$9 million investment in the thriving greeting card business

Greetz, a Netherlands-based greeting-card service has attracted $9 million from ePlanet Ventures of Palo Alto, and existing shareholder Prime Technology Ventures of the Netherlands. The investment is primarily to strengthen Greetz’ position in the Dutch market and expand online worldwide. Greetz lets users personalize greeting cards at its web site, then it prints the cards and mails them to the customer. Customers can also schedule birthday cards for the entire year and link into social … Continue Reading

Half a percent of Facebook users hate the new redesign — Facebook should (mostly) ignore them

[Note: We've since written another article examining specific Facebook redesign changes in detail, and why we think they're good or bad. Check it out.]

Sometimes when Facebook tries something new, people hate it, and it fails (like the Beacon ads that show you friends activity on other sites). But sometimes when it tries something new and people hate it, those people prove themselves wrong and end up liking the changes. Now, user anger is mounting … Continue Reading

Lending Club raises $12M more for peer-to-peer loans

Lending Club, a website where people looking to borrow money can connect with lenders, has raised $12 million in a second round of funding.

Given the extent to which credit has dried up, it’s not hard to see why borrowers would be interested in peer-to-peer lending sites, rather than going through a bank; The New York Times wrote about the phenomenon last fall. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Lending Club says the number of loans made through the … Continue Reading

Want to make money online? Go for iTunes not ads.

The top digital media companies increased their revenues by more than 20 percent in 2008. How? Well it wasn’t online ads. Instead, it was largely thanks to a pay-for-media approach, according to new research from Strategy Analytics.

Leading the way in this field was Apple, with the “Other Music Related Products and Services” area of its business, which includes iTunes. Apple saw its revenue grow 32.7 percent last year in this category, according to the … Continue Reading

Buzz Media raises $12.5M for its pop culture properties

Buzz Media, the social media network formerly known as Buzznet, has announced raising a $12.5 million round of funding. The fledgling media company has garnered recent attention with its growing portfolio of music and celebrity themed web properties including its flagship Buzznet, Stereogum, WWTD, and Idolator.

Despite a recent round of layoffs, today’s news shows no signs of the company slowing, as the funds are slated for the continued growth of its portfolio.

Otherwise, it’s … Continue Reading

Two new iPhones, one new iPod touch, two mysterious new products, OLED and video support? Oh my.

Following Apple’s iPhone 3.0 preview event on Tuesday, maybe you’re a little sick of iPhone news. Then this post is not for you.

Today brings a ton of new information, some of it more flimsy than others, but it seems pretty likely at this point that new iPhones, a new iPod touch and potentially some other products are on the way.

A file in the new iPhone 3.0 software development kit (SDK) points to two … Continue Reading

Kontagent brings analytics to Facebook Connect for the iPhone

Another piece of the Facebook developer ecosystem has arrived on the iPhone: Advanced analytics software made by Kontagent. Facebook developers moving to the iPhone, as well as existing iPhone developers, can now get the benefit of the company’s tools, especially as they explore using Facebook’s integration between its Connect service and the iPhone. The company already lets application developers compare how various feature changes in an application change its traffic, or view traffic based on … Continue Reading

Aurora Feint to share iPhone social networking tools with game developers

Aurora Feint has managed to produce some of the most popular games on the iPhone. Today, it’s going to share some of what it’s learned with other companies at the iGames Summit in San Francisco.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based company — maker of the hit game Aurora Feint: The Beginning and Aurora Feint II: The Arena– will share tools that make it easy to add social networking features to iPhone games. The company estimates that it … Continue Reading

Cisco buys Pure Digital for $590M, claims market leadership in video capture

Cisco, the giant networking company, has acquired private San Francisco company Pure Digital Technologies, maker of a range of dead simple “Flip” video recorders, for $590 million in stock. The deal also includes $15 million in equity incentives for Pure Digital employees who stay after the merger.

Cisco said the move gives it a leadership position in the “video capture” market.

Flip video devices enjoy a 20 percent market share in the U.S. after launching … Continue Reading

GamesBeat 09 spotlight: Zeebo launching low-cost game console for developing worlds

The big three game console makers rarely ship their next-generation machines to the developing world, where problems such as game piracy and pricing are huge barriers to acceptance.

That’s where Zeebo sees its opening. This San Diego, Calif.-based startup has come up with a plan to launch an inexpensive game machine in markets such as South America. John Rizzo, chief executive at Zeebo, will talk about the console at both the Game Developers Conference and … Continue Reading

NPD: Recession changing how we buy music

A report from research firm NPD puts a new spin on the rise of digital music purchases. The survey found CD sales continuing their downward spiral in 2008, while the number of digital music buyers have grown almost 30 percent year over year.

But here’s where the report gets good — apparently, the recession is now part of a growth factor for digital music purchases.

According to NPD, the economic downturn was one of the … Continue Reading

Can Push Notification force AT&T to rethink SMS fees?

Let me be clear right off the bat: Contrary to what some of you may believe, I do not hate text messaging. What I hate are the ridiculous fees mobile carriers push on us when we use it. These costs are so absurd that a number of times I’ve written about the need for a viable alternative to force carriers to bring the fees down. Now, it looks like we may have one of the … Continue Reading

The world's most lucrative social network? China's Tencent beats $1 billion revenue mark

A billion dollars in revenue in a single year? Not even MySpace, currently the most profitable social network outside China, has managed to accomplish that. But publicly traded Tencent, a leading Chinese web portal, instant message client, social network, game developer and more has done it, and largely through the use of virtual goods and other “Internet valued-added services,” like avatars, dating services, online memberships, music and community sites.

Overall, the so-called IVAS revenue category … Continue Reading

Small game studio releases The Path horror game

It’s always surprising to see indie developers pull off games that require heavy investment. Today,  Belgium-based game studio Tale of Tales is announcing that it has released its original horror game, The Path, for download on the Internet.

The game is available for $9.99 on download site Direct2Drive or Steam. The game itself is not really unique. But it’s interesting that this small studio created a very serious game project after more than two years … Continue Reading

Roundup: iPhone tethering works, AT&T prepping no-contract iPhones, IE8 arrives early and more

Here’s the latest action:

iPhone tethering and no commitment price — Just a day after Apple’s iPhone 3.0 software event, developers have found out that tethering is in fact an option in the new OS. They were able to get it working when connected over USB, according to MacRumors. This is great, but you will undoubtedly have to pay for it when AT&T and Apple officially turn it on.

A contract-free iPhone? — Speaking of … Continue Reading

Y Combinator Demo Day: Simple cloud management, real-time energy monitoring, and more

If anyone’s feeling depressed about the future of Silicon Valley innovation, I’d suggest sneaking into the demo day tomorrow at incubator Y Combinator‘s Mountain View, Calif. office. Watching a bunch of smart, ambitious entrepreneurs show off what they’re working on is a good cure for the “nothing cool is happening” blues — and I saw a strong batch of startups at today’s event. (The same presentations repeat tomorrow.)

For the most part, there weren’t many … Continue Reading

Canvas lands $750K for mobile app building software

Canvas, maker of software that allows even layman users to turn paper forms into digital applications for business purposes, announced that it has brought in $750,000 of an expected $1 million first round of funding. It says it will use the money, provided by Sphere Capital, to adapt its product for the iPhone, BlackBerry and other smartphones on the market. The round will remain open.

To create an application, a user simply submits a paper … Continue Reading

Discovery's Patent Lawsuit Could Reveal Kindle Sales

Sony and Amazon fighting over eBook patents? Sure, just about anyone could imagine that. But Discovery Communications (the media company behind Discovery Channel and Animal Planet) suing Amazon over the Kindle’s patents just seems odd.

On the bright side, this tussle might finally force Amazon to drop the cloak and dagger routine over the Kindle’s sales figures.

The news comes as Discovery’s legal team filed suit with the U.S. District Court claiming that Amazon’s Kindle, … Continue Reading

FilmCrave to leverage user content for partnerships

FilmCrave has already made a name for itself as the social network for movie buffs. With its sizable collection of movie trailers, ratings, and user-submitted reviews, it’s cultivated an active network of niche content creators. Now, after two years of modest expansion, the founders have announced they’re offering the site’s API to developers.

The move would make FilmCrave’s content available to a variety of other movie sites. But co-founder Alex Olson believes the value of … Continue Reading

Quigo founder launches new ad network with Doclix

The bumper crop of ad networks divvying up the digital landscape just got a new addition: Doclix, provide of a pay-per-click network called AdSide that says its technology will drive more traffic and ensure better ad quality and placement. While this isn’t a terribly original claim, the New York-based company may get a boost from the fact that its founder, Oded Itzhak, also started ad-targeting platform Quigo and is therefore a known quantity in the … Continue Reading