In their motion for disqualification of Deborah Platt Majoras, the Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center cited a newly discovered fact about the case. Majoras’ husband, John Majoras, works for a law firm retained by DoubleClick.

John Majoras is not listed as one of the five attorneys DC law firm Jones Day has advising DoubleClick on antitrust issues. However, searching the Jones Day site, and Google, shows references to DoubleClick no longer appear on the firm’s website.

A query through the Jones Day site search displayed this item as one of four results:

3. Jones Day - Services - Antitrust Mergers/Joint Ventures - Experience
…DTE Energy Company. DoubleClick Inc. Acquisition by DoubleClick Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition…in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc. H&R… http://www.jonesday.com/services/services_experience.aspx?
AdvancedServices=7deaa765-88f7-4368-8db7-443695819af3
12/7/2007 1:10:31 AM

Click the link, and DoubleClick does not appear in the resulting list. We expect this could be a simple administrative oversight, and look forward to hearing it has been corrected.

But the Jones Day webmaster will have more work to do. For one thing, this link should lead directly to a summary of Jones Day’s experience with DoubleClick. It’s blank, but you can see it in the CDD/EPIC motion.

We checked each of the five attorneys’ profiles on the site. EPIC and CDD listed Joe Sims, Thomas Jestaedt, Alexandre G. Verheyden, Michael S. McFalls, and Chris Ahern as the legal eagles providing counsel.

Each of those attorneys once had this listed in their Professional Biography – Experience:

DoubleClick Inc.
Acquisition by DoubleClick
Antitrust counsel in the $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick by Google Inc.

In each case, that reference has been scrubbed from the Jones Day site. One would imagine an attorney would want to tout being part of a multi-billion-dollar deal involving one of the biggest name brand companies on the planet.

Not at Jones Day, though.

(UPDATE: A DoubleClick representative responded to this story via email: "Simpson Thacher has been DoubleClick’s outside counsel since July of 2005 and was retained to represent it in all aspects of its proposed acquisition by Google, including with respect to United States antitrust matters.  From the outset, Simpson Thacher has represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission and continues in that capacity. Jones Day has been engaged primarily with respect to European and other non-U.S. jurisdictions.  Jones Day was not engaged to represent, and has not represented DoubleClick before the Federal Trade Commission or appeared before the Commission on DoubleClick’s behalf.")

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Tumblr has Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures to thank for the money, according to peHUB.  That first firm has previously invested in Veoh, and the second entity has worked with Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, Twitter, and Indeed.  In other words: Tumblr’s in good company.

And never mind corporations and investments; that statement is supported by the number of fans Tumblr has earned.  On the Tumblr Blog, a post involving a simple graphic that states “November 1” and “It’s ready” has received around 65 replies from people who are interested in the impending update.

What, then, is all the hubbub about?  Tumblr compares its blogging service to a scrapbook, as opposed to a traditional journal-style blog.  It’s easier – and quicker – to use, according to the company.

Some of the $750,000 will probably be used to ensure it stays that way even as people climb aboard after November 1.  As for the rest . . . look for cryptic graphics on the Tumblr Blog.

Sticking with the “big” theme, we think you’ll recognize some of Waterfront Media’s investors; Time Warner Ventures was involved, and so was Scale Venture Partners (which has seen several of the companies in its portfolio get acquired by Yahoo and Microsoft).  Other names include Foundation Capital, Rho Ventures, BEV Capital, and Neocarta Ventures.

This team effort should result in some important upgrades to Waterfront Media and Everyday Health.  “Waterfront Media will use the financing to grow the Everyday Health Network . . . increase the size of its advertising business and make acquisitions in its ongoing effort to become the number one health destination on the web,” according to the release.

Which should, of course, benefit the company’s users at some point – they’ll need to be brought along on the ride.  Keep an eye out for fresh content from new sources.

Hat tip to Silicon Alley Insider’s Dan Frommer.

The round was led by Intel Capital, and Labrador Ventures also took part, if you haven’t already guessed.  In a press release resulting from the round, Alex Castro, the CEO of Pluggd, spoke of his company’s abilities and business model.

“We are building a really unique platform that can search inside the video stream, and we look forward to working with content publishers and advertising service providers both,” stated Castro.  “Our technology makes it possible to connect advertisers with new, hyper-engaged audiences by delivering the most relevant ad, at the best possible moment.”

In addition to searching for words within videos, Pluggd also deals with audio clips.  It’s an interesting idea, and as VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall points out, Pluggd “does something well that few others have been able to match.”  See Marshall’s clip of the technology in action if you need further convincing.

All in all, it’s a good day for Pluggd.  I was rather disappointed to discover, however, that the homepage of Labrador Ventures doesn’t feature any Labrador retrievers.

Ventures is concerned that Partners is infringing on its trademark.  “Ventures, firm of the well-known Internet investor Fred Wilson, has a higher profile, and even comes up first in Google results when you search for the other firm,” reports VentureBeat’s Matt Marshall.

As for that list of accomplishments?  I’m unable to produce one for Partners that sounds half as nice.  “But the firms have been confused several times by outsiders, and [Ventures] wants to stop it,” Marshall notes.  I don’t blame Ventures, and I’m actually (legal stuff aside) a bit grateful – I’ve already had to check this article for errors on several occasions.

The lawsuit doesn’t name any dollar figures (a PDF was provided by peHUB’s Dan Primack) – the first few requests that Ventures makes of the court merely entail ending the similarities.  The suit does go on to request, however, that the court “[d]irect Defendants to account to Plaintiffs for their profits and order that Plaintiff recover its damages arising out of the aforesaid acts of infringement in a sum equal to three times such profits or damages (whichever is greater) . . .”

Still, don’t expect the lawsuit to interfere with day-to-day operations at either firm, and really don’t expect it to bother any of Ventures’s investments; this should remain a behind-the-scenes battle.  And as with many of these lawsuits, there’s no telling how many weeks, months, or years it may be before a resolution occurs.

Google Offers Investments For Gadgeteers

1. Write a Google Gadget.
2. ???
3. Profit!!!

Google has filled in step 2 for gadget makers. Those who achieve a certain level of success could be eligible for a small grant, or a larger investment, from Google Gadget Ventures.

To be eligible to apply, a developer needs to have 250,000 page views per week of their gadget. Google has a $5,000 grant available for those developers, to enable them to spend more time on enhancing the gadget.

In some cases, gadget building may be the gateway to creating a fully-fledged enterprise. Those could receive a $100,000 seed investment from Google to get the business off the ground.

“In order to be eligible for a seed investment, you must have received a $5,000 grant, and you must propose a plan for making your gadget financially sustainable,” Tom Stocky wrote on the Google Code blog.

Microsoft Wants To Smack MySpace

Just when everyone thought MySpace had relegated all the other players into second-tier status, Microsoft announced it would step up and throw a chair (figuratively!) at Fox Interactive Media’s best-known website.

Currently, Wallop has placed a basic web presence online, featuring some of the details of the forthcoming service. Based in Silicon Valley, the startup will be led by Karl Jacob, a former Microsoft executive who has headed psychic advisor site Keen.com, which became Ingenio, and then anti-spam firm Cloudmark.

Wallop will take a cash wallop of its own, collecting venture capital funding from both Microsoft and Bay Partners. The amount of initial investing is not known.

The source of the technology is a little more known, as it emerges from Microsoft’s IP Ventures. That year-old creation offers technology built by Microsoft Research to entrepreneurs who wish to license and develop it further.

Microsoft provided some background on what they feel will differentiate Wallop from other social networking sites:

The model sounds similar to that offered by Multiply, another social networking site. In an interview with Multiply CEO Peter Pezaris, he described the “six degrees of separation” idea of how people may be connected based on relationships.

That model allows Multiply to identify people by existing relationship in the network. For example, Multiply knows that if my brother’s wife joins Multiply, and identifies herself as such, the site knows she is my sister-in-law.

How closely Wallop comes to that model won’t be known until its release this year.

—

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Ditto. Great insight. One thing before I start thinking, I always thought it was bizarre that entrepreneurs couldn’t get funded when they needed it (when the economy sucked and they needed a little revenue to get them through the rough patch). Anyway

then I started thinking. Yeah, I know, that’s dangerous.

What are the “ventures” the entrepreneurs actually need?

See, in the 1980s, they needed money. Why? Cause the growth was in computers and other electronics goods. I worked on an assembly line at Hewlett Packard one summer in the early 1980s. Why did these (and smaller startups like Apple or Atari back in the early 80s) need money? Cause building physical machines costs money. Assembly lines. People. Materials. There was a high marginal cost of goods.

But today’s world isn’t money constrained. You don’t need much money to build software or services.

Today’s world is mostly an audience aggregation one. At least that’s where the money is. Think about it. What does Google do? Gather audiences! How about Yahoo’s Flickr? Or Microsoft’s Live.com? (More on that in the next post about guitarist Robert Fripp, don’t miss that one).

So, if money isn’t in short supply (it’s not, which is why being a venture capitalist right now is actually very tough work) what is? Here’s some ideas of “ventures” that we need:

1) Venture USERS. How do you build a Flickr? Get half a million users. But how do you get there? After all, there are hundreds of services vying for our attention right now. So, anyone who can provide a network of users is going to be valued. Got a network of users that listen to you? You’ll be sought after.

2) Venture Search Juicers. If you are an audience starved startup how do you exist if you aren’t in the first page of Google results for what you want to be known for? So, how do you get there? You gotta get people who have search engine juice to link to you. You need “Venture SJ’s” (for search juicers) to be in your network. You think you can just get a few bloggers to link to you? That’s increasingly going to be difficult. Wanna come and look at my “blog this” folder? It has 2321 items in it. So, how you gonna get noticed in that kind of world?

3) Venture advertising. You’re in the audience aggregation business now, remember? How do you get an audience? Well, you won’t get one if no one has heard of you. So, if you can advertise services (say, if you’re particularly talented in front of a video camera, like, Amanda Congdon of Rocketboom) you’ll be sought after.

4) Venture offices and IT. If you’re a geek who can build cool things in Ruby on Rails what’s the last thing you want to worry about? Having an office in which to work and all that entails (stocking the frige, answering the email and phones, paying the bills). Got a way to bring those services to a number of startups for less than anyone else? (I saw such an operation working in a house on Sand Hill Road) Then you’ll be sought after.

5) Venture deep technical help. Let’s be honest. The skills to get a prototype service up and working are far different than making it work for 10 million users. Building UI’s in Ruby on Rails is a lot easier than building a server farm that can handle exponentially-growing loads. So, can you build a network where you share one tech team among a group of startups? Then you’ll add value to the whole network and be sought after. I saw just this happening at startups in Silicon Valley where one deeply-skilled tech guy was shared among three or four startups.

6) Venture marketing. Hey, every entrepreneur needs a logo, business cards, stickers and swag to hand out at shows, and other things. But, you don’t need a full-time graphic artist. So, the new Venture capitalist who has a graphic designer shared among his or her network will add value and be sought after. At Microsoft I’m really a “venture marketer.” Every team doesn’t need a guy who can get 100,000 views on a video shot with a camcorder. So, I’m shared among many teams. Same skill is gonna be needed at every startup (but only an hour at a time).

7) Venture ideas. I’ve hung around the industry now to realize that there are a few people who generate far better and far more ideas than anyone else. Microsoft has one of those guys. His name is Eric Horvitz. He owns the most patents at Microsoft and I believe he has about twice the number of the person who is in the #2 spot. Now, you probably couldn’t afford him full time (I’m sure that other multi-billion-dollar companies even regularly bid against us for his time) but you might be able to, say, rent Dave Winer or Steve Wozniak or, even, Matt Mullenweg, to come out and give you some ideas for a day. So, “venture IG’s” (Idea Generators) will be sought after.

Venture PR. I remember the days when startups would need to hire a PR company for something like $15,000 per month (and that was for a low-cost set of services, some services would run many times higher than that and often required handing over some of your equity to get really great services). But, in today’s world of blogs the skills needed aren’t as big. You need someone who can deal with the new PR (even the big companies are realizing this, Nokia has a program to send phones out to bloggers so they can try them out). Get a new set of PR skills which can help you build an audience fast and you’ll be sought after.

9) Venture testers. You just spent four years at Carnegie Mellon coming up with a great robotic or speech recognition idea. But now you need testers and other people to help you finish off your project. The network that can help you with those will be sought after.

10) Venture management. You’re two kids from Stanford. You’ve built a team of 20 geeks. Some in SF, some in London or Cork, some in China. But just keeping 20 people working together is not your core skill and it’s making you unhappy. So, you need some really great managers to help you out. The network that can help you will be sought after.

11) Venture evangelists. Hey, I’ll be honest, when I see something that excites me I want to have a piece of the company. It makes me even more evangelistic if I know my own bucks are on the line. Ahh, sorry, Dave Winer already made that point. So, I guess I should have stopped at 10 “ventures” that are needed.

You got any others? If you’re an entrepreneur, which ones are you willing to give up some equity to get?

Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.

Go to Scobleizer …

I know, you’re asking, what does this mean for me?

Well, to give you the best answer I can, I’m going to give you an example that will make the whole topic become crystal clear.

First, there’s the skill of getting outside professionals whose product or service relates to yours to work with you as a team to help your clients and customers, and their clients and customers, and the public in general.

You see, many outside professionals have a harmful way and Tendencies to take recommendations, clients and customers away from you, only to leave you dried out and empty.

There are ways to stop this horrible problem by pointing out that you are not in the “one way street” business, and that you like to give, and get, recommendations. One of which is to show everyone and your competition your Unique Selling Proposition. Strategizing, to try and get one or more of them to see that you mean business.

Establishing real relationships with outside people is going to be an absolute key to making the most amount of money at the least amount of expense. In order for you to move up to another level, you’ll have to get into a new level of perception with outside professionals. You don’t have a choice.

Another crucial step is Marketing. Using this through professionals is no different than marketing to anyone. You see, you’re marketing through them on the surface. What you’re really doing is marketing to them. Just like you do with everyone.

Whoever you market to, there is always some end result in mind. For strangers, the goal is for them to want to come in to see you. So your marketing focuses on the hot moments that will get them in for an appointment. For professionals, your end goal is to get them to refer people to you, and/or to let you do seminars, tele-conferences or whatever else for their clients and customers, or have them help you with the cost of marketing.

So, your marketing must focus on their hot moments that will get them to refer people to you! Matter of fact, here’s how to get other professionals excited and interested in working with you.

See where this is going? They want you to be an asset to them and their clients and customers. An asset that is dependable, trustworthy and a total creative professional business. These people need new business just like you do. But you are going to have to bring more than marketing to the table. They want you to bring new business in, but they want it to be accompanied by a solid, trustworthy professional.

Abe Cherian is the founder of Multiple Stream Media,
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These strategies won’t even require you to have or support your own website, but that doesn’t mean that their potential is somehow limited.

Auction big-ticket items opportunity.

You have no need to be a guru to try selling big-ticket item that may be anything from ancient coin and cars – to diamonds and mansions. Of course, you don’t have to own them personally. You can just become a reseller and post your eBay lot on behalf of the actual owner.

What you will do need to spend your time on is research. You obviously don’t feel like loosing eBay listing fees, so good research on the subject matter is compulsory.

When conducting research on possible profitability of your eBay listing consider to:

1. Check how similar items are currently being sold.

2. Determine the demand among buyers and bidders of similar items or category by checking how many bids are placed in each category. Look at the visitor webpage counters that majority of listings have by the end of the page.

3. Browse the bidding history. If you spot bidding wars on many listings for similar items – it is a good sign of high demand.

4. How many lots have been successfully ended and what the winning bids were.

5. Estimate the supply. How many sellers are placing their lots, how saturated the category is in general.

You may also want to save the best listings and create a collection of the listings closed with high profit margins. Analyze their listings, offers, type of the auction, copywriting style, start price, bidding history and winning bid. You may even want to start from this 6th point in your research in order to determine which items were sold the best before discovering such a big-ticket item to sell for yourself.

If you personally don’t wish participating in listing your lots, supporting and dealing with bidders, there is good news for you. What you need is just to search for power-sellers specializing in items you plan to list and arrange a deal with them. You will act like an intermediary and collect a nice commission just by arranging a deal between the owner of the big-ticket item and an eBay power-seller. This scenario may be more beneficial for you, since your eBay lot will be sold by a professional seller, who knows all ins and outs of this business, who has already built credibility, most likely having an active eBay store and a list of subscribers and customers, so the sale of your item can be really quick and efficient.

When you decide to partner with other eBay seller or do the auctioning yourself, do not forget to take advantage of resources of other power sellers. I’m talking about using their lists of subscribers, customers or “About Me’ pages. You just need to locate sellers with proven track record in your field or category. Then you contact them and ask to mention or announce your complimentary items among their previous customers or at the “About Me” page for a commission. Just try to leverage the potential of eBay marketplace to the full extent.

If you want to know about a man, who pioneered high-priced eBay sales earning $30K in commissions from a single eBay sale, if you want him to show you exactly how he does it or even if you want him to sell your big-ticket item for you and share his massive profit with you, take a close look at these two websites: http://asbone.com/a/big-ticket-ace/ http://www.IWillSellYourStuff.com/

Multi-level JVs.

Next winning opportunity is a variation of partnership that, by the way, may also take place on eBay. The difference lies in the multi-tier scheme of partnership, where you play the role of a middleman between “provider” and “promoter”. You also need to have nothing, except for Internet access and em ail box.

Usually you play the role of either creator of the product/affiliate program owner or its promoter/seller, but the reality is you can wedge yourself between these two parties. This is possible with all multi-tier affiliate programs, where you are “occupying” a place yourself between the owner and the actual promoter. After signup, your task is to find entrepreneurs or businesses with powerful means of promoting such products and offer them more beneficial deal in order to solicit them to join affiliate program under you and automatically earn you a 2nd-tier affiliate commission.

If the owner of the product pays out, for instance, 40% on the first and 10% on the second affiliate level, you can try to attract promoters by sharing with them special commission rate, say, 45% at the expense of 5% of your commission. The remaining 5% is yours to keep. As a result, you can create more lucrative terms of partnership for affiliates to motivate then join under you.

Of course, you can always add special bonuses and services to make affiliates join as your referrals or negotiate special terms of cooperation with the product owner, so he can arrange special deals with you to promote his affiliate program. This is a great opportunity of recurring income for every entrepreneur.

Google AdWords Profit Machines.

This is a true money-machine and I’m going to reveal its principle of operation right now, so you can set it up, test and maintain its workability while it earns you hefty checks days and nights on an autopilot.

Google AdWords is a service of a Search Engine context advertising. You create an account by targeting specific or all languages & countries, creating an ad or ads, supplying a number of keywords that will trigger the appearance of those ads, choosing maximum cost-per-click and daily budget.

It may take about 15 minutes. As soon as your account is created and email is confirmed your ads will start rolling on the Google.com and throughout the Google AdSense network.

With the invention of Google AdWords the real-time tracking and aggregated summary of your campaigns you now can efficiently test any sales letter or marketing materials performance, sending quality traffic whenever you want and in volumes you want.

Google AdWords brought down the whole process of marketing and promoting to the matter of several browser windows and a table data, where you can adjust, add and delete almost any parameter of your marketing machine.

As you know the biggest challenge of affiliate promoters is how to attract quality traffic. Google AdWords solves this problem once and for good. You are in full control over what, where and how much visitors to send. What you need is to test keywords, keeping an eye on your advertising budget and your ROI. When your ROI is positive, consider you have a 24/7 money machine which convert traffic into sales without you lifting a finger. You don’t care about creating a product, customer service, maintaining your own affiliate program, newsletters, marketing your business the conventional way or doing affiliate marketing. Your sole responsibility is to maintain, test, probably develop your AdWords campaigns further and cashing them into incoming checks.

For you to have such a machine, your task comes down to locating a hot selling product. Creating a new Google Adwords campaign, choosing proper set of targeted keywords, adding enticing ads and start directing quality traffic anywhere you wish.

The rest depends on your advertising budget. If it is more than $1000, you can afford to setup several campaigns simultaneously and test general keywords starting from broad matching. If you are on a shoestring budget, try selecting untapped market niches and bidding for exact match of your keywords. This budget-saving strategy will show you the winning ad campaigns and reassure affiliate sales before the end of your advertising budget.

AdWords system will mark best-performing keywords for you by impressions and click-throughs as “Strong”. Keep them, the rest you can delete or replace. If you have weak keywords by click-through, AdWords system will block them and you will have to adjust your list of keywords selection and reactivate your advertising campaigns again.

The universal rule for raising response rates of prospect with any advertising, including AdWords, is targeting. Start from testing keywords by phrase match and mainly exact match. That tactics will guarantee less but quality traffic what is higher conversion and money savings for you. Leave broad keyword matching for general terms to corporate world that is able to spend $100.000 for “ground testing” purposes. We need to act much more astute.

Want to explore this proven automatic money-making strategy in more detail? Then check out “Google Cash”: http://asbone.com/a/google-cash/ It will make your journey from “nowhere” to “fat affiliate checks” quite exciting and easy.

Here are another several free services to make you locate better keywords:

http://inventory.overture.com/ – Overture keyword suggestion tool. http://www.kwmap.com – Keyword Map.

Pavel Lenshin is an Internet entrepreneur.
He contibuted his NeoProfit System:
http://neoprofit.com/system.htm and now you can
Check this superb deal while it is still active:

http://asbone.com/a/santa/