VentureBeat

Zynga crosses 100 million users and expands beyond Facebook games

Zynga said today it has crossed more than 100 million unique monthly users for its social games on Facebook.

Thanks to the popularity of its casual Facebook games such as FarmVille, which has more than 65 million players, the San Francisco company has become the biggest developer on Facebook and the leading company in the emerging social games market.

That’s a pretty good achievement for a startup founded in 2007 and one that is surrounded by multi-billion-dollar… Continue Reading

LinkedIn’s platform gives Facebook Connect a professional spin

LinkedIn aims to be an even more central part of your professional identity, by expanding its platform today with the site developer.linkedin.com.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based professional networking site already offers a platform for third-party developers, allowing them to build widgets and apps that run in LinkedIn itself. What it’s announcing today is another piece of that platform, one that’s arguably more exciting — the site is allowing developers to access your LinkedIn data from their… Continue Reading

Android gobbles up 20 percent share of U.S. smartphone market, says AdMob

AdMob, the mobile ad network that Google plans to acquire for $750 million, today released their October 2009 Metrics Report examining market share for top devices and the operating systems that run on them.

One stat in particular caught our eye. In the US, Android had 20 percent share of smartphone traffic, up from only seven percent six months before. Now that there’s proof that these phones are selling, Android may solidify its spot as a… Continue Reading

Backflip proves indie iPhone developers can create multiple hits — and make money

Backflip Studios has managed to defy the odds on the iPhone by coming up with games that have become big hits over and over.

The Boulder, Colo.-based game studio has just six employees and has been around only seven months, but it has already made more than $1.75 million — by selling game applications in multiple forms, serving ads in them, as well as offering virtual goods. The success shows that with the right games and… Continue Reading

Intel and Sprout launch a consumer-powered Facebook promotion

Facebook reaches so many people now that big brands are trying to figure out how to reach its audience. Intel is using social media firm Sprout to launch a different kind of marketing campaign today.

In the Sprout created campaign, consumers sign up to be fans of Intel’s latest page on Facebook. The more people sign up to become fans, the more Intel drops the price of its featured laptops. It’s an example of letting fans… Continue Reading

Roku adds 10 new free content channels for its set-top video players

Roku offers a trio of set-top boxes that can download movies and TV shows from the web and show them on your TV. Now the company is adding 10 new free content channels to its service.

You can use a Roku box with a Netflix subscription or the Amazon Video on Demand service to watch movies or TV shows on your TV. You connect a Roku box to both your TV and the web. Then you… Continue Reading

16-yr old launches Vye music-sharing site. Another Napster?

With the help of close friends and family, 16-year-old Charles Allatt, has launched Vye Music, an online meta search app for music files around the Net.

The site pulls search results from other music sites — including Skreemr, MP3Codes, and 4Shared Music, sites which in turn index hundreds of thousands of sites, blogs and artist pages.

Vye collates all of this content for the user and applies a simple, AJAX-based interface to let you build playlists, stream… Continue Reading

5 O’Clock Roundup: Nook sold out, Sony launches online store, Bing gets slammed

We’ve been a little behind with roundup lately. Our apologies. Here’s the latest action:

Barnes & Noble Nook sold out — The bookseller’s entry into the eBook reader market is under way. The B&N Nook is out of stockk on the company’s web site and it is now taking orders for devices that will ship next year. Analysts say that the Nook wasn’t ready for shipment in huge quantities and B&N probably launched it anyway to head… Continue Reading

Week in review: Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie on apps, Al Gore at GreenBeat

Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days:

Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie: Apps don’t make your phone special — “It’s not the applications available on the various platforms that will be the differentiators, Ozzie said, even though that’s what many companies and writers seem to focus on.”

Microsoft’s Xbox Live chief on banning modders and browsing Facebook photos on TV — “It’s a cat… Continue Reading

Entrepreneur Corner Roundup: The state of the VC world and tech’s human problem

Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner:

5 ways VC firms can stop shooting themselves in the foot – Venture Capital firms drill the need to create basic credibility into the companies they invest in – but often fail to take their own advice. Laura Grimmer, CEO of Articulate Communications (which works with VC firms), lists five things they could do to build a better pipeline of prospective portfolio companies.

After VC cash? Show ‘em what you’ve learned –… Continue Reading

Now anyone can try Brizzly’s app for Facebook and Twitter

Brizzly, an application for managing messages in Twitter and Facebook, expanded its beta test today — now you don’t need an invite code, so anyone can use it.

The application was created by San Francisco-based Thing Labs, and includes features like expanding links and photos, the ability to “mute” people who you want to stop seeing updates from temporarily, and recently-added support for Twitter Lists.

In addition to opening the beta, Brizzly also added a new feature… Continue Reading

Tweetmeme launches buttons for re-tweetable advertising

Twitter said it’s planning a large-scale advertising network soon, but U.K.-based Tweetmeme beat them to the punch with a monetization effort of its own today.

The startup, which creates those green ‘Retweet’ buttons you see everywhere (including on this site), is rolling out the same feature for ads. They’re partnering with Federated Media to insert retweet buttons into their advertising two weeks from now, enabling people to share compelling ads with others.

Advertising in social streams has… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: Big thank you and media roundup

Thanks to everyone who made it out to GreenBeat 2009 yesterday and Wednesday!

We were thrilled with the turnout, and couldn’t be more grateful for all the support we received from attendees, speakers, sponsors and the press. It’s clear that the Smart Grid has gained the momentum it needs for serious work to be done, and we are excited to play a big role in this conversation going forward.

With Al Gore, and several of the biggest… Continue Reading

GreenBeat: Al Gore says Smart Grid part of ‘the single largest solution’ to climate change

Nobel Prize winner and former vice president Al Gore gave a wide-ranging, passionate talk at VentureBeat’s GreenBeat 2009 conference yesterday in San Mateo about combating global warming. We already liveblogged Gore’s talk, but for folks who don’t want to read the blow-by-blow description, here’s a summary.

Perhaps the most significant point: That energy efficiency is “the single largest solution to the climate crisis,” and the Smart Grid will “play a crucial role” in achieving that efficiency.

The… Continue Reading

New speakers, sponsors for DiscoveryBeat; today is last day for early-bird discount

We’ve got some great momentum for VentureBeat’s upcoming DiscoveryBeat event, which will attack the problem of how to get attention for an app in the midst of a lot of noise.

One of our newest speakers is Randy Breen, chief operating officer at Social Gaming Network, where he oversees game development, business development, strategy and executive management. He has worked in the game industry since 1986 at companies such as Electronic Arts, LucasArts and Emotiv Systems.

Today… Continue Reading

LaDiDa brings reverse karaoke to your iPhone

There are tons of karaoke applications for the iPhone, but a startup called Khu.sh is introducing a twist on the concept, “reverse karaoke,” to the App Store.

There have been other reverse karaoke products, most notably Microsoft Songsmith, a Windows application that lets you record your singing, then automatically generates musical accompaniment. Songsmith even prompted a series of YouTube videos highlighting the hilarious badness of many of the resulting songs.

Khu.sh’s iPhone app, LaDiDa, lets you do… Continue Reading

French game maker Gameloft ditches the Android platform

[Updated] French mobile phone games publisher Gameloft said it is giving up on the Google Android platform.

The company said it is cutting back investment in making games and other apps for Android-based cell phones, even though Android has won a lot of attention lately with new models from Motorola and Sony Ericsson, according to Reuters.

“We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others,” Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said… Continue Reading