Talk about big in Japan! Zynga , the maker of FarmVille and other popular social games, is nearing an announcement of its alliance with Japan’s SoftBank , which plans to invest around $147 million into Zynga and its Japanese subsidiary. The deal could be announced as early as this week. SoftBank’s quarterly earnings call is Thursday, with an analyst meeting following on Friday.
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FarmVille maker Zynga could unveil SoftBank deal in Japan this week
Jeremy Lewis, chief executive of Big Fish Games , is turning out to be quite the ladies’ man. Lewis’ company continues to target its casual games at women as it announces today a partnership with Woman’s Day magazine. The Seattle casual game company has also locked in game-related partnerships with Harlequin Romance and People.com . Under the deal, Big Fish Games will provide games for WomansDay.com web site visitors. Announced at the Casual Connect game conference in Seattle, the deal gives Big Fish Games access to the audience of Woman’s Day, the fourth-largest magazine in America. The readers of Woman’s Day will have access to Big Fish Games’ catalog of more than 2,500 games. Those titles include casual brands such as Mystery Case Files, Drawn, and Hidden Expedition. More than 2 million games are downloaded each day on Big Fish Games’ web site, and it announced yesterday that more than 1 billion titles have been downloaded since Big Fish Games was started in 2002.
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Big Fish Games partners with Woman’s Day magazine
LivingSocial , one of the two most prominent social buying startups in the U.S., has decided to expand to the U.K. through organic growth. The company’s opening a London-based version of the site and plans to open to a number of other big British cities over the next year. Unlike Chicago-based rival Groupon , which landed in Europe through a recent acquisition of German clone MyCityDeal , LivingSocial is going on its own. Social buying sites have been growing at a rapid clip , with at least 90 variants in the U.S., according to Yipit, a deal aggregator that tracks dozens of these startups. The model is relatively simple
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Group buying startup LivingSocial heads abroad, opens in London
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(Editor’s note: Scott Edward Walker is the founder and CEO of Walker Corporate Law Group, PLLC, a law firm specializing in the representation of entrepreneurs. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.) A reader asks : We’re a bootstrapped startup in the Valley, and we’re getting some serious traction. Now we’re seeing interest from potential investors and we’re also trying to negotiate a couple of partnering agreements. Unfortunately, nobody on our team has any experience negotiating deals. Got any tips? Answer: As you’ve already likely discovered, you’ve got a pretty big hole in your management team – one that’s worth filling fast. Negotiating is never an easy process. That said, there are a few things to keep in mind when you start putting the deal together. Check your emotions and remain disciplined. Be careful about becoming emotionally wedded to a particular deal
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Five negotiating tips for startups
Continuing an acquisition spree, Symantec said today it agreed to buy the authentication business of VeriSign for $1.28 billion in cash. The deal includes the secure socket layer, certificate services, public key infrastructure, VeriSign Trust Services, and VeriSign Identity Protection Service . All of those technologies are aimed at making sure people are who they say they are online. Since malware and identity theft have largely robbed the internet of trust, the goal of this deal is to help restore the faith people have in fully participating in online services.
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Symantec buys authentication assets of VeriSign for $1.28B
German business software company SAP just announced that it’s acquiring database company Sybase . SAP will pay $65 cash per share of Sybase stock, giving the deal a total enterprise value of $5.8 billion. The deal is likely part of SAP’s efforts to compete with enterprise hardware and software giant Oracle . The press release also emphasizes the acquisition’s importance to SAP’s mobile products. “With this transaction, SAP will dramatically expand its addressable market by making available its market-leading solutions to hundreds of millions of mobile users, combining the world’s best business software with the world’s most powerful mobile infrastructure platform,” said SAP co-chief executive Bill McDermott in a written statement. Sybase will operate as a standalone unit under its own name, SAP said
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SAP buying database company Sybase for $5.8 billion
Wireless networking company Aruba Networks just announced that it’s acquiring a Chinese startup with the similar-sounding name Azalea Networks . Aruba said the deal not only expands its reach in China, but also brings Aruba into some less obvious areas for WiFi. Azalea makes “mesh” networks for outdoor industrial locations. By allowing data packets to jump from radio to radio, mesh networks can bring fast, high-quality connections to areas like oil fields, ports, malls, refineries, and more. One recent success story involved deploying an Azalea network in downtown Beijing during the 2008 Olympics, where it delivered surveillance footage to security teams. “Think of anywhere where rock solid video surveillance traffic is a requirement,” said Peter Cellarius, Aruba’s vice president of Global Partner Development and Operations
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Aruba Networks goes outdoors with Azalea acquisition
As Facebook has moved away from letting app developers spam users in their apps, RockYou has had to adjust its business away from purely viral apps such as hugs or gifts. And one of its great new schemes to keep Facebook users engaged in its apps is the Deal of the Day. This promotion is a special offer embedded inside a social game that lets users engage with a brand advertisement in exchange for moving forward in the game. Users can opt to watch a video of an upcoming movie trailer or maybe play a game that earns them a coupon. Redwood City, Calif.-based RockYou has tested the Deal of the Day as a new way to make money from social games, which often rely on virtual goods business models
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RockYou’s Deal of the Day is new way to monetize social games with ads
Section: Video , Content Viewers of the Colbert Report and Daily Show won’t be able to watch either program on Hulu much longer. According to a post on the official Hulu.com blog, Comedy Central has decided not to renew its deal for providing on-demand options for the popular video service.
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Hulu losing Colbert Report and Daily Show content; could more shows follow?
BrightSource Energy, one of the companies making solar thermal energy look better and better, has just landed a $1.37 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy , to build three utility-scale plants pumping out 400 megawatts — enough to light up as many as 140,000 homes in California.
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Energy Dept. gives BrightSource, solar thermal a $1.4B boost