Digital Sky Technologies invests $200 Million in FB

By siliconindia news bureau

Bangalore: Facebook has announced that a Russian Internet-investment group, Digital Sky Technologies has invested $200 million in the company. This will give Digital Sky Technologies a 1.96 percent equity stake at a $10 billion valuation. Digital Sky is run by Russian businessman and Internet investor Yuri Milner. It has stakes in a number of Russian Internet properties like Mail.ru, and a Polish social-networking site.

Wall Street Journal on Friday had correctly reported that Digital Sky had offered to invest $200 million in Facebook at a $10 billion valuation. The report also claimed that Digital Sky might offer to buy between $100 million and $150 million in Facebook common stock at a $6.5 billion valuation. In the press release, Facebook informed that Digital Sky is planning to purchase at least $100 million of Facebook common stock from existing stockholders. Even though Digital Sky will get $100 million worth of share but they will not get a board seat.

Since Digital Sky already has some experience in social networking site, it was easy for Facebook to accept the offer. "One of the things that's most interesting about Digital Sky is in their portfolio they have a large number of social networks. Each is able to monetize in different ways but all are effective," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO at a press conference.

Web 2.0 application developed to recommend television programmes

A group of researchers from the University of Vigo, Spain, has developed a Web 2.0 application that filters the programming schedules of hundreds of television channels to recommend programmes that viewers are most likely to be interested in, according to their tastes, timetables and other users' recommendations. This new social network is already being used by students and is freely available on the Internet.

The era of channel-hopping by television viewers trying to find a programme they like is almost over. The range of channels on offer has expanded spectacularly over recent years with the development of digital platforms, cable television and DTT, meaning it is now impossible for viewers to keep tabs on everything being shown and programmes they might want to watch.

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