Facebook app Bday Gift Finder launches with $2M in funding

Finding the perfect gift for a friend’s birthday can be tricky. Bday today launched the Bday Gift Finder, a Facebook app that scrapes your friends’ profiles to recommend the perfect presents. And the company has already secured the best gift of all for itself: $2 million in funding.

The Bday Gift Finder is a simple concept. After the app connects to your Facebook profile, it scans and analyzes your friend’s “likes” from top brand pages. … Continue Reading

Social Q&A service Beepl automatically finds experts for your questions

The Internet has long been a go-to resource for getting a question answered, but oftentimes the answers you get come from less than stellar “experts”. Beepl, a social Q&A service hopes to solve that problem. The site launched out of private beta today and is available to the general public.

Beepl allows users to easily sign-up through Facebook or Twitter and then have the option of connecting to LinkedIn. Once you’re connected, Beepl makes it … Continue Reading

Ebay-owned StubHub acquires Zvents for event listings

Ticketing giant StubHub, owned by eBay, has acquired local event-discovery and promotion service Zvents, according to eBay’s internal employee blog eBayInk. Exact terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Zvents, founded in 2005, lets users to find out what events are going on locally, and also helps advertisers promote those events to gain better attendance.

With more than 600,000 current event listings at any given time, Zvent will drastically increase StubHub’s own event listings database, … Continue Reading

Zaarly employee tries to poach Craigslist advertiser

Is it fair to comb through Craigslist ads looking for people to win over to your own online marketplace?

That’s what Zaarly, an online marketplace for people to post items they need, appears to be doing.

In an email thread obtained by VentureBeat, a Zaarly employee reached out to a Craigslist seller about a possible item for sale. Upon response from the seller, the inquirer responded with what appears to be a pretty canned email … Continue Reading

Group-gifting tool Giftiki lets Facebook friends chip in for a present

For many people, a simple “Happy Birthday” on a friend’s Facebook wall is enough. But a startup called Giftiki is launching a new group gift-giving tool Monday to make a birthdays a bigger deal using Facebook.

The idea behind the company is to allow friends to chip in together to buy a friend a combined gift. Giftiki connects friends on Facebook to have them give a small monetary gift. After more and more friends leave … Continue Reading

IM Creator design tool makes everyone a web developer

Though am by no means a web designer or developer, I often wish I could build a website on my own. That’s why I was intrigued by the new website development tool IM Creator, which lets you quickly design a webpage without having to know any code.

The tool is free to use, though it requires registration once you start designing a site and want to save it. Upon launch, you have a choice of … Continue Reading

Tango video chat heads to Windows PCs

Video-calling application Tango announced on its blog today that it is now available on desktop PCs. The company originally announced the feature back in July, along with a $42 million second round of funding.

The original Tango mobile app allowed smartphone and tablet users to make free video calls to other Tango users over 3G and 4G networks. The same features will be available on the Windows PC version with the usual tech requirements, such … Continue Reading

Workout-tracking app Endomondo hits 5 million downloads, gets $2.3M

What fun is sweating through a tough workout if there’s nobody around to be impressed by it? Endomondo is a mobile fitness-tracking application that not only tracks your workouts, but also shares that information with like-minded fitness buffs for motivation.

Today, the company announced on its blog that it has reached 5 million downloads and secured a second round of funding for $2.3 million from Seed Capital.

Targeting joggers, cyclists, walkers and just about any … Continue Reading

Foursquare celebrates one billion check-ins with updated mobile apps

You know what’s cooler than a million check-ins? A billion. Popular location-based check-in location service Foursquare today announced on its blog that it has reached one billion check-ins, as well as launched updated versions of its popular iPhone and Android apps.

Check-in growth on Foursquare has nearly tripled in a year, going from around 200 million in July 2010 to almost 750 million in June 2011. The company claims the one billionth check-in occurred … Continue Reading

Facebook makes a run at YouTube video dominance

What do you do when you’re already the number one website for sharing photos? Go after videos. In a report released today by online measurement firm comScore, Facebook ranked as the third largest website for viewing videos online in the month of July, with Google Sites and Vevo ranking as the first and second largest.

With more than 51 million unique video views in July, Facebook beat out popular video sites like Microsoft, Viacom, Yahoo … Continue Reading

LocalResponse checks in to social TV advertising with Philo acquisition

Now businesses can keep an eye on consumers checking in in TV land and the real world at the same time. LocalResponse, a company that helps businesses monitor and respond to check-ins, today announced its acquisition of Philo Media Corporation, which has created a way for TV and theatrical studios to deliver real-time messages to consumers. Financials were not disclosed.

Philo was once a TV check-in service for consumers to use for sharing what they … Continue Reading

Read It Later lands $2.5M to access bookmarked content anywhere

Read It Later, the company that lets you bookmark web content and access it on other devices, has secured a first round of funding for $2.5 million, according to a company blog post.

The idea is to let you save content from your browser and access it later via a desktop or other device, like an iPhone or tablet. Founder Nathan Weiner notes that he was constantly struggling to move articles and movies from work … Continue Reading

BuyWithMe acquires loyalty program service Edhance

BuyWithMe, a daily deals service, has just announced the acquisition of Edhance, a company that provides card-linked loyalty programs to merchants. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With Edhance, BuyWithMe merchants will now be able to create ongoing loyalty and reward programs for customers outside of just offering a single daily deal. The acquisition also eliminates any physical or mobile vouchers. Customers are asked to connect their credit cards to an account and … Continue Reading

Foursquare finds revenue stream in daily deals partnerships

Popular check-in application Foursquare, which recently reached 10 million global users, today announced on its blog that it will be offering local daily deals from 5 new partners, including LivingSocial, Gilt City, Zozi,  AT&T Interactive and BuyWithMe.

Similar to how current local business specials are displayed within the “explore” tab, the new deals will show in real time and enable users to quickly secure a deal with just a few clicks. To avoid any spamming … Continue Reading

Foursquare checks in with over half a million businesses

Popular check-in application Foursquare announced today on its blog that as of last week it has more than half a million businesses signed up and offering specials.

Businesses looking to take advantage of customers using Foursquare to check in to their locations can sign up for a merchant account. Once they do so, they can offer specials, update venue information and gain useful insights on check-in data, such as popular days and times. Best of … Continue Reading

Loopt lets local business customers request daily deals

Loopt, an early leader in location-based services, today announced the launch of Loopt u-Deals, a feature that allows consumers to request daily deals from local businesses.

The feature will enable any consumer to request that a business launch a daily deal. For example, I could request that a local restaurant offer a $50 off coupon for $25. Once the deal is accepted by Loopt, the deal requester is then asked to share it. Using channels … Continue Reading

Ping Identity grabs $21M for cloud identity security

Ping Identity, a cloud-security company, said Tuesday it secured a second round of funding of $21 million. The funding will be used for product development and increased sales efforts.

Ping offers several tools to secure a company’s identity in the cloud, including PingFederate, software that allows employees and customers to access a number of online applications with a single, secure username and password. It also offers PingConnect, an online version that can integrate with popular … Continue Reading

Foursquare celebrates over 10 million users

Location-based check-in leader Foursquare has just announced it now has over 10 million users around the world.

To accompany the milestone, the company has created an interactive map that shows a series of colorful dots that slowly spread around the globe. Each dot represents a user and the growth of the company, now a little more than two years old.

In addition to the map, Foursquare also added several statistics about where users are checking … Continue Reading

AisleBuyer grabs $7.5M to help you skip the checkout line

AisleBuyer, a smartphone application that allows retail shoppers to scan products with their phones and check out without waiting in line, has announced its second round of funding for $7.5 million.

The funding will be used for product development as well as for hiring engineers and salespeople, according to a company announcement posted Tuesday.

Consumers can download the AisleBuyer mobile application for iPhone or Android, create an account by adding their credit card information and … Continue Reading