Well, here’s a good reason not to write off Joost quite yet:

When it officially debuts its new Web-based service in mid-October, the London-based company will have some pretty hot content with its half-dozen seasons of the former NBC hit, “Friends.”

Also, there will finally be no more irksome plug-ins.

There will also be cooler social-networking elements.

While all this is not going to make up for the lost time the online video service has wasted with its annoying P2P-based desktop client download, going to a Web-based, all-Flash service with more robust content is certainly the right way to stop rival service Hulu from continuing to clean Joost’s clock.

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In a much-expected financing, LinkedIn has joined the big funding club (Slide, Spot Runner) of late, by raising $53 million at a startling $1 billion valuation.

Why go public when you can just pretend?

Actually, unlike a lot of Web 2.0 start-ups, the professional-networking site has been profitable since 2006.

The new slug of cash comes from new investor Bain Capital Ventures, along with existing investors Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and Bessemer Ventures.

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Yahoo’s board has been meeting today and, doubtlessly, its directors had a lot to talk about (more on that later!).

Of course, there’s the obvious topic of having to figure out how best to deal with the noisy stylings of billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who is waging a proxy war on Yahoo and calling for new management at the top.

But perhaps what the board should be focused on is the old management at Yahoo, especially in the levels just below the top, who have been operating the company under a lot of stress for far too long.

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Earlier this week, I visited Dash Navigation, the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based car-navigation device start-up that is being backed to the tune of $42 million by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins.
There, I got a look at the new GPS device called the Dash Express that went on sale exclusively on Amazon (AMZN) today and was also [...]

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RockYou, widget maker, is the latest example of a sane valuation heartbreaker, as it is undertaking efforts to secure an investment from mainstream financing firms that would value the company at between $300 million and $400 million.

First reported by Valleywag last night, the start-up, said one source, “is being squired around Wall Street” by investment behemoth Morgan Stanley, in search of the same kind of deal its rival Slide got in January.

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Last week, I visited Meebo, the Web-based instant messaging company, at their headquarters on Castro Street in Mountain View, Calif.

Why? Well, like a lot of Web 2.0 companies, because it’s a hot and hyped little start-up with a fast-growing audience for its–wait for it!–widgets!

But Meebo makes actually useful widgets, such as its flagship unified instant messaging offering. Thus, in an endless sea of useless and juvenile apps, that immediately makes BoomTown happy and interested.

And, backed by Sequoia Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, it also has a solid team, although it is one still in search of a much more solid business plan.

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Today, Sequoia Capital, which has been a key investor of search giant Google, as well as Yahoo, will unveil its latest investment in search, a visual search engine called: Searchme.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company, which has been germinating for three years, has raised $25 million from Sequoia and others to further its efforts to make search look more lively.

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Was it just me or did you also get a bit of déjà vu upon reading a story today by the New York Times’s Laura M. Holson about yet another mash-up of a Hollywood talent agencies with Silicon Valley VCs.
That’s apparently what is happening with a new investment venture that includes the William Morris [...]

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Until the writers’ strike in Hollywood is over–who knew it would go on this long?–BoomTown has decided to offer periodic suggestions about cool new stuff to watch.

Today, it is this gem from online video comedy site Funny or Die, in which Jerry O’Connell (who knew he was so hilarious?) does a mean and spot-on imitation [...]

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We at BoomTown are very interested in content on the Web these days, especially given the ongoing writers’ strike in Hollywood and its wrangling over digital (and a whole lot of other) issues.
The intersection–or perhaps collision is a better word–of the entertainment and technology industries continues at an ever more frantic pace.
And it’s clear the [...]

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Here is the second “baby” comedy video from the Funny or Die archives with Will Ferrell and a very tough toddler, played by Pearl McKay, called “Good Cop, Baby Cop”:
Good Cop, Baby Cop on FunnyOrDie.com
And here is the post and video of FOD investor Mark Kvamme of Sequoia Capital talking about the online video space.

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Why does the idea of a marriage between Hollywood writers and VCs make me slightly queasy?

But that’s just the feeling I got when I read the always sharp Joseph Menn of the Los Angeles Times, who penned an interesting piece earlier this week about writers in Hollywood turning to venture capitalists as the strike drags [...]

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So I recently ventured into the heart of the empire of toddler developers with a visit to the San Mateo, Calif., HQ of RockYou, the super-popular maker of third-party apps on hot social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
I have been on a bit of a grumpy tear of late about the juvenile nature of [...]

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Joost, the online video service, is finally out of beta–kind of–with the release of its 1.0 software to anyone who cares to download it and a redesign of both its Web page and search on the service.

The broadband peer-to-peer Internet service, which is trying to popularize a television experience on the Web by providing professionally [...]

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And on the seventh day, at least we did not get another lump of Sugar.

After a year of manic site creation, Brian Sugar actually bought his first company, rather than extend his name further in the online women-focused arena.
Yesterday, Sugar’s San Francisco-based Sugar Publishing–which includes the flagship PopSugar (celebs), GeekSugar (tech), CasaSugar (home), YumSugar (food), [...]

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