There are one or two apps which allow you to ‘plant’ virtual objects in a location allowing others to pick them up later on (Pinterest for location anyone?). Everplaces literally just launched, Stikinotes and Pinwheel have yet to launch. But CircleMe comes out of a six months closed beta today to try and prove it’s different than the others.
Launching with a web site, an iPhone app and $2.5 million in funding from VC firm Innogest Capital, this social network lets users geo-tag a city to trigger alerts when you are near something you’ve said you already like on another social network.
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This morning, Amazon announced its mobile app marketplace, the Amazon Appstore for Android, is celebrating its first birthday with a week-long sale on some of its most popular apps.
The company also took the time to share some figures about the Appstore’s growth over the past year, including the size of its selection, which grew from 4,000 apps at launch to 31,000+ apps today. In addition, Amazon released lists of its best-selling apps of all time, both paid and free.
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We’ve long been used to book marking web pages, then ‘adding to favourites’ and more, but there is plenty more to be done in this space where location is concerned. Gogobot and Foursquare are doing it in travel and venues respectively. But try going back and finding where you’ve been on Foursquare for instance. There are plenty of location apps, but where’s the utility?
Everplaces is aiming to sort out this mess by making location more more useful. A closed stealth-mode beta has been out since December but now it’s open. You can download the iPhone app here.
Everplaces helps people keep track of places that are relevant and interesting to them, like a personal wish list or to-do list. You can save places directly from websites, import from the now defunct Gowalla and your Google MyMaps history. More integrations are planned.
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If you were thinking that the Lumia 800 would somehow go for less than it is at Microsoft stores — $899 with Nokia Play 360 Bluetooth speakers, Nokia Purity HD headphones and a Luna Bluetooth headset — let me just do you a favor and burst that bubble right here and now. Amazon has just joined Microsoft retail stores in offering the Windows Phone device, and unfortunately the 800 won’t be any cheaper on virtual shelves.
Worth noting that this isn’t an awful deal considering what you’re actually getting for the $900, but here in the States we’re really not used to paying more than $300-$400 for a premium phone (thanks to carrier contract subsidies). The phone will play nicely with AT&T’s network, though T-Mo subs should expect EDGE speeds. → Read More
Identity theft protection company LifeLock has raised $100 million in new equity funding from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Symantec Corporation and River Street Management. Additional investors included Industry Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, Keating Capital, Inc. and Wasatch Advisors’ venture capital arm CrossCreek Capital. This brings LifeLock’s total funding to $178 million.
LifeLock says that the new funding has been used towards the acquisition of ID Analytics, which develops a technology that predicts the likelihood of identity risk associated with an application for credit. Not only does the company evaluate for risk, but similar to LifeLock, also provides consumer protection services against identity theft. The company partners with financial organizations and telecommunications companies. → Read More
As developers hunker down and get into the business of trying to work out how to get consumers to buy more of their product on mobile devices, some revealing numbers out from Nielsen on what people are willing to pay for on tablets already.
The upshot: paid content, it seems, is alive and well, but some media categories are doing a lot better than others. → Read More
Following its acquisition by SAY Media, ReadWriteWeb’s COO Sean Ammirati is leaving the company to join Birchmere Ventures, an early-stage VC firm with investments in cleantech, medical, and technology startups. Ammirati will be added to Birchmere’s investment team and will serve as the lead partner for a new fund within the company called Birchmere Labs. Similar to betaworks, Birchmere Labs will be a studio fund where the firm will develop its own startups, however it will also serve as a seed fund, investing in early stage startups, and specifically those in the “community driven commerce” space.
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People search site MyLife has purchased the technology from recently shuttered all-in-one social communications manager Threadsy. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
As we’ve written in the past, MyLife is a full-fledged search engine which not only finds people—thanks to aggregated search across social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace—but also helps visitors connect with them all on the same site. MyLife pulls information from public records and also allows users to subscribe to the search site to connect with others, track their searches and more.
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Back in December, Salesforce announced the acquisition of social performance platform Rypple, and revealed that it will be entering the human capital management (a.k.a. employee and talent management software) market with the launch of a new product Successforce. Today, the CRM giant is launching the newly integrated product; however, Salesforce is keeping Rypple’s name. The company is also debuting Site.com, which offers marketers and businesses a simple, cloud-based content management system.
For background, Rypple is a social performance management platform that helps managers and employees improve performance. Essentially, Rypple replaces the traditional performance review with a more social and collaborative approach. The software has been compared to a “Zynga for the enterprise,” and allows managers to track projects, guide their team and give kudos to deserving staff for others to see within its online application.
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Another sign of the significant investment and attention going into the mobile payments market: BOKU is today announcing a significant new round of funding totaling $35 million, to be used to continue building out its payments business.
Of that amount, TechCrunch understands that $30 million will be coming from VCs and angels led by new investor NEA, with participation also from existing investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Dag Ventures, Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. And $5 million will be coming from a new strategic investor, the carrier Telefonica.
This brings the total amount invested in the company to $75 million. → Read More
China is already a significant market for companies like Apple, with CEO Tim Cook describing “staggering” and “off the charts” sales of the iPhone in China last quarter. But according to IDC the opportunity is just beginning for Apple and others working in the smartphone world: China is set to become the world’s largest smartphone market this year, overtaking the U.S., which has led in years past.
IDC says this is part of a larger trend of emerging countries getting up to speed with developed nations: by 2016, China will be joined by Brazil and India in the top-five countries in terms of smartphone shipments. Countries like the U.S., U.K. and Japan will continue to see growth, but not at the rate of these other, more populated countries. → Read More
BrightEdge, a startup that offers tools for large companies to manage their search engine rankings, has raised $12.6 million in a Series C round of funding.
The round was led by new investor Intel Capital, with participation from existing backers Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures, and Illuminate Ventures. CEO Jim Yu says that brings BrightEdge’s total funding to a little more than $21 million, of which it has only spent $3 million. → Read More
The writing was on the wall for Flip, but when Cisco decided to shutter its rather popular Flip video camera business in April 2011, the company promised a smooth transition for existing users. That said, Givit video sharing service will be integrating with Flipshare, Flip’s online video sharing platform, to store the content that will soon be permanently deleted from Flipshare.
Even though the iPhone completely disrupted Flip’s business, there are still more than 3 million Flip users out there in the world who need a place to store their videos. Givit aims to solve that problem through its cloud service. → Read More
Back in December, we reported that Israeli-headquartered video-conferencing specialist, RadVision, was in advanced acquisition talks with global collaboration and communications giant, Avaya. While those talks have taken awhile to unfold, today Avaya officially inked the deal, agreeing to an acquisition of RadVision in which shareholders will receive $11.85 per share — a deal worth some $230 million. The acquisition is subject to approval by RadVision shareholders, but the companies said they expect the deal to be final within 90 days. → Read More
Yesterday I wrote about how Israel is trying to promote itself as the next hotbed of consumer and Internet startups, moving beyond its traditional roots in “hard” technology. But today comes news of a deal that is firmly about its existing might in the latter category: Cisco is reported to be gearing up to purchase interactive TV and security specialist NDS, founded in Israel in 1988, for a sum believed to be in the region of $5 billion. Update: Cisco has now issued a release confirming its intention to buy NDS. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2012, and it will be incorporated into Cisco’s Videoscape platform, which covers cloud, network and end-user elements of the video delivery business.
According to the Israeli financial daily the Calcalist (translation here), the deal is expected to close in the coming days. NDS is 51 percent owned by Permira, and 49 percent owned by media giant News Corp. → Read More
Employees of hot web companies like Facebook have been selling shares to private investors for years, and a few firms have jumped in to take advantage of the situation.
So naturally the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken an interest, too. After a lengthy investigation into the budding industry — and ahead of a big Facebook initial public offering — it’s going after two stealthy financial groups as well as popular private market SharesPost. → Read More
It’s pretty easy to write yet another post about who “won” SXSW or, if you’re feeling ornery or ambitious, how there are no longer any breakout stars. But there’s an important point lost in this repetitive debate.
SXSW is good at producing cultural phenomena — think apps that take off among a critical mass of digerati, who then fly home and spread these products to other parts of the country or world.
But the conference doesn’t have a track record yet for producing sustainable consumer Internet businesses.
If previous SXSW “winners” Twitter or Foursquare had the revenue growth and the smidge of net income that’s helpful for debuting on public markets, they might have been in the wave of companies that filed for an IPO in the past year. → Read More
Cloud solution provider and consultancy Appirio is announcing $60 million in new funding led by private equity firm General Atlantic, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital. This brings Appirio’s total investment to over $70 million. Previous investors include Salesforce.
Appirio works with organizations such as Facebook, NYU, Thomson Reuters and Home Depot to adopt, build, and manage public cloud applications and platforms like Salesforce.com, Google and Workday. The company has moved over 1.5 million people to the cloud since its inception. → Read More
Another executive departure at Zynga, and a big hire for Groupon: TechCrunch has learned — and Groupon has just confirmed — that Curtis Lee, who had been director of product management for Zynga, is joining Groupon as its new VP of consumer products, to oversee everything consumer-facing on the product side for the daily deals giant.
This is a significant talent loss for Zynga, and comes on the heels of two other exec departures: ad chief Manny Anekal earlier this month, and lead designer Michael McCormick in February. Lee, meanwhile, was known as something of a “monetization guru” for Zynga, laying the blueprint Zynga’s virtual goods and currency sales.
Among his past roles at Zynga, Lee had been head of product for Zynga’s Austin studio, and had been director of product for one of its biggest hits, Mafia Wars. Significantly, a source says that he had been working on a “huge, unannounced project” with Mark Skaggs, the man who created Farmville and Cityville. → Read More
I remember watching the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray wars closely a few years back. I wanted one to win so I could go out and buy a next generation movie player. But the battle went on and on, and by the time Blu-ray won, I had set my sights on a new frontier: digital distribution. I never did get that Blu-ray player. And now I’m quite certain I never will. The new 1080p Apple TV is here.
To be clear, because of the way it’s compressed, iTunes 1080p content is not equal to the 1080p picture you’ll get from a Blu-ray disc. It’s very close, but it’s not quite there yet. I imagine it will get there as digital compression technology continues to improve. But even if it doesn’t, this is something that won’t mean a thing to the vast majority of consumers. Thanks to the marketing of television sets over the years, they know “1080p”. They don’t know that the quality can be inconstant. Fair or not, it won’t matter. → Read More
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