Innovation Endeavors, a Palo Alto VC shop, has an opening for a senior associate.

Beijing-based Renren, a Chinese social networking internet platform has announced the acquisition of online video sharing site 56.com. The value of the acquisition will be $80 million and is expected to complete in the fourth quarter of 2011. Since inception, 56.com has received venture backing from firms including Sequoia Capital, Steamboat Ventures, CID Group, and SIG.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based online business directory and social network MerchantCircle has sold for $60 million in cash and stock after raising $14.3 million over two rounds from Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners, Square 1 Bank, and Steamboat Ventures. The company was purchased by the online advertising business Reply, based in San Ramon, Calif. [...]

Publicly traded ValueClick will pay $70 million for mobile advertising network Greystripe Inc. San Francisco-based Greystripe has raised venture capital from firms including Steamboat Ventures, Monitor Ventures, Peacock Equity and Incubic Venture Capital. Montgomery & Co. acted as financial advisor to Greystripe. Under the terms of the deal, Greystripe’s management will join ValueClick, and the business will be run as a wholly-owned subsidiary within ValueClick Media.

GameSalad Inc. has raised $6.1 million in a second round of funding led by Steamboat Ventures. Greycroft Partners, DFJ Mercury, DFJ Frontier and ff Asset Management also participated in the financing round. The new money will help GameSalad expand its game creation technology and expand the company’s efforts in web and mobile gaming. Beau Laskey, managing director at Steamboat Ventures, will join GameSalad’s board as a result of the financing. Dana Settle, partner at Greycroft Partners, joins as a board observer.

Beijing-based Yoyi Media has raised $20 million in Series B financing led by Oak Investment Partners. Existing backers Steamboat Ventures and Shanghai-based Gobi Partners also contributed. Yoyi Media is a provider of targeted online advertising and marketing technology. The new money will help the company expand its video and rich-media advertising platform.

Game developers should thank Facebook for only taking 30% of their revenue when the social network’s credits system of paying for virtual goods becomes its sole currency this July. Facebook commands an iron fist over its itsy-bitsy “partners” the way the mob used to muscle corner store merchants a century ago. Game developers are still [...]

Gridsum Technology completed a Series A funding round led by Steamboat Ventures, a VC firm affiliated with Walt Disney Co. Gridsum is a Chinese provider of web, video and search analytics services.

Passenger, a social network products company based in Los Angeles, California, has raised $7.5 million in an investment round led by Dr. Bahram Nour-Omid and existing investors Shelter Capital Partners, StarVest Partners and Steamboat Ventures. Dr Nour-Omid, a partner at Shelter Capital, has been appointed CEO, with Steve Howe as Chairman.

Elemental Technologies, a Portland, Ore.-based provider of massively-parallel video processing solutions, has raised $7.5 million in Series B funding. Steamboat Ventures led the round, and was joined by return backers General Catalyst and Voyager Capital.