Q&A social network Formspring.me reaches 25M users
Formspring.me, a social network where users can ask and reply to questions, now has over 25 million registered members, the company announced on its blog.
Over 3.4 billion total questions have been answered by Formspring users, the 18-month-old San Francisco-based startup told VentureBeat.
Formspring also released an infographic (embedded below) that illustrates some of the site’s more interesting statistics, like the 877 questions Marvel Comics Senior Vice President Tom Brevoort has responded to about X-Men.… Continue Reading
Entrepreneur of the Year finalist: “Know that you don’t know”
This sponsored post is part of a series of profiles on Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” finalists. Click here to keep up with the rest of the series.
When asked what advice she gives aspiring entrepreneurs, Eileen Gittins quickly responds with a common theme: “Never give up.” Gittins — a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year competition — is the founder and CEO of the do-it-yourself online book publisher, Blurb.… Continue Reading
Outfit7 climbs the beanstalk to find a mainstream audience
The Talking Friends have taken yet another step toward the entertainment industry. Last week, mobile gaming company Outfit7 announced a signed deal with talent agency William Morris Entertainment. Now, they have partnered with Beanstalk, the licensing agency behind brands like Mr. Clean, Jack Daniel’s, Ford Motor Co., AT&T and more.
Beanstalk plans to launch a global licensing program for Outfit7 that will include toys, games, books and other goods tailored to children of various age … Continue Reading
DEMO UPDATE: New tiered pricing plan AND scholarships!
Almost everyone needs the occasional leg up, but sometimes just putting your right foot forward can be tough. The DEMO Conference is aiming to fix that with the DEMO Scholarship Partner Program. Twenty startups that have raised less than $500,000 will receive a full ride to the same conference that launched Salesforce, TiVo, E-Trade, Netscape and more. Furthermore, 10 angel-funded companies who have received less than $1.5 million in seed funding will be offered partial … Continue Reading
Google goes social with Google+ — Will Facebook flinch?
After months of waiting, Google finally unveiled on Tuesday its new social project, Google+. It’s an ambitious gambit that aims to turn all of Google’s services into one giant social platform, and in the process steal some thunder from Facebook while making Google – for once – a big player in social networking.
Google has redesigned the top navigation bar to work across all of its services. It’s very similar to the notification bar found … Continue Reading
Travel-search startup Hipmunk is nitpicky – and getting better
Flight search startup Hipmunk now indicates which flights have Wi-Fi available for the duration of the flight — a relatively small change that shows just how nitpicky the company is about building the best design in the travel-search startup ecosystem.
Finding a flight with Wi-Fi is usually a minor annoyance when booking through a site like Orbitz. I’ve paged through multiple flights on Hipmunk until I can find a flight that has Wi-Fi available. But … Continue Reading
Updated: Zynga might file for $2 billion IPO Wednesday
[Update: a separate report from Bloomberg News also indicates that Zynga might file for an initial public offering tomorrow.]
Social games maker Zynga may file to go public as early as Wednesday to raise up to $2 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Zynga is expecting a valuation somewhere between $15 and $20 billion, sources familiar with the matter told the Journal. That would put the company well ahead of massive game publisher Electronic … Continue Reading
FCC still won’t judge on wireless industry competition
The Federal Communications Commission has released its Fifteenth Report on wireless competition, and the big news is that there’s no big news.
That is, the FCC has still not released a formal finding as to whether there is, or is not, effective competition in the Mobile Wireless industry.
This is a big deal, because lack of a finding does not help predict what the FCC will decide regarding the pending merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. … Continue Reading
Is Sony silencing player efforts to halt Star Wars Galaxies’ demise?
[Update: Sony has responded to queries from VentureBeat]
Sony is locking forum topics and banning players who are trying to promote a petition to keep one of its online games, Star Wars Galaxies, from shutting down on December 15, according to reports from players.
Several Star Wars Galaxies players have contacted VentureBeat and said that the company has locked several forum topics regarding a petition that has gathered more than 2,100 signatures to keep the … Continue Reading
Deaf activists launch social campaign against Netflix
Today a group of deaf and hard of hearing activists are using Change.org, a platform for social change, to persuade Netflix, an internet subscription service for movies and TV shows, to provide better access to subtitles for its online streaming content.
“Since I started relying on captioning, I’ve learned how few entertainment options exist for the deaf and hard-of-hearing,” says Sebastian St. Troy, a consumer-rights activist in Texas who launched the Change.org campaign. St. Troy, … Continue Reading
California electric car rebate program runs dry
A California program that gives hybrid and pure-electric car buyers a rebate between $1,500 and $5,000 has run out of funding for the remainder of the state’s fiscal year ending June 30.
The state of California allocated $7 million last year for rebates to qualified electric car buyers. The popularity of the federally-mandated Cash for Clunkers program sent car buyers out in droves. Spurred on by high gas prices, early adopters were eager to go … Continue Reading
Office 365: meet the new suite, same as the old suite
Microsoft’s online office suite, Office 365, finally hit the streets Tuesday. But it’s about five or six years too late to the cloud-based office software game and unlikely to provide much benefit to smaller and mid-sized companies, according to a number of executives of large enterprise software providers.
Microsoft has the edge in familiarity because many of the world’s largest companies already use its Office suite of productivity software. But while that may offer Microsoft … Continue Reading
Nook Color first to offer Angry Birds with location-based extras
Barnes & Noble said Tuesday its Nook Color e-reader and tablet would be the first device to offer a real-world tie-in to the insanely popular Angry Birds game.
The original Angry Birds title hit 140 million downloads in April, and that number continues to climb as the game flies to every platform it can.
What’s different about the new Nook Color version is the inclusion of the “Magic Places” feature. The feature opens up extras … Continue Reading
Sprint CEO doing his damndest to stop AT&T’s T-Mobile purchase
Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has been railing loudly against AT&T’s $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile since the deal was announced. Now we have a closer look at Hesse’s concerted effort to kill the deal, thanks to a Bloomberg report.
The CEO has taken to planning against the merger in a secure White Room, which only he has access to. His “nukes” — or tactics to shoot down the merger — are marked down in red, … Continue Reading
AOL to launch new music service based on Slacker Radio
AOL said today it has partnered with digital music startup Slacker Radio to launch a new subscription-based music service later this summer.
The free version of the new service will be based on Slacker’s current service. Like Slacker, the service will enable users to create tailored radio stations, save favorite songs and stations, read album reviews, access artist biographies, review station histories, and skip up to six songs per hour, per station.
AOL’s premium music … Continue Reading
What do you love? Google knows.
Reactions to Google’s new “What do you love?” service are going to be mixed. That’s probably why the site wdyl.com was rolled out quietly, at night, with no more fanfare than an anonymous ”tip” going to Techcrunch.com.
Wdyl.com essentially takes a search request and turns it into a comic book-looking page of relevant results. You get the results after entering a term and then clicking on an adorable heart-shaped button.* The search results are then … Continue Reading
Microsoft launches Office 365, its Google Apps killer
Microsoft caught up with the present today with the launch of Office 365, a suite of its well-known Office software tailored for the cloud.
Office 365 is an online-based service that shares similarities to Google Apps and Zoho, and it lets people collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and e-mail using a combination of subscription desktop software and web apps. Microsoft’s popular applications like Word, Excel, Exchange, and PowerPoint will now be able to be licensed month-to-month … Continue Reading
France commits €1B to nuclear power
French President Nicolas Sarkozy (pictured right) announced today that the country will pledge €1 billion ($1.4 billion USD) to nuclear power research and development.
France will also commit €1.3 billion to renewable energy projects. Sarkozy said that the moratorium on nuclear power did not make any sense and that there were no alternatives to nuclear power that were cleaner than fossil fuels available today.
Germany recently announced that it would shut down all of its … Continue Reading
News Corp. finalizing $30M sale of Myspace
Myspace’s parent company News Corp. is in the final stages of selling the under-performing social network for $20 – $30 million, reports All Things Digital.
News Corp. is apparently in a rush to complete an acquisition deal by Thursday — its fiscal year-end. The media giant probably doesn’t want MySpace to blemish its 2012 financial records, especially given the lackluster revenue predictions.
Backing up earlier information, the report indicates that significant cuts in staff and … Continue Reading
Judges pick BioShock Infinite as the best game of E3
Take-Two Interactive’s BioShock Infinite has been selected as the best game of the E3 video game trade show by the Game Critics Awards.
Dozens of game critics, including me from VentureBeat, voted on the top games of E3. Since BioShock Infinite won four major awards, that’s a pretty good indicator that Take-Two has a major hit on its hands for 2012, when BioShock Infinite is expected to launch.
The game is an original title developed … Continue Reading
