Filed under: Raising money, Venture capital industry

Facebook held up Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) for $240 million in funding, then tapped Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing for another $60 million. Now, it has turned to three German entrepreneurs for more money, according to TechCrunch. The Samwer brothers, Alexander, Marc and Oliver, have reportedly invested in Facebook, though terms of the investment are unknown.

What is known is that the Samwer brothers are filthy rich after selling German auction site Alando.de AG to eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) in 1999 for $43 million, wireless ringtone and mobile games maker Jamba AG to VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) in 2004 for $273 million and Germany’s answer to Facebook, StudiVZ, in 2006 for $100 million to Holtzbrinck LLC (now Macmillan Publishers).

Continue reading at TechConfidential.com.

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Filed under: Debt, Technology

Your web host accidentally takes a year’s worth of hosting fees out of your bank account when they’re not supposed to and their message to you: “Whoops.”

That’s what DreamHost had to state after it accidentally took $7.5 million from its customers, who have 600,000 websites hosted with it.

Apparently, the company was upgrading technology and was working out bugs in the billing system. Cash collections from credit and debit cards were lower than usual, and the company was working to make sure everyone was getting billed and payments were coming in. While attempting to bill customers who hadn’t been billed (in error), the company made a mistake and ended up charging all customers for a full year of fees for 2008. In case you haven’t noticed, 2008 just started.

That resulted in about $7.5 million coming out of bank accounts and going onto credit cards, all of it unexpected by the customers. So a company representative writes on the trusty corporate blog… “Whoops.” They explained the situation and (to their credit) offered to cover overdraft fees and late fees that may have come about because of the incorrect charges.