The Next Web

News Corp buys remaining 49% stake of Jamba from Verisign

Written on October 7, 2008 – 9:23 pm
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has taken full ownership of mobile content provider Jamba by buying VeriSign’s 49 percent stake for about $200 million. VeriSign has been trying to divest its slower-growing businesses to focus on its core website-naming and Internet security services.

Jamba was founded in Berlin in 2000 by the Samwer brothers (that’s right, those guys who invested in Facebook) and is still based in the German city next to having established its US headquarters in California. In late 2004, VeriSign bought Jamba for about $270 million. On 12 September 2006, News Corporation announced it paid approximately $188 million for 51% shares in Jamba and would combine it with Fox Mobile Entertainment assets.

The company makes content like wallpapers, ringtones and games for mobile phones. It also offers short episodes — called “mobisodes” — of some Fox TV series, including “24,” “Prison Break” and “Bones,” for phones. The company also sells insurance for mobile phones and home electronics and runs online gaming and online dating services.

(Hat tip to SAI)

I hope you like that post!

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

Jamba, Jamster, News Corp, news corporation, Rupert Murdoch, verisign

No Comments »

Some media companies finally get it and profit from illegal YouTube movies

Written on August 18, 2008 – 12:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

“For the most part, people who are uploading videos are fans of our movies. They’re not trying to be evil pirates, and they’re not trying to get revenue from it.”

There you go! See? It isn’t that hard to say goodbye to that negative “the digital revolution is gonna kill us” attitude. The man who said the above words to The New York Times really gets it: Curt Marvis, the president of digital media at Lionsgate Entertainment. His company doesn’t remove illegal YouTube movies, but prefers to profit from it. YouTube offers them the possibility to profit from the advertisements on the video page and shows a little banner, saying Lionsgate Entertainment owns the movie.

Indirect profit

CBS, Universal Music, Electronic Arts and some other participating companies won’t make millions of dollars from this unconventional advertising program. Since the ads only appear on a fraction of all the YouTube videos and most of them hardly track a hundred views. But it’s not so much about direct profit here, but more about indirect profit.

With the media companies allowing mash-ups of content they own the copyright of, fan subcultures can flourish. Every YouTube user can create his own trailer of his favorite movie or give the storyline a twist. Some become real hits. So while the media companies are making a few pennies from the ads directly, they indirectly boost sales via web hypes.

Not everybody is convinced

Not all of world’s media giants are convinced by YouTube. Time Warner and Murdoch’s News Corporation are willing, since they acknowledge testing the new advertisement model, but still a bit afraid. Disney and NBC Universal prefer to see visitors of illegal movie pages automatically forward to their own videos.

But the worst and most old-fashioned of all is Viacom. They’re still busy lining up the 1 billion dollars copyright infringement case against YouTube. If the company wins, the billion dollars might compensate some of Viacom’s losses on sales. But what about the future? How will they boost sales in five years? They’d better start to get used to the new age and profit from it, just like some of their competitors do.

cbs, disney, electronic arts, lionsgate, nbc universal, news corporation, time warner, Viacom, youtube

2 Comments »