CRUSH Alerts 2.0 - New Fortune 1000 Mergers and Acquisitions Announcements

Mobile analytics firm Motally hires Nielsen exec as CEO

Friday March 19th 2010 10:33:32 AM

John Forese — pronounced for EE see — has taken over as CEO of mobile analytics firm Motally, whose monthly reports VentureBeat usually writes about. Forese was senior vice president of product management for Nielsen, a position he landed after serving as an SVP at mobile analytics firm Telephia, which Nielsen acquired in 2007.

Motally also recently added former Googler Doug Garland, a vice president of product development for the search company, to Motally’s board of directors.

Forese says his prime task is to grow the company’s footprint of clients, and its footprint of the sites, services and apps measured by Motally. Mobile websites aren’t as hot as apps among startup entrepreneurs, but they’re still a growth market. Motally recently launched an API for uploading and downloading large sets of mobile website log files for analysis. That will make them irreplaceable to some of their largest clients.

I talked to Forese by phone earlier this week. At the time, I was agitated because Motally competitor Flurry had published a report on app stats, and then issued a major correction twelve hours later after everyone in Techmeme-land had read the wrong results. How do I know to trust you guys, I asked?

“You’ve got to be very transparent on methodology and you need to be consistent over time,” Forese said. “It’s early days. Even the Internet [i.e. website stats] is still trying to figure out the metrics that matter.”

Motally’s hook is that they handle both mobile websites and mobile app stats, while Flurry (and Pinch Media, with which Flurry recently merged) are focused on apps. “When you think about the mobile Web,” Forese told me, “that’s not just the Web of smartphones. It’s a way to get a very large base of people who for one reason or another have feature phones. You still want to get to them with mobile media.”

The San Francisco-based company was founded in early 2009, and received an undisclosed amount of first round funding from Blue Run Ventures and super-angel Ron Conway.

Companies: Flurry, Motally

People: Doug Garland, John Forese

John Forese — pronounced for EE see — has taken over as CEO of mobile analytics firm Motally, whose monthly reports VentureBeat usually writes about. Forese was senior vice president of product management for Nielsen, a position he landed after serving as an SVP at mobile analytics firm Telephia, which Nielsen acquired in 2007.

Motally also recently added former Googler Doug Garland, a vice president of product development for the search company, to Motally’s board of directors.

Forese says his prime task is to grow the company’s footprint of clients, and its footprint of the sites, services and apps measured by Motally. Mobile websites aren’t as hot as apps among startup entrepreneurs, but they’re still a growth market. Motally recently launched an API for uploading and downloading large sets of mobile website log files for analysis. That will make them irreplaceable to some of their largest clients.

I talked to Forese by phone earlier this week. At the time, I was agitated because Motally competitor Flurry had published a report on app stats, and then issued a major correction twelve hours later after everyone in Techmeme-land had read the wrong results. How do I know to trust you guys, I asked?

“You’ve got to be very transparent on methodology and you need to be consistent over time,” Forese said. “It’s early days. Even the Internet [i.e. website stats] is still trying to figure out the metrics that matter.”

Motally’s hook is that they handle both mobile websites and mobile app stats, while Flurry (and Pinch Media, with which Flurry recently merged) are focused on apps. “When you think about the mobile Web,” Forese told me, “that’s not just the Web of smartphones. It’s a way to get a very large base of people who for one reason or another have feature phones. You still want to get to them with mobile media.”

The San Francisco-based company was founded in early 2009, and received an undisclosed amount of first round funding from Blue Run Ventures and super-angel Ron Conway.

Companies: Flurry, Motally

People: Doug Garland, John Forese

Settlement to benefit Ohio auction-rate securities buyers

Friday March 19th 2010 10:28:11 AM

Investment giants Credit Suisse Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Company Inc. have agreed to buy back more than $230 million in securities from Ohio investors to formalize a settlement resolving allegations that misleading information from the companies left investors unable to access their funds when the market froze in 2008. (MS)

Mayo Research: Intervention Drops Hospital Infection Rate by One-Third

Friday March 19th 2010 10:00:00 AM

ROCHESTER, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) is the one of the leading pathogens causing hospital-acquired infection in the United States.

Questions answered by your location history: Who were you with?

Friday March 19th 2010 09:38:31 AM

The increasingly popular location-based mobile game Foursquare recently announced a new addition to its service. A history function now shows who you were with in addition to where you were at a particular time. You will have a record of all the friends you were with at the Grizzly Bear concert two months ago–and the friends you didn’t invite can see that, too. The function could prove to be more than just a tool for jealous spouses, though.

At first glance the feature doesn’t seem to be much of an addition, since you obviously know who you went out with last Wednesday. The bigger trend is adding context to your past location and Foursquare (with similar other services) is seeking to find new ways to do that.

“We want to let you see how your social graph changes over time. You can look at who you were hanging out with five years ago. You’ll see the people you were spending the most time with and what you used to do with them. You can do all types of contextualizing with this kind of information, and getting the history out there is the first step,” Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley said in a phone interview.

The contextualizing Crowley is discussing can involve prioritizing your contacts. Of all the people who share similar interests with you, who is good for going out for drinks or a game of racquetball? Maybe this information can help Foursquare provide users with fine-tuned recommendations about places to go and people to see. Also, Foursquare plans to enable gazing into the distant past, back to 2003 (a lifetime in Internet years). Before Foursquare, Crowley was trying to break into the location-based service scene with Dodgeball, acquired by Google and then discontinued. However, Dodgeball users can build a full history all the way back to 2003 if they imported their data to the system before it shut down.

Gowalla, another location-based mobile service built on the idea of check-ins (when you go to a venue like a bar, you check yourself in with your mobile phone; the people with most check-ins at a venue get special titles or points), is thinking hard about bringing context to location. At Gowalla’s website, users have been able to read through their history since the service launched in beta a year ago, but the company is revamping the functionality along with the rest of its site. “Gowalla likes to think of the check-in as a ‘bucket’,” says CEO Josh Williams. “You can add various of things to that ‘bucket’ to provide context.”

“This might be the type of place you were at, the date, was it a special event, and so on. Two things we’ve added recently to the bucket are conversations and photos. Now, when you check in, a friend can comment on that check in and start a dialog. This makes it super-easy to say, ‘Stay there, I’ll be over in 20 minutes’, or, ‘Try the BBQ, it’s the best in Austin.’ Photos are great, too, and certainly add depth to the concept of checking in,” Williams wrote in an e-mail, adding that more features are coming to the check-in function soon.

Williams thinks contextualizing location in different ways will make a big difference to users and developers. “In the end, it [adding data to location] will make it fun for users to review the highlight reel of their lives and potentially fun for developers to mash up this information in aggregate, in the form of ‘visualizers,’ or who knows what. Lots of fun to be had here.”

Visualization is on Crowley’s mind, too. Foursquare’s website already provides lots of statistics about users, such as average check-ins when out, percentage of check-ins at new places, distribution of check-ins by day of week, and so on. Foursquare refers to the excellent and meticulously (or downright obsessively) compiled Feltron Annual Reports of Nicholas Felton, and Crowley says this type of information lends itself perfectly to some cool visualizations.

“What’s interesting about the Feltron Reports is that the data Felton has compiled lets you see how he has grown personally, and this is something we would like to enable in some form for other people,” Crowley said.

Crowley also said these features will be a part of Foursquare’s API, or application programming interface. Developers can take that functionality and use it in ways that Foursquare hasn’t invented yet; in other words, they’ll throw it out there and see what third-party developers can turn it into.

Getting a cool graph with bells and whistles about your social life can be interesting to you, but not to you only. The functionality opens the door to an obvious privacy concern: Not everyone wants to let people know who they were with even when they’re willing to share their location. The connections could spark conflicts (jealousy or maybe suspicions of leaking sensitive information come to mind) and raise questions about why these people are, or seem to be, connected. In any case this may be the type of information some people would not be comfortable seeing out in public.

Foursquare says it is wary of the privacy issues and backlash new features might incite (think Google Buzz) and this is why the functionality is restricted, at least for now, to users’ approved Foursquare friends only. Users can also delete history they don’t want to make public, and Dennis Crowley says that tools to hide or even delete friends from users’ history are easy to provide.

So, while the idea of building a personal highlight reel will appeal to many, Foursquare, Gowalla, Burbn (a newcomer that wants to bring rich media to people’s whereabouts) and all the other services based on people’s willingness to share their location will have to tread carefully.

[This story is part of a weekly series on location-based services, written by VentureBeat's JP Manninen. If you have an idea for a story you would like to see in this series, drop a line at jp@venturebeat.com]

Tags: Foursquare, Gowalla, location

The increasingly popular location-based mobile game Foursquare recently announced a new addition to its service. A history function now shows who you were with in addition to where you were at a particular time. You will have a record of all the friends you were with at the Grizzly Bear concert two months ago–and the friends you didn’t invite can see that, too. The function could prove to be more than just a tool for jealous spouses, though.

At first glance the feature doesn’t seem to be much of an addition, since you obviously know who you went out with last Wednesday. The bigger trend is adding context to your past location and Foursquare (with similar other services) is seeking to find new ways to do that.

“We want to let you see how your social graph changes over time. You can look at who you were hanging out with five years ago. You’ll see the people you were spending the most time with and what you used to do with them. You can do all types of contextualizing with this kind of information, and getting the history out there is the first step,” Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley said in a phone interview.

The contextualizing Crowley is discussing can involve prioritizing your contacts. Of all the people who share similar interests with you, who is good for going out for drinks or a game of racquetball? Maybe this information can help Foursquare provide users with fine-tuned recommendations about places to go and people to see. Also, Foursquare plans to enable gazing into the distant past, back to 2003 (a lifetime in Internet years). Before Foursquare, Crowley was trying to break into the location-based service scene with Dodgeball, acquired by Google and then discontinued. However, Dodgeball users can build a full history all the way back to 2003 if they imported their data to the system before it shut down.

Gowalla, another location-based mobile service built on the idea of check-ins (when you go to a venue like a bar, you check yourself in with your mobile phone; the people with most check-ins at a venue get special titles or points), is thinking hard about bringing context to location. At Gowalla’s website, users have been able to read through their history since the service launched in beta a year ago, but the company is revamping the functionality along with the rest of its site. “Gowalla likes to think of the check-in as a ‘bucket’,” says CEO Josh Williams. “You can add various of things to that ‘bucket’ to provide context.”

“This might be the type of place you were at, the date, was it a special event, and so on. Two things we’ve added recently to the bucket are conversations and photos. Now, when you check in, a friend can comment on that check in and start a dialog. This makes it super-easy to say, ‘Stay there, I’ll be over in 20 minutes’, or, ‘Try the BBQ, it’s the best in Austin.’ Photos are great, too, and certainly add depth to the concept of checking in,” Williams wrote in an e-mail, adding that more features are coming to the check-in function soon.

Williams thinks contextualizing location in different ways will make a big difference to users and developers. “In the end, it [adding data to location] will make it fun for users to review the highlight reel of their lives and potentially fun for developers to mash up this information in aggregate, in the form of ‘visualizers,’ or who knows what. Lots of fun to be had here.”

Visualization is on Crowley’s mind, too. Foursquare’s website already provides lots of statistics about users, such as average check-ins when out, percentage of check-ins at new places, distribution of check-ins by day of week, and so on. Foursquare refers to the excellent and meticulously (or downright obsessively) compiled Feltron Annual Reports of Nicholas Felton, and Crowley says this type of information lends itself perfectly to some cool visualizations.

“What’s interesting about the Feltron Reports is that the data Felton has compiled lets you see how he has grown personally, and this is something we would like to enable in some form for other people,” Crowley said.

Crowley also said these features will be a part of Foursquare’s API, or application programming interface. Developers can take that functionality and use it in ways that Foursquare hasn’t invented yet; in other words, they’ll throw it out there and see what third-party developers can turn it into.

Getting a cool graph with bells and whistles about your social life can be interesting to you, but not to you only. The functionality opens the door to an obvious privacy concern: Not everyone wants to let people know who they were with even when they’re willing to share their location. The connections could spark conflicts (jealousy or maybe suspicions of leaking sensitive information come to mind) and raise questions about why these people are, or seem to be, connected. In any case this may be the type of information some people would not be comfortable seeing out in public.

Foursquare says it is wary of the privacy issues and backlash new features might incite (think Google Buzz) and this is why the functionality is restricted, at least for now, to users’ approved Foursquare friends only. Users can also delete history they don’t want to make public, and Dennis Crowley says that tools to hide or even delete friends from users’ history are easy to provide.

So, while the idea of building a personal highlight reel will appeal to many, Foursquare, Gowalla, Burbn (a newcomer that wants to bring rich media to people’s whereabouts) and all the other services based on people’s willingness to share their location will have to tread carefully.

[This story is part of a weekly series on location-based services, written by VentureBeat's JP Manninen. If you have an idea for a story you would like to see in this series, drop a line at jp@venturebeat.com]

Tags: Foursquare, Gowalla, location

SpaceCom International Announces Acquisition of IS-902 Capacity from Intelsat

Friday March 19th 2010 09:32:02 AM

SpaceCom International Announces Acquisition of IS-902 Capacity from Intelsat

SpiriTel Buys Scottish IP Telephony Firm

Friday March 19th 2010 09:26:38 AM

SpiriTel plc, the business communications service provider, has acquired the entire issued share capital of Nessco Limited, for an initial cash consideration of ?1.2 million. The acquisition is SpiriTel's eleventh since 2006.

XnE Enters Technology Industry by Acquiring MSP on Demand

Friday March 19th 2010 09:25:07 AM

XnE, Inc. has entered the technology industry by acquiring MSP on Demand, LLC.

Calvert Social Index Quarterly Adjustments

Friday March 19th 2010 09:10:00 AM

BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Calvert Social Index Committee (“Index Committee”) met on March 4th to review and approve changes to the Calvert Social Index®. The Index Committee meets quarterly to review the component companies of the Index for corporate actions (i.e., spin-offs, mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy) and for the recommendations made by the Calvert Sustainability Research Department that may affect their eligibility for the Index. The Index Committee has re

UPDATE 1-Russia approves Oracle, Sun merger with conditions

Friday March 19th 2010 08:59:05 AM

MOSCOW, March 19 (Reuters) - Russia's anti-monopoly regulator (FAS) said on Friday it had approved a $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle on condition that Oracle continues to develop Sun's MySQL database.

FreeAppADay.com Lands Award-Winning and Top Rated TowerMadness iPhone App, Also Acquires iPad Website

Friday March 19th 2010 08:57:00 AM

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Leading iPhone Application Discovery Portal www.FreeAppADay.com, following a successful GDC week, which saw 5 FreeAppAday.com-promoted apps simultaneously land in the overall App Store top 10, is offering today and today only multiple Awards Winner and top rated app TowerMadness for free. "The success of our campaigns is well beyond my expectations," says Joe Bayen, CEO at ICS Mobile. "FreeAppAday.com is currently the single most efficient promotional platf

Armtec's full-year earnings up to $43.5M from $33.M as revenue rises

Friday March 19th 2010 08:46:00 AM

The Canadian Press - GUELPH, Ont. - Armtec Infrastructure Income Fund says it will continue to focus on cutting costs after posting higher full-year revenue helped by its recent acquisitions.

Icahn Now Wants "All" of Lions Gate (LGF)

Friday March 19th 2010 08:32:40 AM

Visit StreetInsider.com at http://www.streetinsider.com/Mergers+and+Acquisitions/Icahn+Now+Wants+%22All%22+of+Lions+Gate+%28LGF%29/5453890.html for the full story.

Worldwide Food Services, Inc. (WFSV) Signs Letter of Intent

Friday March 19th 2010 08:30:00 AM

BORDENTOWN, NJ--(Marketwire - March 19, 2010) - WORLDWIDE FOOD SERVICES, INC. (PINKSHEETS: WFSV) announced today the Company has signed a letter of intent to acquire Global Holdings, Inc. Details will be made available upon completion of the acquisition.

Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. CEO Announces Acquisition of Herlong Airport Maintenance Company

Friday March 19th 2010 08:28:00 AM

JACKSONVILLE, FL--(Marketwire - March 19, 2010) -  Quasar Aerospace Industries, Inc. (PINKSHEETS: QASP) --

Cerner to replace BJ Services in S&P 500

Friday March 19th 2010 08:16:41 AM

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's said late Thursday that Cerner Corp. will replace BJ Services Co. in the S&P 500 index . The change will take effect after Baker Hughes Inc.'s acquisition of BJ Services, which is expected to be completed soon. (Corrects that Baker Hughes is acquiring BJ Services, not Cerner)

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

Treasury appoints Cushman to sell Battersea Power Station stake

Friday March 19th 2010 08:04:00 AM

Treasury Holdings has hired Cushman & Wakefield to sell a minority stake in London?s Battersea Power Station development to help finance the £5.5bn project. Cushman is the firm that advised the US Embassy on its proposed move to a...

[$$] China Mobile Mulls M&A in Asia, Africa (at The Wall Street Journal)

Friday March 19th 2010 08:03:20 AM

China Mobile Mulls Deals China Mobile, the world s biggest mobile operator by subscribers, is looking at acquisition and investment targets in Asia and Africa as profit growth slows at home, its chairman said.

Russia approves Oracle, Sun merger with conditions (at Reuters)

Friday March 19th 2010 08:03:20 AM

Russia s Anti-monopoly regulator said on Friday it has approved a $7 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems by Oracle on condition that Oracle continues to develop Sun s MySQL database.

PNC Bank investigating debit card security breach

Friday March 19th 2010 08:00:15 AM

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. is investigating a possible security breach involving some debit cards issued by the former National City Corp., which it acquired in December 2008. (PNC)

Laiterie des Trois Vallees Receives $280,000 From Government of Canada to Acquire Specialized Equipment

Friday March 19th 2010 08:00:00 AM