Nikki Finke, the Hollywood power blogger who recently began working for Jay Penske’s Mail.com Media Corp., has a new Web site. And soon, she will have a new employee–a “well-known figure from established media.” But who is it?
You can now formally call off eBay’s efforts to spin off Skype–not that many people took them seriously to begin with. The company has sold off 65 percent of its internet telephony business to a consortium of private investors for $1.9 billion. The deal puts Skype’s overall value at $2.75 billion, a bit more than the $2.6 billion eBay paid for the company in 2005.
Here’s the beginning of the inevitable online video shakeout: Joost, the once-hyped video service that was supposed to rival Google’s YouTube, is restructuring to focus on “white label” services, i.e., a back end for other video players.
The site is laying off the majority of its 100-plus employees, and CEO Mike Volpi is out, replaced by Matt Zelesko, who had been SVP of engineering.
The founders of Last.fm, the London-based Web music start-up CBS snapped up for $280 million two years ago, are leaving the company. No word yet on whom CBS will appoint to replace the founding trio of Felix Miller, Richard Jones and Martin Stiksel, or what any of the men intend to do next.
Miller announced the deal in a short blog post today. More shortly….
Facebook is indeed taking money from Russian investors Digital Sky Technologies. As previously reported, the social network is selling $200 million of preferred stock at a $10 billion valuation; DST will also buy up to $100 million of common stock at a lower valuation later this year.
Here’s yet another fan of the Kindle, Amazon’s much-hyped e-book reader: News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, who likes the device enough that he’s considering investing in a Kindle rival.
CBS paid $1.8 billion for CNET last summer, and today it is dealing with the consequences: A re-org and layoffs. CBS execs won’t release a total for the number of people fired, so news will be coming out in piecemeal fashion for some time. In the meantime, here’s CBS Interactive’s new corporate structure, detailed in an internal memo distributed late today.
Time Inc. is cutting something like 600 employees, but for the past few weeks it has been doing so in small steps: 10 here, 30 there. That will change today when up to 250 people at Time Warner’s magazine unit are expected to get pink-slipped. Leaving the company along with them, executives from Cooking Light and Southern Progress.
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 »
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