Wednesday, May 2, 2012

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Twilio Rising: Microsoft Inks Deal To Offer Voice, Messaging APIs To 'Tens Of Thousands' Of Azure Developers Top
sunriseA potentially big move forward for cloud-based telephony API startup Twilio -- and an intriguing development for Microsoft, given its would-be ownership of Skype: Twilio and Microsoft have formed a strategic alliance to offer Twilio's APIs to developers on the Windows Azure platform. The offering will cover both Twilio's voice and messaging services, and Twilio is sweetening the deal by giving developers a credit of 1,000 free text messages or inbound voice minutes when they sign up.
 
Yahoo Launches Online Marketing Dashboard For Small Businesses Top
Yahoo! Small BusinesYou may not know this but Yahoo still operates a product called Yahoo Small Business, which provides SMBs and sites with web hosting, domain name registration, web site design templates, e-commerce solutions and more. In fact, Yahoo says that it has helped millions of businesses get online and grow their presence on the web. Today, the company is debuting a new marketing dashboard to give users additional insight into online reputation, web metrics and more. As the company explains, the new tool allows small businesses to analyze website metrics and maintain accurate and comprehensive business listings across the Web. For example, the dashboard enables social media monitoring and provides recommendations on new listing opportunities, including on Yelp, Yahoo and others.
 
Berlin-based Orderbird Gets $3.5M For Its iOS-Based Restaurant Ordering Solution Top
orderbird logoAs NFC continues to see growing adoption, we are still noticing more mobile payment solutions that don't use the technology picking up traction -- and funding: one of the latest comes from Germany, where a Berlin-based company called Orderbird has picked up a €2.7 million ($3.5 million) round for a service that lets restaurants use iOS devices to take customer food orders, send them to the kitchen and act as a "cash register" to process the payments at the end. The round was led by Alstin, a holding company headed by German financier Carsten Maschmeyer, who invested €2.4 million, with another €300,000 coming from angels and existing strategic investors backing Orderbird. (They include Lars Kamp, Carlo Kölzer and Tom Köhl.) The company has raised €3.2 million ($4.2 million) since opening for business in February 2011.
 
Jive Debuts New App Integrations, Universal Web Access For Social Network For Businesses Top
jive-1Social enterprise company Jive is debuting a number of new features for its social network for businesses today. The company is also announcing its Try Jive, a free 30-day trial for customers. Jive is one of the giants on the social enterprise space. Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, Jive's software combines computing with social collaboration to offer fully-featured, internal social networks for businesses. Its suite of applications help businesses collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, communication, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, social networking features and more.
 
The Weather Channel's Revamped Website Goes Social, Tells You When It Will Rain Top
Screen shot 2012-05-02 at 8.13.39 AMToday, The Weather Channel celebrates its 30th birthday. It will officially feel old at concerts and hot new night clubs. To mark the occasion, the company has revamped their website, weather.com, to keep up with the times. Weather is a very information-based vertical — there isn't a whole lot one can do to spruce it up. But TWC is looking to personalize the experience as much as possible. That said, you'll notice the redesign as soon as you visit the site.
 
Russian Classified Giant's $75m From Accel Shows It's 1999 In Emerging Economies Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-02 at 13.10.45Avito.ru, the biggest online classified ads site in Russia, has secured a fresh $75 million round of funding from Accel Partners' London office. Founded in 2008, Avito has so far landed $101 million from Accel, Baring Vostok Private Equity, Kinnevik, and Northzone. The capital will be used for expansion and hiring. Russia's classifieds ads business has plenty of room for growth becuase - guess what kids - it's basically 1999 out there is Russia. And this large emerging market is playing through all those businesses models we know and love from back in the good 'ol days. Expect more of this.
 
DataSift Raises $7.2M For Powerful Social Data Analysis And Business Intelligence Platform Top
datasiftDataSift, a data analysis company that provides developers and third parties with access to Twitter, Facebook and other social data sources, has raised $7.2 million in a follow-on Series A round from existing investors GRP Partners and IA Ventures. This brings DataSift's total funding to $15 million. For background, developers, businesses, media companies and organizations can essentially use DataSift to mine the Twitter firehose of social data, as well as Facebook, YouTube, blogs, forums and online message boards. But what makes DataSift special is that it can sort through billions of social interactions then filter this social media data for demographic information, online influence and sentiment, either positive or negative.
 
It's Finally Here: Spotify Launches Its Long-Awaited iPad App Top
Login screen with frame smallerToday, Spotify is releasing its long-awaited iPad app -- finally giving Apple tablet users, who also have a Spotify Premium (paid) subscription, a native route to accessing its 17-million song catalog. It will be worth seeing whether pent-up demand for the app will translate into a rush of downloads and usage, in the same way that Spotify saw around its (also long-awaited) U.S. launch last year. On the back of that, the U.S. has become Spotify's fastest-growing market, with the company projected to make $889 million in revenues this year on a global user base of 13 million people and counting.
 
Flattr Finally Lands Big Dailymotion Deal, But Its Business Model Still Sucks Top
Dailymotion video page with Flattr buttonFlattr, a social micro-payments platform which we've likened to a "Like button with cash" is to partner with the second biggest video site on the Web, Dailymotion. The distribution deal is targeted at Dailymotion's key content creators in its Motionmakers category. A cynic might call this a mere test of the platform to see if it can be rolled out across the site more widely. But both parties insist this is a card-carrying 'deal'. Suffice it to say Flattr has been crying out for a big distribution partner and yearned after one for the last two years. But TechCrunch remains skeptical that even this deal will lift the startup out of the early adopter crowd into the mainstream as there remain significant issues with its business model. Then again, at least they now get a real stress test.
 
Birst Lands $26M From Sequoia, Hummer Winblad To Bring Big Data Analytics To The Masses Top
Screen shot 2012-05-01 at 10.27.22 PMBirst, a San Francisco-based startup that offers on-demand business intelligence and analytics solutions for companies big and small, has raised $26 million in series D financing, led by Sequoia Capital. Existing investors, including Hummer Winblad and DAG Ventures, also participated in the round, bringing Birst's total funding to $46 million.
 
European VC Connect Ventures Launches With $22M Fund. Secret Sales Gets The First Helping: $487K Top
Connect Ventures logoMake way for another VC firm in Europe: Today sees the launch of Connect Ventures, a new London based fund that will focus on seed and Series A stages in European tech companies. It's kicking off with a €16 million ($22 million) fund, which will be dispersed in investments of between €250,000 and €1.25 million ($330k-$1.7m). Led by co-founders Pietro Bezza and Bill Earner, Connect Ventures will be focused on early stage companies in the consumer web, digital media, e-commerce, entertainment and gaming sectors. The first recipient of money from the fund is the London-based private sales site SecretSales, which is getting a £300,000 ($487,000) investment on top of the £6.3 million ($10.2 million) round that it got in February from a consortium of investors that included Doughty Hanson, Pantech Ventures and others.
 
Bing Strips Down Results Page To Make Google Look Like "Search Overload" Top
Mr. Clean Bing centeredWhile Google keeps cramming its search results pages full of tools and social content, today Bing confirmed with me the full roll out a redesigned search results page that completely clears the left sidebar, and replaces the tabbed header with a cleaner set of links. Bing's Facebook integration is also more subtle now, instead of plastering names and faces beneath Liked results. This more relaxing, dare I say zen, design gives Google a more claustrophobic and exhausting feel by comparison. Microsoft seems to have realized that if it can't match Google's algorithmic prowess, it could win with sleek design that doesn't bombard you with a thousand options. Here's how the designs of two search engines compare...
 
Yuri Milner, Dave Morin, SV Angel, CrunchFund And More Hook Up Pair With $4.2M Top
Screen Shot 2012-05-01 at 11.05.16 PMFor a social network that's, for lack of a better term, monogamous, social network for couples Pair has just raised funding from so many high-profile investors I'm having trouble picking who to include in this headline, and seriously running out of room. Investors in the company's recent $4.2 million seed round include Ashton Kutcher's A-Grade Ventures, Dave Morin, Paul Buchheit, Founder Collective, SV Angel, Lerer Ventures, Michael Birch, Sam Altman, CrunchFund, Tencent, Yuri Milner, Betaworks, Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, Harjeet Taggar, Gary Vaynerchuk, Brandee Barker, Brian Pokorny, Elad Gil, and Susan Wu. This sounds like it would be an amazing dinner party.
 
Salesforce Acquires YC-Backed Collaborative Text Editor Stypi Top
stypifeatIt looks like the team from Y Combinator-backed Stypi is heading to Salesforce, according to this blog post. UPDATE: We've confirmed that Salesforce has acquired Stypi. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. As we reported last year, Stypi develops a lightweight, real-time collaborative text editor. It's similar in many ways to fellow YC alum Etherpad, which was acquired by Google. You can create documents in Stypi and edit it just as you would any other document, and you can invite new collaborators simply by sending them the URL.
 
TechCrunch/Gadget Weekly: Kids And Technology, Can A New Keyboard Save RIM Top
logoThe TechCrunch/Gadget Weekly is back with several new faces. Jordan and Chris join John and I for our first TC/G webcast in several months. In this week's episode we discuss our recent trip to RIM's Waterloo's HQ and also the perils of kids and interacting with seamless technology.
 
Google Wins $35 Million U.S. Government Contract Over Microsoft Top
doi_logoGoogle and its partner Onix Networking just won a $35 million contract to run the U.S. Department of the Interior's new cloud-based email and collaboration system. This wasn't always a sure bet for Google. In 2010, the Department of the Interior awarded Microsoft a $59.3 million contract to run its email and collaboration system. Google and its Ohio-based partner Onix Networking quickly filed a suit to block this contract. In Google's view, the Interior Department's procurement process unfairly favored Microsoft and never gave it a fair chance. Google finally withdrew its lawsuit last September after the Department scrapped its plans to use Microsoft's solution because its original decision was "now stale in light of new developments in technology and entrants into the market."
 
OMGWHAT? GREE Acquires Mobile-Social Game Developer Funzio For $210M Top
funzioJapanese gaming giant GREE just acquired mid-core, mobile game developer Funzio for $210 million in an all-cash deal that should boost its ability to build games for Western audiences. Funzio is behind Crime City, Modern War and Kingdom Age, which are graphical RPGs that have had more than 20 million downloads on Apple's iOS, Android or Facebook platforms. I had heard a few weeks back that Funzio was in a fundraising process at a $350 million post-money valuation and had also been loosely talking to various buyers in an auction-style process. Apparently, the fundraising efforts helped tip Funzio into a sale, but maybe not at the valuation I had originally heard about. Still, $210 million is not bad at all, considering that the company had raised about $20 million to date from IDG Ventures and Playdom co-founder Rick Thompson. For comparison, Draw Something-maker OMGPOP went to Zynga for $180 million in cash plus an undisclosed earnout. Why did GREE buy Funzio? GREE is a multi-billion dollar mobile gaming company from Japan that is trying to break into Western markets. Its profit margins put Zynga to shame, but the company is running out of room to grow as its home country becomes saturated.
 
Castlight Lands A Whopping $100M D Round To Bring Transparency To Healthcare Costs Top
Logo_High ResFounded in 2008, San Francisco-based Castlight has been at the forefront of the movement to bring price transparency and comparison tools to healthcare, offering a B2B service that enables self-insured businesses to provide their employees with the tools to compare costs and quality of a wide range of tests and procedures. While there was plenty of resistance from providers off the bat, the value of this price transparency has been more than apparent in the amount of funding Castlight has raised to date -- $81 million. Today, the startup is more than doubling its coffers, as it has announced the closing of a $100 million Series D financing. The round was led by two "major" (but unnamed) mutual funds, with contributions from T. Rowe Price, and Redmile Group. Castlight's previous investors include names like Morgan Stanley, Wellcom Trust, U.S. Venture Partners, Maverick Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Venrock, and more.
 
Now BrandYourself Users Can See The Companies Googling Them Top
BrandYourself Visitor IntelligenceBrandYourself, a startup offering a cheap and easy approach to managing your Google results, has added a new feature to answer one of those burning questions: Who are the people Googling me? To be clear, it's not actually plugging in to Google and sending you an alert every single time someone enters your name. Instead, it's revealing data about who's visiting your BrandYourself profile page in a way that's probably more meaningful and comprehensible to your average consumer than, say, Google Analytics. So every time someone visits your profile, BrandYourself can tell you (either via your dashboard or an email alert) what city they're in, how they found you, and what company they work for. Co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron compares the feature to the way LinkedIn and other social sites can alert you about other members who have viewed your profile, "except applied to the entire web."
 
AllClear ID Rolls Out First-Ever Social Security Number Blocking Service For Children's IDs Top
allclearidID and fraud protection service AllClear ID, is launching a new feature today which aims to protect kids' Social Security Numbers (SSNs) from being stolen and used to secure things like mortgages, loans and other big ticket items. It's a major problem, the company says, noting in a new study that 10.7% of children have had their ID stolen. The idea with the new service is to create the equivalent of the "Do Not Call" list for children's SSNs. Once on the list, if any criminal tries to use the kid's ID for any reason - even just a credit check - credit reporting agency TransUnion will immediately flag and block the ID's use. Oh, and the best part? It's free.
 

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