Electric car maker Think returns from bankruptcy, again

Norway-based electric-car maker Think announced today it was purchased by one of its investors after the company filed for bankruptcy last month, the company’s third trip to bankruptcy courts in its 20-year history.

Boris Zingarevich, a Russian timber baron and investor, was named by a court-appointed trustee as the winning bidder for Think. Zingarevich is also is the principal investor of U.S. lithium-ion battery maker Ener1. After Think failed to raise new investments and sought … Continue Reading

LinkedIn launches plugin for one-click job applications

LinkedIn on Monday launched a new plugin that makes the process of applying for a job as easy as clicking a button.

The new “Apply with LinkedIn” plugin can be embedded on the job listings pages of company websites, and it simplifies the way job seekers can submit their resumes to companies they want to work for.

“There’s a lot of emotion and anxiety in applying for a job,” Adam Nash, LinkedIn’s Vice President of … Continue Reading

HTC’s product design chief resigns

HTC chief innovation officer Horace Luke has left the company for personal reasons.

Luke has been with HTC since 2006, and played a key role in HTC’s remarkable rise from an ordinary Taiwanese contract manufacturer to a significant smartphone brand in its own right.

His duties will be taken over by the company’s vice president of design, Scott Croyle.

In a statement, HTC said Luke “nurtured a culture of innovation at HTC and instilled a … Continue Reading

Netflix CEO: “We’re gonna thrive on streaming only”

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in a conference call to discuss second-quarter earnings that the online-video giant plans to focus on a “streaming only” future after separating its mail-order DVD service into a separate subscription. But that future, Hastings said, will also bring Netflix into many more countries.

“We gained some confidence when we launched in Canada. That blew away our expectations,” he said. “With the strength of streaming only internationally, we got convinced that … Continue Reading

Dictionary alternative Wordnik gets $8M in funding, Google board member

The word “Wordnik“ isn’t in the dictionary. But with $8 million in third-round financing and a Google exec on its board, the company called Wordnik just might redefine what a dictionary is.

Along with the new round of funding, Wordnik score Google’s vice president of product management Bradley Horowitz (pictured right), who oversees Google+ and other aspects of Google’s social strategy, as a board member.

The company believes “people understand words best when they can … Continue Reading

VentureBeat is hiring! We seek director of ad sales, content analyst, more

VentureBeat is on a roll.

Our page views and audience have doubled over the past year. We just wrapped up our fourth annual MobileBeat conference, with record attendance and lots of announcements and a new format at DEMO is generating a lot of buzz. And we’ve been hiring more writers (Hi, Jolie O’Dell!). Stay tuned for even more announcements.

Now we’re hiring to keep pace with that growth.

The first opening is a full-time one.

… Continue Reading

Flipboard’s getting ads, courtesy of Condé Nast

Everyone’s favorite iPad social reader, Flipboard, is getting itself a revenue stream.

The startup, which recently raised a $50 million round, has just inked a deal with mega-publisher Condé Nast to include full-page advertising in some of its digital offerings, including The New Yorker, Wired and Bon Appétit. Flipboard CEO Mike McCue spoke with VentureBeat today to discuss the details of the deal.

“In December,” said McCue, “we started a trial with a … Continue Reading

Netflix snags DreamWorks content deal from HBO

DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind box-office hits like Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, is finalizing a contract to bring its library of films to Netflix‘s streaming-video service, according to multiple reports.

The contract would replace an existing deal DreamWorks has with HBO, which doesn’t expire until 2014, reports All Things Digital. DreamWorks didn’t respond to VentureBeat for comment about the agreement.

With 22 feature films, the DreamWorks deal wouldn’t add a significant amount of … Continue Reading

Twitter hires two new high-level marketing execs

Twitter has added two new executives to its flock, one to focus on marketing to consumers and another to work on the company’s partnerships with global advertisers.

With both hires, Twitter is positioning itself as an important front in mainstream digital media, one that’s becoming impossible for large brands to ignore.

Pam Kramer joins Twitter as the startup’s first vice president of consumer marketing. In a release, the company described her role as one that … Continue Reading

Updated: Netflix expects subscriber growth to slow in Q3

[Update: Added additional information from the company's quarterly conference call.]

Video streaming site Netflix’s recent rate hike has slowed the site’s growth substantially.

The site expects to add 700,000 new domestic subscribers — at the most — in the third quarter this year, which is down from the 1.8 million new domestic subscribers added in the third quarter last year, according to the most recent Netflix earnings report.

The company said it expects subscriptions to … Continue Reading

AT&T’s Android lineup getting the Gingerbread upgrade

Android 2.3 – a.k.a. Gingerbread - is finally being made available to owners of many AT&T Android devices starting today.

Once the OS updates are complete, Gingerbread will likely approach one quarter of the Android versions currently running across all Android devices.

The upgrade will be coming to AT&T customers who bought an Android smartphone released in 2011. Devices slated for Gingerbred-ification include the HTC Inspire 4G, the LG Phoenix, the Motorola Atrix 4G, Samsung’s … Continue Reading

Real-time search: How a whole ecosystem bit the dust

Yet another real-time search engine has called it a day, causing many to ponder how a white-hot industry fizzled so entirely in just two years.

Last week, startup Wowd announced its team was “moving on.” Many read this announcement as one of the darker stories of the entrepreneurial world: the kind of failure that entails giving investors their money back, open-sourcing the code and returning to corporate life.

In this case, however, this young company … Continue Reading

Sector analytics provider Quid nets $10M, Max Levchin joins as an advisor

Quid, a provider of analytics for specific job sectors, announced today that it has raised $10 million in its third round of funding and has added PayPal co-founder and Slide founder Max Levchin to its board of advisors.

“At PayPal, they were able to combine algorithms, visualization and people together to really understand core networks,” Quid co-founder Sean Gourley told VentureBeat. “For us to get that insight of how you use computers, algorithms and data … Continue Reading

Motif raises $20M to allow investors to invest in ideas

Motif Investing, a startup formed to help people invest in ideas, has raised $20 million in a second round of funding.

The idea is to give individuals a way to invest based on themes. Rather than choosing to buy stock in a particular company, Motif lets investors put money into portfolios of stocks, called motifs, that are based on ideas such as cloud computing or democracy in the Middle East. A motif can be customized … Continue Reading

Consumers spend average of $14 per transaction in iPhone and Android freemium games

Not everyone buys virtual goods in mobile games. But among those who do, the average purchase price is pretty big: $14.

That’s a pretty big number, considering free-to-play games are relatively new to consumers, according to stats gathered by mobile analytics firm Flurry. Not everyone is used to buying items inside games. But the number shows that people who make in-app purchases (the name for goods purchased while an app is still running) are willing … Continue Reading

Legal document site LegalZoom raises $66M

Online legal document repository LegalZoom has raised $66 million in its most recent round of funding.

LegalZoom is an online service that helps people find and fill out legal documents. That can include documents to create a last will and testament, filing to incorporate a business, trademarking a name or title or filing for a divorce. The documents range anywhere from $100 to $400, according to the company’s website. LegalZoom is not a law firm … Continue Reading

Huddles and Hangouts: Google+ conferencing tools aren’t just gimmicks

Google’s newest social network, Google+, features group chats for its mobile app (on Android and iOS) and in-browser video conferencing. They aren’t new ideas, but the execution for both is top-notch and they are useful for both businesses and typical consumers.

Here’s a breakdown of the new features and some cool things you can do with each:

Google+ Huddles

Huddles are group chats that you can create to communicate with other Google+ users. It’s like … Continue Reading

Updated: Amazon flags Nintendo 3DS for inventory issues

[Update: Amazon has responded to VentureBeat.]

Online retailer Amazon.com has flagged the Nintendo 3DS and placed the handheld gaming console under review until further notice, according to the device’s page on the site.

Handheld devices are a huge part of Nintendo’s portfolio. The Nintendo 3DS is supposed to succeed its previous handheld device, the Nintendo DS. That handheld gaming console was a smash hit with gamers and outsold its primary competitor, the PlayStation Portable, by … Continue Reading

Google’s Gundotra admits to mistakes with Google+ ‘real name’ fiasco

Google VP Vic Gundotra has admitted that the company’s new social network, Google+, has made mistakes when it comes to kicking many people using fake names off the service and says there is still much to do to perfect the system.

Gundotra’s comments came in a discusion with tech blogger Robert Scoble, who used to work with Gundotra at Microsoft. Gundotra elaborated to Scoble that there is more going on behind the scenes than simply … Continue Reading