Interactive webcast software provider Rotor Inc. and online entertainment company Stan Lee Media have signed a one-year deal to jointly develop interactive programming.
Rotor has been making waves with its technology that makes online webcasts truly interactive, allowing users to influence an event’s story line by answering polls and asking questions of the event’s host. Based on that information from the audience, a show can be quickly tailored to topics of interest.
Stan Lee Media, founded by the eponymous co-creator of Spider Man and the X-Men, will use Rotor’s technology to host online events related to the company’s entertainment properties, which include animated programs and licensing deals with popular musicians.
Landing Stan Lee is a major victory for L.A.-based Rotor, which spent months toiling away to perfect its product while other companies rushed to market during the dot-com flurry. In May, the company held its first-ever online event for Sony Pictures Family Entertainment and The WB.
Stan Lee Media is a perfect partner for Rotor, said Adam Tyler, the latter company’s senior vice president of entertainment.
“They’ve always been willing to take chances and do programming that you don’t see anywhere else,” Tyler said. “What Rotor does is create a new form of programming, so it seems like a really good marriage.”
The deal may even bring opportunities to test out new interactive features.
“Certainly anytime you’re dealing with someone who has very important brands, you don’t want to take real risks of doing things that would damage the brand,” Tyler said. “But at the same time, they’re known for taking risks and if anyone’s going to forge ahead and do the unusual, it would be them. I think they’d be more open to it than other companies.”
Drawing on the Walls
Forget brightly colored walls, ping pong tables or a video-game room. Online real estate company Homestore.com Inc. has taken unique d & #233;cor to new extremes.
After solidifying plans to move from its Thousand Oaks headquarters to a new facility in Westlake Village in early September, Homestore.com Chairman and Chief Executive Stuart Wolff decided to let employees go wild.
During the first two weeks of July, 400 Homestore employees broke up into teams and turned 16 office walls into art. Using a stipend of less than $250 per wall for decorating materials, teams battled it out to win an all-expenses-paid day trip to the nearby destination of their choice.
Finished walls included everything from a “Wheel of Fortune”-style wheel marked with prizes including vacation days, cash and other prizes, to a “Who’s Who” wall containing a picture of each employee, and a wall featuring actual bird cages with pictures of the team members inside.
But it was the finance department’s “Bean Counter” wall featuring more than 8,000 green-and-white jelly beans formed into a wall-sized replica of a Homestore stock certificate that took first prize in the final judging last week.
“It’s really well done,” said spokesman Jeff Charney.
Second prize went to the legal department for its Velcro wall that a person could stick to, a la David Letterman.
The winners came as a bit of a surprise to some.
“Finance and legal, the numbers one and two, are groups that aren’t perceived to be very creative,” Charney said. “Give people a chance to be creative and you wouldn’t believe how much people can shine.”
Need2Buy Gets Cash
A local company running an online business-to-business marketplace for the electronics components industry just landed a $43 million round of funding from heavy-hitting investors, including TMCT Ventures.
Need2Buy.com, based in Westlake Village, has been working since March to land this second round of funding.
“Times have changed,” said Maury Friedman, the company’s chairman and CEO.
The company’s first round of funding, just $3 million, took hardly any time to raise late last year, Friedman recalled. “People tended to ask questions, but there was very little due diligence,” he said.
But the second round just happened to coincide perfectly with the stock market jitters and a resulting plunge in the valuation of many business-to-business tech companies. “That added an element of uncertainty to the negotiations,” Friedman said.
Besides TMCT Ventures, backers included Shelter Ventures of Los Angeles and Baker Capital of New York. The company will use the funds to enhance its technology, expand into other countries, increase its marketing efforts and expand its management team.
Staff reporter Laura Dunphy can be reached at [email protected].
L.A. Web Review
LosAngelesAlmanac.com has so much information it’s enough to make you wish you had to write a fourth-grade essay on L.A.
The site contains anything and everything a person could want to know about L.A.’s history, prominent people, earthquakes, the environment, even the weather. Information is given almanac-style, meaning most descriptions or explanations are just a paragraph or two long. Much information is given in easy-to-read charts.
Need to know L.A. County’s Nobel Prize winners? Care about the history of L.A.’s telephone area codes? Curious what high-profile crimes still remain unsolved by the LAPD? The answers are all there, in bite-sized pieces. For those who are interested in learning more, the site usually includes the source of the information, whether a book or governmental agency.
LosAngelesAlmanac.com can’t boast exciting graphics. But it’s easy to use and jam-packed with interesting information, without being frustrating or overwhelming.
