In his weekly Backstory column, The Deal's Richard Morgan chimed in on the new $250 million equity fund from GE Commercial Finance and NBC Universal—seemingly at once both ominous and an interesting value proposition. It's a tight space, Morgan wrote, with other "conglomerate-size strategics" vying for the next big thing in new media, including Time Warner Investments, the one-time venture outfit of America Online Inc., Walt Disney Co. brainchild Steamboat Ventures and Comcast Interactive Media. While one analyst painted it as an ominous emergence, perhaps analogous to the ramp-up immediately preceding the implosion of Web 1.0, GE-NBCU is steaming ahead with hopes of getting in on "cutting-edge technologies." Its planned point of differentiation is to bring expertise on both fronts—financial and media—and it has kicked things off with a $3 million investment in Adify Corp., which both sets up online ad networks and automates systems like tracking, reporting and payment. Then late Wednesday, the founder of RSS service startup Rmail, Randy Morin, announced via blog the sale of his company to NBCU. While it isn't clear what shape the investment took and details are few, Morin did enlighten readers about what's ahead for Rmail users..."new stuff." More such deals can't be far behind.—Carolyn Murphy
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See Morin's blog post
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