TechCrunch

Bad Karma At contentSutra. Site Sputters After Being Bought By The Guardian.
Erick Schonfeld Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:36:56 -0000
Only three months after the British newspaper publisher The Guardian Group bought Rafat Ali's ContentNext Media and his collection of blogs for a reported $30 million, one of those blogs is sputtering badly. The blog in question is contentSutra, the Indian counterpart to its bigger and better known brother, paidContent (both cover the business of digital media). Until recently, contentSutra was ContentNext's second biggest blog, even beating out mocoNews. But if you look at it now, traffic has dropped off a cliff. Posts are sporadic, and mostly consist of news roundups or the occasional post from the editors at paidContent. ContentNext and the Guardian are currently in talks with media companies in India for possible syndication and cross-promotion deals. Rumors are going around that ContentNext has been in talks with HT Media (publisher of the Hindustan Times), 9.9 Media, and others. We also received a tip that the Guardian is trying to unload contentSutra all together, but Rafat Ali says that is not true. In any event, the site is not doing as well as it once did. The editor who built up contentSutra for two years, Nikhil Pahwa, left at the end of May, and launched his own competing blog, Medianama, a month later on June 27.
French Inspirational Stores inspires VCs for 10m Euros series B funding
Ouriel Ohayon Sun, 05 Oct 2008 17:24:09 -0000
Did someone declare that startups would have a hard time raising money? Not for some of them. Paris Based Inspirational Stores will announce tomorrow a 10 million euros series B lead by Atlas Ventures and OTC asset Management. Inspirational Stores offers famous high-end brands without online retail activity a full turn-key solution to give them a second life on the web starting from web presence to full logistical and customer support service.
Bitwine Acquired By Monster Venture Partners
Michael Arrington Sun, 05 Oct 2008 08:46:56 -0000
Bitwine, a service launched in late 2006 that lets people ask questions to experts for a fee. Originally the service was tethered to Skype; more recently it began letting users connect to experts via Skype, other VoIP service, or normal phone lines. Experts can charge their clients either by the minute or a simple flat fee. Clients pay by PayPal and the money gets sent to experts as soon as the sessions end. The service is also available as a white label product. Monster Venture Partners will announce tomorrow that they have acquired a controlling interest in the startup, and are replacing CEO Elad Baron with a former Expedia Exec, Ronnie Gurion (Baron will remain on as President and CTO). The acquisition price was not disclosed; Bitwine had previously raised $1.5 million in a round of financing from Crossbar Capital.
If Sales Of Halloween Masks Could Predict The Election, Obama Would Be President
Erick Schonfeld Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:25:56 -0000
Everyone has their favorite way to predict who will win the Presidential election. Amazon likes to keep track of Halloween mask sales. Supporters of either candidate can buy rubber masks of each to wear for Halloween. So far, 57 percent of the masks Amazon has sold have been Obama masks, versus 43 percent for McCain masks. The weird thing is that is right around the same number that McCain is getting in the latest tracking polls (Obama is tracking closer to 50 percent support). If you want some real helpful stats and links, check out Google Director of Research Peter Norvig's Presidential Election 2008 FAQ page. He's got links to all the latest polls, election prediction markets, truth scorecards, and studies measuring media bias. Or you can just buy a mask. I'm not sure if they'll let you in the voting booth with that, though.
The Crunchie: It’s Not Just An Award, It’s A Weapon
Erick Schonfeld Sun, 05 Oct 2008 05:18:09 -0000
When we commissioned the statuettes for the Crunchies Awards last year, we hoped to create something a little more memorable than the typical plastic tombstone. We opted for a plastic monkey holding a bone aloft instead. While it does have a certain menacing quality to it, we never expected anyone to turn it into weapon. But now you can find "The Crunchie" in the online game Duels. Our award has been re-stylized as a deadly mace with a power rating of 631 (which is massive, a run-of-the-mill mace has a power rating of 50 or less). There appears to be only one, and it is owned by a player named Loki (aka Andrew Busey, CEO of Challenge Games, the maker of Duel). You don't want to mess with him. He's got a Crunchie.
Congress Finally Gets Why The Google Deal Is So Bad
Michael Arrington Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:27:32 -0000
Congress is finally understanding the reality of the Yahoo-Google search deal, and what it means for the state of search competition in general. It's not about price fixing advertising rates, it's about neutering the second place market participant. As I wrote on September 27, the current deal between Yahoo and Google will inevitably lead to the decline of Yahoo's core search advertising business. They will insert Google ads to push revenue. But as they do so, they'll give advertisers an increasing incentive to just go to Google for their ad management. The disparity between Yahoo and Google's revenue-per-ad models will grow, which will further encourage Yahoo's reliance on Google. The result will be a Google monopoly in search advertising. And instead of competing for that monopoly, they get paid for the privilege:

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