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Google is definitely on a buying spree this year. The company's latest acquisition is Episodic , an online video platform that Google will probably integrate into YouTube is some form. Neither Episodic nor Google shared any financial details about this acquisition. Episodic plans to keep its current service up and running for the time being. Sponsor This is Google's second video-related acquisition this year. In February, Google also finalized the acquisition of video compressions specialists On2 which was first announced in August 2009. Last year, a number of rumors about Google buying video provider Brightcove surfaced, but those rumors never turned into reality. What Does Episodic Do? While Episodic is probably not a household name for most, the company offers a wide range of video services, as well as a full set of analytics for its customers. Episodic offers a free trial, it is really a paid video service for both live and on-demand videos. One of the company's current signature clients is Showtime, which uses the Episodic platform to deliver live video from sporting events . Episodic also offers monetization services, including ad management and support for credit card payments. Discuss
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Google Acquires Online Video Platform Episodic
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The semantic web is one of the leading trends we track here at ReadWriteWeb, so it was big news to us earlier this month when Evri announced it was acquiring Twine creators Radar Networks . Following the announcement, Twine CEO Nova Spivack wrote an inspiring and lengthy farewell blog post detailing the acquisition, and the story behind the development and growth of Twine. Towards the end of the post, Spivack outlined some lessons for budding entrepreneurs based on what he learned through his startup experience. Sponsor The number one piece of advice he suggests is to raise as little funding as possible from venture capitalists, and to stick with revenue funds, bootstrapping or angel funding to get by. Based on Spivack's experiences with raising VC funding, he believes the conditions and strings that are attached to it aren't worth it if the company can get by without raising any funding, especially in the current economic situation. "It is no easy task to get a startup funded and launched in this economy," he writes. "The odds are not in your favor -- so play defense, not offense, until conditions improve (years from now)." Part of playing defense, he says, is to curtail spending as much as possible - a suggestion that goes hand-in-hand with the modesty of raising as little venture capital as necessary. Spivack urges startups to avoid quickly spending and expanding upon bloating their bank account with investor dollars; instead, he argues for responsible saving and planning for unexpected downturns and crashes. "Assume the market will crash -- downturns are more frequent and last longer than they used to. Expect that. Plan on it," writes Spivack. "And make sure you keep enough capital in reserve to spend 9 to 12 months raising your next round, because that is how long it takes in this economy to get a round done." One of the things we hear VCs look for in potential investments is traction, but Spivack, interestingly enough, says traction is not always a sure-fire bet for funding and success. He says VCs are more concerned with finding a company that is producing revenues preferably at a break-even level - something he attributes to an evolving VC landscape. "Venture capital investing has changed dramatically -- early stage and late stage deals are the only deals that are getting real funding," writes Spivack. "Mid-stage companies are simply left to die, unless they are profitable or will soon be profitable." Spivack provides a number of other lessons he learned from his time with Twine, and be sure to read his entire post for a touching story behind his company. For now, note his most important lessons regarding modest spending and modest fund raising. A lot of startups enter the scene looking to become as flush with cash as possible, but in some cases, with some entrepreneurs, having too much money can be a bad thing. Discuss
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Twine CEO to Startups: Be Modest With Your Money
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Picnik just announced that it has been been acquired by Google. While the details surrounding the acquisition are still somewhat murky, the Picnik team just announced the acquisition on the company's blog. Picnik currently has 20 employees and, according to its own data, "millions of visitors every month." The company offers a free service as well as paid accounts and a number of third-party services, including Box.net and Flickr , use Picnik's API to offer the company's services to their customers. According to the company's announcement, the service will remain online and unchanged for the time being. The price of the acquisition has not been disclosed. Sponsor What Will Happen to Picnik? For Google, this acquisition would make a lot of sense. After all, with Picasa Web Albums , Google offers one of the most popular online photo sharing sites and while it offers some basic editing features, it doesn't offer anything close to Picnik's feature set. Picasa, too, is one of the few Google services that still relies heavily on a desktop client and as Google continues to push its online services, it's only natural for Google to want to offer a better online photo editor as well. Indeed, according to Google own announcement, the company will work "hard on integration and new features." The Picnik team will move to Google's Seattle offices and judging from the announcement, there will be no changes in the company's management and engineering time. What about Picnik's Relationship with Flickr? Picnik has a close partnership with Yahoo's Flickr, where it is the default photo editor. It will be interesting to see if Flickr plans to make any changes to this agreement in the near future. In today's announcement, Google notes that it plans to continue to support "all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks." We contacted Yahoo and Flickr for a statement, but all we got so far was "no comment." Discuss
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Google Acquires Online Photo Editor Picnik
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As ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus reported in 2006 , 3Tera is a company to watch: "3Tera strikes me as a company to keep an eye on - they're tackling a complex problem and they have a lot of potential customers out there." CA must agree. The companies have entered into a definitive agreement for CA to purchase 3Tera , adding it to CA's growing list of cloud acquisitions. Sponsor Simplifying Deployment 3Tera's focus is simplifying the deployment of environments. The tools also helps synchronize capabilities between cloud providers and so-called "private clouds" hosted inside a company's data center. The company has a GUI based application to help visualize, manage, and deploy solutions in the cloud. This is an important thing to solve, especially if time is of the essence in getting your cloud-based application supported by your IT team, and keeping your choices open after it is deployed. The Cloud is Mainstream As self-reported by the 3Tera team in their blog , this acquisition represented cloud computing becoming mainstream in IT. CA sees a need to fill in this piece in their portfolio and IT leaders are asking for tools to deploy and manage cloud infrastructure assets. "We started 3Tera to radically ease the way IT deploys, maintains and scales - MANAGES - applications. Our AppLogic® cloud computing platform provides the foundation of our partners' orchestration of cloud services for public and private clouds around the world. Today, we're taking the next step in moving toward making cloud computing mainstream by joining CA." It looks like cloud computing is becoming essential to the enterprise. Is it in yours? Discuss
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Sometimes it Pays to Solve Hard Problems: CA Acquires 3Tera
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A first peek at Apple's new data center in Maiden, North Carolina, shows a massive complex that demonstrates the huge commitment Apple may be making to cloud computing. According to Data Center Knowledge , the $1 billion data center is 500,000 square feet in size, nearly five times the size of Apple's 100,000 square foot facility in Newark, New Jersey. The data center is considered a major part of Apple's cloud computing roll out. Sponsor It is speculation at this point what Apple is planning to do with the data center and how it will leverage cloud computing. From Data Center Knowledge : The most interesting question is whether Apple needs a much larger facility to support growth in its existing services, or is scaling up capacity for future offerings. One of the leading theories about the size of the NC project is that Apple is planning future cloud computing services that will require lots of data center storage. In December, Apple acquired Lala, the music service. There has been speculation that the acquisition was meant to help Apple get into the cloud-based music world. That could mean that people would access their iTunes accounts from an online service. It is also possible that Apple is getting into the online video space. To offer such a service would require data centers on the magnitude of what Apple is building in Maiden. Discuss
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A First Look at Apple's Massive Data Center
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