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Weekend Video: EconMusic Speaker Billy Bragg: The Great Leap Forwards

By Robert Andrews - Fri 05 Sep 2008 10:07 AM PST

Did we mention that Billy Bragg is speaking at EconMusic, our London conference examining the digital music business on September 23? Billy has previously taken on MySpace for its policy on artist royalties and Bebo for building a fortune off musicians’ work. At EconMusic, Billy joins Last.fm, Mog.com and others to discuss digital licensing and making a living in the online age.

Here, with a great song to head in to the weekend, Billy reprises his 1988 classic Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards - and talks MP3, the importance of physical formats and the music industry’s “last stand”. We can’t wait for the debate (and hope YouTube pays Billy when you click play below). More Braggism after the jump; register for EconMusic now…

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Posted in: Conferences, EconMusic

Tags: billy bragg

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By Amanda Natividad - Fri 05 Sep 2008 12:55 PM PST

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Social Net Ad Targeter Lookery Secures $2.25M Funding

By David Kaplan - Fri 05 Sep 2008 10:33 AM PST

Lookery, a company that trolls demographic data on social net users and sells it to ad networks, has raised $2.25 million, Venturebeat reports. It says Lookery has already raised $1 million in angel funding. Since initially starting as banner ad network for third party apps on sites like Facebook and MySpace, the company has morphed into an aggregator of demographic data. In addition to giving sites a tool that records the users demo information based on their activity, Lookery also buys data from other companies. Also, it doesn’t operate directly on Facebook, because the social net doesn’t allow third party ad networks to target ads using its users’ information. Instead, Lookery imports the data it gathers outside of that site to serve ads inside Facebook.

Posted in: Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, VC+M&A, Venture Capital

Tags: lookery

Russian Search Ads Provider Quintura Gets Bridge Funding

By David Kaplan - Fri 05 Sep 2008 10:15 AM PST

Search optimizer Quintura has raised an undisclosed bridge funding from Mangrove Capital Partners as part of a larger round of financing. In a post on its official blog, Moscow-based Quintura hopes this latest capital infusion will attract additional investors. It also hopes to grow its audience reach from its current 8 million to 50 million by next year. Mangrove contributed an unspecified amount to Quintura’s first round in June 2007. Quintura’s search engine uses graphics to pinpoint tags, and has raised “several million dollars” in a first round funding entirely from Mangrove Capital Partners.

In other activities, the company has brought on Dennis Szerszen as CMO in the U.S. Szerszen was previously SVP of marketing and corporate development at security software vendor SecureWave (now Lumension Security). 

Posted in: Advertising, Marketing, Countries, UK & Europe, Technologies/Formats, Search, VC+M&A, Venture Capital

Tags: quintura, mangrove capital partners, russia