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Value Of Tech M&A Deals Up 22 Percent In Q3 2011 To $56.4 Billion

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:53:18 +0000

M&A activity in the technology sector continues to grow in terms of value. According to an Ernst & Young report released today, big acquisitions drove the aggregate value of global technology M&A to $56.5 billion in the third quarter of 2011, up 22 percent from a year ago, and up 8 percent from last quarter. The report says that aggregate deal value (of deals with disclosed value) was the highest total value for any calendar quarter since 2007, before the global downturn. In particular, deals involving smart mobility and business analytics came on strong in the quarter, driving two deals each with values above $10 billion, the first time two deals of that size occurred in the same quarter since the first quarter of 2010. The top deals for the quarter included Google’s $12.5 billion Motorola acquisition, HP’s $10.2 billion acquisition of Autonomy, Broadcom’s $3.5 billon buy of NetLogic, Innovation Network’s $2.6 billion purchase of mobile display units from Sony, Hitachi and Toshiba; the $2.3 billion takeover of GoDaddy, Providence Equity’s $1.6 billion acquisition of BlackBoard, EA’s $1.3 billion purchase of PopCap and NCR’s $1.1 billion buy of Radiant Systems. One particular focus of technology M&A in 3Q11 was “big data.” There were roughly two dozen deals in this business intelligence/analytics category in the third quarter, including one of the deals above $10 billion. Transactions were also driven by cloud computing, information security, social networking, online and mobile games, health care IT and internet and mobile video. Many deals combined two or more of these trends. Ernst & Young says that growth in the aggregate value of private equity transactions drove the overall sequential increase in value. PE aggregate value increased 82 percent sequentially to $14.6b in quarter and increased 86 percent year over year. PE firms contributed 6 of the 11 third quarter deals valued above $1 billion. Big-ticket deals dominated in quarter with the top 11 deals totaling $40.1 billion in value, or 71% of all disclosed in the quarter. This was only the second quarter since 2008 where the top 11 deals all had values of over $1 billion. Average values per deal also climbed, and were up 14 percent over the previous quarter and 26 percent year over year to $221 million, the highest level in 11 years. The aggregate value of the top 11 deals represented over 70 percent of the total deal volume for the quarter. In terms of volume, the number of M&A deals dropped 2 percent for the second consecutive quarter, to 759 deals in third quarter. Cross-border deals declined 11 percent each in volume and value in 3Q11, compared with the second quarter 2011. Outlook clouded by global trends So will the values continue to grow in technology M&A deals. Ernst & Young cautions that market and economic volatility could cause a dip in value and amount of deals. But the disruptive technologies that continue to be developed (and are in demand) could mitigate this.

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Value Of Tech M&A Deals Up 22 Percent In Q3 2011 To $56.4 Billion

Twitter Names Mass Relevance, Crimson Hexagon As Curation Partners

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 02:01:46 +0000

Twitter today announced formal partnerships with Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon to allow the two companies to re-syndicate tweets for use on websites, television shows, jumbotrons and more. Mass Relevance helps clients curate the Twitter firehose so they can display the highest quality tweets about a given subject. Crimson Hexagon performs sentiment analysis on the firehose to let clients determine the opinions of the Twitter user base. The two partners will act as intermediaries between the micro-blogging platform and companies that want to display its content elsewhere. This will allow Twitter to grow tweet syndication as a revenue stream without having to build sales, design, and support teams. Twitter’s firehose includes 230 million tweets a day and over 1.5 billion a week. While social media monitoring tools can help brands find the mentions of them or a certain topic, it’s still difficult to filter out noise, spam, and low quality tweets and then pull out the best tweets or analyze their meaning. Mass Relevance and Crimson Hexagon take care of all of this for their clients, in addition to sounding like Bond villain secret weapons. For example, Mass Relevance helped E! Online find the best tweets about the 2011 Oscars from the audience, nominees, and critics and then display them on a microsite. Crimson Hexagon powered CNN’s analysis of Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address, allowing the television network to project graphs onto screens in the studio indicating the percentage of tweets that supported Obama’s address, thought it was too liberal, or had mixed reactions. It also helped us figure out why we hated NBC’s Winter Olympics coverage . The two companies were already platform partners, but the new agreements will allow them to re-syndicate tweets in exchange for a fee without fear of suspension. In the blog post announcing the deals, Twitter’s developer relations manager Jason Costa wrote, “Expect to see additional partnerships of this kind as we look for new ways to help everyone get the best out of Twitter.” These types of deals will allow Twitter to stay lean while simultaneously building out revenue streams that don’t piss off users like the short-lived “#Dickbar” that obscured the Twitter feed with ads . Crunchbase MASS RELEVANCE CRIMSON HEXAGON TWITTER Company: Mass Relevance Website: massrelevance.com Funding: $1.7M The Austin-based company with a SaaS enterprise platform for real-time social content curation and broadcasting serving networks (such as MTV, NBC, ABC), publishers, sports teams, and brands. Learn more Company: Crimson Hexagon Website: crimsonhexagon.com Funding: $5M Crimson Hexagon’s technology enables companies to derive actionable, quantifiable, data-driven insights from user-generated content. Learn more Company: Twitter Website: twitter.com Funding: $1.16B Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for… Learn more

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Twitter Names Mass Relevance, Crimson Hexagon As Curation Partners

How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook’s Brand Pages

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:05:09 +0000

Google today launched the first iteration of its brand Pages product for Google+. The company has some big choices to make about how it will flesh out this skeleton to challenge the Pages product Facebook has had years to work on. Still, comparing the two visions of brand presences now can give us a sense of what might be next on the product roadmap for Google+ Pages, and the opportunities Google has to exploit weaknesses stemming from Facebook’s need to promote its application platform and draw advertising dollars. Two core ways Google+ could make its Pages better than Facebook’s would be letting brands target updates to demographic subsets of their followers, and providing official app templates that let brands easily assemble their own custom apps rather than going through third-party developers. Page Set Up Over the next few days Google plans to give all users the ability to create Pages. The rollout is a bit of a mess now, though, as every existing Page features a “Create a Google+ Page” link that abruptly roadblocks some users with a notice that they can’t actually do that yet. Similar to Facebook, Google currently offers a few overarching types of Pages that break down into many sub-categories, according to Search Engine Land . Both include a special format for local businesses that allows them to list information like an address and phone number. Facebook provides very little instruction about how to choose the right category and how that choice will impact functionality. A better in-line Page creation tutorial could keep brands on Google+ from worrying they’ve screwed up their crucial first steps. Google+ Pages lack custom vanity URLs, though you can assume that’s coming. Multiple admin support is reportedly on its way. The option to assign different roles and privileges for admins such as the ability to publish updates or remove other admins could make Google+ Pages more secure and easier for teams to manage. Following and Publishing As Jason Kincaid points out in his article on the launch of Pages (linked above), Google confusingly lets users both add a Page to their circles, or +1 it. The former means a user will start seeing the Page’s updates in its main stream and the stream of any circle they add the Page to, while the latter lets users share a link to the Page. Google will need to make following a Page an obvious and straightforward experience if it wants Pages to gain enough followers for brands to invest resource in publishing through them. A great feature of Google+ Pages is Direct Connect, which lets users add a Page to their circles by searching +[brand name] on Google. This takes significantly less work than having to visit a Facebook Page in order to Like it. Direct Connect also builds on Google’s dominance in search — something it should exploit in other areas such as email and maps to differentiate its social network. Another big potential advantage of Google+ Pages is that they can create their own circles which can then be selected as the audience of a post. Currently Google creates “VIPs”, “Customers”, and “Team members” circles that admins can populate. If Google provides an efficient and accurate way to sort followers into circles by age, location, and other characteristics, Pages could publish different updates to different demographic subsets of their audience to maximize the relevancy of those updates. For example, if retailer Macy’s could publish updates to a circle of all their followers under the age of 30, it could serve its younger audience updates about more youthful products without annoying its older followers. Similarly, rather than creating separate Google+ Pages for their presences in different cities, brands could publish city-targeted updates about local promotions. Facebook currently only allows Pages to target posts by country and language, preventing age or more granular location targeting. Google+ users can comment on the posts of Pages but can’t post directly to the wall of a Page. They can mention a Page in one of their own updates by typing a ‘+’ directly before its name, but this won’t appear on the Page the way Facebook mentions do. The ability to post questions and feedback to their walls and have discussions with admins and other fans is leading Facebook Pages to become a new customer service channel that brands can’t afford to ignore. Google+ should think carefully about how much of a two-way communication medium it wants Pages to be. As of right now, there appears to be no sign of analytics for Google+ Page admins. Being able measure engagement with posts and Page growth is critical to brands justifying allocation of resources to Google+, so it will need its own version of Facebook Page Insights at some point. This decision to keep Page performance opaque for now could be to keep brands from writing off the new social network before Google thinks it has attained a sufficient number of users. Hosted Applications In addition to news feed posts, a key driver of engagement and new fans for Facebook Pages is the ability to host applications. Pages use these apps to create landing pages that encourage Likes, sign-up forms for email and mobile marketing, contests and sweepstakes, games, and ecommerce storefronts. However, to create these apps, Page admins have to find solutions from third-party developers, and in some cases have to license Page management platforms to offer the apps they want. Google has a chance to make Page applications more accessible to all businesses by creating official templates that can be customized with the images, copy, and functionality desired by brands. Rather than forcing admins to choose between apps built by unknown third-parties, it could give them free templates they can trust to work. This would also allow Google+ to offer Page apps without first having to create a robust set of APIs to support them. Facebook has forged a functional model for brand presences on social networks. Unfortunately, its focus on app developers and its desire to get brands advertising in order to target specific demographics has left Google some big opportunities to create a friendlier platform for brands. By adding app templates and granular Page update targeting it could convince brands that Google+ could be a powerful, free, and easy-to-adopt component of their digital marketing strategy. Crunchbase GOOGLE FACEBOOK Company: Google Website: google.com Launch Date: July 9, 1998 IPO: NASDAQ:GOOG Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps and YouTube. Most of its Web-based products are free, funded by Google’s highly integrated online advertising platforms AdWords and AdSense. Google promotes the idea that advertising should be highly targeted and relevant to users thus providing them with a rich source of information…. Learn more Company: Facebook Website: facebook.com Launch Date: January 2, 2004 Funding: $2.34B Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks. The original idea for the term… Learn more

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How Google+ Could One-Up Facebook’s Brand Pages

Animal Issues Get More Social Love Than Disaster Relief [INFOGRAPHIC]

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:05:09 +0000

Non-profits targeting wide-reaching issues have embraced social media, but they have not all found equal success. This infographic, created by Craigslist founder Craig Newmark’s non-profit craigconnects, examines the impact of Facebook and Twitter activity across seven types of causes — animal, children, cultural, disaster relief, environment, health, veterans/military and women. The research tracked the five largest non-profits by funding in each category and is a follow-up to a previous study on how non-profits use social media . The infographic explores who posts most frequently, who’s being talked about, who’s replying to followers and whose posts have the greatest spread. The most talkative organizations are for animal causes (surprise, the Internet loves animals!) and environmental causes. Veterans/military causes post the least. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is the most talkative non-profit. Disaster relief organizations have the most engaged followings. Women’s causes are among the least talked about, though we’ve seen that women dominate social networking . Take a look through the findings and let us know in the comments what you think. Do you engage with non-profits on Twitter or Facebook? Which causes do you find most engaging? More About: craig newmark , craigconnects , craigslist , infographic , non-profit , Social Good , Social Media For more Social Good coverage: Follow Mashable Social Good on Twitter Become a Fan on Facebook Subscribe to the Social Good channel Download our free apps for Android , Mac , iPhone and iPad

Google Direct Connect Hooks Search and Google+ Pages Together

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:49:22 +0000

Google has rolled out a new feature called Direct Connect, which makes it dead simple for users to find and follow brands on Google+ via Google Search. Whenever a user wants to find a brand on Google+ , all they have to do is type “+” in Google Search, followed by the brand or business they want to follow. So if a user wants to follow Toyota, they would simply type “+Toyota” in the Google Search box. This brings up a direct link to the Toyota Google+ Page that appears directly under the search box. Hitting enter after typing in “+Toyota” will also take a user directly to Toyota’s page. Direct Connect changes the function of the “+” operator in Google Search. In the past, the operator made it so that any word with the plus sign before it was required in all search results (much like what putting quotations around a word or phrase accomplishes). However, Google retired that operator last month, likely in anticipation of the launch of Direct Connect. Direct Connect gives Google+ Brand pages a leg up on Facebook Pages, Twitter profiles and even brand websites. The link appears just under the search box, so it essentially acts like a search result above the search engine page. It’s also the only operator that takes users directly out of Google Search and to another website. Google is testing Direct Connect with its properties and a limited set of partners (+Google, +Toyota, +YouTube, etc.) but says it will roll out the feature to other brands in the near future. 1. Angry Birds The popular game welcomes Google+ followers with an excited “Ca-caww!” Click here to view this gallery. More About: Google , Google+ Pages , trending

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Google Direct Connect Hooks Search and Google+ Pages Together

What Will the Next 40 Years of Technology Bring? [CONTEST]

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 18:43:08 +0000

This post is supported by Intel , Sponsors of Tomorrow™ and the world leader in silicon innovation, in celebration of the world’s first microprocessor: the Intel 4004 . In the past 40 years, technology has drastically changed our daily lives. Back then, the Internet was barely in its infancy. The smallest computer was the size of a refrigerator and was infinitely less powerful than today’s palm-sized smartphones. Nowadays, children in school can learn with peers across the globe in the classroom . Cars don’t need to run on fossil fuels. The deaf can hear . Computers are sleek enough to fit inside a manila envelope. Looking at how far technology evolved in the past 40 years, we want you to tell us: Where do we go from here? In the next 40 years, what do you think technology will be like? The most inspired response will receive an Asus UX31E-DH52 Ultrabook — so be sure to submit a thoughtful and creative answer. We look forward to hearing what you have to say! How to Enter the Contest: Tell us in the comments below what you think is on tap for the next 40 years in technology, and “like” this post on Facebook, OR Tweet your thoughts on the next 40 years in technology with the hashtag #next40yrs . Submit your answer by Monday, Nov. 14 at noon ET. Please use your real identity in the submission so that we may credit you in the follow-up post. Look out for a post with the winning submission on Tuesday, after the contest closes. This contest is limited to U.S. residents 18 and older. Please read our full contest rules here . Image courtesy of iStockphoto , iqoncept More About: Asus , contest , intel

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What Will the Next 40 Years of Technology Bring? [CONTEST]

Twitter Nabs Former Oracle Development Exec As VP Of Infrastructure Engineering

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:19:14 +0000

Twitter has just announced a key engineering hire today. Adam Messinger will be joining the company as Vice President of Infrastructure Engineering. Messinger was previously Vice President Development at Oracle, where he was responsible for managing the Oracle Coherence, Oracle JRockit, Oracle WebLogic Operations Control, and other web tier products. Prior to joining Oracle, he worked as a venture capitalist at Smartforest Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. At Oracle he was responsible, for the development Exalogic, Java SE, FX, ME, and Card, Coherence, Virtual Assembly Builder, Middleware Lifecycle and Applications Lifecycle. Prior to his time as a VC, he founded Gauntlet Systems Corp., which was acquired Borland. It’s a big development hire for Twitter, as the company says Messinger “was doing web engineering before many used the web.” In October, Twitter’s VP of engineering Mike Abbott left the company to join Benchmark as an EIR. Photo Credit/ Jaxenter Crunchbase TWITTER Company: Twitter Website: twitter.com Funding: $1.16B Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post their latest updates. An update is limited by 140 characters and can be posted through three methods: web form, text message, or instant message. The company has been busy adding features to the product like Gmail import and search. They recently launched a new site section called “Explore” for… Learn more

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Twitter Nabs Former Oracle Development Exec As VP Of Infrastructure Engineering

Your Favorite Video Game Theme Songs Done By An Entire Freaking Orchestra

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:04:30 +0000

Dum dum dum dummmmm. Do do do dee dee dooot! The London Philharmonic Orchestra has just released “The Greatest Video Game Music” featuring full orchestrations of all of your favorite themes including Super Mario Brothers, the Legend of Zelda, and Halo. That’s right: Angry Birds finally has its own multi-part score and trilling woodwinds. And the cover art, featuring a soldier playing a cello, is wildly goofy. You can listen to a sample of the Call of Duty theme composed by Hans Zimmer and pick up the album here . With the coupon code “GAMESMP3″ you can get the MP3 version for a mere $1.99, about the price of a tiny Super Mario Brothers eraser at the Nintendo store. Here’s what you get: 1. Advent Rising: Muse (Composed by Tommy Tallarico, Emmanuel Fratianni, and Laurie Robinson) 2. Legend of Zelda: Suite (Composed by Koji Kondo) 3. Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2: Theme (Composed by Hans Zimmer) 4. Angry Birds: Main Theme (Composed by Ari Pulkkinen) 5. Final Fantasy VIII: Liberi Fatali (Composed by Nobuo Uematsu) 6. Super Mario Bros Theme (Composed by Mahito Yokota and Koji Kondo) 7. Uncharted – Drake’s Fortune: Nate’s Theme (Composed by Greg Edmonson) 8. Grand Theft Auto IV: Soviet Connection (Composed by Michael Hunter) 9. World of Warcraft: Seasons of War (Composed by Jason Hayes) 10. Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty Theme (Composed by Harry Gregson-Williams) 11. Tetris: Theme (Composed by Alexey Pajitnov) 12. Battlefield 2: Theme (Composed by Joel Eriksson) 13. Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (Composed by Jeremy Soule) 14. Call of Duty 4 – Modern Warfare: Main Menu Theme (Composed by Stephen Barton and Harry Gregson-Williams) 15. Mass Effect: Suicide Mission (Composed by Jack Wall and Sam Hulick) 16. Splinter Cell: Conviction (Composed by Michael Nielsen, Kaveh Cohen, and Amon Tobin) 17. Final Fantasy: Main Theme (Composed by Nobuo Uematsu) 18. Bioshock: The Ocean on his Shoulders (Composed by Garry Schyman) 19. Halo 3: One Final Effort (Composed by Martin O’Donnell and Michael Salvatori) 20. Fallout 3: Theme (Composed by Inon Zur) 21. Super Mario Bros: Gusty Garden Galaxy (Composed by Koji Kondo) No Castlevania theme? Come on, London Philharmonic Orchestra, aren’t you down with Akumajō Dorakyura?

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Your Favorite Video Game Theme Songs Done By An Entire Freaking Orchestra

Unthink’s “Anti-Facebook” Social Network Reaches 100,000 Users

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:40:44 +0000

Unthink , the social networking platform whose marketing campaign involves a lot of Facebook bashing , has reached 100,000 registered users, the company is now reporting. As you may recall, the site quickly crashed after TechCrunch sent its usual heavy stream of traffic to the network, and it took Unthink over a day to recover. Now the number of visitors to the site is doubling daily, including both active users and casual visitors. According to Rachael Vicari, Unthink COO, the company was unprepared for the amount of traffic it saw. The first two days sent the amount of visitors it expected to see over the first 90 days, she said, and they had to triple the number of servers to keep up. She also cites Alexia’s statistics, which report a 14,800% increase in traffic over the past 7 days alone. Tomorrow will be a week from launch, and since its public debut, 100,000 users have set up their own “Suites” on the network. (For background, Unthink user profiles, which involve a public, private and professional aspect, are called “Suites.”) Growth like this is impressive for an outsider to the typical startup scene (case in point: they didn’t know how much traffic TechCrunch sends!), and especially one that has the chutzpah to take on Facebook itself. Still, one has to wonder how many visitors are driven to the site out of sheer curiosity and disbelief, e.g.: Silly little startup, you think you can beat Facebook? Now that’s something I have to see! Instead of touting week-old numbers, Unthink should check back in a month, a quarter, 6 months, then a year, and see whether or not the current growth trajectory holds up. User engagement is another important (and unanswered) question. Who’s actually participating on Unthink? How many of the 100,000 are friending users, posting updates, uploading content, etc.? Vicari says the reason for the growth is because “the time is right” for a network like this, but it’s far too soon to make that claim. For comparison’s sake, Facebook took a year to reach a million users, and Google+ reached 25 million in around a month’s time – something it took Facebook three years to achieve and which took Twitter over 30 months. Tampa-based Unthink has $2.5 million in funding from DouglasBay, which publicly claims to have a 21% share in the site. For more on what Unthink is up to, check out the previous review .

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Unthink’s “Anti-Facebook” Social Network Reaches 100,000 Users

More Mind-Blowing Real-World Kinect Interaction From Microsoft Research

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:39:32 +0000

Have you had your share of augmented reality this month? Between CMU’s OmniTouch , Microsoft’s HoloDesk , and Metaio’s updated AR app , you could be forgiven. But trust me, you’ll want to watch this video of Microsoft Research prototypes using pico projectors and Kinect cameras. The ability to quickly build and track a 3D model of the environment is combined with the ability to display synthetic information onto the real environment. The result? The digital simulation of the world is overlaid on the world, in real time, and it’s utterly insane. Look, just watch. It’s six minutes you’ll be glad you wasted: The clincher is right there at the end. Virtual particles pouring off the desk and into a real drawer . The pico projector could be a little more wide-angle, but they’re getting there. Perhaps a 3D VR display a la Vuzix (I never thought I’d be recommending one) is the trick. Can you imagine playing a game where your body, hands, and fingers are all accurately tracked, and the line between digital and real items is blurred? It’s one more step towards a holodeck, but right now it’s still just collaborative research between Microsoft Research and Lancaster and Newcastle Universities (created for the Pervasive conference at Newcastle). Like so many things at Microsoft Research and Labs, it would require millions in development to make into a product, but it’s too cool not to share. [via HardOCP ]

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More Mind-Blowing Real-World Kinect Interaction From Microsoft Research