Thursday, April 19, 2012

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BranchOut Hits 25 Million Users, Nabs $25M In Series C Funding Top
BranchOutBranchOut is officially going for the big time. The company, which makes a professional social network that runs on top of Facebook, is announcing today it has closed on $25 million in new funding, bringing its total venture capital investment to $49 million. This latest batch of money, which serves as BranchOut's Series C round, was led by the Mayfield Fund with the participation of previous investors Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners and Redpoint Ventures. The money will be used mainly for hiring more employees to add to BranchOut's current full-time staff of 45, founder and CEO Rick Marini said in an interview, which you can watch in full in the video embedded above. At less than two years old, BranchOut certainly seems to be on a fast track when it comes to funding. But according to Marini, the money is only following the company's very real growth. BranchOut now has more than 25 million registered users, more than half of which -- 13.5 million -- are active on the app each month. To put those numbers into context, more than three new users are joining BranchOut every second. When BranchOut first debuted in July 2010, it was often characterized as a "LinkedIn for Facebook" -- but it's becoming apparent that BranchOut is carving out a very clear identity of its own.
 
Lots Of Pain, No Gain: Nokia Reports $4B Drop In Q1 Sales To $9.7B, Blames Restructuring, Competition Top
Nokia warned us last week that it would be reporting some worse-than-expected numbers, and here they are: sales down by $4 billion (€3.4 billion) to $9.7 billion (€7.4 billion), with a corresponding fall in earnings per share, down by a quarter of a euro and now at a loss per share of just over $1 (€0.80).
 
WPP Makes Big Leap Into E-Commerce, Leads On $10 Million mySupermarket Investment Top
mysupermarketThe media and advertising giant WPP is taking a big step into e-commerce and how it can use it to leverage its other digital investments: today it has announced that it is investing $7 million into the grocery comparison shopping site mySupermarket, part of a $10 million round that also includes participation from existing investors Greylock and Pitango. WPP says that it plans to use the investment to help extend its digital portfolio, and specifically help in the marketing and other services that it offers to is customers in packaged goods -- the FMCG segment is one of the most important in WPP's client base. The deal will see WPP become a minority shareholder in Dolphin Software, the company that makes mySupermarket.
 
Another Siri-Like App, Voice Answer, Hits The App Store For Those Of Us Without The iPhone 4S Top
Screen shot 2012-04-19 at 10.30.53Looks like Apple might be loosening its grip even more on voice recognition apps? Or, it simply just feels that the competition is not as good as its own native Siri. We've just gotten word from Netherlands-based developer Sparkling Apps that its voice-response app, Voice Answer -- rejected by Apple for nearly three months -- has been approved by Apple and is now live in the App Store, and usable on any iPhone, iPod or iPad running iOS 4.2 or later. It took "almost three months of negotiating, tweaking and pushing," developer Martijn van der Spek tells TechCrunch. Like Siri, the app is based on data from Wolfram Alpha, among other sources, and lets users ask questions by either speaking to the app or typing in a question. It's priced at £2.49 ($3.99).
 
Kixeye Is The Lucrative Dark Horse of Facebook Gaming Top
willWhile Zynga and other gaming companies seem to be doing everything possible to claw their way off the Facebook canvas, at least one San Francisco company is still in. Big time. With just shy of 5 million monthly active users on Facebook, Kixeye is ranked a dismal 72nd on the developer leaderboard behind Zynga, EA and Angry Birds-maker Rovio, according to tracking service AppData. But the astonishing revenue Kixeye makes per user has the company on track to gross more than $100 million in total revenue this year. That's up from between $25 to $50 million last year, according to an independent source familiar with Kixeye's financials. Kixeye is part of a class of companies that is taking Facebook gaming far from its "Cow Clicker" past. The company doesn't target the stereotypical 35-year-old female demographic that Zynga is well-known for, but rather a subset of hardcore gamers that are willing to pay up. Think fewer virtual potatoes and more epic sea battles.
 
Dorsey Pitching Square At $4B Valuation To Legg Mason, Fidelity And Other Institutional Investors Top
squarePayments company Square is raising another major round of funding, but is targeting institutional investors first because of the enormous size of the round, we hear from sources. Square's CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey and COO Keith Rabois have met with both Fidelity and Legg Mason over the past week, and as AllThingsD reported earlier, Square is looking to raise at a $4 billion valuation, which we've confirmed as well. In addition, we are also hearing that the company is raising around $250 million, which was originally reported in the New York Times. We hear Dorsey wrapped up the 10-day trip to the East Coast to conduct the raise.
 
With Help From Facebook Timeline, Viddy Becomes Top Free iPhone App Top
Screen shot 2012-04-18 at 5.56.43 PMWith the skyrocketing popularity and billion-dollar sale of Instagram, there's an ongoing race to apply Instagram's wildly successful photo sharing model to mobile video. There are a number of startups vying to claim the "Instagram for Video" title, with Socialcam, Viddy, Klip, Mobli, and even the infamous Color all in the running. Yet, today brings evidence that Viddy may now be the one to beat, as the social video sharing app became the top free iPhone app on the App Store -- with much of that growth emanating from its new Facebook Timeline app.
 
It's Not About Instagram — It's About Mobile Top
instagram logoIt has been more than a week now, but Techmeme today is dominated by Instagram related headlines. Was the Board involved? Did Marc Andreessen know? Did Instagram take the $50m from Sequoia and others before agreeing to be acquired? Was $2bn the right ask? Was $1 billion cheap or is it a bubble? These are soap opera-like questions. Interesting? For sure if you have insomnia. Deep? Not really. A week after the acquisition I think we all need to be stepping back and reflecting on the meaning of the deal as it relates to our future. Actually, if we do that, many of the other questions do become easier to answer, and possibly more interesting.
 
Facebook Targets May 17th For IPO Date Top
Screen Shot 2012-04-18 at 4.39.29 PMThis just in: According to multiple sources close to the company, Facebook is eying IPO on May 17th -- depending on whether the SEC agrees that all the reams of paperwork are in order.  This is in line with earlier reports that the company was going to hit NASDAQ during the third week of May. And also in line with what a single source told CNBC at depth, that the social network was considering either the 17th or the 24th.
 
MoveInsure Aims To Be Esurance For The Moving Industry Top
Screen shot 2012-04-17 at 5.30.01 PMBelieve it or not, 37 million Americans, or about 16 million households, pick up and move every year. Depending on whom you ask, we move as frequently as once every three years. Yes, moving is a part of life, albeit a stressful and emotional one. Unsurprisingly, the many services and operations that go into household moves have collectively come to represent a sizable industry. If you take transportation, warehousing and storage, packaging, processing, distribution, and logistics into account, industry revenues total more than $16.5 billion annually. The problem, however, is that the moving industry is rife with legacy systems and is dominated by a fragmented group of players, so a startup called MoveInsure has set out to streamline communication between those players and bring efficiency and automation to moving transactions, aiming to be the Esurance for the moving industry.
 
Here, Waste The Evening: Prince Of Persia Source Code Posted To Github Top
It's not every day that you see code like this:
*------------------------------- * Superimpose "Turn disk over" message *------------------------------- FLIPDISKMSG lda #flipbox ldx #>flipbox jmp superimage
Yep. That's assembly language, about as far from Ruby as you can get. It's from the original, Apple II version of Prince of Persia, one of the best games in anyone's childhood, anywhere. As we mentioned before, Jordan Mechner found the original disks in his father's place last month and was looking for someone to help pull the files off of the disks. Thanks to Jason Scott, Mechner held a copy party in his house to drag, kicking and screaming, into the light of day.
 
Update Your Draw Something App To Chat, Save Drawings, Share 'Em To Facebook and Twitter Top
Draw Something Update DoneTell your friends to hit the App Store or Android market, there's a new update for Draw Something out today with some cool new features. Now you can chat with friends while you play, save your drawings to your phone or tablet, and share those drawings straight to Facebook or Twitter. Zynga, who recently acquired Draw Something and its developer OMGPOP for over $180 million, hopes these social and viral improvements will restart growth as the app has started bleeding users over the last few weeks. Despite Zynga's notoriety for designing games to maximize addictiveness and the amount users spend, there's been no tweaks to Draw Something's virtual goods and uncompetitive style. Instead, former OMGPOP CEO and new Zynga Mobile New York General Manager Dan Porter told The Guardian the game was successful because "it's very chilled, very zen".
 
Jumala Aims To Be An Unboring Minecraft Top
While I seriously doubt the staying power of this game platform, the concept is pretty cool. Called Jumala, this free-to-play online game allows players to stop the action mid-game and flip things around and change the entire level. Level too scary? You can add flying hot dogs and flowers. Too boring? Add demonic death heads. The game is all about level design. You earn points by creating games and environments a la Little Big Planet and you can earn currency to buy various pieces of content and interactive items. Each level you create is shared via Facebook with other players and you can change items mid-game, just to mess with people.
 
Gaopeng, Groupon's Flagging Effort in China, May Be Headed For A Merger with FTuan Top
gaopeng-logo-1This post is contributed by Ben Jiang, editor of TechNode, a bilingual blog based in China. Gaopeng, a joint venture between Groupon and Tencent, may be headed for a merger by the end of next month with FTuan, according to reports from local Chinese news agencies. Notably, FTuan is a rival Chinese daily deal service that Groupon's local partner Tencent invested in. If such a deal happened, it would underscore Tencent's increasing control over the venture and Groupon's retreat in the Chinese market. Gaopeng's constant losses have apparently made Groupon think twice about its China venture.
 
Scribit Digs Up Content For Your Content Marketing Top
scribitIf you're an entrepreneur struggling to find the time or inspiration to udpate the company blog, a new service called Scribit offers a solution. Scribit was developed by a startup called Vertical Acuity, whose initial product helped publishers syndicate their articles to other sites and find fresh content for themselves. President Joe Fiveash used to work at Weather.com, and he says that this kind of content-sharing normally requires a lot of time-consuming deal-making. With Scribit, publishers can pre-approve their content for syndication at a set payment rate, so it's a simple process to republish something.
 
Google Pumps Up Their Cloud Print Service With New FedEx Partnership Top
cloudprintThe amount of harried printing situations I've been party to has dropped dramatically since I finished school, but Google's new update to their Cloud Print service should have you covered if you can't say the same. According to a post on the official Chrome blog Google has baked the ability to print to any FedEx Office location right into Cloud Print, so you'll be push your documents from Chrome, Google Docs, or your Android device to a participating store and pick up it whenever you need to.
 
More Than 200K Merchants Have Signed Up For PayPal Here Top
PayPalDuring eBay's earnings call today, eBay CEO and President John Donahoe said that over 200,000 merchants have signed up for PayPal Here,  the company's Square-like mobile payments hardware and software platform for small businesses. We haven't seen any sign-up numbers for the mobile payments service since PayPal revealed it was seeing 1,000 new registrants per hour for the new service. As you may have heard, PayPal Here offers a triangular add-on that plugs into the headphone jack on your smartphone. Merchants can then accept payments by swiping cards with the thumb-sized card reader or can use the smartphone's camera to scan credit cards (powered by Card.io), scan checks, etc. PayPal Here offers a flat rate of 2.7 percent for card swipes.
 
Facebook Revamps Preferred Marketing Developer Program To Make It Easier To Find "Real" Social Media Experts Top
attachment-2Facebook doesn't want your company to get burned by shady "social media gurus", so today it expanded its Preferred Developer Consultant program into the new Preferred Marketing Developer program which offers certifications for high quality developers of apps and Page management, ads, and Insights tools and services. In March we got the scoop that Facebook planned to overhaul the PDC program, and today it finally executed by combining it with the Marketing API program and admitting 141 more companies to bring the total approved developer count to 232. It also launched a new directory and lookup tool to let clients search for consultants by location, expertise, feature, business model, and whether they serve small, mid, or enterprise-sized customers. Making sure companies that spend marketing dollars on its platform have a positive experience is crucial to getting them to buy more ads, make Facebook the center of their online marketing strategy, and boost the social network's revenues.
 
One More Time: Is This The Samsung Galaxy S III? Top
s3-e1334773042379-600x400The amount of leaks, rumors and hype around the Samsung Galaxy S III are reaching iPhone-ish proportions. Consumers obviously want this phone. The latest set of alleged pics show a phone clearly born of Galaxy S pedigree but there's no way of knowing if they're the real thing. The picture quality is of course a bit bad. It looks like it was taken with an iPad 2 or Galaxy Tab. Either way, the phone in question arguably matches up with the design cues of current Samsung devices albeit one a bit farther down the evolutionary trail.
 
T-Mobile Announces The HTC One S: $199 On-Contract On April 25 (Hands-On) Top
photo-9It's only been a few short hours since AT&T announced the availability of HTC's mamma-jamma One X smartphone, but there may be a few more tricks coming out of HTC's sleeve before the day is done. For example, T-Mobile just sent over a bit of news regarding the One S, namely that it will launch on April 25 for $199.99 on-contract after a $50 mail-in-rebate. We first spotted the One S back at MWC in Barcelona, and generally speaking we found it to be a pretty sweet device. This time around, I walk away feeling the same sentiments. I'm all about the design, specs are adequate, and Sense is an entirely tolerable custom overlay. Let's delve deeper, yes?
 

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