Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Elastic cloud infrastructure startup Cloudscaling has raised $10 million in its second round of funding so it can keep growing at a quick clip and innovating its cloud technology.

San Francisco-based Cloudscaling was founded in 2006 and claims to be “the leader in elastic cloud infrastructure.” Its core product is the Open Cloud System, an OpenStack-powered cloud infrastructure application that can give companies the same benefits of cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon Web Services and Rackspace. But unlike those companies, Cloudscaling’s solution is deployable in a client’s data center under an IT team’s control. It can also run its solution on Amazon and Google’s public clouds if a customer wants to do so.

In April, Cloudscaling announced version 2.5 of Open Cloud System. Some of its newest customer wins include LivingSocial, EVault, Ubisoft, and DataFort.

The new funding was provided by prior investor Trinity Ventures and new investors Juniper Networks and Seagate. Previously, Cloudscaling raised $4 million back in Sept. 2011.

“This financing round caps a tremendous year of momentum for the company,” Cloudscaling CEO Michael Grant said in a statement. “That momentum affirms the voice of the market, clearly stating that customers want more than OpenStack. They want an on-premise, OpenStack-based private or public cloud turnkey system solution that delivers architectural and behavioral fidelity with major public clouds like Amazon Web Services. Our Open Cloud System product delivers on that need to enable hybrid cloud application deployments that span private and public cloud services.”

Clouds photo via Alejandro Erickson/Flickr

Divorces are traditionally terrible. But Wevorce, a Y-Combinator-backed startup that has just launched into general availability, wants to change that and make the process of divorce more amicable and less expensive.

Wevorce first caught our eye at March’s Y Combinator Demo Day. At the event, Wevorce founder Michelle Crosby [above] told the story of being dragged through her parents’ painful divorce when she was 9 years old. Her parents fought for 15 years and they still don’t talk to this day.

So Crosby grew up and decided to make a solution that could help people like her parents. Instead of a two-lawyer arrangement, Wevorce assigns a single attorney to a case and gives a divorcing couple software to make the process easier to understand. Wevorce claims the software helps its attorneys complete paperwork in 60 percent of the time it normally takes to go through the process.

“Divorce tests as the second most stressful event in an adult’s life,” Crosby told us via email. “Wevorce is humanizing the transition from one household into two for families. Not only does Wevorce address the legal implications, we also address the emotional and financial aspects that are inherent in every divorce.”

Besides making the divorce process more understandable and speedy, the company also claims to make it cheaper. Wevorce says its set fees range from $3,500 to $15,000. The company says the average case costs less than $10,000 while traditional divorces can cost upward of $27,000.

To date, Wevorce has only been available in a handful of U.S. cities including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Boise, San Jose, Calif., Oakland, Calif., Asheville, N.C. But now the service is available so any lawyer in the U.S. can tap the software and any divorcing couple in the U.S. can connect with lawyers through the service.

Check out the video below for more on Crosby’s inspiration to create Wevorce.

Screenshot via Wevorce/Vimeo

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With the debut of the new Xbox One gaming system, we could focus on many things: hardware, flashy games, and entertainment options. But one aspect really gets me fired up: Developers should now be able to use Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing platform to make games more powerful than ever.

Wired reports that the game developers and studios can tap Azure for all kinds of things. Microsoft isn’t going to force developers to use the cloud platform, but it will certainly push them to do so.

The Xbox One will not have to be always connected to the Internet to play games, but it does generally require an online connection. And if developers do decide to tap Azure’s cloud computing platform to boost a game’s power, a web connection will be necessary to play that game.

Why Azure?

Microsoft has been building Azure’s cloud computing capabilities for a long while. Azure has been mostly known as a platform-as-a-service that (primarily .NET) developers use to make the process of app development easier.

Microsoft opened up Azure for pure cloud infrastructure use in June. It now competes with top dogs like Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, and Google Compute Engine.

Steven Martin, the general manager of Azure’s operations team, told us this past October that Azure users are consuming more compute capacity than the entire world used in 1998. As of December, Azure’s cloud storage holds more than 4 trillion objects. It also handles an average of 270,000 requests processed per second, with a peak of 880,000 requests per second.

Azure applications in gaming

Now, let’s see what you could do with all that power.

The first and most obvious application of Azure on Xbox One is making Xbox Live more powerful and useful. All your downloaded games and achievements would be synced and available wherever you are. You would also have dedicated servers for every multiplayer game you participate in. Multiplayer matches would be able to host up to 128 gamers in a single session.

Xbox Live currently runs on 15,000 servers, but it will soon move to a stunning 300,000 servers later this year for the Xbox One launch. That’s a lot of power dedicated to making Xbox Live better.

Second (and this is a bit more crazy), developers can offload computational tasks to the cloud instead of relying on physical hardware to do the heavy lifting. Necessary game computations for physics, rendering, and the like could be immensely enhanced with a connection to powerful virtual servers in the cloud.

“It’s not like on day one, everyone will have figured out how to take advantage of that power,” Microsoft interactive entertainment CMO Marc Whitten told Wired. “It’s just one of those stakes we’re placing.”

Screenshot via Microsoft

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GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

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Updated at 11:06 a.m. with quotes from Change.org CEO Ben Rattray from VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference.

Popular social petition service Change.org has raised $15 million in new funding — cash that will help it further build up the “world’s largest petition platform.”

Change.org provides an accessible way to enact social change and it makes it simple to create and sign petitions. The service has grown quite a bit in the last year, jumping from 6 million users in early 2012 to more than 35 million users today. More than half of Change.org’s users are outside the U.S.

“Petitions aren’t new,” Change.org CEO Ben Rattray said today at VentureBeat’s HealthBeat conference in San Francisco. “What’s different now is that you take petitions, you make them easier than ever before and more social than ever before.”

So far, the site’s users have won “thousands of victories.” Major wins spurred by Change.org petitions include Bank of America dropping its $5 debit card fees, Seventeen magazine committing not to Photoshop models, and having felony charges against high school student Kiera Wilmot dropped.

The new funding was led by Omidyar Network, the philanthropic investment firm that eBay founder Pierre Omidyar created with his wife, Pam. Rattray told VentureBeat that his biggest priority was finding a funding partner who deeply believed in the company’s mission.

“We’re trying to show that it’s possible to build a technology company focused on social impact, and we now have the resources to hire the tech talent needed to demonstrate that at scale,” Rattray said. “We’ve been approached a number of times by traditional, for-profit venture capital firms interested in investing in the company, but we are only open to investment from social investors who are prepared to support that mission. … So we specifically sought out the Omidyar Network because of its unique alignment with our empowerment mission and the ability to support our scale.”

Chris Bishko, an investment partner at Omidyar Network, will join Change.org’s board.

Rattray says it will continue to help petition creators get their word out, though it does not plan on bringing in folks with industry-specific knowledge to help with those petitions. Instead, it says the best way to get your story heard is to, well, tell your story.

“Actually focusing on the direct impact on an individual’s life is by far the most impactful,” said Rattray. “You can’t win with numbers in public advocacy. … You win with stories.”

Additional reporting included by Meghan Kelly.

Top photo via Michael O’Donnell/VentureBeat, Middle photo via Change.org

Apartment renting service Airbnb has faced several challenges in its history, but it keeps chugging along with strong growth. But a judge has ruled that Airbnb rentals violate New York City’s hotel laws, and one man is facing a $2,400 fine for renting out his apartment on the service, CNET reports.

Airbnb host Nigel Warren rented out his East Village apartment for three nights in September for $300. Shortly after the rental, he was hit with violation notices because New York City has a law established in 2010 against renting your property for less than 29 days. Warren could have been fined as much as $30,000 for the violations.

Warren fought the charges in court, but ultimately he lost. Administrative Law Judge Clive Morrick lowered the fees owed to $2,400 but said Warren still was clearly violating the 2010 law.

Airbnb isn’t happy with the ruling, and it even showed up at Warren’s hearing on May 9 to argue for his side. Airbnb has issued this statement about the final decision to VentureBeat:

This decision runs contrary to the stated intention and the plain text of New York law, so obviously we are disappointed and we are considering all appeal options as we move forward. Put simply, this decision is wrong on the law, and bad for New York. The laws in New York and around the world are confusing and often contradictory, but we intervened in this case because this was the one area of the law that seemed most clear. This decision demonstrates how difficult is for hosts and even companies like ours to adequately understand laws that were not meant to apply to regular people hosting to make ends meet.

And more importantly, this decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own homes. There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous enforcement officials. It is time to fix this law and protect hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes. 87 percent of Airbnb hosts in New York list just a home they live in — they are average New Yorkers trying to make ends meet, not illegal hotels that should be subject to the 2010 law.

Warren and his landlord have 23 more days to appeal the decision, but Warren isn’t sure if he wants to take the case any further.

“While I’m disappointed with the ruling, I’m relieved the penalty is far less than what the original fines seemed to be,” Warren told CNET. “I’d say it’s now a pain in the ass, which is much better than life-altering. I’m also glad that four of the five violations were dismissed. I plan to talk to Airbnb before making any decision on whether to appeal. I like what Airbnb does, and I don’t want this ruling to stand in the way of what I think is, overall, a great startup.”

So where does that leave Airbnb’s business in New York City?

The ruling doesn’t necessarily mean city officials will heavily crack down on the many listings in NYC. But this case does show that if you place your property on Airbnb, you could face serious legal action. New Yorkers, rent at your own risk.

New York photo via Erik Daniel Drost/Flickr

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Leading corporate performance management (CPM) company Adaptive Planning has raised a massive $45 million in its fourth and final round of funding with a goal to further dominate the CPM space, the business said Tuesday.

Adaptive Planning offers a suite of budgeting, planning, forecasting, and data discovery software in the cloud. Its software works for small businesses all the way up to large enterprises, which now represent 25 percent of its business. The company had 1,500 customers at the end of 2012 and it estimates it will have 2,000 customers at the end of this year. Big name customers come from all kinds of industries including Box, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Jive Software, NBC News, Nissan, Red Hat, Toyota, and Zipcar.

“We address all of the CPM market — and it’s a huge market,” Adaptive Planning CEO John Herr told VentureBeat. “Most of our new customers move to us from Excel. We help customers upgrade from ‘Excel hell’ to Adaptive.”

Adaptive Planning competes with solutions from Oracle, IBM, and SAP, but its software-as-a-service has made it a leader in its space. And now the company will have more cash to hire more employees, further refine its software, and create more partnerships with resellers.

That last point is particularly important for the company, as it already has a strong reseller network of more than 400 “channel partners.” These partners help sell the product to more businesses and give it better access to international customers. One such partner is NetSuite, which offers Adaptive-based Financial Planning service that is integrated with NetSuite’s software.

The huge new funding round was led by new investor Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), with participation by existing investors ONSET Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, RBC Venture Partners, Cardinal Venture Capital, and Monitor Ventures. BVP partner Byron Deeter will join the company’s board.

“The business is on fire and this investment is a strong endorsement of what we’re about,” Herr said. “Many BVP companies are also customers of Adaptive.”

Including the new round, Adaptive Planning has raised about $100 million to date, including a $22 million round a little over a year ago.

Herr said this will be the last round of venture capital funds raised for the company and that it will explore the option of going public “in the next couple years.” He also indicated other “exit opportunities” were on the table. “We’re open to all positive outcomes,” Herr said.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Adaptive Planning was founded in 2003 and has 200 employees. Herr said the company aims to double its number of employees in the next 12 to 18 months.

Businessman with tablet via ollyy/Shutterstock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While messaging app MessageMe just raised $10 million in funding, that announcement was missing key info about the app’s growth. Now the company has come forth with some impressive stats, including that the service now has 5 million registered users just 75 days after launch.

Competing with popular apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, MessageMe offers iOS and Android applications that let you share rich messages and content with family and friends. On top of standard text, you can also send images, YouTube videos, iTunes tracks, voice recordings, and more. Ten days after launch, MessageMe users were uploading two images per second. Today, they are uploading eight images per second. More than 1,500 notifications are sent to MessageMe users each second.

“At MessageMe, our ambition lies in the goal to change the way people communicate around the world, and the mediums through which they connect,” the company said in a blog post today. “From a text message, to a song clip, to those personal moments with your best friends, we’ve built a product which is now used by more than five million people to communicate one day to the next.”

MessageMe only launched its apps in early March but already has attracted $11.9 million in funding. Investors include big names like Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital, True Ventures, and SVAngel.

Next up, the company says it has “groundbreaking additions in the pipeline.” We’ll see if it can deliver on that promise.

Photo via MessageMe

Web security firm AVG has already demonstrated its dedication to user privacy by adding Do Not Track capabilities to its software. Now it appears to be doubling down on that with the purchase of small web privacy firm PrivacyChoice.

PrivacyChoice was founded in 2009 offers one flagship product — a powerful browser extension called Privacyfix that analyzes your activity on sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google and shows you how exposed your information is. For example, PrivacyFix analyzed my Facebook info and found that my exposure to Graph Search is quite high and that Facebook tracks my activity on 89 percent of sites I regularly visit. (Yes, this freaks me a out a little.)

“Since founding, our mission has been to deliver more effective and more informed choices about how your data is collected, used, and shared,” PrivacyChoice founder Jim Brock said in a statement. “We saw strong synergies between our approach and the efforts AVG continues to make in empowering people when it comes to their online privacy.”

Privacyfix is currently available for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, but it will soon be available for Internet Explorer as well. AVG also promises that Privacyfix will come to iOS and Android phones and tablets some time “this year.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Brock will become Vice President of Privacy Products for AVG along with the acquisition.

Check out an example of the Privacyfix dashboard below:

Privacy sign via rpongsaj/Flickr

NEW YORK CITY — Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just announced a stunning redesign of photo-sharing site Flickr, a property Yahoo let languish for years. But the announcement comes the same day as the $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, another beloved property with a missing vowel and an “r” at the end of its name.

Naturally, some Tumblr fans want to know how Yahoo plans to avoid the fate of Flickr, Geocities, and other failed acquisitions.

So I asked Mayer what changes she has made inside Yahoo to ensure that what happened to Flickr won’t happen to Tumblr.

Mayer said first and foremost that the hiring of new top-level management would help make sure Tumblr doesn’t become Flickr: Part Two.

“It all comes down to people,” Mayer said. “We have an all-new executive management team.”

She also said she had learned from past major acquisitions, including Google’s buy of YouTube and eBay’s purchase of PayPal. Those deals worked because the companies remained independent and kept their own culture, Mayer explained.

“When we look at superscale acquisitions like eBay, PayPal, Google, YouTube, a meme arises,” Mayer said. “Those companies have so much momentum and they often do better when operated independently. Learning from that history is why we made the commitment to operate Tumblr independently.”

Earlier in the event, Mayer said that Yahoo would be moving all 500 of its New York employees to a new office in Times Square. Notably, all Tumblr employees will stay isolated in their own offices, which shows Mayer is serious about them maintaining some independence. That independence will (hopefully) keep the company young and inspired.

“The idea is for Tumblr brand to continue with its vision — a vision that appeals to millennials,” Mayer said.

You can also look to the announcement today to revitalize Flickr as a sign that Mayer won’t let Tumblr meet a similar fate to Flickr.

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

Photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

NEW YORK CITY — On the same day as it announced its $1.1 billion purchase of blogging powerhouse Tumblr, Yahoo debuted a flashy new design of photo-sharing site Flickr and its Android app.

Yahoo acquired Flickr back in 2005, but the photo-sharing service suffered under persistent mismanagement and Yahoo’s inability to make Flickr better. While Flickr suffered, Facebook became the dominant photo-sharing application, and later, Instagram became the top dog for photo sharing with friends and family.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer acknowledged that the Flickr acquisition “didn’t go so well.” But now Flickr is getting better with a bold new redesign, and the new design is live now.

“We’ve made Flickr spectactular,” Mayer said. “We’ve got full high-resolution photos. You don’t lose any fidelity. No one else does that.”

First, photos will be bigger and the design emphasizes high-resolution images. Every user will get 1TB of space for their photos at no cost. Yahoo says that’s 537,731 photos of average size that you can store for free.

“I think Flickr is awesome again with these new announcements,” Mayer said. “Photos make the world go around. Flickr was awesome once. It languished. But now it’s awesome again.”

Just for reference, this is what a standard photo page on Flickr used to look like:

Now that same page looks like this:

The announcement comes at the same time as the Tumblr acquisition. After numerous reports the past few days, Yahoo finally confirmed that it had purchased Tumblr for about $1.1 billion early this morning. Mayer promised “not to screw it up.” Tumblr CEO and founder David Karp will remain CEO of the company he started, and Tumblr will stay an independent company from Yahoo.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was also on hand at the event to congratulate Yahoo and Tumblr on the deal.

“We’re proud that Tumblr is a homegrown company,” Bloomberg said. “We couldn’t be more excited for them. … Not only are David and Tumblr made in New York, they’ve helped us make a better New York.”

With the event in New York, Yahoo also appropriately announced that it will soon open a new office in New York City. Yahoo has taken out a lease for office space at 229 West 43rd Street, which is the old New York Times building. All of the 500 New York Yahoo employees will be moved there. Tumblr’s employees will remain separate in their own office.

Photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

AT&T home automation service Digital Life has launched in seven new cities — Baltimore, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C. — bringing the service to a total of 22 markets in the U.S.

We first got a look at Digital Life back in May 2012, but it finally launched in 15 major markets a month ago. The service competes with Verizon’s Home Monitoring and Control system and Comcast’s Xfinity Home.

Digital Life gives users management over many functions in their home, including a 24-hour security system, climate control, and lights. There’s also advanced controls to let you lock doors and windows remotely and check carbon monoxide levels and water pipes. AT&T offers up mobile applications for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones that let you control these functions whether you are at home or away.

The basic version of the service costs $30 per month with an initial $150 equipment fee that includes a battery backup, wireless keypad entry, key chain remotes, sensors, and an indoor siren. The premium “smart security” version costs $40 per month with a $250 equipment fee that includes a motion sensor, carbon monoxide sensor, glass break sensor, smoke sensor, and takeover kit. Premium users can also sign up for additional packages for advanced camera, energy, water, and door management.

Photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

While rumors have been swirling for days, Yahoo finally confirmed this morning that it has acquired popular blogging service Tumblr for about $1.1 billion. Notably, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer promises Yahoo won’t ruin the Tumblr experience.

“We promise not to screw it up,” Mayer said in a blog post today. “Tumblr is incredibly special and has a great thing going. We will operate Tumblr independently. David Karp will remain CEO. The product roadmap, their team, their wit and irreverence will all remain the same, as will their mission to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve. Yahoo will help Tumblr get even better, faster.”

Tumblr is a huge platform for blogging and sharing content. The service hosts 105 million blogs, and 900 new posts go up per second. It has 300 million monthly unique visitors and 120,000 signups each day.

The big weakness for Tumblr is actually making money. It only pulled in $13 million in revenue in 2012. But that’s where Yahoo can come in and help the company find more ways to make cash through advertising.

“The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance user experience,” Mayer wrote.

Tumblr CEO Karp has previously been vocally resistent to advertising, but Yahoo plans to find ways for advertising to find its way into the platform. All signs point to Yahoo adding opt-in advertising so bloggers can enable ads and potentially get a slice of revenue for ads on said blogs.

Yahoo will pay approximately $1.1 billion for Tumblr — all in cash. Prior to today, New York City-based Tumblr had raised $125 million in funding from investors including Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, The Chernin Group, Spark Capital, and CrunchFund.

Karp describes the deal as “awesome” and insists that Tumblr won’t change much. “We’re not turning purple,” Karp wrote in a blog post. “Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

Marissa Mayer photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Better watch out, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Hot messaging app MessageMe has just raised $10 million in its first round of funding, the company confirmed today.

MessageMe offers iOS and Android apps that send rich messages to friends, family, and groups. The app also lets you share YouTube videos, iTunes tracks, voice recordings, emoticons, and other things you might not share over traditional text messaging. MessageMe has risen quickly in status; it only just raised seed funding about a month ago. At that time, the service said it has 1 million users.

It will take more momentum on MessageMe’s part to displace WhatsApp’s traction. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum recently told the world his app is “bigger than Twitter” and is now processing 8 billion inbound messages a day and over 12 billion outbound messages a day.

MessageMe’s new funding first leaked out through an SEC filing. The round was led by Greylock Partners’ John Lilly, with participation by Google Ventures, True Ventures, First Round Capital, SVAngel, Resolut.vc, and Social+Capital Partnership. Every firm that participated in MessageMe’s $1.9 million seed round participated in this round except for Andreessen Horowitz.

Top image via MessageMe

Marketing automation business Marketo made its debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange today, and early trading looks strong, with shares up 55 percent over initial pricing.

Last night, the company priced 6.1 million shares at $13 — the high end of its $11-to-$13 range — and ended up raising $79 million. As of this writing, the stock is trading at over $20 a share.

Marketo and competing marketing automation firms like Eloqua, Pardot, and Silverpop offer software and services focused on improving and managing sales lead generation. The company purchased social campaign service Crowd Factory a year ago to help with its mission and to reach more consumers.

Back in early April, Marketo filed for a $75 million IPO. Prior to the IPO, San Mateo, Calif.-based Marketo raised $108 million in VC funding from big players including Battery Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, InterWest Partners, Mayfield Fund, and Storm Ventures.

Big data business Tableau Software also had its IPO today and shares popped 60 percent in early trading. Today is clearly a good day for enterprise tech IPOs.

Marketing concept via Shutterstock

Enterprise tech IPOs have seen big movement over the past few years. Now we can add big data and data visualization company Tableau Software to the list of successful enterprise IPOs, as its share price has popped as much as 60 percent in early trading today.

Last night, Tableau priced its IPO at $31 per share, raising $254 million with an offering of 8.2 million shares. Now that price has shot up to about $49 on the New York Stock Exchange, as of this writing.

Tableau offers products to help technical and nontechnical users create interactive charts and simulations based on raw data. Tableau generated $127.7 million in annual sales in 2012, more than double its 2011 revenue and more than quadruple its 2010 revenue. Back in November, we picked Tableau as one of 10 startups leading the way in big data.

“Our mission, to help people everywhere see and understand data, isn’t all that different from Google’s,” Tableau CEO and cofounder Christian Chabot told us in a recent interview.

Tableau originally filed for its IPO in early April. At that time, it was just looking to raise $150 million in its initial public offering.

Prior to the IPO, Seattle-based Tableau raised $15 million in funding over two rounds from New Enterprise Associates. NEA’s partners and investors have got to be pretty happy with this deal, as the fund was seeing a 20x return on its investment in Tableau, according to Fortune’s Dan Primack — and that was before today’s pop.

Screenshot via Tableau/YouTube

If you can’t be cool, why not buy someone who is? That’s what Yahoo is looking to do with an investment in — or perhaps outright acquisition of — blogging service Tumblr, whose valuation could be as high as $1 billion.

All Things D first reported the rumors of a Yahoo investment in Tumblr, and Adweek followed up citing sources of its own. Adweek’s report seems more certain that Yahoo is interested in an outright acquisition, while ATD’s report is more circumspect.

Tumblr has raised $125 million in funding to date at a reported valuation of $800 million. It is reportedly in talks to raise another round of funding at a reported $1 billion valuation, according to ATD.

While Tumblr is popular, it only made $13 million in revenue last year, when it first started selling ads, and hopes to grow that to $100 million in revenue this year.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has already presided over several acquisitions as head of the company and just a week ago she snapped up two more startups — GoPollGo and Milewise. Most of the deals thus far have been much smaller deals, more focused on hiring strong talent rather than getting shiny new products. In fact, Yahoo has shut down most of the services it has purchased.

A deal to buy New York City-based blogging powerhouse Tumblr would act in an opposite fashion, and Yahoo would almost certainly leave Tumblr’s products fully intact. But Tumblr has hardly monetized its large audience and just a few weeks ago it introduced a mobile ad platform to let brands to advertise inside Tumblr’s mobile apps. If Yahoo were to take its advertising know-how and apply that to Tumblr’s platform, it could lead to big bucks.

“If you could pick a company that fits in with what Marissa Mayer has demonstrated in her career — aesthetics software technology and fast-growing — you could not land on a better choice,” a source told AllThingsD.

Tumblr’s investors include Union Square Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, The Chernin Group, Spark Capital, and CrunchFund.

Yahoo did not immediately respond with comment but we will update this post if the company gets back to us.

Marissa Mayer photo via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

You’d think Twitter cofounder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey would be a whiz at social media. But his posts to Twitter’s young video-sharing service Vine are a mix of weirdly creepy and just-plain-boring clips.

Vine launched in January and carries an official description in the iOS app store as “the best way to see and share life in motion.” The app appears to have had a profound effect on Dorsey.

Back in late April, Dorsey admitted that he has a hard time simply taking pictures anymore and thinks Vine’s 6-second videos have changed how he sees art. He said: “I think it’s an entirely new art form, and I think it’s amazing — every picture I look at right now, I want it to move; I’m waiting for it to move. Where’s the sound?”

But Dorsey doesn’t appear to know what’s worth capturing in motion, and sometimes he’s being downright creepy.

I’ll be the first admit that I’m not that great at Vine. We all can’t be majestic Vine artists. But I don’t post Vines often, and I certainly don’t spam my Twitter followers with Vine videos because I’m bored.

For example, just today Dorsey has posted three relatively dull Vines from the same plane window:

A cursory look through Dorsey’s other Vine videos isn’t much better. Often he takes Vines where a picture would have been sufficient. Instead of a snapshot of a moment, we’re subjected to 6 seconds of some ho-hum event.

Here’s Dorsey standing in a line:

Here’s Dorsey showing off the “energy” of the Square NY office:

Here’s Dorsey looking at a street in Manhattan:

Here’s Dorsey looking at some “street art”:

Here’s Dorsey in a cab:

And then there are these creepy Vines, where Dorsey looks into the camera and captures other people behind him:

Occasionally, Dorsey does use Vine in a way that goes with the spirit of the service.

It’d be nice to see Dorsey post more Vines like these. We’re wishing you luck, Jack.

Top screenshot via Jack Dorsey/Vine

There’s no shortage of money being thrown at digital currency Bitcoin. Last week, Bitcoin wallet startup Coinbase scored $5 million in funding. And this week, both Boost.VC and Liberty City Ventures allocated more funding for Bitcoin-focused startups.

Now relatively young Bitcoin startup BitPay has announced it has raised $2 million more in funding to lead the market in Bitcoin payment processing. This follows a $510,000 seed round it raised in January.

BitPay specializes in e-commerce, B2B, and enterprise solutions for Bitcoin, and it claims processing fees as low as 1 percent with no setup fees. It signed up more than 1,900 new merchants in April, and it claims to sign up about 100 new merchants per day at this point.

The new funding was led by Founders Fund, the fund behind the so-called “PayPal Mafia.”

“We were not looking to raise any capital until later this year, but we could not ignore the opportunity to have Founders Fund involved with BitPay,” BitPay CEO and cofounder Tony Gallippi said in a statement. “There’s no single investment firm we would rather have on our team right now than Founders Fund.”

Also on the round is Max Keiser’s fund Heisenberg Capital, a London-based fund targeting Bitcoin-focused companies.

Bitcoin artwork via Deviantart

Sometimes regulation puts the brakes on innovation, and car-focused startups have learned this more than most. Now car-sharing startup RelayRides has suspended its service in New York City after the New York state’s Department of Financial Services served it with a cease-and-desist letter.

RelayRides is a peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace in which people offer their cars for daily or weekly rentals, and it recently acquired competitor Wheelz. But the Department of Financial Services says RelayRides has been operating in violation of New York insurance laws and is “putting the public at risk” with inadequate insurance coverage.

So RelayRides has shut down in New York until further notice. The company writes in a blog post:

We are actively working with the Department to address these concerns. While we’re cooperating with the Department on these changes, we will be suspending activities that it considers non-compliant.

Effective Thursday, May 16, and until further notice, renters will no longer be able to make reservations for New York vehicles. Likewise, owner vehicles listed in New York will no longer be available. Trips already in progress in NY will not be affected by this change.

New York City has become a battleground for taxi, car-sharing, and ride-sharing applications. Just a few weeks ago, the CEOs of ride-sharing service SideCar and taxi-hailing app Hailo slugged it out onstage about New York’s rigid regulations.

Broken down car warning sign via SteveWoods/Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

While Google added the option to send money through Gmail yesterday, the search giant clearly wasn’t finished with announcements. It has also debuted new “quick action” buttons in Gmail that you can use to RSVP to events, see flight info, and more — all without leaving the inbox.

Quick actions will appear next to certain kinds of messages in your inbox, and you don’t even have to open the email to provide a response. If someone sends you a calendar invite, a button will show up on top of the email line that lets you RSVP or decline the invitation. Another example: You can rate a restaurant you went to last night straight from an email notice sent to you.

One of the most exciting potential quick actions is checking into a flight from the inbox. Google hasn’t committed to check-ins exactly, but it says that you’ll be able to see flight info more easily in Gmail, including whether your flight is on time and when your connection is. (See an example of flight info and a potential check-in below.)

These quick actions will roll out over the next few weeks to all Gmail users. Developers that are interested in adding Gmail quick action functionality can check out the Gmail developers website dedicated to schemas.

Image via Google

As if today’s other announcements weren’t enough, Google is also bringing Google Wallet support to Gmail, making it incredibly easy to send friends and family payments by just sending an email.

“Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and family directly within Gmail — even if they don’t have a Gmail address,” Google writes in a blog post today. “It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card.”

To send money using Gmail, you will be able to just hover over the attachment paperclip in the compose view and then click the “$” icon to add money to your email.

The new feature will compete directly with other online payment solutions like PayPal and Dwolla. It will be rolled out to all Gmail users in the U.S. over the age of 18 “over the coming months.”

Check out the video below for more.

Woman with money via Shutterstock

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google cloud infrastructure service Compute Engine is now open to all developers who want to use it, the search giant announced today.

Compute Engine was first announced about a year ago and aims to compete with Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, Microsoft Azure, Joyent, and other infrastructure-as-a-service providers. Back in April, Google opened up Compute Engine to many more developers and lowered prices by 4 percent.

On top of opening it up for all potential users, Compute Engine has also been updated with the following new features:

• Subhour billing charges for instances in one-minute increments with a 10-minute minimum, so you don’t pay for compute minutes that you don’t use.

• Shared-core instances provide smaller instance shapes for low-intensity workloads.

• Advanced Routing features help you create gateways and VPN servers and enable you to build applications that span your local network and Google’s cloud.

• Large persistent disks support up to 10TBs per volume, which translates to 10 times the industry standard

More Google cloud updates

App Engine, Google’s platform-as-a-service for developers, has also been updated with PHP runtime. PHP is one of the most popular web programming languages, so it’s great to include that in App Engine for all the PHP developers out there.

Google also used today to announce a new product called Google Cloud Datastore. It is a standalone NoSQL-based service for storing non-relational data. Google says the app includes automatic scalability, high availability, ACID transactions, SQL-like queries, indexes and more.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

We knew Google would unveil new updates on Google Maps today at I/O, but we didn’t expect it to be this substantial. Google claims it has completely rebuilt Maps with a new interface, search abilities, and faster performance.

You can request access to a preview of the new Google Maps here.

One big key to the revamp is that Google Maps is based on vector imagery and delivered via WebGL. This means maps will download and show up more quickly. The app will also be smarter about adding street names and labels in real time.

As for new features, the revamped Maps will include the following:

Every click brings up a new customized map: Maps will now highlight only the roads and landmarks that matter to you.

Search results labeled on the map: Info cards pop up on places in the map to provide better info like business hours, ratings, and reviews.

3D photographic imagery for some locations: Google showed off St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome as an example, and it also included user-uploaded photos in the mix so you can get a feel for what the inside of the building looks like.

Earth view: You’ll be able to see the Earth from all the way out in space. Cloud cover is a real-time representation of what’s actually in the sky. Pretty cool.

Google also has updated its mobile apps for iOS and Android with new features including Google Offers and Zagat reviews that pop up in the map. You’ll also get traffic alerts that include live accidents that have just happened and it can reroute destinations automatically.

Google said it will finally release Google Maps for iPad “this summer.”

Hangouts, the free multiperson video chat and messaging service inside Google+, has been broken out into its own standalone applications for iOS, Android, and Chrome.

“Technology can just go away and people can focus on what makes them happiest, just hanging out.” Google SVP Vic Gundotra said today at Google I/O.

The new Hangouts service unifies all communication across Google’s platforms. It’s replacing all prior apps like Google Talk, Google+ Messenger, and Hangout video chats with Hangouts. This new app handles texts, shares photos, video chats, and more.

No matter which app you use to access Hangouts, you’ll have access to a list of conversations that it backs up in the cloud. You’ll be able to message people even if they aren’t online.

Importantly, Hangouts will challenge WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other popular messaging services that are supplanting traditional text messaging.

The Hangout apps for iOS, Android, and Chrome will be available today.

Just ahead of Google I/O, “magic” movie editing application Magisto has announced it is one of the first apps to launch on Google Chrome’s packaged app platform, which is full of software that act more like native apps than web apps.

Magisto offers automated video editing. You just upload clips and photos and pick a song, and Magisto intelligently mashes it together into one seamless video. Previously, it offered this experience on iPhone and Android. Now it adds this Chrome app. The application has some offline capabilities, including processing large videos regardless if you’re offline or online.

Notably, Magisto is only one of a handful of apps on Google’s Chrome Packaged App Platform at launch. The Chrome app is now available on the Chrome Developer Channel, which is version 28 of the browser. Magisto will make the native Chrome app available generally outside of the Developer Channel “later in the year.”

“We think that Google has offered a clever solution in packaged apps in that they offer a hybrid of traditional web apps and desktop software,” Magisto CEO Oren Boiman told VentureBeat via email. “The Magisto Chrome packaged app is a cross-platform product that is one-click to install, like a Chrome web app, yet is 10 times faster than the regular Magisto web app.”

Additionally, Magisto also announced that it has added Google+ Sign-In to make it easier for people to register and use Magisto. It also will make it possible for those users to download Magisto on their Android devices with a single click.

New York City- and Tel Aviv-based Magisto received $5.5 million in second-round funding in Sept. 2011 following an undisclosed first round. Hong Kong investor Li Ka-shing’s Horizon Ventures led the second round, with participation from prior investor Magma Venture Partners. Magisto has received more than eight million downloads on Android and iOS to date.

Photo via Magisto

Popular expense report startup Expensify has introduced invoicing and billing clients from inside its cloud-based dashboard, the company said today.

Expensify was founded in May 2008 with the promise of offering “expense reports that don’t suck.” It’s main mission is to make the expense report and reimbursement process easier for companies with relatively simple web, iOS, and Android apps. The company has attracted 1.4 million users from more than 200,000 companies to date.

Expensify CEO David Barrett told VentureBeat that this is a “major milestone” for the company because it is the first time it has launched a feature not directly related to expense reporting.

The new feature will compete directly with Freshbooks and Bill.com, two companies known for cloud-based billing. What makes the new feature so handy is that Expensify users can now take expense reports you have created or been submitted to you and can re-bill them as an invoice to clients.

If clients already use Expensify, payment options for invoices and bills are the same as the ones offered for expense reports, including ACH Direct Deposit, PayPal, and even Bitcoin.

“Expensify’s addition of invoicing and bill processing might seem odd to an outsider,” Barrett said via email. “But inside the industry, we’re all jockeying for advantage in a bigger long-term game: becoming the next Intuit.”

San Francisco-based Expensify has raised $6.7 million in funding from investors including Hillsven Capital, Baseline Ventures, SV Angel, and Travis Kalanick.

Image via Expensify

Mobile payments business Square has debuted a new piece of hardware called the Square Stand that makes using an iPad as a cash register a more elegant solution.

The well-designed Square Stand costs $300 and features a card swiper at the bottom of the device. It can also connect to a receipt printer, kitchen printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanner. Square Stand only works with the second- and third-generation iPads at present, but the company will offer a Lightning-connector version later this year.

Square has focused its efforts on the iPad because customers using the device now represent almost 50 percent of all Square transactions. The Stand complements its already popular Register software for iOS that gives businesses purchase tracking abilities.

“Local business owners take as a given that they need an ugly, slow, expensive, and complicated point of sale system cluttering their counter,” Square CEO Jack Dorsey said in a statement. “Square Stand is elegant, fast, affordable, and easy to use. Whether you’re selling cupcakes, cardigans, or cappuccinos, running your business with Square has never been easier.”

Check out the video below for more.

Microsoft corporate VP Tami Reller said today that the next major update to Windows will be called Windows 8.1 and that it will be available for free before the end of the year.

“We feel very good about the direction we’re heading in with Windows 8,” Reller said today at the JP Morgan Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference in Boston. “Windows 8.1 is an update. Since launch, we’ve continued to deliver many product updates. This is more substantial than a daily or a weekly update.”

The update was originally code-named Windows Blue, but it looks like Microsoft has finally seen fit to call it Windows 8.1. The update will be available to download via the Windows Store. Not only will the update come to Windows 8 devices, but it will hit Windows RT devices as well.

A preview version of Windows 8.1 will be available to the public on June 26 at the start of Microsoft’s Build developer conference in San Francisco.

As for broader availability, Reller said 8.1 will be available “later this year” and that the company is sensitive to holidays. Microsoft wants Windows 8.1 loaded on devices available for purchase during the holidays.

Reller did not mention any new features that 8.1 will include, but earlier reports have said Microsoft will bring back a version of the Start button on the desktop and an option to boot directly to the desktop.

Additionally, Reller mentioned during her talk that the Windows Store now has 70,000 apps. That’s a pretty impressive number given that Windows 8 only launched last October.

Screenshot via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry has always been primarily known as a smartphone for the workplace, but it has lost that status in recent years as iPhone and Android have steadily gained ground in enterprises. But that doesn’t mean BlackBerry won’t keep vying for attention in the workplace.

And so today it has launched Enterprise Service 10.1, which updates its flagship enterprise software that smartly secures BlackBerry, iOS, and Android devices.

“We have been doing it longer and better than anyone else in the industry,” BlackBerry COO Kristian Tear (pictured) said on stage today at the BlackBerry Live conference. “BlackBerry has security baked in from the ground up. We start thinking about it all the way back to our supply chain.”

Enterprise Service 10.1 will add better security, more IT policy options, a simplified deployment process, a new dashboard with more info on all devices in the fleet, and no cost BlackBerry support. The update will be free for all customers who already use the BlackBerry Enterprise Service.

Tear also emphasized the inclusion of BlackBerry Balance software — which creates separate profiles for business and personal — inside the BlackBerry 10 OS.

“How many people carry two devices?” Tear asked the audience. When many people raised their hands, he responded, “That is simply not needed with BlackBerry 10.”

BlackBerry also used its time on stage today to introduce the budget Q5 smartphone, which includes a keyboard and is targeting emerging markets.

Screenshot via Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Sept. 9 - 10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

In a move to get more people to try its sleek email app Outlook.com, Microsoft has smartly added Google to its list of chat services, joining Facebook and Skype chat.

Microsoft recently announced that Outlook.com now has more than 400 million active accounts following the migration of all Hotmail users over to Outlook.com. The rebranding and redesign that occurred from Hotmail to Outlook.com was necessary because Hotmail had struggled to find new users after Gmail started gobbling them up. Those moves clearly paid off.

Now, to bring even people over to Outlook.com, Microsoft is adding Google Talk functionality.

“As a part of making Outlook.com personal, we believe people choose to use many different services and our role is to help them connect to the people who matter most, wherever they are,” Douglas Pearce, the group program manager for connected services, wrote in a blog post today.

To add Google contacts, open up the Messaging pane in Outlook.com and there will be a dialog prompt to “Add people to chat with Google contacts.” Once you have access, you’re all set. If you ever want to change the connection settings, you can do so at you Live profile page.

Users of Microsoft cloud storage service SkyDrive will also get the benefit of Google chat. This could especially come in handy if you want to work on a document and chat with colleagues at the same time.

“If you’re working together on a document with a Google friend, you can be chatting with them at the same time without leaving SkyDrive,” Pearce wrote. “You can even share a link to the document and edit it together in real time.”

Google functionality in Outlook.com and SkyDrive chat will roll out to all users during the next few days. Take a look at chat in SkyDrive below.

Photos via Microsoft