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Silicon Alley Insider

Digital Business, Live From New York


Huffington Post Raises $15 MillionToday

huffington.jpgHuffington Post is close to announcing a $15 million round of financing, the Times (UK) reports. PaidContent's Rafat Ali says Oak Investment Partners is leading the round. Previous investors include SoftBank Capital and Greycroft. Rafat pegs a $100 million, post-money valuation guesstimate.

HuffPo will use the money to expand its local news coverage and investigative reporting, the Times reports.

Disclosure: HuffPo cofounder Ken Lerer is an investor in our parent company.

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Puppycam Livestream: 4 Million ViewersToday
Finally the world discovers how to make a global live streaming mega-hit. Low production costs, too!

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New York Times (NYT) October GhastlyToday

Titanic.jpgThe New York Times (NYT) cash crisis certainly didn't improve in October:

  • Ad revenue dropped 16% year over year, worse than September and one of the worst months to date (August was -18%).
  • Online revenue in the news business grew only 5%, a major deceleration
  • Circulation revenue increased 4%, thanks to a price increase
  • Overall revenue down 9%
  • About.com revenue decelerated massively, growing even less than in the news business: +3%. This is shocking. It's especially bad news because About.com was one of the bright spots at the NYT.

The New York Times finally cut its dividend yesterday, which was a step in the right direction. It won't be enough, however. The company faces a major cash crunch, with $400 million due in May. It needs to sell assets and make major cost cuts. Preferably soon, before it's too late.

See Also:
Cash Crunch At New York Times: $400 Million Due In May



Google Considers Buying Chrome Market Share (GOOG)Today

ChromeScreen.pngHow did Microsoft (MSFT) win the browser wars of the 90s and have its own Internet Explorer (IE) browser supplant once-dominant Netscape? Mostly by bundling IE with Windows and making it the default browser for new computers sold.

Now Google (GOOG) may be trying to do the same with its Chrome browser: The company tells the Times (UK) it's thinking about deals with PC makers to pre-install Chrome on new computers. Also, we finally get a timeframe for a Chrome port to the Mac and Linux: First half of next year.

We briefly worried that Chrome, currently with less than a one-percent market share and only half-hearted marketing, may become more Google abandonware like the recently canned Lively. That no longer appears to be the case.

Of course, Google's success will depend on what kind of PC makers it can ink deals with. Chrome might be especially useful on netbooks, so Asus would be an easy target. But a deal with HP (HPQ) or Dell (DELL) would be a lot more helpful tha

TechCrunch Ad Rates Slashed 35%Today

michael-arrington-cigar.jpgThe recession has slammed into tech advertising, apparently, even at hot sites like TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, and GigaOm. (Okay, and Silicon Alley Insider).

Federated Media, which sells ads across a boatload of top-tier tech sites, has slashed ad rates at all of the above. TechCrunch's rate-card CPMs, for example, have been cut 35%, from $36 to $23.40:

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Rate card rates are a joke, of course: If an ad has ever been sold at the price on the rate card (except at SAI), we're not aware of it. But the new rates will at least reduce the amount of time advertisers spend laughing when they first see them.

Here's the good news on SAI's rates, by the way. Advertisers are now getting a lot more for their money:

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