The latest from TechCrunch
- Brizzly Plays Feature Catch-Up, Adds Foursquare And "New" Retweet Support
- TigerText Raises $1.9 Million For Private Mobile Texting Network
- LinkedIn Beefs Up Company Profiles With News Feeds, Career Data, And More
- Forrester: Social Networking On The Rise Worldwide, Content Creation Not So Much
- Amazon Debuts "Kindle for the Web", Which Is Pretty Much What It Sounds Like
- Confirmed: AOL Buys Video Syndication Company 5min (For $65 Million)
| Brizzly Plays Feature Catch-Up, Adds Foursquare And "New" Retweet Support | Top |
| When I logged on to Brizzly this morning, a notification popped up announcing some brand new features for the web-based social networking client. As you can read on Brizzly maker Thing Labs ‘ blog, there are also some design changes accompanying the new features. Like rival Seesmic Web has done in the past, Brizzly has now added Foursquare support to the fray, which means you can now see your friends' Foursquare check-ins from within Brizzly. There’s also a new camera control feature and Brizzly has also finally decided to give people the choice on how to retweet, erm, tweets: the classic way or the – not so new anymore – new-style retweet functionality. Thing Labs has also moved the posting form in Brizzly away from the top of the screen, into the top of the left-hand navigation, so it can be accessed from any Twitter screen. In addition, the startup added easy access to drafts and Brizzly photos while posting. Finally, if you have a lot of saved searches or Picnics , your navigation menu and the Trends & news section don't stay in place when you scroll down the page (in the Twitter tab). Henceforth, you can collapse or expand any of the navigation sections on the left side of the screen by clicking on the title. While AOL and Thing Labs remain mum on the subject, we’ve heard from solid sources that the former is in the process of acquiring the fledgling company, mostly for its talented and experienced founding and management team. Thing Labs received a little over $2 million in funding from Polaris Ventures , SoftTech VC , and angels including Michael Jones (now the President of MySpace), Ron Conway , and Greg Yaitanes (best known as a director of the hit Fox TV show House). The company initially sprung out of Polaris’ Dog Patch Labs in San Francisco . CrunchBase Information Brizzly Thing Labs Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| TigerText Raises $1.9 Million For Private Mobile Texting Network | Top |
| LinkedIn Beefs Up Company Profiles With News Feeds, Career Data, And More | Top |
| We recently wrote about the fast growing number of company profiles on professional social network LinkedIn (the network has over one million to be exact). Launched in April, the company profile gives organizations a centralized profile that has the look and feel of a member profile. LinkedIn also added the ability to “follow” companies, much like you would on Facebook or Twitter. In fact, 30 million LinkedIn users are following over 1 million company profiles Today, LinkedIn is expanding the use of company profiles; creating additional ways companies can interact with members on the platform. Now profiles are getting more social. Administrators can publish blog posts, job opportunities, company news and incorporate Twitter feeds into a company profile. Of course, visitors will be able to see other LinkedIn members they know that work at company X. And LinkedIn is doing way more than just allowing companies t post information. Data, such as composition a company’s employee base (i.e. a company could have a higher percentage of engineers compared to sales & marketing) , is being included as well. In the “University Attended ” tab, users can see which colleges most employees at company x graduated from, and more. Companies will also be able to create and manage a “Careers Tab ” on their pages, giving visitors and potential job seekers insight into company’s hiring practices, hear employees @ the company talk about their experience and learn more about the profiles of other employees at the company – in terms of composition of the workforce, by department, feeder schools to the company, average tenure of employees at the company and more. And eople who are interested in jobs at company x can also see what current employees did before working at the company. Some companies have already turned the new features on for some companies. For example, Google’s profile includes much of this Data. We used it to track how many Googlers are currently heading to Facebook. This expansion seems to be part of LinkedIn’s strategy to not only make the network a more social place but to also provide meaningful data to users about the company. Providing ways to mash-up and use 75 million-plus members’ data is undoubtedly something that we are going to see more of from LinkedIn. In the end, it’s about democratizing the massive amount of career data on the network and providing more ways that users can consume this information in a useful way. CrunchBase Information LinkedIn Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Forrester: Social Networking On The Rise Worldwide, Content Creation Not So Much | Top |
| Forrester Research claims adoption of social networking continues to rise across the globe, while other forms of social interactions, such as content creation, experienced no substantial growth in the past twelve months. Based on data from more than 275,000 consumers in Asia Pacific, Europe, and North America, the company has released a report dubbed "A Global Update Of Social Technographics". You can buy the whole report for $499 here should you fancy, but here’s the gist: The number of people who joined social networks increased by 11 percent in Europe, 18 percent in metropolitan China, and 11 percent in Australia. By comparison, North America saw slightly less growth, with only an 8 percent increase. But, Forrester says, between 2009 and 2010 not a single market exhibited growth in the number of people who create social content. More and more lurkers using social networking services around the world, in other words. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Photo via Flickr user Robert S. Donovan , with permission) CrunchBase Information Forrester Research Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Amazon Debuts "Kindle for the Web", Which Is Pretty Much What It Sounds Like | Top |
| Amazon.com today introduced the beta version of "Kindle for the Web" , which enables people to read and share digital book samples in their browsers without the need to install or download anything. The company says it aims to lure bloggers and website publishers who participate in the Amazon Associates Program to embed samples of Kindle books on their websites ( here’s how ). It seems like a win: these website owners will earn referral fees from Amazon when customers complete book purchases using the links on their websites. Website visitors can simply click the "Read first chapter FREE" button on a book product page on Amazon or on other websites, and the first chapter will open within the web page. Customers can change the font size and line spacing, adjust the background color, and share their favorite books with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail. There’s also a way to embed free chapters on your own site if you fancy. To see examples of Kindle for the Web on authors' websites, go to the blog of author Karen McQuestion and the free sample of her bestselling Kindle book "A Scattered Life," or the website of author John Miller and the free sample of his book "The First Assassin." Pretty neat if you ask me – what do you think? CrunchBase Information Amazon Kindle Amazon Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Confirmed: AOL Buys Video Syndication Company 5min (For $65 Million) | Top |
| AOL is buying video syndication network 5min Media , reports AllThingsD . According to Israeli news outlet YNews , this is indeed a done deal, and the price is between $50 and $65 million. It isn’t exactly what you’d call a stellar exit for 5min’s investors, who pumped just south of $13 million into the company, but not a terrible one either. The acquisition will reportedly be announced Tuesday morning. Update: the official confirmation has arrived (press release below): Launched back in 2007, the site was initially a portal for how-to videos, but eventually grew into a video syndication giant . That means 5min aggregates tens of thousands of instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos across a wide variety of categories and dynamically distributes them to partner websites such as Answers.com and DailyMotion . Video content originates from small indie producers to big-name brands and media companies, and the topic ranges from recipes, yoga and fitness routines, tech tutorials, DIY projects for home and garden and health videos on specific conditions to beauty and fashion tips. 5min claims its Video Syndication Platform currently reaches over 160 million uniques per month. The company boasts proprietary semantic technology dubbed VideoSeed powering its Syndication offering and helping bring its “Video Everywhere vision” to life across virtually any site. VideoSeed contextually matches the most relevant videos in its library with a Syndication Partner site's existing text content. You can see how this fits into AOL’s nichebuster content strategy , which is unsurprisingly taking some serious time and effort to translate into results that please its shareholders. In January 2010, AOL moved to acquire StudioNow for $36.5 million in a bid to integrate a solid video creation platform into its content management system Seed.com . AOL at the time said it would harness StudioNow's technology platform and network of more than 3,000 creatives to develop and produce professional videos at the request of AOL editors. Update: official press release: AOL Acquires 5min Media, Web's Largest Video Content Syndication Platform Combination of 5min Media and AOL's Video Capabilities Creates Powerful End-to-End Offering NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AOL Inc. [NYSE: AOL] today announced it has acquired 5min Media, the Web’s largest video syndication platform.* The acquisition allows AOL to significantly expand its consumer offering of contextually relevant, high-quality video across its sites, increasing the AOL Network's appeal to advertisers and is expected to further enhance the distribution and monetization of AOL-produced original video content throughout the Web.** Deal terms were not disclosed. "Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web" "Our acquisition of 5min Media is the latest in a number of steps we have taken this year to better position AOL to capture the growing video opportunity on the Web," said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL. "AOL is building a video ecosystem for the next decade. 5min Media is the perfect complement to our powerful video capabilities — it provides a missing piece in the AOL value chain that completes our end-to-end video offering from content creation through syndication and distribution to the consumer experience and monetization." "AOL and 5min Media share the same excitement about the direction our industry is taking, and our complementary video capabilities make us a compelling fit and an attractive combination for content creators and publishers," said Ran Harnevo, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, 5min Media. "We've seen rapid and successful growth as an independent organization and becoming part of AOL is a natural next step. We're confident that AOL's organizational horsepower, combined with the vast library, audience and syndication capabilities 5min Media offers, present compelling opportunities for AOL as well as the content creators we work with and the publishers we serve." Leading Video Syndication Network and Library to Enhance AOL's Properties 5min Media is the world's leading video syndication network with a library of more than 200,000 categorized, tagged and rated videos from more than 1,000 of the world’s largest media companies and professional independent video producers. Founded in 2006 and headquartered in New York City with offices in Tel Aviv, 5min Media has been named the largest U.S. independent video property by comScore, with more than 20 million unique viewers and more than 130 million video streams (including ad and content videos) in the U.S. in August 2010. 5min Media's growing network of 800 partner sites allows content creators to reach this audience of targeted viewers across 21 different verticals, including six verticals – Home, Food, Beauty / Fashion, Health, Travel and Pets – that lead their categories, according to comScore Video Metrix, August 2010. VideoSeed, 5min Media's proprietary semantic technology, contextually matches the most relevant videos with a partner site's text content to enhance the consumer experience and increase monetization rates. AOL has already begun to integrate 5min Media's video content on its sites through a commercial agreement executed prior to the acquisition. "With 5min Media we'll be able to add more video inventory to our pages. Importantly, we'll also be able to identify video content holes among our sites, tap our StudioNow capabilities to fill those needs and create a truly 'demand informed' video library," Armstrong said. Combination Completes Next Step in AOL's Value Chain With the addition of 5min Media, AOL will significantly increase its consumer offering in video programming and connect consumers with high-quality video. In January, AOL acquired StudioNow, the premier online platform for quality video content creation and distribution. With StudioNow, AOL has formed a fully functional platform to produce high-quality video content in a rapid, cost-effective and scalable way for both AOL as well as third-party publishers. In addition, AOL is forging exciting new partnerships to provide relevant content to specific audiences, including partnering with: The Ellen DeGeneres Show; Marlo Thomas; The Jonas Group and MGX Lab to found Cambio (www.cambio.com); and A Squared Entertainment LLC to create children's content featuring Warren Buffett, Gisele Bündchen, Martha Stewart and the late Carl Sagan. *comScore Media Metrix data, August 2010 **According to eMarketer, online video advertising spend is expected to grow from $1 billion in 2009 to more than $4 billion by 2014, making it the fastest growing format in online advertising. At the same time, the Cisco Visual Networking Index predicts that video will account for more than 60 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2013. CrunchBase Information 5min Media AOL Information provided by CrunchBase | |
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