 | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: GigaOM | Category: Media
Polyvore, a fast-growing fashion community site, is in the interesting position of pushing forward both search and user-generated content creation at the same time. On the occasion of her hiring, we interviewed new CEO Sukhinder Singh Cassidy about some fascinating stats and observations about the company.
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
By now, most radio stations have started broadcasting online, meaning you can listen from anywhere you’ve got an Internet connection. For whatever reason, though, that fantastic feature hasn’t really found its way to where we normally listen to the radio — in the car or in our living room.
But now Spark Radio, a brand new $6 app in the iPhone App Store, is bringing the advantages of radio and the Internet together to make one killer music app.
It’s essentially a collection of Internet radio stations from all over the world – more than 10,000 for now; and the company promises to have 30,000 by April — all available on your iPhone. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: eMarketer | Category: Metrics
Social media, blogs and search engine optimization more cost-effective for lead gen
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: eMarketer | Category: Metrics
Many marketers are dissatisfied with measurement
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Enerkem, the Canadian bio fuels company, believes it can sell carbon-neutral fuels for cheap and do so while removing trash from landfills. The company has taken $51 million in funding including investment from Waste Management of Houston. Garbage and bio fuels go together like peas and carrots, with a waste-to-fuels facility in Michigan set to help Enerkem spend its new money.
On the other hand, Advanced biofuels have been getting a bad name from ActionAid . ActionAid claims that bio fuels contribute to global starvation and that they don’t help climate change, either. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
The topic that provoked some of the most argument at the Beet.TV’s online video roundtable in San Francisco today was the format of online advertising. Initially, everyone focused on the nitty grity of delivering the “pre-roll” video ads that run before the content that you actually want to watch. Then Jim Louderback of Internet TV network Revision3 declared that approach is “cowpathing the old model” — it’s just trying to import TV ads into a new medium where they don’t make sense. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
General Motors is losing one of the key players on the team developing the Chevrolet Volt — the hotly-anticipated plug-in vehicle that is supposed to forever change the green vehicle market. And where is Denise Gray, director of global battery systems, going? Where else? A battery startup in California.
So far, the company that stole her away hasn’t been identified. Gray only says that she is stepping into a senior management post at a California startup that is still in stealth mode. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
General Motors is losing one of the key players on the team developing the Chevrolet Volt — the hotly-anticipated plug-in vehicle that is supposed to forever change the green vehicle market. And where is Denise Gray, director of global battery systems, going? Where else? A battery startup in California.
So far, the company that stole her away hasn’t been identified. Gray only says that she is stepping into a senior management post at a California startup that is still in stealth mode. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: GigaOM | Category: Media
In a ruling that could have broad implications for video hosting sites that operate in Italy, three Google executives were found guilty of violating privacy laws yesterday for a video that was uploaded to Google Video by one of its users. Although Google has already said [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Mashery, a startup that helps software companies market, distribute and keep track of their application programming interfaces (APIs), has just raised $5.5 million in a third round of venture funding, according to a filing with the SEC.
With more web-based startups releasing APIs to extend their capabilities and engage users, this type of service seems to be in higher demand than ever — a fact that attracted attention and cash from Cisco Systems. The Silicon Valley giant led the financing round for Mashery, which is also backed by First Round Capital, 406 Ventures and Formative Ventures. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Facebook status updates from Pages will start showing up in Google’s real-time search results today.
It’s the first time the search giant has indexed content from the world’s largest social network for real-time results. The company incorporated tweets last December, and then MySpace status updates earlier this month.
The key thing to remember though is that Google has much more limited access to Facebook’s real-time data than its competitor, Bing. Microsoft has deeper ties to the social network, as an investor in Facebook and as a search provider for the site. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Online baby product retailer SproutBaby acquired blogging network EcoMom today in an all-equity transaction. The deal reflects a growing trend where editorial content and direct marketing are blended to drive sales in niche online communities.
SproutBaby sells “eco-conscious” infant products like organic baby food and skin care products that omit chemicals linked to cancer. EcoMom is a blogging network and online community of ecologically-conscious mothers.
“We realized we would have a much stronger offering together, than as separate companies,” said SproutBaby chief executive and founder Jody Sherman. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Online baby product retailer SproutBaby acquired blogging network EcoMom today in an all-equity transaction. The deal reflects a growing trend where editorial content and direct marketing are blended to drive sales in niche online communities.
SproutBaby sells “eco-conscious” infant products like organic baby food and skin care products that omit chemicals linked to cancer. EcoMom is a blogging network and online community of ecologically-conscious mothers.
“We realized we would have a much stronger offering together, than as separate companies,” said SproutBaby chief executive and founder Jody Sherman. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
In its ambition to be a player in the red hot category of social network games, Hi5 is expected to announce today that it has acquired a social gaming platform company and a new team of executives with years of experience in online games.
The San Francisco social networking company has acquired Big Six, an Austin, Texas-based social game developer that has its own battle-tested virtual currency platform. It has also hired Big Six co-founders Kevin Gliner, Monty Kerr and Chad Hansing to help run hi5. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
European antitrust regulators are investigating complaints in France, Germany and Italy by competitors who claim Google is unfairly using its huge market advantage — sometimes an even greater percentage of local searchers than in America — to push them out of business.
Most notably, Microsoft-owned Ciao, a comparison shopping site which Microsoft acquired in 2008 and has since integrated into its Bing search engine, has joined with map service Euro-Cities, the German newspaper Bild, and German magazine publisher Hubert Burda Media in complaints against the Silicon Valley search giant. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
It’s time to unveil our expert panel of judges for the second annual Who’s Got Game contest for the best game startup. We’ll hold the finalist competition for the contest on March 10 at our GamesBeat@GDC conference in San Francisco at the Moscone Convention Center.
Moderating the panel and taking part in the judging will be the very judicious Jeremy Liew, managing director at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Liew invests primarily in the Internet and mobile sectors, with a particular interest in social media, commerce, gaming, financial and methods for increasing monetization. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Busuu.com, an online community offering free language courses, today announced it has secured an undisclosed six figure angel round from an Austrian serial entrepreneur. The new funding will help the company strengthen the language platform and continue to expand internationally.
Busuu.com is a free online community offering interactive language courses in Spanish, French, German, Italian, English and Brazilian Portuguese (the latter was added today). Each course has 4 levels. Users can also look to other community members to help in learning a new language through web messaging and video chat. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
Everyone wants to know who has the most social influence, but so far, there hasn’t been a good way to measure it. The number of friends you have on Facebook or Twitter is only a partial measure.
So a Canadian startup is launching the world’s first fantasy stock market that measures your social influence. Empire Avenue’s The People’s Market will let users buy and sell shares in each other, allowing a person’s social influence to be measured via market forces.
“Online, every writer, blogger, photographer or Twitterer has influence, but nobody has been able to answer the question, ‘What’s my influence worth?’ until now. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
It looks like the startup founder visa, a concept that has a lot of backing from the startup and venture community, might actually become a reality: Senators John Kerry and Richard Lugar (a Democrat and a Republican, respectively) today introduced the Startup Visa Act, which reflects many of the ideas pushed by the movement’s advocates.
The idea is to create an alternative to existing visa programs like the H-1B, a temporary visa for immigrants working in high-tech or other specialized fields. [...]
Read more | Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Source: Venture Beat | Category: Technology
We’re seeing many examples of cable companies trying to bring their content to the web these days, in an effort to maintain their relevance in a world where services like Hulu and Netflix’s video streaming exist. There’s HBO’s newly launched Go service, which is part of Comcast and Time Warner’s “TV Everywhere” initiative, and we’ve also reported on Brightcove’s tech to help broadcasters bring their content online.
Now AllThingsDigital is reporting on Cablevision’s plans, which takes a different approach at uniting subscriber’s PC and TV viewing habits. [...]
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