I like shoes, I will buy a new pair of Nike trainers and I’ll probably get a new computer, but at the moment I just want to save and bank it. I don’t have many living expenses.Summly founder Nick D’Aloisio • Discussing his plans for what to do with the money he’ll receive from Yahoo’s $30 million buyout of the company. By the way, he’s 17. Some are already calling the deal sort of crazy.
Warren Buffett’s a ketchup fan. His company, Berkshire Hathaway, is joining with 3G Capital to buy Heinz. It’s a $28 billion deal — one that’s bound to buy a lot of condiments. Yum.
Facebook’s proposed purchase of Instagramhas been cleared by the FTC, paving the way for the deal to close nearly five months after the initial announcement. This news comes a little over a week after the UK’s Office of Fair Trading gave similar approval to the deal. The FTC passed the deal unanimously in a five-to-zero vote, saying that “the deal may now proceed as proposed.” As Facebook has gone public since the purchase was first announced, the value of the deal is actually a good bit lower than the original estimated purchase price of $1 billion — the deal is for $300 million in cash, plus 22,999,412 shares of Facebook common stock. As of today, the whole deal is valued at $747.1 million.
Looks like the folks over at Instagram didn’t need that $200 million back-up plan after all. That being said, we still don’t blame them for being extra cautious when the stakes are that high.
The Wall Street Journal reports the price tag being in the vicinity of $500,000, but TechCrunch is already disputing that figure. That’s pretty low considering that a Business Week report infamously valued the company over $200 million six years ago. According to the report, Betaworks will fold Digg into News.me but will not retain any members of the Digg staff who still remain after the mass exodus to The Washington Post Company’s Social Code in May. (big hat tip to MartinezReport for the tip) source
» That’s quite a deal for Kevin Systrom and company, considering the government will likely be monitoring a deal of this magnitude. According to an updated S-1 filing, Facebook has already paid $300 million to Instagram and agreed to pay a $200 million “termination fee” if any government agency blocks the planned buy-out. While it’s certainly not the same as a billion dollars, we imagine that the Instagram staff can sleep soundly knowing that they’ll all be millionaires no matter what. But, with that said, we’d be willing to bet that Facebook’s board of directors would have liked to have known about this little detail.
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» Saddled with debt: The bidding group, led by former NBA star-turned-entrepreneur Magic Johnson, is about to set a record for the most expensive team purchase in history, topping a $1.1 billion 2008 buyout of the Miami Dolphins and a $1.47 billion buyout of Manchester United in 2005. (Well, a federal bankruptcy court still needs to approve the sale.) The team, currently owned by Frank McCourt, declared bankruptcy in June of last year after admitting the team has $600 million in outstanding debt. McCourt had to sell the franchise partly because of an expensive divorce, and was told by a court in December that he could not sell the team’s media rights, leading to his sale of the team. But he’s still making out like a bandit — even considering that he has to cover the debt on the team’s sale, he spent just $330 million to buy the team eight years ago, along with another $100 million to build the team’s current stadium.
Zynga plans to buy OMGPOP, creators of the mega-popular ‘Draw Something’ iOS game. The move is unsurprising to many industry analysts, several of whom began predicting either a buyout or a clone of the new title, after ‘Draw Something’ ousted Zynga’s ‘Words with Friends’ as the top Facebook Connect game worldwide. With over 20 million new users on board, the newest mobile craze dispatched of the competition with ease. Now, Zynga is expected to pony up approximately $200 million to acquire the studio. (Photo by Asiatic League) source
CNN rumored to be acquiring Mashable: Could two media organizations be more made for one another? Possibly not, says the man in the teal shirt — and the buyout could reach $200 million, which is smaller (but nearing the scale) of last year’s AOL/HuffPo merger. Brian Stelter did a piece on this story, too, which CNN is currently denying.
Over the last 90 days, the Digg...
#FMMDI (at 30 Rockefeller Plaza)
Thanks. I guess my thoughts are as follows:
1. I think...
Two Months Ago I set out to interview the principal cast...
This guy’s name is Gen. Keith...
“I love the one non-NSA story that made it on the...
What if a little site you love doesn’t have a business model? Yell at the developers! Explain that you are tired of good projects folding and are willing to pay cash American dollar to prevent that from happening. It doesn’t take prohibitive per-user revenue to put a project in the black. It just requires a number greater than zero.Pinboard founder Maciej Ceglowski • Offering a rarely-heard take on the free-Web-app movement — that startups without business models are only hurting end-users, an argument that’s fresh in the minds of some after Gowalla’s staff got acquired by Facebook, but not its product. (This is a pain we know all too well, thanks to the pending death-by-acquisition of Apture and our scramble to replace it.) And in case you’re wondering, Ceglowski follows his own advice — he charges a one-time $9.55 fee to join his Delicious competitor. We’re with him (though we’re not opposed to the freemium idea that sites like Reddit use). We’ll gladly pay a $10 one-time fee to use a product if it means the product’s still going to exist in three years. source (via • follow)
» We don’t know how to feel about this: While we appreciate the fact that Google might make “The Daily Show” happen on YouTube with a buyout like this (though Viacom has pulled their shows from Hulu in the past), if it actually happens, it runs directly into a wall of regulatory scrutiny — as Google’s been feeling the heat lately. While YouTube and Hulu aren’t the only games in town (hi Netflix and Vimeo), together they’re big enough that it would deserve some regulatory scrutiny if it actually happens.
» A competitive deal? Dish Network, known mostly for its satellite dishes and for being the satellite company that isn’t DirecTV, will earn a competitive advantage by branching out with Blockbuster, which has a large infrastructure, if not money to pay for said infrastructure. For example, Dish Network could also offer Blockbuster’s Netflix-like DVD service on top of their already-robust satellite service. It’s synergy, folks! Another way to look at this: Blockbuster shares were delisted after trading for less than $1 for nearly a year. Netflix shares are trading around $250.
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