As we reported last fall, NowThis provides “a combination of original and third-party news videos” aimed at mobile users. There are about 1,500 videos available so far, and the company plans to add more.

NowThis is also launching an updated version of its iPad app soon. Among other things, the app will allow users to save up to 100 videos to their iPads for offline viewing.

Thursday’s ruling comes as part of a case that begin in early 2011 when two Democratic political operatives, Peter Daou and James Boyce, filed a lawsuit stating that they had presented the idea for HuffPo in 2004. The pair claim that Huffington and Lerer then cut them out of the process, launching the site in 2005 and claiming the idea as their own.

In October 2011, New York Supreme Court Judge Charles Ramos threw out seven of eight claims in the case but allowed one claim — based on the state claim of idea misappropriation — to go forward. Since then, the parties have been wrangling over procedural issues and Daou and Boyce filed an amended complaint.

In addressing the amended complaint, Ramos allowed the idea theft claim to go forward as well as those for fraud and unjust enrichment; he tossed a fourth claim for breach of implied contract.

“Plaintiffs have adequately alleged that defendants took the information that plaintiffs provided, secretly shared it with another person, camouflaged the origin to make it appear as it came from that other person and, in effect, stole the idea and developed it with that other person,” Ramos wrote in letting Daou and Boyce go forward with the fraud claim.

In the same ruling, Ramos rejected Daou and Boyce’s request to subpoena the CEO of AOL, Tim Armstrong, rejecting arguments that Armstrong had essential knowledge about the founding of the Huffington Post. AOL bought the Huffington Post for $315 million in the spring of 2011.

Today’s ruling does not mean that Daou and Boyce have won the case. Instead, it means they have cleared a crucial procedural hearing and, thanks to the added claims, can proceed to a trial with a stronger hand.

“The court has made only a preliminary decision based solely on the uncontradicted allegations of the complaint and without any consideration of the proven facts,” a Huffington Post spokeswoman said. “As we have said from day 1, there is no merit to these allegations. They are make believe. With this ruling, we will now be able to move for summary judgment and lay out the actual evidence in this case. We look forward to the opportunity to present the full record to the court.”

Here’s the ruling:

Order upholding HuffPo complaint.pdf by

This story was updated at 8:30 p.m. ET with a statement from the Huffington Post and at 9:30 p.m. ET with a slightly updated version of the statement from the Huffington Post.

I downloaded the app, which quietly went live on Friday, and browsed through the selection. Currently, there’s categories for Top stories, Obama vs. Romney, Awesome debates, Malala, Tech and Fun. Users can swipe through a selection of video clips for each category. The opening video right now is an original clip that sums up some of the complicated math that Obama and Romney need to pull off to win enough electoral votes.

Most of the clips are introduced by a NowThis News host. Some clips from users or outside sources, like a wordless video of post-Sandy gas lines, are just launched with NowThis News branding. Eason Jordan, a former chief news executive at CNN who is now general manager for NowThis News, told me Monday that the app will get eight to 10 original clips added through the day, which is supplemented by an additional 10 to 15 clips. The goal is to get people watching video news again using the tools they turn to most frequently.

“We feel like younger people are not watching traditional TV news, they’re getting video news from mobile and social, and we’re building for that audience,” Jordan said.

The company, which launched in stealth mode in April under the name Planet Daily and has $5 million in funding, will also be releasing an Android app in the coming weeks. Users can also access NowThis News videos through the company’s Facebook and Twitter pages and through a dedicated vertical on BuzzFeed.

Jordan said NowThis News is trying to escape the trap of being boring by encouraging feedback and interactivity. That means users can submit their own videos, comment on current clips and suggest future stories.

I pointed out to Jordan that some of the content is getting a little stale, including old footage from the presidential debates and a look at the fall from space by Felix Baumgartner. He said the content pipeline is just getting cranked up and will produce even more pieces as NowThis News builds out its team, which is currently at 25 people. He believes a diet of 20 to 25 videos a day will satisfy most users.

NowThis News’ focus on news and interactivity may pit it against HuffPost Live, the Huffington Post’s streaming video network that tries to elicit user participation through webcams, smartphones and tablets. Jordan said that he respects HuffPost Live, but the service is a stream of “talking heads,” while NowThis News lets people choose which videos they want to view.

Election day will be an interesting test of whether watching NowThis News is better than just flipping channels, picking off videos from a user’s social stream or turning to any of the social video apps available.

The round was led by Oak Investment Partners, the VC firm that has also invested in media companies like the Huffington Post, Bleacher Report and Demand Media, and Oak’s Fred Harmon will join Thrillist’s board of directors. Lerer Ventures and Pilot Group also participated (Thrillist founder Ben Lerer is the son of Lerer Ventures’ Ken Lerer).

Thrillist launched in 2005 with under $2 million in funding from the Pilot Group. The company now publishes email newsletters in twenty markets, has over five million subscribers and says it’s “on pace to approach” $60 million in revenues in 2012, compared to $33 million in 2011. About 30 to 40 percent of Thrillist’s revenue is derived from advertising, with 60 to 70 percent coming from JackThreads clothing.

The company plans to use the new funding to build out its current content business, develop mobile and expand into “new commerce categories.”

Thrillist has “big plans for evolving the Thrillist experience on the web, as well as on mobile and in video,” said cofounder Adam Rich. “We also have significant aspirations to continue developing JackThreads into a lifestyle destination that doesn’t just sell products, but also perpetuates a lifestyle that we know our guys covet.”

Berry left the Huffington Post in February and got to work on a new incubator called SoHo Tech Labs, which reunites some of the top former executives of the Huffington Post. Along with Berry, there’s HuffPo co-founders Ken Lerer and Jonah Peretti, former CEO Eric Hippeau, Greg Coleman, former president and chief revenue officer and Eric Ashman, the former CFO. Others from HuffPo’s tech group including Ben Regenspan, CTO of the lab, have migrated over as well.

Channeling the HuffPo spirit

Berry isn’t just assembling a cast of familiar faces. He’s conjuring up the same spirit that helped the Huffington Post become a top online publisher. The idea is to channel the same virality, fast iteration, worldwide development and emphasis on analytics and apply it to a handful of startups that can get up and running with head-spinning speed.

“Our thesis is the social and mobile infrastructure we have today didn’t exist at this scale a year ago. That’s why we’re seeing the rise of Instagrams and Draw Somethings. The speed at which disruption can happen is unprecedented,” said Berry, in a sit-down interview at his office in the former Huffington Post space.

SoHo Tech Labs has already gotten two startups off the ground: CasaHop, a house exchange service that soft-launched last month and Rebel Mouse, a social publishing platform that is still shrouded in secrecy. Two more are in the works with the company prepared to push out up to eight companies this year. It’s not a factory, insists Berry, CasaHop’s CEO, but the pieces are in place to help manufacture startups with almost machine-like efficiency.

Working as a team

When ideas come in, Berry can turn to Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed, to shape it with an eye toward virality. Hippeau helps with business strategy while Lerer, general partner at Lerer Ventures, works on lining up funding and lends a hand with design and branding. Ashman is responsible for setting up the equity structure on the projects while Berry ensures that the technology evolves in a straightforward manner. All of the projects out of SoHo Tech Labs will be built off the same platform, based on Python, NoSQL, MySQL, JQuery and other technologies. The benefit is that all the companies in the lab can avoid duplicating their work by sharing code easily, plugging in the necessary components needed to build a viable product.

As a project spins up, Berry can tap a team of more than 20 developers along with three designers spread around the world to help get it up to speed. That was one of the key lessons from HuffPo’s growth: it relied on an international tech team that was constantly handing off projects to each other, ensuring that improvements and updates happened quickly. Under this entire arrangement, startups should be able to get an minimum viable product for $50,000 to $80,000.

The key for any SoHo Tech Labs startup is a viral kick, something that can spread quickly via social channels without paid marketing. Berry said the startups out of the lab will also offer an easy entry for newcomers but should also include deeper functionality for people willing to invest. And the companies will be very mobile, either at launch or soon thereafter.

Not a HuffPo competitor

So what kind of startups is SoHo Tech Labs building and will any of them eventually challenge the Huffington Post? Berry said the plan is to build platforms, tools and social sites, not to compete with HuffPo. Berry is sensitive about this subject and knows that the issue is valid, especially considering many of his team came over from HuffPo. Berry, for his part, took his time with his exit, making sure HuffPo was able to prepare for his departure.

“I understand there might be some nervousness (at the Huffington Post) but this is a new space. This is a small group of core people who were not happy at AOL. It’s different working for a small company,” Berry said.

With Berry, it’s all about getting up to 60 miles per hour as fast you can. That also presents a problem for Berry, whose projects are moving along at a nice pace, but aren’t ready to hit the road. Few things irk him more than not being able to gauge how an idea can fare on its own. But it’s good to be back with the old team, trying to see if a small group of people can create some magic again, Berry said.

“The emphasis is on scrappy,” Berry said. “It’s about doing something fun and scrappy and hoping it goes crazy.”

Planet Daily is reportedly aiming at bringing TV-style news to the web, luring in people who normally watch Jon Stewart, said AllThingsD. The start-up is partnering with Bedol’s Bedrocket, a Lerer-backed media company that creates and invests in video programming.

AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka previously reported that the content will be a mix of livestreamed and taped reports, made up of professionally-produced segments and video from amateur contributors. The idea is to rely on social media channels to promote and distribute content to viewers. Planet Daily is still in the midst of hiring workers and will look to be up and running by this summer to start covering the presidential election.

Lerer and Hippeau are part of a group of former Huffington Post execs who are moving on to new projects. Jonah Peretti started Buzzfeed and Paul Berry, former CTO, recently left AOL to start a company called Rebel Mouse. The group has also teamed up on Soho Tech Labs, an incubator where they will be seeding and founding start-ups.

Brian Bedol, founder and CEO of Bedrocket Media Ventures, which was launched with Huffington Post Co-Founder Ken Lerer, will be appearing at paidContent 2012, May 23 in New York City. 

Image courtesy of Flickr user Walt Jabsco.

The round was led by new investor, Institutional Venture Partners, along with continued support from existing backers RRE Ventures, Allen & Co., Marc Andreessen, Gordon Crovitz, Ken Lerer, among others.

The new capital comes a little more than a year after the site raised a $3 million fourth round. The year before that, the site raised $2.7 million, though at the time it was estimated to be in the $5 million range.

Blodget did not offer any hints as to what sorts of things would be coming, though it currently has 60 staffers — pretty large by the standards of online news publishing — and it’s likely that it may add to the roughly 15 channels currently organized under the Business Insider banner.

In March, the company said it had reached profitability — $2,127 at the end of 2010, to be exact. So far, the company hasn’t released any other details about its balance sheet, aside from the one accompanying today’s funding, when Blodget noted that Business Insider does have money in the bank.

So how’s it faring this year? Like most media entities in this up-and-down economy, Business Insider’s the bottom line probably varies month-to-month and quarter-to-quarter. For example, the company’s Ignition conference at the end of November will probably make that month and December a profitable month (ticket prices start at $1695 for the two-day event). Given the economic times, Business Insider can still expect to break even this year, but the need to drive more growth over the long term will require continued investment in the business.

All in all, while there’s no denying the site’s popularity with tech, media and financial professionals, there are many in its audience that loves to hate it and — and some who just plain hate it.

One detractor is Marco Arment, who is recognized as one of the primary developers of the Tumblr’s platform and the creator of Instapaper. In a post on his personal blog, Arment charges that Business Insider has “they’ve linked to nearly every significant article I’ve written” and in many cases, “rewritten my titles to be more inflammatory and attract more clicks, which irritates me more than how much their cluttered, ad-overloaded site “design” buries the link to my article.”

He adds that Business Insider eventually asked him if he would formally allow Business Insider to publish his posts, offering him the chance of greater promotion for his work, but no direct financial compensation. Needless to say, he declined the offer, saying that the traffic referrals were negligible.

In any case, it’s that kind of intensely visceral reaction that keeps readers interested in whatever it is Business Insider is doing.

Huffington, like the board members I interviewed, spoke of Morgan’s accomplishments growing traffic and the organization during her 18 months as CEO. Morgan represented the transition from Huffington and Cofounder Ken Lerer as first-stage startup execs. But, she said, “what is needed here is really monetizing the traffic. That is the primary responsibility of our CEO at this stage in our growth.” She said Morgan knew the change was imminent.

It’s a key part of what she sees as HuffPo’s next phase: “In our space, staying still doesn