The latest from TechCrunch
- uCirrus Raises $4 Million For Datastream Processing Software
- IAC Shows Signs Of Life In Third Quarter, Revenues Jump 25 Percent
- Compete Top 50: Bing And Ask Rise – MySpace, MapQuest And Flickr Fall
- Eye-Fi View Holds Your Full-Resolution Photos For a Week So You Can Decide Where They Go
- Makeup Discovery Service BirchBox Raises $1.4 Million Seed Round
- The MySpace Redesign Is Almost Here—Some Details
| uCirrus Raises $4 Million For Datastream Processing Software | Top |
| uCIRRUS , which markets real-time enterprise operating software dubbed PUSHvm , this morning announced that it has closed a $4 million funding round led by SK telecom Ventures and joined by Qualcomm Ventures and ATA Ventures . The company says the fresh capital will be used to accelerate the product roadmap for PUSHvm, which powers real-time datastream processing and delivery of large volumes of customized data for its clients, thus reducing their infrastructure costs. | |
| IAC Shows Signs Of Life In Third Quarter, Revenues Jump 25 Percent | Top |
| Barry Diller realizes that his Ask search engine isn’t going to gain market share anytime soon, but search can still power growth for IAC if it just keeps up with the growth in the overall search market. IAC released third quarter earnings this morning. Total revenues were up 25 percent to $422 million. Operating income quadrupled to $36 million, and adjusted earnings per share came in at $0.32 versus Wall Street estimates of $0.27. (However, after stripping out the adjustments due to one-time sales of stock and other assets a year ago, net income was actually down 19 percent). Search represented nearly half of revenues ($205 million). The search business grew 20 percent, goosed primarily by a 55 percent increase in active toolbars to 97 million. IAC’s toolbar business is its secret distribution weapon, but those searches tend to generate lower revenue per query than those on Ask.com, which itself is still growing and is now ranked as the sixth largest website in the U.S. LAst month, Ask CityGrid Media’s new local advertising network also contributed to overall search revenues. But search wasn’t the fastest growing part of IAC’s business. Revenues for its media and other properties (such as CollegeHumor, The Daily Beast, Electus, Evite, and Vimeo) grew 44 percent to $63 million. Match’s revenues jumped 31 percent to $106 million, with paying subscribers up 30 percent to 1.8 million (“organic” growth in subscribers, though, was 16 percent). The rest of IAC’s revenues came from ServiceMagic, up 10 percent to $48 million. In terms of operating profits, the two biggest contributors were Match ($38 million) and search ($29 million). The media businesses showed an operating loss of $4.6 million. The company also bought back $125 million worth of shares during the quarter. The stock is up about 5 percent this morning to $27.85 on the earnings news. CrunchBase Information IAC Ask.com CityGrid Media Match Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Compete Top 50: Bing And Ask Rise – MySpace, MapQuest And Flickr Fall | Top |
| Online analytics company Compete has just published its ranking of the top 50 websites for September 2010, giving some insights into current visitor trends (and not absolute numbers, as the company tends to undercount traffic for most websites). Compete’s data compilation shows increasing traffic to Microsoft’s search engine Bing (up 11.7 percent for the month and 108.5 percent for the year) as well as Ask.com (up 8.7 percent for the month and 75.3 percent for the year). On the other side of the spectrum we – unsurprisingly – find MySpace (unique visitors down 5.53 percent for the month and 19.1 percent for the year) and MapQuest (down 5.8 for the month and 22.1 percent for the year). If MySpace’s redesign will help buck the trend remains to be seen. Perhaps more surprisingly, Yahoo’s Flickr.com seems to have lost some of its shine lately, showing a 14 percent decline in unique user visits in September 2010. And what about IAC’s Ask.com, which actually jumped over online juggernauts such as Amazon.com and MSN.com last month, according to Compete’s data. The search engine is now ranked in sixth place, trailing sites like Wikipedia, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and YouTube. Other winners include Disney’s Go.com and Mozilla.com , which showed the largest monthly unique user visitor gains (15.8 percent and 30.5 percent, respectively). CrunchBase Information Bing Ask.com Compete Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| Eye-Fi View Holds Your Full-Resolution Photos For a Week So You Can Decide Where They Go | Top |
| If there was one problem with the otherwise excellent Eye-Fi card it’s that images stored to the card had the nasty habit of appearing on public Flickr accounts without their owners knowledge – images that usually involved the owner in a compromising position with a close, naked friend or a barnyard mammal. Sure you can control where the Eye-Fi sends stuff but not many people bothered with those settings. The company has just announced Eye-Fi View, a sharing system that makes sense. View creates a temporary private storage space for all Eye-Fi users where it keeps photos safe and sound for up to a week (you can buy unlimited storage for $4.99 or $49 a year.) You can see the updated View UI at http://center.eye.fi/ . Read more… | |
| Makeup Discovery Service BirchBox Raises $1.4 Million Seed Round | Top |
| Have you ever walked into your neighborhood Sephora only to feel utterly inundated by a sea of colorful beauty products? There are literally thousands of slots filled with bronzers, eye palettes, brushes, moisturizers, foundations, creams, creating a dizzying kaleidoscope of shades and scents. As someone who doesn’t pour over fashion magazines for the latest product and make-up tips, it’s simply overwhelming. I’ve always wondered why we couldn’t take the makeup discovery process out of the box, aka the brick and mortar experience, and bring it into the home in a real, non-Mary Kay tactile way that’s a step beyond mere online shopping. A new breed of startups are trying to do just that, including New York-based BirchBox , which just raised a $1.4 million seed round led by First Round Capital and Accel Partners. Several individual investors participated in this round, including Sam Lessin (drop.io), Dave Morin (Path), Michael Dearing (Harrison Metal), Kirsten Green (Forerunner Ventures), and Gary Vaynerchuk . BirchBox , which officially launched in September after a few months in beta mode, is a mash-up of a monthly sample service, an online shop and a beauty editorial content. The core of the site is the monthly subscription plan. Users can either pay $110 upfront for a full-year package or $10 a month, with the option to quit at any time. Each month, users receives at least four premium samples (no dinky packets), shipped to their homes from high end beauty retailers like Laura Mercier, Nars and Cargo. The website supplements these monthly packages by providing pertinent tips and tutorials for the featured samples. If a user wants to purchase the full-size version, they can buy it on BirchBox, which will earn them points for future discounts (inviting new members will also help you rack up points). The idea is create a fun discovery process at an affordable price and to help brands reach consumers and drive sales. The site currently has 2,000 paying subscribers and competes with traditional retailers, like Sephora, and other makeup sample subscription services like Yellow Box Beauty or TestTube. "Beauty brands have long recognized the power of sampling and Birchbox improves the reach and effectiveness of sampling programs by identifying high potential consumers outside of the brands' traditional reach, tracking their behavior and feedback, and encouraging a deeper relationship with the brand,” Principal of First Round Capital, Phineas Barnes said in a statement. According to the co-founders Hayley Barna and Katia Beauchamp (who, like the founders of Gilt, are Harvard Business School grads) they wanted to create a service that was simple and exciting, by focusing on prestige brands and their latest products. “We thought, wouldn’t every woman want a best friend who has access to the beauty editor’s closet,” Beauchamp says. When I asked her whether she will eventually slap on an (oh-so-trendy) flash sales feature on BirchBox, she flatly said, “No.” Although she acknowledges the popularity of flash sales, and many like Gilt have dabbled in cosmetic offerings, Beauchamp says BirchBox is focusing on new products and catching them early in their life cycle. For now, the service seems to lack significant customization (most users will get the exact same items), but the startup says it’s working on increasing personalization, particularly for skin types, hair traits and style tastes. I’m interested to see how this service works out and whether the economics make sense for the participating brands. Beauchamp provided little detail on the pricing structure, but these top tier beauty brands are effectively giving away premium-sized samples of new products for the sake of promotion. That makes sense if users opt to buy the full-size versions when their samples run out, less sense if there’s a thin correlation between samples and sales. CrunchBase Information BirchBox Information provided by CrunchBase | |
| The MySpace Redesign Is Almost Here—Some Details | Top |
| MySpace is preparing to roll out its long-awaited redesign , perhaps as early as tomorrow, at least for new users. It’s not going to be pretty. Well, actually, it is quite pretty—I’ve seen screenshots—but that still might not be enough to help stem the diminishing appeal of the social network. MySpace tried to brief us on the new design under embargo , which we don’t do, so we declined the briefing. Nevertheless, we keep getting snippets of information from various sources. So let me describe it for you. The design will feature the new MySpace logo at the top, and center around discovering and sharing media—music, photos, and videos. When you log in, a big status bar will prompt you to “Share something!” That can be a status message, a link, a photo, or a video. As with MySpace now, there is an emphasis on sharing music, videos, and games. By sharing this media, you become a social filter and a tastemaker for your friends. People with a lot of friends can become social promoters of music and other media, and the new design seems to be set up to highlight and reward those people. The new MySpace is a lot cleaner and more organized than it is now. Instead of a linear activity stream, the new design is broken up more into tiles, or at least that is one view. A stream of what your friends are sharing is one of the tiles, but there are also tiles for videos, celebrities and musicians you are following, and photo-heavy advertisements. The tiles remind me of the look now popular in iPad apps like Pulse and Flipboard. There is definitely a realtime theme going on as well. You can toggle between what is “most relevant” to you and “live” updates. Another live notifications box at the top shows upcoming events and messages. If you are not logged in, the new homepage will show a rolling counter of things people are sharing, as well as tiles for promoted albums, TV show, celebrities, and trending items people are discovering. Overall, this is appears to be improvement to the current design. But will it be enough to bring people back to MySpace or bring new people in? If all your friends are on Facebook, they are not going to be sharing their music with you on MySpace. By focusing on media sharing and curation, maybe it can find it’s place again in the social network pecking order. The new MySpace: The current/old MySpace: CrunchBase Information MySpace Information provided by CrunchBase | |
CREATE MORE ALERTS:
Auctions - Find out when new auctions are posted
Horoscopes - Receive your daily horoscope
Music - Get the newest Album Releases, Playlists and more
News - Only the news you want, delivered!
Stocks - Stay connected to the market with price quotes and more
Weather - Get today's weather conditions
| You received this email because you subscribed to Yahoo! Alerts. Use this link to unsubscribe from this alert. To change your communications preferences for other Yahoo! business lines, please visit your Marketing Preferences. To learn more about Yahoo!'s use of personal information, including the use of web beacons in HTML-based email, please read our Privacy Policy. Yahoo! is located at 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. |
No comments:
Post a Comment