From All Things Digital, Dec. 1, 2008:

A BoomTown Interview with Oak Investment’s Fred Harman

The Huffington Post will announce this morning that it has raised $25 million, in a single investment from Oak Investment Partners.

The large round by Oak, which was led by Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture capitalist Fred Harman, will give the popular online news and blog site a valuation of just “south of $100 million,” a source said.

The new funding, the Huffington Post’s third, will be used for expansion of its offerings and the hiring of editorial and business talent.

“There is an inevitable shift from offline to online with people increasingly getting their news media online, and this election proved how powerful the Huffington Post could be,” said Harman, in an interview with BoomTown. “And I think the post-election perception of the Huffington Post has changed in the eyes of advertisers to being a key mainstream news site.”

Indeed, the Huffington Post–which is now billing itself as ‘”The Internet Newspaper”–has been hitting on all cylinders during the current election season.

And it hopes to continue building that momentum into the Obama administration, which will give the liberal-leaning site a lot of advantages in coverage.

The Huffington Post has also become a powerful news aggregator, much as the more conservative Drudge Report has, sending traffic all over the Web from its site by linking with a variety of online sites. It also has a strong offering of high-profile bloggers.

But the site’s leaders are also hoping its traffic strength will allow it to be as strong in arenas outside of its flagship political arena, including in business, local, “green” and investigative news.

It will also use the money to make acquisitions, the company said in a press release about the funding, which it put out this morning.

It’s certainly a long way from May of 2005, when its high-profile Co-Founder Arianna Huffington was roundly mocked for launching the site. Today, she has seen her power grow as the site’s traffic and influence has.

The site’s namesake operates out of her California-based office in Los Angeles, while the company has its HQ in New York.

For the full story, go to the jump.

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From ClusterStock.com, Nov. 30, 2008:

(But Says It Has "Nothing" To Do With His Situation)

What was Mark Cuban doing at 2:00 AM this morning? Posting to his blog about a new OIG report critical of the SEC. But the Dallas Mavs owner, who's currently facing insider trading charges from that very agency, insists that his late night blogging has nothing to do with his own situation. He's just a normal guy interested in "all things financial and the government during this financial crisis."

So what parts of the report (.pdf) did Cuban find interesting?

• SEC employees are allowed to trade stocks, but the controls used to conduct internal investigations into insider trading by SEC employees are wanting.
• There have been several instances of SEC staff engaged in retaliatory investigations against companies that have complained about naked shorts
• Six SEC employees in the last six months have been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution.

So obviously, Cuban's interest in this report has nothing to do with his own situation. It just so happens that he's been charged with insider trading, and part of his defense is that an SEC staffer had a personal vendetta against him. But yeah, nothing to do with him.

See Also:
Cuban's Insider Trading Charge: Payback For Anti-Bush Movie?

Back in 2003, when many Web 2.0 companies were getting their start, they had a big leg up that didn't exist in the late 1990s: Ad networks. Things as simple as Google AdSense or John Battelle's Federated Media gave bloggers and even larger sites like YouTube and Digg a way to get instant revenues, without having to hire and commit to costly sales forces and infrastructure.

Tiny Dogster went another route. It tried all the ad networks and realized that CPMs in the 20-cent range weren't going to sustain a business-- especially with ad networks taking as much as 50% of the profits. Dogster founder and CEO Ted Rheingold didn't suddenly saw ad networks as the expensive proposition-- not the cost saver. It's an insight a lot of the mainstream media is only now discovering the hard way.

Now, in 2008, Dogster is heading into a downturn with strong relationships with advertising agencies and a bigger pipeline of business than it had a year ago. "This is still a relationship business," he says. "And once we have those relationships, we get more calls." Watch the video to hear more of Rheingold's take on where niche online advertising is going.

You'd think a dog and cat social network would be a pretty frivolous business even for Web 2.0 land. After all, wasn't Pets.com one of the most notorious of dot com flame outs?

You'd be wrong. Ted Rheingold, Dogster's CEO and co-founder, has built a surprisingly robust business. Community and information sites are slow growing, says Rheingold, so they won't be a $100 million business overnight. But with a strong emphasis on profitability, a refusal to raise venture capital, and differentiated revenues coming from ads, virtual goods and subscriptions, Dogster looks like a shoe-in to weather the coming storm.

In this clip, what Dogster did right before the downturn hit.

From All Things Digital, Nov. 24, 2008:

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock.

While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly.

Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately-held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together.

Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over.

So why did the deal break down?

Well, as is usually the case, over price–was $500 million worth of Facebook stock actually worth $500 million?–and the typical concerns about integration and costs.

But, more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth.

“It’s more about timing,” said one person familiar with Twitter’s motivations. “There is a strong feeling that there is still an opportunity–even with the economic downturn–to blow this thing out.”

Still, combining the world’s fastest-growing social-networking site with what is quickly becoming the best-known microblogging service is actually a natural fit.

That’s especially true, given that Facebook–for all its powerful online social connections–has seen Twitter race past it in innovating in the “status update” arena.

While some sources at Facebook said Zuckerberg was becoming frustrated by the buzz Twitter was getting–a market that should have been dominated by Facebook–others at the company said he was interested in buying Twitter because of his respect for its progress.

More after the jump.

For additional news, go to All Things D.

The logic of investing in life-sciences startups and tech startups out of one fund has been hotly debated ever since technology became the clear sector for homerun returns. Morgenthaler Ventures, which just closed a new $400 million venture fund, has always stuck by doing both. And it’s times like these Gary Little is glad. He invests from the technology side of the house and knows just how ugly that sector is getting.

But with no IPO market, can capital-inefficient life sciences be much better? Here’s how Morgenthaler thinks it’s cracked the code.

With a new warchest of $400 million to invest, staid Valley venture firm Morgenthaler Ventures clearly still believes in the Valley. But how do you invest through tough times? Especially when pre-September tech seemed largely recession-proof.

Gary Little joined me in the studio to share some advice he’s learned through a few of the Valley’s cycles. And—believe it or not—he says entrepreneurs actually learned their lesson eight years ago too.

Forty-year old Morgenthaler Ventures knows a thing or two about timing downturns, but it no doubt also knows a thing or two about luck. The firm started raising its most recent fund in January—months before all the financial institutions that fund the venture business started to watch their portfolios freefall.

Morgenthaler hung in there, raised $400 million, and announced the close yesterday at a time many expect a thinning out of venture firms raising money. Morgenthaler partner Gary Little joined me in the studio to talk about the firm’s timing and how this fund is different.

In a previous segment, Steve Fletcher, of Savvian Bank, noted that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs aren't getting how bad times these economic times are. But is that semi-delusional optimism a blesssing-in-disguise?

Funding for Valley-based companies fell 9% in the second quarter and, no doubt, has fallen more in the third quarter. But at more than $2 billion, Valley-based startups still get more than double the next closest region. Sure, times will get worse, but at the end of the day there are thousands of venture capitalists here who need to put money somewhere. Contrast that to other tech hot beds, especially on the East Coast like New York, Boston or Washington DC. While the purse strings are tightening here, they're disappearing altogether elsewhere.

Another cluster of Web and media companies announced layoffs yesterday, among them blogging software company Six Apart, Wired, and Al Gore's Current. It was enough to cause plenty of panic at Valley watercoolers-- even chatter it was another Internet bust. But let's get real: Less than 100 people lost their jobs. Indeed, not counting Hewlett Packard, eBay and Yahoo, layoff announcements have been numerous this fall, but not very big in size. Do entrepreneurs think they're done with the scalpel, and, if so, are they kidding themselves?

Steve Fletcher, managing director at GCA Savvian, votes yes and says there's a lot more job loss ahead for the Valley.