Seattle tech news this week includes Amazon’s seasonal hiring binge, the acquisition of AdReady, a Paper-Moleskine partnership, and funding for BuddyTV.com. Read on for more details.
—If the government shutdown continues through the holidays, laid-off federal employees could apply for one of the 70,000-plus full-time seasonal openings Amazon.com plans to fill this year. The Seattle Internet giant’s hiring plans can also be read as a sign of economic recovery: Amazon says it’s looking to fill 40 percent more seasonal positions than it did last year, reflecting expected increases in demand. Amazon says seasonal workers earn 94 percent as much as permanent employees, on average, and can get health benefits. And, thousands of people parlay their seasonal jobs into permanent positions. More than 7,000 have done so already this year, the company says.
—Seattle online advertising platform provider AdReady has been bought by CPXi, a digital media holding company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. AdReady will remain in Seattle and become an independent division of CPXi. CEO Aaron Finn will become general manager of the unit.
—Another popular app is pairing with Moleskine, the maker of the little black notebooks. FiftyThree, famous for the Paper iPad app, introduced a product called Book, which takes sketches made in the Paper app and prints them on a 15-page accordion foldout by Moleskine. These hand-assembled little books will cost $40 and take a couple of weeks to go from the digital to real worlds. This move comes as little surprise, particularly given Moleskine’s partnerships with the likes of Evernote. In a story about Seattle- and New York-based FiftyThree’s $15 million funding round this summer, I noted that Paper already took visual cues from Moleskine and that it “has in many ways become the digital equivalent of the iconic Moleskine brand: a blank slate, favored by generations of writers and artists.”
—BuddyTV.com has raised a little over $1.5 million, according to an SEC filing. The Seattle-based company makes a social platform and guide for television content on any device. The company, which is actually called Advanced Media Research Group, incorporated eight years ago this month. We’ve asked CEO Andy Liu for details of the latest funding and will update this post as appropriate.
