Hasta La Gadget!

TV Guide Digital has fared well between its web portal and mobile apps, but part-owner CBS thinks there’s a lot of potential locked away. Enough so, in fact, that CBS is taking over TV Guide Digital by acquiring Lionsgate’s remaining 50 percent stake in the venture. The media giant now has full control of both TVGuide.com and the TV Guide Mobile apps, both of which are folding into CBS Interactive’s Technology, Games and Lifestyle division. CBS mostly hopes that the deal will make it a font of wisdom for channel surfers — it sees TV Guide Digital’s rapidly growing audience and programming knowledge as complements to TV.com. We don’t yet know how the acquisition will affect the TV Guide properties themselves, but we’d expect more than just the status quo.

Filed under: Cellphones, Home Entertainment, Tablets, Internet, HD

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Could it be that the recent Yahoo acquisition of Tumblr rubbed some people the wrong way? Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said that they wouldn’t screw it up, but sometimes you can’t make everyone happy. It turns out that Tumblr’s creative director and one of the company’s first employees, Jacob Bijani, is stepping down from his post.

Bijani doesn’t mention the reason for his leave, but he says that he’s “proud” of the work that Tumblr has done, and it was “a privilege to contribute to something beloved by so many.” He says he’s excited about the future of Tumblr and is looking forward to seeing what’s next for the company and the product, noting that it will most likely “be nothing short of incredible.”

Could it be the first of many big departures for Tumblr? While Tumblr CEO David Karp seems to be all on board with the acquisition, many employees may not feel the same way. I mean, we wouldn’t be surprised if every Tumblr employee was on board with it, but we’re certainly a bit surprised to see that one of the original employees is heading out.

Bijani says that there’s still a lot more that he wants to accomplish, mentioning that he has “about a dozen different projects” on the back burner, so it seems he isn’t quitting his profession, but the timing of the departure is a curious one, and if we had a portion of that cool $1.1 billion, we don’t blame Bijani for taking “some time off to digest the last few years.”

VIA: Valleywag

Tumblr creative director quits after Yahoo acquisition is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

As talk continues surrounding the possible acquisition of the social mapping company known as Waze, it appears today that Facebook is out of the running. According to sources familiar with the matter speaking with All Things D, a potential acquisition of Waze by Facebook is no longer an option as talks have fallen apart. Facebook was tipped to be considering buying Waze for upwards of $1 billion USD.

According to these same sources, talks fell apart at a point at which the Waze team was deciding whether they’d be willing to relocate from their current addresses in Israel all the way to Menlo Park. It’s not every day that a developer decides to move from the Middle East to California, after all.

At the moment, neither Facebook nor Waze have made any official comments on the situation, and it’s unclear whether Waze is in talks with any other companies that would consider acquiring them outright. Earlier this week it was suggested that Apple was another bidder in contention for the purchase of Waze, while Tim Cook publically denied this just last night.

Making it clear that Apple had already acquired 9 companies this year alone, Cook made the case for an industry that continues to be unafraid of acquisitions as a regular occurrence. With Waze continuing to gain steam as its own self-contained map-based social app, chatter around the companies that would benefit from folding its current greatness into their own will continue without a doubt.

Facebook Waze acquisition negotiations end is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

After we recently heard about the possibility of Yahoo buying out Hulu, more information is surfacing revealing that Yahoo is said to be paying somewhere between $600 million and $800 million for the streaming service. This range is based on different options that Yahoo has laid out for Hulu, including the length of licenses and how much control content creators will still have.

Rumors of Yahoo buying Hulu come shortly after the company bought blogging service Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion, as well as purchasing a handful of smaller startups, including online gaming platform PlayerScale. With newly-appointed CEO Marissa Mayer at the helm, Yahoo has practically pulled a complete 180, and the Mayer is looking to turn things around for the dying company.

As more and more companies are getting into the television and movie streaming business, Yahoo has been one of the bigger companies to remain stagnant in that area, but it seems they be doing things the easy way by purchasing Hulu and calling it a day. It’s one of the most popular streaming services on the internet, right up there with Netflix.

Hulu was originally put up for sale back in 2011 for a whopping $2 billion, but after no one was interested in paying that much, Hulu eventually took down the offer and continued on with their day-to-day. However, after failing to purchase YouTube (for which Google won the prize), it seems Yahoo is looking to take another stab at a video streaming service.

According to sources close to the situation, the negotiation for the Yahoo Hulu acquisition mostly deals with the control and price of the content, rather than just negotiating a simple price for the Hulu service itself. The one question many people are probably asking, however, is if Hulu is worth $800 million. Yahoo paid over $1 billion to Tumblr, but should a popular video streaming service receive more cash?

SOURCE: AllThingsD

Yahoo Hulu acquisition rumored for $800m bid is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Waze is a navigational app that offers crowdsourced information on things such as traffic conditions, with the information and map updates coming from users themselves. The app has long been the source of acquisition rumors, with word having surfaced back in January that Apple was looking into buying the company, something that was later denied by sources. This was followed up earlier this month by a new rumor, this time that Facebook is looking into buying the company for $1 billion, and now new sources are saying Google is considering tossing a bid into the mix.

This new information comes from sources who are likewise unnamed, said to be familiar with the matter and having access to the private talks. Says these individuals, Google hasn’t made a decision either way, but is considering making a bid on Waze. The navigational company is looking to get at least $1 billion in an acquisition situation, but is also looking into staying independent and instead going the venture capital route.

According to Bloomberg, two sources have both stated that Facebook has, indeed, been in talks with Waze, considering a purchase of $1 billion. If such is the case, and Google is indeed also interested, the independent company could see itself in the middle of a grand-scale bidding war. That isn’t the case any time soon, however, if the sources are correct. None of the companies in talks with Waze, which are said to be more than just Facebook and Google, are close to forming a deal.

Although there was speculation that Apple was in talks to buy the app, with very little information surfacing about the matter, sources have told Bloomberg that Apple is not “currently part of” the business talks. Whether that means the rumors earlier this year were true and Apple has since then backed out, or that the company was never considering the purchase in the first place, is still unknown.

It is particularly interesting to contemplate a Facebook acquisition of Waze, considering the vast amount of data that Facebook already has on many Internet users across the globe. A Google acquisition could be similarly interesting, although for different reasons, and it isn’t too much a stretch to imagine the Internet giant nabbing the crowdsourced navigation app to keep it out of the hands of competitors.

SOURCE: Bloomberg

Google reportedly considering bid against Facebook to buy Waze is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.