VentureBeat

How to Achieve Elegance

I interviewed Matt May, author of In Pursuit of Elegance: Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing, about the topic of elegance. He says that the four qualities of elegance are: symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustainability. If you’re interested in creating elegant products and services,… Continue Reading

How to Build a Brand Community

Dave Balter, the founder of BzzAgent, provided me with ten tips for building a brand community. Check out his tips here if you’re trying to build an online community for your company. Please mark it “found useful” if you did.

More about social media at Socialmedia.alltop…. Continue Reading

Quantum Secure, physical security infrastructure co., raises $4M (officially)

Quantum Secure, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of enterprise physical security solutions, said it has raised $4 million for its first round of funding. This is more than the $3.54 million we originally reported in Oct., before the company was able to make its official… Continue Reading

Sequoia reportedly invests in SF blog for women, Sugar Publishing

Michael Moritz (pictured below), venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital, and backer of Google and Yahoo, is apparently funding a blog company called Sugar Publishing, which runs four popular blogs, including flagship PopSugar, that caters to young, hip women.

The San Francisco start-up, which has a… Continue Reading

News Corp scores $900M from Google, a coup

Updated

Google will pay the parent of social networking company MySpace.com at least $900 million in shared advertising revenue over the next three and a half years, and become the exclusive search engine for the site.

This is significant because News Corp paid $580 million for Intermix… Continue Reading

Shutterfly IPO filing perplexes

Shutterfly, the Redwood City online photo site, has filed for an initial public offering, something hinted at earlier this week — but its finances don’t look as good as we thought.

To pull off an IPO in this crowded area of online photography, you’d expect Shutterfly… Continue Reading

GoingOn v. PeopleAggregator: May the best man win!

Marc Canter

You may be confused by the launch plans of two very similar social networking services, PeopleAggregator and GoingOn, and it’s not your fault.

They are both platforms that let you create a personal profile and then export that profile to different areas on the Web…. Continue Reading

Silicon Valley’s DFJ raises largest clean-tech venture fund

Venture capital firm DFJ Element has raised a record-sized fund for investing in green technology companies, the latest sign that this area is red-hot.

The fund, an affiliate of well-known Silicon Valley firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, raised $284 million, almost double the target of $150 million… Continue Reading

Sequoia bets on Stardoll, a site for little girls

Stardoll, a site where young girls can create and dress up celebrity dolls of themselves or others, is not your classic Silicon Valley high-tech sort of investment.

Yet Sequoia has invested $6 million in the Stokholm company, Stardoll told us yesterday. It is the latest example… Continue Reading

Amid photo-sharing hype, Shutterfly makes IPO move?

Shutterfly, the online photo site based in Silicon Valley (Redwood City) is pursuing a sale or possible initial public offering, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources — in a deal targeted at $400 million to $500 million.

It is about time, as this venture-backed company… Continue Reading

VideoEgg opens service to most publishers

VideoEgg continues to make strides with its web video publishing service. The company is releasing an integration kit tomorrow that will make it easy for web site owners to add VideoEgg’s video publisher and player into their sites. This will make it easy for publishers… Continue Reading