Another marker in Tim Armstrong’s campaign to undo just about every part the old regime at AOL: The company has sold Buy.at, an affiliate marketing company it bought two years ago. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear what happens to ICQ, among other assets.
Sellaband, the Dutch company that lets fans “invest” in musician’s albums, is back, after a brief dip into bankruptcy.
Here’s the Flixster/MySpace deal Kara Swisher sussed out on Christmas Eve: News Corp. is handing over its Rotten Tomatoes movie review site, previously owned by its IGN unit, to the movie-centric social network and will get an equity stake in the combined company.
AOL is about to cut ties to Time Warner, and CEO Tim Armstrong has been making his case to current and potential investors. Here’s one last pitch, delivered to the crowd at the annual UBS Media and Communications Conference in New York.
Comcast’s deal to buy half of NBC Universal from GE, first reported in late September, is now official, but it won’t go through until regulators sign off many months from now. So today’s terms may end up looking a bit different when all is said and done.
The tale of Joost, the would-be online video heavyweight, is almost at an end. Most of the company’s remaining assets have been sold off to Adconion Media Group, the two companies announced today.
AOL, which has already told investors it will spend up to $200 million firing a good chunk of its staff, has now told employees. The company is looking for “up to 2,500 volunteers,” CEO Tim Armstrong told his staff today. That’s a third of AOL’s payroll.
Yesterday the New York Times won five Pulitzer Prizes and executive editor Bill Keller took a well-deserved victory lap with a speech that reportedly had his newsroom in tears. But for better or worse, none of that matters to investors, who are trying to figure out what the company’s long-term prospects look like. In the near term, they look terrible.
In the first three months of this year, the company saw ad sales drop 27 percent, and the Internet no longer helps: Web ad sales were down 6.1 percent. The company says to expect more of the same, for a while.
SpiralFrog, the free music service that also doubled as an awesome money-burning machine, has finally given up the ghost. The site, which industry sources said had been shopping itself in recent months, shut down last night, and any remaining assets are being handed over to creditors.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
