocity has been presenting to investors all across the globe, including a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund" title="sovereign investors"sovereign investors/a in Dubai, for raising a new fund for his VC firm. So I would not be surprised if the two things to confused along the way, and someone expressed interest in putting money into a Miller-backed consortium. /p p The story says that Miller believes he can do a deal that would be worth around $20 to $22 a share to Yahoo (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=YHOO" class="ticker" title="YHOO"NSDQ: YHOO/a) shareholders, which means raising about $28 billion to $30 billion to purchase the entire company. I a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-reliance-still-scouting-for-mobile-content-acquisitions-in-us-how-about" title="have said before"have said before/a that the Indian tech-media giant Reliance ADA should look at a Yahoo deal seriously, and it is likely Miller has had conversations with them, considering Velocity's India connections (it is an investor in NDTV there, among other companies). /p p All that said, Velocity itself has not yet been able to close its new fund, and considering the economic market and how funds worldwide, even sovereign ones, have suffered badly, it is unlikely any consortium could come together raise enough money to buy Yahoo, or even part of it. Our sources also says that both bMiller and Levinsohn have met Yahoo in the last few weeks/b, as part of the discussions for the search for a new CEO for Yahoo. /p p Miller almost got appointed to the Yahoo board earlier this year, when he was on an Icahn-backed slate of alternative board members...his nomination was nixed last minute due to a non-compete clause with AOL/Time Warner. /p p Meanwhile, Yahoo's stock is up about 11 percent right now, on this news... /p piSocial Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and MA deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. stronga href="http://www.paidcontent.org/reports/"Visit the ContentNext Reports page/a/strongi/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=s7aLCo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=s7aLCo" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=G4G8O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=G4G8O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=l1uBO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=l1uBO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=Zgmmo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=Zgmmo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=3KzjO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=3KzjO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=qBZNO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=qBZNO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/472724583" height="1" width="1"/

Interview with Investor Jim actress Dec 02 2008 Posted by admin in News | Reaction to Lehman Brothers Conference Call, Analysis and Disussion on Financial Markets, Outlook for Oil, and Investment Strategies Bookmark This: [...]

The closure of Pownce, which was announced Monday via posts by co-founder Leah Culver and her new employer, blog software company Six Apart, didn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who’s followed Pownce since its launch last year. Despite help from co-founders like Kevin Rose of Digg and usability guru Daniel Burka, the service never really found an audience, or at least not one big enough to make a go of it. In the end, Pownce was just too much like Twitter (and Jaiku and Plurk, for that matter); the added features it had — including the ability to transfer files — weren’t enough to set it apart in people’s minds, much less turn it into a must-have utility.

So why did Six Apart, the blogging software provider founded by husband-and-wife team Ben and Mena Trott, decide to buy the company? It’s possible that they just saw Culver and her fellow Powncer Mike Malone as valuable hires in the programming department, and decided to acqu-hire them, as Google has done with so many startup founders over the years. But while the Pownce service is being shut down, could its features live on inside Six Apart and its Vox blogging service? I think that’s a very real possibility. Culver, for example, notes in her blog post that she hopes to “come back with something much better in 2009.”

Twitter and its ilk are often referred to as platforms for “micro-blogging,” because (in the right hands at least) a 140-character message posted to the service can be almost as good as a blog post. More than one blogger has said that the frequency of their blog posts has decreased since they began Twittering, and some have given up full-blown blogging altogether. Others, however (myself included), use Twitter as a kind of feeder system for their blogs. Not only do they use it to find ideas, links and conversation that spark longer blog posts, but they use it in reverse — to alert potential readers to their posts. And in many cases the conversation extends from the blog to the chat service and vice-versa. There’s an almost symbiotic relationship between the two services, with each feeding off and benefiting from the other.

Six Apart has made a number of acquisitions that indicate the company is thinking about how to extend its services, including social media application maker Apperceptive. Much like its blog software competitor Automattic, the home of WordPress (see disclosure below), the company seems to be looking for tools that can be incorporated into its platforms to make them more robust as media publishing services. Could a Twitter-style tool be part of that vision for Six Apart? It would make a lot of sense, just as WordPress buying Buddypress (a startup that added social networking functionality to the platform) and launching a Twitter-style chat theme called Prologue made sense.

There are already a variety of plugins and tools that allow WordPress and Movable Type bloggers to incorporate Twitter into their blogs, either by posting their messages automatically in a sidebar, or in some cases, by allowing them to post to Twitter from their blog dashboard. But having someone who understands how such services operate could help Six Apart integrate these kinds of features more fully into their platforms, as well as making it easier to develop new ones that could merge micro-blogging and “real” blogging. At the end of the day, Six Apart and Automattic aren’t just blogging services but content-management and content-publishing companies, and Twitter messages are just another form of content that needs to be managed and published.

Auttomatic is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=49356507796c7a9c00cae168maxX=406maxY=440" border="0" alt="McNameeFB.jpg" title="McNameeFB.jpg" width="406" height="440" /Elevation Partners spent $325 million on a 25% stake in Palm (PALM) in June 2007. Yesterday, a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/12/palm-fall-sales-sucked-slashing-costs-for-hail-mary"Palm pre-announced fiscal Q2 revenues 40% below Wall Street expectations./a/p pBut don't worry about Elevation Partners investor Roger McNamee. Roger's found a venue for taking out his frustrations: Trolling a a href="http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=38156726114ref=nf"Verizon (VZ) Wireless Facebook page/a touting the a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/rim-blackberry-storm-review"new RIM (RIMM) BlackBerry Storm/a, telling visitors to check out emNew York Times/em columnist David Pogue's a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/seven-reasons-pogue-hates-the-blackberry-storm"nasty review/a./p pWe know Roger, who plays in a rock band with former SNL band leader G.E. Smith, is a fun guy. So this is probably just Roger being Roger. But let's hope that Palm's sharp cost cuts aren't affecting its emtrained/em P.R. team./p pstrongSee Also:/stronga href="../../2008/12/palm-fall-sales-sucked-slashing-costs-for-hail-mary"strongbr //strongPalm: Fall Sales Horrible, Slashing Costs (PALM)/a/p pspan/span/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/3Gkqm60lYXaNPanX2JzEIdEK2AQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/3Gkqm60lYXaNPanX2JzEIdEK2AQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=ZB9Xq4lR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=ZB9Xq4lR" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=59bKsq7H"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=wBS45Kmo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=Qf55Yny6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=Qf55Yny6" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=GuZuw3IS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=m691Q8s8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=F3mYhVBz"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=nXE3v3sA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/Xmh5_boyUNc" height="1" width="1"/

Ravit Lichtenberg is the founder and chief strategist at Ustrategy.com—a boutique consultancy with a mission to help startups succeed. She authors a blog at ravitlichtenberg.com.

With the economic downturn grinding the startup wheels to a near-halt here and abroad, companies are competing for a smaller pie. Capital, acquisition odds, advertising dollars, and consumer wallets are all becoming much smaller.

If you are a European startup in the consumer Web services or product space, you have even more obstacles to overcome than your US counterparts. For one, funding in Europe is still very limited and narrowly focused compared to the US. Second, your consumer base is much smaller—especially if your product is localized for language and service. Third, the more innovative you get, the more likely it is you’ll bump against a much greater skepticism and a much smaller pool of early adopters.

So you decide to come here—Silicon Valley, the Mecca of anything startup– to raise funds and tap into the massive and enthusiastic US customer base. But right now, even though you may have enjoyed great interest as investors expand their reach internationally, you’re up against fierce competition from just about everyone.

And this is where European startups face the biggest challenge: presenting your company in a way that makes sense—the US way.

Fundamental differences

In the past 2 months I’ve listened to over 40 pitches from French, Belgian, British, and Eastern European companies. About 1 in 15 presented their company in a way that would stick. This is because Europeans tend to build their case in a highly academic way–stating the conditions under which their offering makes sense and building their argument from there.

American audiences, on the other hand, are used to seeing “the bottom line first” and they do things very fast by European standards. “They’re like cowboys,” a Belgian CEO told me. “First they shoot then they look.” This is a fundamental difference in how people present and perceive information. And it can mean the difference that gets you to that second meeting, someone writing about your startup, and even getting funding.

Key points to remember

Let’s go over a few key points that can help you present your company in a way that makes more sense here:

1. First impression is (almost) everything.

Americans know this very well. That’s why they work on their “elevator pitch.” You have 30-60 seconds to create an impression. Want to spruce it up even more? Have a 1-2 minute demo ready on your iPhone that plays while you speak. Think: Why are you different? What makes you stand out? How do you stick in someone’s mind? Why should an investor want to see you again? These are questions that should always be on your mind and guide what you say— all in 60 seconds or less.

2. Speak in benefits. Customer benefits, that is.

Europeans tend to be highly accomplished on the technology side. In the US, you also need to think about, and communicate, what your prospective customers will be able to do thanks to your technology. How will it address a true customer need? Why will a customer use it? Better yet—why will they pay for it? Every time you speak about a feature or capability of your technology, immediately follow with “and that means that customers will be able to...” (fill in the blank).

3. Start with the end first.

It may sound counter intuitive but business communication in the US is often non-linear and starts with the conclusion first. The people with whom you meet will want to know what your product does and how much money you expect to make from it. If that sticks, then you can go back and talk about how you got to the idea, how you developed it, all those other things it can be, etc.

4. Know your numbers.

In Silicon Valley numbers speak louder than anything else. They’re also important as a reality-check for you as technologies and competitors evolve. Don’t let anyone fool you–no one really knows what’s going to happen so it’s okay to make assessments—just make sure they’re intelligent ones. Be ready to talk about your 3-year profit-and-loss (P&L) model and about your Total Addressable Market (TAM) in clear terms.

5. Focus.

The American idiom is “put a stake in the ground.” It’s when of all the many things your technology can be, you choose one (or two) things for now and go with them. This is a tough one, I know, because you want to show all the great things your idea can become. But where you see options, VCs see lack of direction. So let’s keep things in order: Decide on a focus for now, and put the framing, benefits, and numbers around that choice. You will later have plenty of time to develop your roadmap.

6. Investors are not your friends.

They are meeting with you because you might represent a good investing opportunity. As such, come prepared with all your materials and if possible, with a beautifully executed demo and present your case. If you need advice, ask your friends, other CEOs, or advisors if you have them. In fact, ask anyone–just not investors you’d like to work with. Once the term sheet has been completed and the deal signed, they’ll provide you with plenty of advice whether you want it or not. It’s their job.

7. Networking is key.

Many European CEOs think networking and mingling is “cocktail hour saved for those who don’t do real work.” But in the US—and especially in the Silicon Valley—this is an important catalyst to getting business done. You need to get out of your three-cubicle office which you’re sharing with four other companies and go to events. You need to tell other CEOs, bloggers, and investors about your product. You’ll get invaluable advice that will undoubtedly help you move forward, new connection points, and a perspective on the startup world within which you operate. This is just as important as making phone calls and taking meetings.

8. Keep it short.

Repeatedly I hear that CEOs talk about their companies for too long. Yes- you want to make sure people understand the breadth of your offering, but more talk doesn’t necessarily get you results. Lucas Grassi Gurfein, former International Product Manager for Yahoo!Inc. suggests bullet points often work best: Use them as talking points and keep your presentation short. More important than demonstrating the history of your idea is creating a stellar impression and a genuine curiosity in your listeners’ minds; you want them to come back and say “can we talk more?” Less, you see, is truly more.

9. Don’t be argumentative.

In most European countries, debating a topic is just part of daily conversations. To most Americans—unless they were on their college debate team—the practice of debate can be unnerving. You already know that Europeans can be perceived as uncomfortably direct here—add debating and you come across as argumentative and maybe even hostile, which is hardly what you meant.

Try to balance between presenting your rationale and listening to feedback. If you have a thought about the point being brought up, you can always start by acknowledging the feedback’s validity and then add how you’re thinking of addressing it.

10. Tap into the existing infrastructure.

There are a number of organizations and initiatives designed directly to help advance European companies in the US:

· Each country typically has a Chamber of Commerce in the Bay Area which puts together business-related events and can help you get connected much faster than you could do on your own.

· There are non-profit organizations like SVOD and VC backed events like the Dow Jones’ Venture Wire EuroTech Showcase that help promote European startups through connections to venture capital firms and journalists.

· A number of organizations sponsor conferences, competitions, and “boot-camps” for startups. GuideWire’s Innovate!Europe is one example—it focuses on identifying new and promising talent in Europe and helping them grow globally. Make sure you’re aware of these and attend at least a few each year.

As the CEO of a European startup you will need to overcome a number of obstacles. At the same time, the European tendency to take more calculated risks, base products on proprietary technology, and have demonstrated success abroad, can translate into leverage especially in these difficult times.

As venture capital firms increasingly diversify their portfolio with a greater reach abroad, you may in fact enjoy more opportunity than ever before. If your product is truly offering customers a way to do something new, something they want—if you help them make existing interactions less painful—you’re just as likely (if not more) to get a piece of that funding pie and more of those cavorted consumer eyes. The key is to communicate what you do and what’s unique about your startup’s offering in a way that matches how people perceive and respond to information in the US.

Have tips of your own? Share them below in the comments.

Imagery courtesy of iStockphoto, TommL, Sodafish, Caracterdesign

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