For everyone waiting for Philadelphia’s Google or Facebook, let me introduce you myYearbook.com.

The New Hope social networking site just raised $13 million from three venture firms. And while it’s not the goliath those other Web businesses are, it’s grown a lot in little more than three years.

I’ve Facebooked. I’m LinkedIn. Looking at myYearbook, I know I’m not the target demographic. Teenagers are.

And that has a lot to do with the teens who started the site back in April 2005.

Dave and Catherine Cook started with a simple idea: Turn the static high-school yearbook into a dynamic online experience.

After hiring programmers to build a Web site, the brother-and-sister entrepreneurs got their fellow students at Montgomery High School in Skillman, N.J., to create their own online yearbook pages.

Like so much of what happens online, the site went global in about six months. Dave and Catherine even convinced their older brother, Geoff, to become CEO.

In early 2007, myYearbook raised $4.1 million from U.S. Venture Partners, of Menlo Park, Calif., and First Round Capital, of West Conshohocken. At the time, it had more than 1.8 million members.

Today, it has more than 10 million members. Hitwise, which measures online traffic, says myYearbook is the third-largest social network in the U.S. - well behind MySpace and Facebook. But it recorded the fastest-growing market share between June 2008 and June 2007.

This latest financing was led by Norwest Venture Partners, another Silicon Valley fund willing to send its money East.

You don’t shower $13 million on an enterprise unless you believe it’s going to return in buckets. And it looks like myYearbook has figured out how to make money from teens being teens. That’s what Norwest principal Sergio Monsalve noted: “What myYearbook has accomplished within the realm of online advertising is truly innovative.”

Not too many businesses started by high-school students wind up raising $18.6 million. I hope they enjoy the ride.

The pharmaceutical industry garners headlines in the Philadelphia area, but there are other kinds of companies that feed off that business.

Health-care analytics firms are one type. On Tuesday, two local providers of information to the drug industry said they’d merged as of Monday.

SDI, of Plymouth Meeting, bought Verispan L.L.C. of Yardley, for an undisclosed amount. SDI CEO Andrew Kress said that Philadelphia’s LLR Equity Partners, which just raised $800 million for its new fund, supplied the capital for the transaction.

With 200 employees, SDI is the smaller of the two private companies. Verispan has about 500 workers.

You’ve probably never heard of either of them, unless you’re the type of person who wants to know which drug company psychiatrists hold in high esteem. (That would be Eli Lilly, according to Verispan.)

But you may have heard about Pollen.com, a Web site operated by SDI that offers allergy forecasts. (Yesterday’s cities with high pollen counts included Erie and Newark.)

Both make their money selling their patient-level analytics to pharmaceutical and biotech companies, hospitals and pharmacies, and other clients. Still there’s very little overlap between the two, said Kress, who is heading the enlarged SDI. It will maintain both local offices as well as ones in Cranbury, N.J., and Waltham, Mass.

After a transition period, Verispan CEO Wayne Yetter will leave the organization.

Verispan was formed in 2002 as a joint venture between McKesson Corp., the wholesale pharmaceutical distributor, and Quintiles Transnational Corp., a clinical research organization.

Kress talks about the need for SDI to develop the next generation of analytics services for a pharmaceutical industry that is not as profitable as it was five years ago.

Drug companies need to be more efficient in how they deploy their resources and better data can help them do that, Kress said.

Last week, Blackstone Group agreed to buy AlliedBarton Security Services from MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc.

Today, we know how much the New York private-equity firm is paying for the King of Prussia-based security guard firm: $750 million.

In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Blackstone said that cash amount includes a $50 million maximum potential earnout payment. That money is paid only if AlliedBarton achieves certain levels of earnings before income taxes, depreciation and amortization for its fiscal year ended Dec. 31, 2009.

Important to note: The deal could be terminated if it doesn't close on or before Oct. 10. Blackstone would have to pay a fee under certain circumstances, but the amount of the breakup fee wasn't disclosed in the SEC filing.

MacAndrews & Forbes, which is the conglomerate controlled by billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, paid $263 million for AlliedBarton in 2003. The company, which had its origins in SpectaGuard, is about three times the size it was when Perelman bought it.

It's not exactly a flip, but the company that puts on the Philadelphia Home Show has been sold.

Marketplace Events L.L.C., which is owned by Arkansas-based Stephens Capital Partners L.L.C., bought 38 North American consumer home shows from DMG World Media last week. The price was $53 million, according  to one of the investment banking firms involved in the deal.

The rest of the shows for 2008 will go on as scheduled. The Philadelphia Home Show is usually held at the Convention Center in January.

Near the end of 2007, DMG said it was looking to sell its home shows in North America after 12 years here. 

So it's not just houses sitting on the market for months at a time, right?

DMG produces 250 trade shows and consumer shows worldwide and is a subsidiary of Daily Mail & General Trust PLC.

Here's what DMG chief operating officer Michael Franks says:

The home shows were a significant reason for dmg world media's entry into the North American market in the first place, and we have all enjoyed building the business to where it is today.

Marketplace Events, of Cleveland, retained the management team and the company's almost 100 employees.

It also signed a three-year deal with "Extreme Makeove: Home Edition" host Ty Pennington to be spokesman for the shows. So brace yourself for Pennington's megaphone shout pitch coming next January.

I love top 10 lists and rankings of the biggest, the most profitable and the most valuable companies.

But sometimes rankings make you scratch your head, especially when they’re based on an index of several factors.

On Monday, two different organizations conjured up different pictures of Philadelphia as a place to do business.

First, the Web site of Inc. magazine listed Philadelphia as one of the worst cities in which to do business as part of its annual ranking the hottest cities. (Midland, Texas was the best place overall for business.)

How did the editors determine this? It’s by employment growth rate, and that should tell you that Philadelphia would have trouble gaining ground. Its employment base has been shrinking for years.

Of the 335 metropolitan areas it ranked, Philadelphia was stuck at No. 308.

Among 66 large cities, Inc. magazine tapped the Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina area as the hottest for business. The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn area of Michigan was the worst. Philadelphia was No. 62, better than Providence, R.I., but worse than Rochester, N.Y.

States in the South and West dominate the 20 hottest cities, as determined by Inc. Only New York breaks that trend when it pops up at No. 22.

The second ranking was by KPMG International, and it calculated a “tax index” for 21 U.S. cities with populations of more than 2 million. I feared the worst, but Philadelphia did better than I expected. It was No. 10 - ahead of Boston, but behind Denver.

KPMG says its tax index is a measure of the total taxes paid by corporations in a location and industry, expressed as a percentage of total taxes paid by similar corporations in the United States.

Still Philadelphia’s total tax index of 101.9 was below the U.S. national average of 100, so I’m not sure the Commerce Department wants to be trumpeting the results. In fact, KPMG said Baltimore, our neighbor down I-95, had the most favorable tax structure for business in the United States, save for San Juan, Puerto Rico.

You can't be a business junkie without loving ranking things in various ways.

And I can't wait to dive into special lists like the Fortune 500, the Inc. 500 and the Forbes 400.

But sometimes rankings make you scratch your head. Like today. Two different pictures of Philadelphia and business.

First, Inc. magazine calls Philadelphia one of the worst cities in which to do business. Now the magazine calls its annual ranking the hottest cities for business. But looking at the 335 metropolitan statistical areas it ranked, I see Philadelphia stuck at No. 308. And it is the city, because it lists the 2007 nonfarm employment as 664,300.

Looking at just large cities, Inc. magazine tapped the Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina area as the hottest for business. The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn area of Michigan was the worst among the group - No. 66. Philadelphia was No. 62, better than Providence, R.I., but worse than Rochester, N.Y.

How do they determine this? It's by employment growth rate, and that should tell you that the city would have trouble gaining ground. Its employment base has been shrinking for years.

The second ranking released Monday was by KPMG International, and it calculated a "tax index" for 21 U.S. citiies with populations of more than 2 million. Philadelphia did better than I would have expected. It was No. 10 - ahead of Boston, but behind Denver.

Here's how KPMG says it came up with its ranking:

The tax index is a measure of the total taxes paid by corporations in a particular location and industry, expressed as a percentage of total taxes paid by similar corporations in the United States.

KPMG looked at corporate income taxes, capital taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, miscellaneous local business taxes and statutory labor costs for 102 cities worldwide.

Still Philadelphia's total tax index of 101.9 was below the U.S. national average of 100, so I'm not sure the Commerce Department wants to be trumpeting the results. In fact, KPMG said Baltimore, our neighbor down I-95, had the most favorable tax structure for business.

The city with the worst tax index was San Jose, according to KPMG. Yes, worse than New York.

There may be a new aerospace company based in the Philadelphia area.

Taurus Aerospace Group says it's hired Larry Resnick as its chief executive officer. While the news release is datelined Philadelphia, there's nothing else to indicate that Taurus is based around here.

Until Nov. 2, 2007, Resnick had been senior vice president of operations at Triumph Group Inc., a publicly held company in Wayne, Pa. that supplies and overhauls aerospace systems and components. Resnick retired from Triumph after 10 years as an executive there.

In January, Resnick was named operating director of Arsenal Capital Partners, a New York private-equity firm with $800 million in committed equity capital. He was the co-lead of Arsenal's Aerospace & Defense Team.

In the Arsenal statement on his hiring, the company said Resnick led all mergers and acquisitions activity for Triumph Group since 2000.

Six months later, Resnick is heading Taurus, which is affiliated with Australia's Macquarie Group. Taurus owns Brek Manufacturing, a Los Angeles company that it bought Jan. 4. Brek's Web site lists Taurus as being based in New York.

Taurus also owns Aviation Technical Services, of Everett, Wash., which Macquarie bought from Goodrich Corp. in November for $55.3 million. That company employs about 1,200 workers.

The third company Taurus controls is Aircraft on Ground Inc., a Dallas provider of aircraft fuel tank repair and maintenance services.

None of those three business units has a footprint in the Philadelphia area, so Taurus' local ties may simply be with Resnick. Here's what he said in today's statement:

I look forward to working closely with the current Taurus companies and their employees to further grow the businesses. Part of that is to actively pursue additional opportunities to expand our offerings to aircraft OEM and fleet customers.

A phone call to the contact for Taurus was not returned by 4 p.m.

It’s a sign of the times when furor over a sign can cause a company to rethink whether it wants to do business in Philadelphia.

Unisys Corp. said in December it would move its corporate headquarters from Blue Bell into Center City. It agreed to lease 90,000 square feet in Two Liberty Place and relocate 225 employees there.

Some scoff that that’s not a lot of jobs, but it is for the city that’s been bleeding jobs for decades. Symbolically, the city could do worse than attract another Fortune 500 company into its core.

Who could foresee that Unisys’ plans would not be well-received by some well-heeled tenants in the million-dollar condos on the top floors of Two Liberty. Nothing against information technology; they have a problem with the red corporate logo Unisys wants to affix to the building outside the 38th and 39th floors.

That red sign has thrust Unisys into a federal lawsuit with those tenants. Plus, opponents will vent about it at a zoning hearing board meeting in September. That would be the second hearing on the sign after one last week.

Nothing of this surprises me. But to hear a Unisys spokesman say the company would have to reevaluate its plans if it isn’t able to stick its name on Two Liberty?

Does anyone really think that if Unisys loses in this sign whine that that would be the reason it doesn’t move into the city?

Come on, this company is beset by challenges.

Unisys has been the incredible shrinking computer company since it was formed in 1986 by Burrough Corp.’s acquisition of Sperry Corp. At $5.7 billion, it generates $4 billion in revenue less than it did 20 years ago. Over the same period, the company shed 62,500 jobs to bring its current global workforce to about 30,000.

And if you read the transcript of Wednesday’s conference call with analysts, the company is likely to get smaller.

“We recognize that to succeed in today’s market, we need to either be very big and highly diversified or else smaller and highly focused,” said Unisys CEO Joseph W. McGrath. “We believe the best path forward is the latter one, to build on the work we have done and further focus and refine our business model.”

If getting smaller and more focused makes Unisys more profitable, that’s great. But after 20 years, it hasn’t figured out what it’s really good at? Given some of the comments by McGrath on that call, it still sounds like it’s trying to come up with the right strategy.

I can understand brand-building, and that’s part of why Unisys wants to be in Center City. (How many times can management entertain clients at Alison at Blue Bell, right?) But lots of opponents of the Unisys sign see Philadelphia’s “brand” trumping this corporate one.

I think some of the opposition has blinders on to have missed all of the corporate logos that have been affixed to buildings around the city.

But whatever the zoning board decides, it’s going to be fascinating to see what Unisys does. If it loses, will it quietly press ahead with the move into the city? Or will it move to Radnor next to Lincoln National Corp., which moved its headquarters and 400 jobs out of Center City in 2007?

If it wins, will its branding effort be seen as innovative or annoying to the other corporate elite around town? If it wins, does it really lose?

Philly Ticker

The $4.4 billion cash offer to buy Philadelphia Consolidated Holding Corp. sent its shares rocketing up 71 percent last week.

The Bala Cynwyd property and casualty insurer was the biggest mover among local stocks. Shares closed Friday at $58.23, which is lower than the $61.50 price offered by Tokio Marine Holdings Inc., of Japan.

Earnings

Today: Universal Health Services;

Tuesday: Advanta, Cephalon, FMC, Lincoln National, Mothers Work, SAP, Teleflex, Vishay;

Wednesday: Adolor, Amerigas, Brandywine Realty, Comcast, Quaker Chemical, UGI, ViroPharma;

Thursday: CDI, Endo Pharmaceuticals, Internet Capital Group, PMA Capital;

Friday: Cigna, Dorman, PPL, Public Service Enterprise, Tasty Baking, West Pharmaceuticals.

Quotable

“I regard the blockbuster model of the industry as being a little bit like the following: … Our business model is to discover a needle in a haystack when we want the next needle in a haystack.”

- Andrew Witty, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline PLC, about how the pharmaceutical business must change its preoccupation with billion-dollar drugs.

Redlasso Inc. today suspended access by bloggers to its video search site two days after some networks sued the King of Prussia company in federal court.

The company will continue to provide services to its business and radio customers, including Greater Media and XM Satellite Radio.

Here's what Ken Hayward, CEO of Redlasso, had to say:

We are very disappointed in the actions of select networks. We believe we have always acted within the law and have been respectful of the networks' rights. Unfortunately, they have forced our hand and are denying the blogging community access to the Redlasso platform that beneficially tracks the usage of newsworthy clips across the Web.

Hayward goes on to say that the company intends to continue talking with content providers in an effort to reach formal partnerships that "will be beneficial to the content owners and blogging community."

How'd they get to this point? You can read two previous posts here and here.