[UK] BREAKING: This is quite a big move from TV broadcaster Channel 4 in the UK. They appear to be admitting their 4oD video-on-demand ‘catch-up’ service is no match for putting the lot on YouTube. Here’s the release that just went out:

YouTube, Channel 4 sign pioneering long-form content deal

October 15 2009: YouTube and Channel 4 have signed a pioneering content deal which will make the broadcaster’s original programmes available on demand, in full and free-of-charge via YouTube in the UK in the coming months.

The strategic partnership marks the first time that a broadcaster anywhere in the world has made a comprehensive catch-up schedule available on YouTube, providing Channel 4 with additional advertising inventory and reach: YouTube last week announced it was serving over 1 billion video streams every day.

Under the terms of the deal, Channel 4 will make its 4oD video-on-demand ‘catch-up’ service of new programmes available via YouTube shortly after television transmission, including series that have already proved particularly popular with online audiences such as Skins, Hollyoaks, The Inbetweeners and Peep Show. YouTube users will also be able to access around 3,000 hours of full length programming from the Channel 4 archive at any given time, including shows like Brass Eye, Derren Brown, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, Teachers and many others.

Content will begin appearing in the coming months and be fully available in early 2010. All programmes will be available only in the UK, free-of-charge supported by advertising.

Financial terms are not being disclosed, but the partnership runs for an initial term of at least three years and the two parties will share advertising revenues on an agreed formula. The deal will create significant value for Channel 4 and its independent production partners, generating additional revenue to invest in creating high quality, original content. YouTube and Channel 4 will continue to co-operate on additional monetisation opportunities as new technology evolves.

Channel 4 will have a branded presence on YouTube and will be able to sell advertising around its content on the site. The agreement also allows Channel 4 to sell advertising around some non-Channel 4 content on YouTube for the first time, expanding the amount of inventory available to its sales team and bringing its considerable expertise in advertising around full length TV content to the YouTube platform. It will help Channel 4 develop its advertising sales proposition in digital, including the use of YouTube’s demographic targeting tools to target advertising against Channel 4 content on YouTube.

The deal builds significantly on Channel 4 and YouTube’s existing partnership; Channel 4 was the first broadcaster to sell pre-roll advertisements on YouTube clips and to incorporate an offline sponsor into an online YouTube package (Lucozade, Big Brother).

The deal is non-exclusive, allowing Channel 4 to continue distributing its 4oD service via its own website, channel4.com, and other third party sites and services.

Nikesh Arora, President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development for Google, YouTube’s owner, said: “Over the past few years, fans have had access to increasing amounts of professional programming online as TV companies experiment with new ways of distributing their content. Channel 4 have been visionary in their online strategy and are consistently at the forefront of new uses of YouTube to engage their viewers and unlock new revenue streams. This significant new agreement brings Channel 4’s great full length content to the YouTube community, helping Channel 4 to grow their online revenues and to continue to invest in the creation of high quality original content.”.

Andy Duncan, Channel 4’s Chief Executive, said: “Channel 4 was the first broadcaster anywhere in the world to make all its commissioned content available online and we’ve consistently pioneered in this field. This strategic partnership is another important milestone for us and we’re delighted to be combining the power of the ‘4’ brand and the appeal of our content with YouTube’s unrivalled reach and reputation online.

“Making our programmes directly accessible to YouTube’s 20 million UK users will financially benefit both Channel 4 and our independent production partners and help bolster our investment in quality British content. It demonstrates our ability to strike dynamic commercial partnerships to help underpin our future as a commercially funded, not-for-profit multi-platform public service network.”

Jon Gisby, Director of Future Media and Technology at Channel 4, added: “Channel 4 has a clear lead among commercial broadcasters in video-on-demand and we’re convinced extending our relationship with YouTube will help consolidate that position. The deal will grow our share of the audience and enhance our advertising sales proposition. It will create new advertising inventory for Channel 4 Sales in digital media and will help us realise our ambition to be the UK’s leading sales house for video-on-demand.”

Patrick Walker, YouTube’s Director of Partnerships, added: “We know that the YouTube community is enthusiastic about full-length programming on the site, and we’ve been working hard to create the right environment for more broadcasters to make their content available with the right branding, the right advertising formats and the right level of control over advertising sales. This partnership demonstrates our commitment to bringing an even greater range of content to YouTube and we look forward to other similar agreements to come.”

[UK/Wales] It feels like these guys have been on the fund-raising trail forever. But finally SubHub, the platform for subscription content websites, has closed a significant funding round. Led by commercial funder, Finance Wales, alongside Angels including Simon Murdoch and David Hulston, SubHub now plans to expand its website building and monetisation tools and service.

The startup has done well out of formally locating it’s business to Cardiff, Wales – although not all the management actually live there, admittedly. Historically it took plenty of grant funding from the Welsh Assembly Government which pumps money into the local economy. Total funds raised by the company has been over $1.2 million. Of course it also has revenues from its paid-for platform. The company is not disclosing the exact, but say it’s the “largest single chunk of the total $1.2 million raised to date.” We estimate it’s in the region of £500,000. They’re calling this a Series A, but that appears to apply to the total amount raised to date.

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[UK] Fizzback, a SAAS provider of CRM to large retail, telco and financial enterprises, has secured £1.6 million in second round (Series B) funding. The round was lead by Nauta Capital and included existing investor Advent Venture Partners.

Fizzback offers a cross-channel platform (sms, email, voice, web) for real-time dialogue between business and customers

Nauta Capital operates out of Barcelona and Boston. Advent Venture Partners is in London. Advent led the previous £2.5 million round in October 2006.

[Apologies for the brevity, I'm posting via the WiFi on a train in the UK] It looks UK-based TVCatchup has launched a new service which has the Twittersphere chattering today. Accessing iphone.tvcatchup.com on an iPhone (or iPod Touch) lets the user tap into live UK TV channels, with a delay of about one minute. Quite some feat to pull off. And the Brighton-based outfit is claiming it’s all legit. TVCatchup ran into pretty serious trouble last year with broadcast.

Here’s a some video I found about the service:

Whoa! Easyvoyage, the European travel site, has announced a second leveraged buyout of €31.6 million. That makes it the largest financial transaction in France and the 5th largest in Europe for this year, apparently.

The two new financial investors are UFG and GIMV. The initial shareholders Frederic Chevalier, Jacques Maillot, Francis Reverse, and Mogador Participations will maintain their position. Jean-Pierre Nadir, Founder and CEO now holds 40 per cent of the shares.

This second LBO follows an LBO of €9 million in December 2006. Easyvoyage has doubled revenue year-on-year.

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[UK] Shazam’s funding today from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers could put it onto a path to IPO. The very cool way to find out the name of that track you like in a noisy bar, has reached 50m users. It’s aiming for 100 million by the end of next year.

The amount of funding has been undisclosed, so what size of that IPO would be is anyone’s guest. The cash for Shazam’s fourth fundraising is coming out of KPCB’s $100m iFund, which was launched in March last year aiming at mobile companies. Shazam also has investors DN Capital and Acacia Capital Partners. Shazam has raised about $20m to date.

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So the background first: Giant oil business Trafigura is accused of dumping toxic waste off the Ivory coast of Africa, allegedly causing harm to the local population that frequents those shores. In most countries the legal system has not bothered to hear Trafigura’s claims that it’s been libeled. But the UK still has libel laws which were written over a hundred years ago. These are more than friendly to the “injured” party. Thus wealthy companies and individuals regularly mount actions there that other countries wouldn’t even give 5 minutes of court time because they are so blatantly self-seeking. In the last couple of days The Guardian newspaper was subject to a judge’s gagging order preventing it from even reporting the fact that a question about Trafigura had been asked in Parliament, traditionally outside the constraints of gagging orders and libel law. This potentially set a huge and backward precedent.

What happens next? The gagging order, links to Wikileaks and plenty of other information about the case was repeated on Twitter. Last night and today the entire issue trended on Twitter with hashtags including #guardiangag #guardian #carterruck (Carter Ruck was the law firm representing Trafigura) and of course #Trafigura.

With the traditional media gagged, the new media had kicked in. That created a story which plenty of trad media outlets and blogs outside the UK could not ignore and started reporting on.

In other words, this kind of censorship is over. And I hope that British Libel law will change as a result. It must now move into the 21st Century and reflect new technology. After all, there is now a new defence. Feel libelled? You can defend your case just as much as the other guy online. Except of course if you are dumb enough not to register @carterruck, for instance.

The below map is from Trendsmap.

And in another display of this massive wave of people power, here’s two videos of a time-lapse of Twitter trends captured by Twitscoop.

Online cash trivia gamester Amuso has closed its latest round of funding with a $1.5 million investment from Mangrove Capital Partners, the principal investor at its launch in 2007, alongside a series of angel investors. It will use the cash to expand in the UK and US. It’s also hired Ned Walley and Rabin Yaghoubi, both former Directors of Strategic Partnerships at Google. Bill Houghton, former Director of Products at AOL Entertainment, is Amuso’s new Head of Products. Amuso’s development lab is in Barcelona.

Cash trivia games are worth more than $3 billion globally, and Amuso’s speciality is launching them on social networks via flash widgets. On TriviaStar competitors can play the free version or make small cash deposits, payable via SMA or PayPal, from which partners take a transactional commission. The remainder is used to fund cash prizes for winners. Amuso says conversion rates from play for free to play for cash represent one in ten for an average $1.50 entry fee.

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[France] On stage at last year’s Le Web an argument broke out between co-founder Loic Le Meur and TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington over whether Europe was capable of producing a ‘big win’ Web company or whether Skype was, perhaps, just a one-hit wonder. Like heavyweight fighters, both of them traded some heavy blows in subsequent blog posts. But during the live on-stage Gilmour Gang, one company was mentioned by Le Meur which left the rest of the assembled staring blankly: Vente-Privee.

Probably the reason it prompted such sideways looks however is that this is not a classic web app startup, but an ecommerce hub. Vente-Privee began in France in 2001, but has only recently become a powerhouse of a new wave in Europe: online private sales clubs involving designer fashion brands, otherwise known in the fashion retail industry as the “overstock market”. Its success has lead to a bunch of clone sites, while Vente-Privee itself is on target to €650m in turnover globally this year. In other words Europe is not out to lunch – as Arrington put it – it is out to shop.

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[UK] Presumably missing the obvious opportunity to launch “SkyTunes” to compete with the slightly better known iTunes (I guess because of the legalities) the UK broadcaster Sky is launching SkySongs some 15 months after it said it would.

Kicking off next week on October 19, the service will have all the major labels and 100 independents – but its four million catalogue compares badly with 7digital’s, for example. But then again, we are not really talking about Sky service here. We are talking about a re-skinned MusicStation /Omnifone. Omnifone is an independent provider of music services, with MusicStation being its main product. It’s won lots of industry awards, apparently.

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GooSync, the synchronisation service that lets you sync a mobile with Google Calendar, tasks and contacts using SyncML, has been going since 2007. But though it’s been running a premium and free version, it’s now dumping the latter entirely. Not an unsurprising move given the growth especially in mobile data use of apps like this, especially with the iPhone.

The company said “Given the exponential demand for GooSync over the last 12 months, it has become increasingly more difficult to continue this high level of service to both Premium and Free users. It is therefore, with regret, that we are now discontinuing our Free service.”

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It’s been a long old time since we checked in with Bristol based Coull, the application which helps brand owners create their own video portals and interactive video content.

The startup has now has secured additional funding of £500,000 and hired Vaughan Denny the former head of rich media sales for Google Europe.

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Quite some years ago I was a young journalist sent on assignment to Munich to cover a conference. As many conferences are, it was not exactly rich with stories. But there was an upside. The Oktoberfest was on and I managed to sneak out to enjoy the echoing halls of the festival, drinking beer, singing songs and eating fantastic food. Munich is a beautiful city, rich with history and surrounded by incredible mountain scenery. But like all European cities in the 21st century, it cannot rest on its laurels. It’s now taking its place as a hub in the network that is the European tech entrepreneurial scene.

Thus TechCrunch Europe is hosting TechCrunch Munich at the Sun Microsystem offices in Munich on 20 October, from 2pm onwards, followed by networking drinks. We’ll be hearing startup pitches and speakers in this key German city in the startup ecosystem, focusing on a number of current and relevant themes for the tech community. Tickets have already been going fast, so get the last ones here.

Here’s the run-down on the event:

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As we just reported today, Foursquare, the location based social game from Silicon Valley, launched today in London. I’ve duly signed up to check it out, and tweeted out my username to see who’s out there on the system that I know.

First of all the site has no setting to stop receiving emails when someone requests to be your ‘friend’ on Foursquare. That’s not a privacy issue, but it is incredibly annoying. This is possibly their version of a ‘viral loop’. I call it spam/ham. Yes, I can set up a filter, but it’s not an ideal solution. That’s not my main beef with Foursquare.

My main beef right now is the utter lack of sophistication in the privacy settings on location. Let me explain.

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BREAKING: Location-based game Foursquare has just added London to it’s roster of cities. The news that the startup (which turns a city into one big game for users via an iPhone app) was poised to hit the biggest city outside the US came out on the company’s Twitter feed two days ago. Granted it’s already live in Amsterdam (the only other non-US city) but London is an order of magnitude larger. Paris is supposedly next on their list.

Foursquare is a location-based social network presented as a game where you “check in” at a location when you are out, thus turning the mobile app into a guide to the city and way to meet people. There is also a loyalty store card element.

I’m going to make a rash prediction about Foursquare in London, and particularly the Brit reaction: Either it will be a smash hit or it will fail miserably.

Brits have taken to points-based games on Facebook. But when it comes to location, most of the time, Londoners are more interested in piling into the nearest pub than worrying about who is the “mayor” of a particular physical space.
I’ve also been trying out Gowalla, which is similar. Now, since I have 12,00 followers on Twitter I thought I might find at least a few members there, but in fact I found hardly any. So whether Foursquare can beat this or not remains to be seen, but since they prep-populate their service with locations you can own, this may give them a head start. [Update: I just tried finding Twitter friends on Foursquare - sure enough, I recognised only three people in London. Still, it's only just launched].

It will be interesting to see how other local location-based players like Rummble will react to this move. They already have Tremors which ranks places by the number of Tweets coming out of a location, but this is not the same as a “game” in the way Foursquare is in terms of collecting points. IN that sense it may well lack virality.

Just before the Summer we launched the TechCrunch Europe Top 100. This is a regularly updated Index of the most innovative and highest-potential European tech companies. The Index is focused on mobile and web companies (although cleantech and gadget companies have a presence) in the broad EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region. The index was created in association with Valley-based startup tracker YouNoodle. The scores and rankings are based on a sophisticated algorithm using information pulled in from thousands of online sources about early stage companies: traffic, mainstream media, funding information sources, the blogosphere, and other key factors.

And now we need your help. We’re going to re-fresh the Index, taking some companies out, putting some in and generally improving it. We’d like your feedback on who should stay and who should go. Leave your feedback in the comments. More after the jump:

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So, good luck to all those startup teams attending Launch48 in London in a couple of weeks. What’s Launch48 you say? Here’s the schpeel:

Launch48 runs events for people who want to try to learn and launch a web business. On Friday the 16th of October we are running a conference with some of the best web entrepreneurs from the UK speaking about marketing, PR, business, technical, and design in regards to launching a web business. From Friday 16th Oct in the evening to Sunday 18th October we are running the Launch48 weekend – a 48 hour event grouping people into teams to create new web businesses. During the weekend participants network, build a new business, and learn from a range of experienced mentors from the web industry.

In other words if you have a startup you want to find out will work or not, then hot-housing it for 48 hours may well help you decide.

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Back in December 2008 Reevoo looked like it was running out of time.The B2B customer reviews site hunkered down on staffing amid pressure from the downbeat economic climate in an attempt to play out both its venture investment and give its revenues time to power up.

In March last year it secured an undisclosed round of investment from Banexi Venture Partners, the French leading venture capital firm that originally backed Kelkoo, while existing investors, including Eden Ventures, also participated. It was doing £500,000 worth of transactions a month with partners like Tescos, Orange and Dixons and had launched a French portal. But its SEO was terrible and it was, in my opinion, treading water.

Well today it looks like CEO Richard Anson’s slower burn strategy has paid off.

Reevoo is announcing further partners for its service including Hotpoint, Sharp and Toshiba (joining Brother, Cannon, Indesit, Kodak and Kaspersky) to supply genuine, post purchase, customer reviews for their European e-commerce sites. Although there are plenty of sites that let you review products, like Ciao and Amazon, only Reevoo confirms you actually bought the product.

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[Netherlands] Dutch Start-up Flogs has raised almost €2 million in a round of funding from private investors and the Dutch Government to develop its sharing and synchronizing of event calendars from most major platforms. CEO Toon Timmermans says they plan to expand the business worldwide, opening an office in New York and hiring more staff.

These include Ralph Manheim, a former IMG Media executive with experience in the world of Football, as the commercial director for Flogs International. Martijn van Egmond, formerly of Google, will become marketing and communication manager.

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[UK] PureSolo, a UK startup which has developed an online music store which lets people record and share their own versions of well-known tracks, will this week launch a special service with hit UK TV show The X Factor, the American Idol-like show. The branded version for the official website will let fans record themselves singing to all those cheesy tracks the show’s contestants are forced to sing for judges like Simon Cowell. There’s presumably little to stop PureSolo creating other versions for other shows in other markets.

PureSolo technically competes in the online karaoke space with others like MikeStar, an online-karaoke community for Europe. However PureSolo’s emphasis on actual music notation and recording sets it apart from the average karaoke games. The startup, headed by CEO David Kaplan, is bootstrapped and backed by private individuals.

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[UK] Something interesting is going on. North West Business Insider magazine reports (no online link, it’s in the printed title, alas) that Envestors planning to launch in Manchester to take advantage of “wider pockets of wealth”. It’s a commonly known fact that the North West of the UK has a cluster of millionaire business people who may well be interested in putting small amounts into an organised network like this.

Envestors started in 2004 offering high-net-worth individuals the chance to invest between £20,000 and £2m in early-stage businesses, also plans to expand into Jersey. In other words, it’s not necessarily going where a tech scene is – it’s following the money.

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[FRANCE] TalentSoft, a French software startup which has SAAS software enterprise products has finalised a new round of funding with Seventure Partners to the tune of €1.6 million. The idea is to further develop its products which are designed to perform staff appraisals and something called “talent planning”.

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Following TechCrunch Europe events in Berlin, Stockholm, Paris and London among many others, we’re heading to Munich in Germany next. I’ll reveal more about the event this week.

In the meantime, we’d like to hear from speakers and startups who have something to launch or just speak about.

I am looking for speakers to give short, fast presentations.

I am looking for startups to pitch.

The event will be in English and covered on TechCrunch/TechCrunch Europe.

To be considered for the pitch competition you need to email TechCrunch Europe Editor Mike Butcher, with a one side of A4 text-only pitch, and also include the URL of your company/project/startup etc on CrunchBase (you can add your company onto it if it is not already there). Include: The market “problem” you are solving with your startup, your solution, your business model, your competitors, your team and what you’re looking for (Seed funding, Angel funding, Series A round, etc). There is no fee for one person form the startup to pitch, as is our policy. Deadline for entry is ASAP.

I’m just going to get this out and see what occurs after.

So Facebook newsfeeds have been intermittently interrupted today and it looks like the story runs like this.

Today Facebook allegedly tried to shut down the ad-serving operations of Social Cash, an ad network that operates inside Facebook applications.

However, it appears that in shutting down SocialCash, it’s also shut out all applications running SocialCash adverts.

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When I first heard that there was a new project to make London’s Technorati bare all for a charity calendar I was a tad skeptical it would actually happen, but the organisers are getting their act together fast, as you can see from the video below. (WITN = Why Is This News).

To anyone stumbling on this post from Silicon Valley or beyond, let me explain. Britain, the home of Benny Hill, still thinks it’s titillating to have people appear semi-naked. Hey, it takes all sorts. But from this culture was born Calendar Girls, a project by some normally straight-laced British women to pose for a calendar in the name of a cancer charity. The project eventually became a movie and is now even a West End play. The calendar they shot had them posing, in reality only semi-nude, but with little cover other than strategically placed objects. Ok, so that’s your history lesson over.

Anyway, the London Nude Tech Calendar now has a Ning group, and explains all here. And they’ve even done a teaser video:

London Nude Tech Calendar Teaser from Leap Anywhere TV on Vimeo.

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