Roundup: Yahoo snaps up Citizen Sports, Doerr departs Amazon board and more

Here’s the latest action:

Yahoo dips into social game space with Citizen Sports buy — Yahoo announced that it is acquiring Citizen Sports, a company that offers sports-related applications for the iPhone and Facebook. The search engine says that the deal will boost to its already popular sports vertical by giving it a presence across more platforms. According to an interview on paidContent, Yahoo has felt left out of the conquest of Facebook, which is … Continue Reading

EA's Battlefield: Bad Company 2 blasts out 2.3M unit sales

Electronic Arts said today that its Battlefield: Bad Company 2 video game has sold more than 2.3 million units, putting the game on track to be a contender for best seller of the month.

The game — where you can destroy environments as you shoot at enemies — went on sale on March 2 on the PlayStation 3, the PC and Xbox 360. The brisk sales should come as a relief to EA, the struggling … Continue Reading

GetGlue helps you find Taste Neighbors who like the same books, movies, and music

GetGlue, the social recommendation service from startup Adaptive Blue, has been collecting data about what its users like since its launch in November. Now it’s using that data to help those users find others who like the same things.

To do this, the service (which works through both the GetGlue website and a browser add-on) is introducing a new feature called Taste Neighbors. Previously, users probably followed the activity of other users if they were … Continue Reading

As digital distribution looms, GameStop keeps opening retail stores

GameStop, the worlds biggest video game retailer, managed to grow in its fourth fiscal quarter thanks to sales of used games and new store openings. Even in the age of digital distribution from rivals such as OnLive, GameStop plans on opening 400 stores in the coming year.

The Grapevine, Texas-based company reported that sales for the fourth fiscal quarter ended Jan. 30 grew almost 1 percent to $3.52 billion from $3.49 billion a year ago. … Continue Reading

Videoplaza raises $5M for video ad-serving technology

Videoplaza, a Swedish startup that helps publishers optimize the way they serve video ads, raised $5 million to expand across Europe. Creandum and Northzone, two leading Scandinavian venture capital firms, led the round for the company which started breaking even in November.

The company has spent more than two years building sophisticated technology that helps online sites figure out which videos ads to use when, so that they elicit the highest click-through rates.

Stockholm-based Videoplaza … Continue Reading

Radian6 caps off first year in the black, as social media becomes profitable

An early venture-backed player in the social media marketing space is seeing its foresight pay off.

Radian6, a company that helps brands manage online conversations across the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook, capped off its first profitable year and is looking to increase its research and development spending by 50 percent this year.

Based far, far away from Silicon Valley in New Brunswick, Canada, the company built a roster of 1,300 clients including MTV, Dell and … Continue Reading

Not to be left out, Sprint gets Google's Nexus One too

Only a day after Google announced that it was offering an AT&T-compatible version of its Nexus One smartphone, Sprint has announced that the phone will be headed to its network as well.

While there are no details on when the phone will be available on Sprint, the carrier confirmed that it won’t be selling the Nexus One in stores. Instead, you’ll have to buy it directly from Google. There are no pricing details either, but … Continue Reading

Zillow launches on Android, as its iPhone app hits 1M downloads

Real estate site Zillow is following the success of its iPhone application today with a shiny new version for Android that will provide users with housing price data and more right on their phones. Making the case for its mobile presence, the company also announced that its iPhone app has passed the 1 million downloads mark, with users viewing 2 million homes every month.

When Zillow first came to the iPhone in April last year, … Continue Reading

Nuon captures $6.05M to develop treatments for autoimmune disease

Nuon Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing medicines to treat autoimmune disease and inflammation, has brought in $6.05 million of a targeted $6.13 million round of equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Mateo, Calif., the company has representatives from Frazier Healthcare Ventures, Domain Associates and GBS Venture Partners on its board of directors.… Continue Reading

Rummble seeks a location truce as it aggregates check-ins

Europe’s answer to the location-based services craze, Rummble, is seeking a bit of peace amid the competition for users to exclusively check-in and share their locations with a single app.

To do so, it’s aggregating check-ins from other services that are publicly shared on Twitter through its mobile apps. That way, users can see where their friends are regardless of which service they use to temporarily share their whereabouts. The company will parse natural language … Continue Reading

Odyssey Thera lands $3.5M for matching treatments to diseases

Odyssey Thera, provider of drug discovery tools that determine which medications will be most effective to treat which diseases, has brought in $3.5 million in equity, according to a filing with the SEC. Based in San Ramon, Calif., the company has representatives from Merck, the Burrill Investment Committee and the Brown Foundation Institute for Molecular Medicine on its board of directors.… Continue Reading

uTest rates the best TV network web sites, and catches bugs

NBC’s ratings are in the basement compared to its broadcast rivals. After that messy Jay Leno-Conan O’Brien fiasco, it’s scrambling to reprogram its 10 o’clock time slot. But they are No. 1 on another list: Apparently, tech-savvy viewers say NBC.com has the best web site of all the major U.S. broadcast networks, besting CBS, Fox and ABC, in that order.

The honor was bestowed on the peacock network by uTest, a software testing marketplace that … Continue Reading

Facebook emails traffic, stat summaries to Page owners — but it's only a test

Facebook users listed as admins of Pages, public profiles that enable users to share a business or product, may start noticing an email with the subject line “Your Weekly Facebook Page Update” in their inboxes.

While no official announcement has been made – which is often the case when Facebook tests new features — the social network has started to send Page admins weekly statistics, including how many new fans joined, comments, wall posts, links … Continue Reading

SINET event draws feds and security entrepreneurs together

The U.S. should improve its security infrastructure to deal with cyber threats, or it could wind up like the government of Estonia, brought down by hackers after a dispute with Russia.

Jaak Aviksoo, the minister of defense of the Republic of Estonia, offered the warning today at the Security Innovation Network conference at Stanford University in Silicon Valley. His country found that the malware developed for criminal enterprises can also be used for a political … Continue Reading

Glam defies media trends, expands into France

When former NetObjects CEO Samir Arora founded Glam Media in Brisbane in 2003, his strategy was one it would be hard to float past funders today: Let’s use great writing, great photos and magazine-inspired layout to bring big-brand advertisers onto the Web.

Doesn’t the guy know it’s all about dumbed-down “content” written by the lowest bidder, auto-promoted by a search engine optimization specialist, and flipped on an ad network as an arbitrage property?

I mean, … Continue Reading

Google working with Intel and Sony on Android-based TV (report)

Google will be the latest company trying to convince users that they want to surf the web from their living room — it’s working with Intel and Sony on a new platform called Google TV, according to a report in The New York Times.

This follows Google’s previous attempt to get into television advertising — an effort that doesn’t seem to have paid off. That effort’s initial leader, Tim Armstrong, left to run AOL. Since … Continue Reading

GetJar CEO explains the new app economy (video)

International app store GetJar has been around for years, but is only now gaining attention in the United States through a deal with Sprint.

This morning GetJar released a study the company had commissioned from Chetan Sharma Consulting — pronounced CHET-en, not CHEET-en — that claims the global market for mobile apps will be worth $17.5 billion by 2012.

According to Chetan Sharma, the growth in mobile app monetization will come from virtual goods, not … Continue Reading

Study: Mobile apps industry to hit $17.5B by 2012 with 50B in downloads

An independent study has found that the market for mobile applications will increase from $6 billion today to $17.5 billion in 2012. The study was commissioned by GetJar, the world’s second biggest mobile app store.

The study also reported that downloads of mobile apps will jump to 50 billion in 2012, a huge increase from 2009′s seven billion downloaded apps. The average price of mobile apps will also drop from $2.00 today to $1.50 in … Continue Reading

Algae fuel contender Aurora lands $15M — but can it grow?

On the surface, biofuels derived from algae seem to be an ideal solution to wean cars and trucks off gasoline. Algae grows anywhere, produces fuel that can work in today’s vehicle tanks, and seems cheap enough. Based on these arguments, Aurora Biofuels, a startup that cultivates algae to produce biodiesel, has just landed $15 million in a third round of venture funding. But it has yet to overcome the big hurdle standing between algae and … Continue Reading