Lijit Networks, which provides advertising and analytics tools to publishers, announced Tuesday its acquisition by Federated Media Publishing for an undisclosed amount. “While the details of the transaction itself weren’t released, this acquisition ranks among the most significant outcomes for the region in the past 10 years,” said Seth Levine, managing director of Foundry Group,…
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With over 48 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, the content is becoming unwieldy. Speaking on a panel at Chicago’s TechWeek on Saturday, YouTube’s head of news and politics Steve Grove explained how YouTube is trying to organize the clutter–including YouTube Trends, which aggregates popular videos. “We think this could become the YouTube…
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Today is the day – popular European music service Spotify is now available in the US. While their mantra is “Any track, any time, anywhere. And it’s free,” they’ve done a nice job of creating demand by requiring you to sign up and wait for an invitation. What, you don’t want to wait for an…
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We have seen this coming for quite sometime. But now MySpace has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million in a sale that will be completed later today according to an early report and confirmed by a MySpace press release (shown below). MySpace was purchased by News Corp in 2005 for $580 million which…
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We are living in the connected era as people, cars, homes and even the refrigerator is getting connected to the Web in some way. So it was only a matter of time until we saw this trend take to the gym. Technogym is a company that has created Visioweb to offer the first treadmill connected…
Read MoreTim O’Reilly, the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, the creators of books, magazines, conferences and events focused on sharing the knowledge of innovators, has been watching the bleeding edge of technology since the beginning of the Internet and open source software. We were able to talk with Tim this past week in Austin, Texas…
Read MoreThere seems to be a high correlation between people in tech and photography. Most of the tech-heads I know love their digital cameras. But for the most part, people still look at their cameras as a part of their family or vacation gear, not as a part of their work toolkit. The proliferation of photo…
Read MoreShawn Riegsecker is the founder of Centro, a company that makes the buying and selling of online media easy and has participated in Tech Cocktail Chicago events in the past. Last year, Shawn’s company pulled in $116 million in revenue. But things were not always that good. Shawn started the company back during the recession…
Read MoreTo say that Lookee TV has an immense content offering in its Wi-Fi connected portable Internet TV and radio player would not be an understatement. You could seriously watch or listen to something different every day for the next TEN years. This pocket-sized (4.3”) device opens the broadcast media floodgates. LookeeTV provides access to over…
Read MoreWith the 2011 Consumer Electronic Show just a few days away, Intel is gearing up for a few launch announcements. I plan to be there to see them live, but it appears the cat is already out of the bag as it was reported today that Intel will be launching a new core processor and…
Read MoreThis could be a troubling day for Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Apple as the eBook race just added another competitor: Google. Last week there was an announcement from Google and today they launched the Google eBookstore. But they didn’t just launch it with a few titles, Google launched with over 3 million titles, many…
Read MoreTumblr offers a great service and it is no surprise it is growing like a weed. It is easy to use and it’s bookmarklet makes microblogging almost as easy as just surfing the Web. Media Companies Try Getting Social With Tumblr One of the big differences between Tumblr and Twitter is that Tumblr does not…
Read MoreIt was only a matter of time and leave it to three women from Harvard University to fill in the media marketplace hole for providing content targeted directly to college women across the U.S. at Her Campus. Launched in September 2009, the trio’s mission also includes redefining the future of online magazines by individualizing content,…
Read MoreFour years ago Frank Gruber and I founded TECH cocktail. We sought to bring the Chicago startup and technology community together in a meaningful way and have been fortunate enough to do that and much, much more. I am very proud of the organization we built and what we’ve accomplished since our first TECH cocktail…
Read MoreI just got back from a celebratory dinner for the acquisition of Social Times to WebMediaBrands (NASDAQ:WEBM) known for its mediabistro.com, learnnetwork, freelanceconnect, and semanticweb and more. Social Times is a D.C-based media company focusing on reporting on the social networking news of the Web. I am extremely happy for Nick O’Neill. Nick was one…
Read MoreThere has been growing attention to the start-up scene in the DC metro area in the past few months. More and more start-ups are launching on a regular basis there are a number of events popping up. One event that is sure to bring even more attention is InterAct 2008. INTERACT will gather together the…
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Two months after the iPad 2 debuted in March, around 40% of users surveyed said their iPad was their primary computer, up from around 30%... Read More
There are a number of startup accelerator and incubator programs in the United States. We are fans of these programs (not to be confused with... Read More
We are excited to announce the participating startups for Tech Cocktail's South by Southwest (SXSW) event: #Startuplife Celebration presented by .CO. It was one of... Read More
With our Startup Mixology Conference coming up next week followed by our classic Tech Cocktail DC Summer mixer which will showcase a handful of early-stage... Read More