Semantic Web startup Radar Networks raised $13 million in a B round, led by Velocity Interactive Group. Velocity’s Ross Levinsohn will join the board. Other investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The company previously raised $5 million from Vulcan, Leapfrog Ventures, Ron Conway, and Peter Rip.
Radar Networks is the company behind Twine, a site in private beta that helps you organize the Web and your personal information by automatically tagging and cataloging everything you save to it. (For more, see our write-up).
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
opensource: del.icio.us tag/opensource
Software
Web2.0
visualization
information
opensource
interface
interactive
podcasting: del.icio.us tag/podcasting
community
audio
Web2.0
collaboration
learning
interactive
social_networking
News Corp has acquired New York based religious community site Beliefnet, according to a report at FishbowlNY.
Beliefnet was founded in 1999 and provides a service that offers commentary and community discussion on various religious beliefs. The company has a checkered history, having declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2002, then restructuring and emerging from bankruptcy in October the same year. According to earlier reports, around 70% of the sites traffic is related to Christian interests, with around 70% of users being females, and the most popular age group being 35 to 45. Beliefnet raised $7 million from Softbank Capital in 2005.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
In related news, a “source fimilar with the matter” has told Reuters that News Corp is not in negotiations to buy LinkedIn, rumors of which first surfaced on TechCrunch UK in November. The source claimed that News Corp was in talks with LinkedIn, but the two companies had been discussing future partnerships, not a takeover. With the Dow Jones (Wall Street Journal) acquisition being finalized a partnership between News Corp and LinkedIn would make a lot of sense; the premium business sites from Dow Jones provide a high-wealth business focused demographic that would sit well with LinkedIn’s business networking product.
Update: sources at Fox Interactive are saying they know nothing about the deal; this isn’t to say that its not happening but it is a little strange. The site may have been purchased by another part of News Corp.
Editor’s Update: More scrounging around has confirmed that the deal indeed is about to be officially announced.
Editor’s Update 2: The deal is official. Beliefnet was bought by the Fox Entertainment Group, News Corp’s cable arm, to distribute content from its faith-based programming initiative and from its religious/spiritual book imprints Zondervanand HarperOne. Dan Fawcett, president of Fox Digital Media, did the deal.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
open-source: del.icio.us tag/open-source
Web2.0
collaboration
media
Online
open-source
open_source
interactive
opensource: del.icio.us tag/opensource
presentation
interactive
freeware
opensource
Tutorial
tools
education
video
Web2.0
edtech