Blogging service WordPress’ parent company Automattic is getting a $50 million investment from Tiger Global, according to WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg.

The announcement comes from a blog post on Mullenweg’s personal site today, and comes just days after rival blogging platform/community Tumblr sold to iconic tech giant Yahoo for a whopping $1.2 billion.

Mullenweg notes that the investment comes from a secondary sale led by Tiger Global’s Lee Fixel, meaning Tiger Global purchased shares from early Automattic employees and investors. He also notes that Fixel was one of the “quiet geniuses” that previously invested in successful tech companies such as SurveyMonkey, Facebook, LinkedIn, Palantir, and Square.

Here’s what Mullenweg had to say on his blog about the investment:

“Anyway, wanted to get in front of the news that will inevitably come out in the next week or two: there has been a large secondary transaction in Automattic stock, about $50M worth. “Secondary” means that it’s existing stockholders, like the earliest investors or employees, selling stock to another investor versus money going into the company (“primary”). It was led by Lee Fixel at Tiger Global, one of the behind-the-scenes quiet geniuses that has previously invested in SurveyMonkey, Facebook, LinkedIn, Palantir, Square, Warby Parker… Automattic is healthy, generating cash, and already growing as fast as it can so there’s no need for the company to raise money directly — we’re not capital constrained. The minority of stockholders that elected to participate are holding on to the vast majority of their shares. We’re building an independent company that’s going to be a growing part of the fabric of the web for many years to come, so allowing early investors to lock in some returns releases any short-term pressure there might be on the company for a liquidity event and allows us to focus fully on the long road ahead.”

h/t to AllThingsD

Photo credit amperegrino/Flickr

Pandora took some heat after placing a 40-hour listening cap on its power users back in February, but the move apparently helped the company. Instead of fleeing the service for competitors, users decided to subscribe in order to keep listening to more music.

The company has added over 700,000 new subscribers to its paid Pandora One service, it revealed in its fiscal year 2014 Q1 earnings report yesterday. The company now has 2.5 million paid subscribers, and the increase for the quarter is more than it added during the entire previous year. Pandora attributes the subscriber growth largely to both the listening hour cap and Android enabling in-app purchasing of Pandora One on mobile devices.

The subscription growth is interesting because it seemed like the listening cap, which was put in place to help Pandora control its content licensing costs, would send some of its users into the arms of competitors. Slacker Radio told us it saw a huge boost in new user registrations after Pandora rolled out its cap policy. But having heard outgoing CEO Joe Kennedy’s explanation on the earnings call, I can understand Pandora’s logic for the cap: The average Pandora user listens to about 20 hours of music per week and is far more valuable from an advertising revenue standpoint than the user who consumes twice that amount of music.

Regardless of the paid subscriber boost, the company said it’s still firmly committed to focusing on its free, ad-supported service.

“We don’t look at [Pandora One] purely as a subscription service but rather as a paid option for our users that’s almost like a feature addition instead of a business line,” Kennedy said during the earnings call. “We will be thinking a lot about in-app purchasing behavior, especially on Android. It’s changed the dynamic of how people look at paid listening as a preferred option.”

Pandora also reported a record number of listener hours, which hit 4.2 billion for the quarter (a 35 percent increase over the same period last year), a 55 percent year-over-year increase in revenue to $125.5 million, and a larger share of all U.S. radio listening to 7.83 percent (compared to 5.86 percent last year). Investors responded positively to the earnings, too –  pushing the stock price up nearly 9 percent to $18.68 a share in after hours trading.

Photo by Sean Ludwig/VentureBeat

Media discovery startup Shazam released a new version of its iPad app today that adds a ton of new features, boosting your ability to identify music, TV shows, and advertising.

Probably the most notable of these additions is the new auto-tagging feature, which allows users to keep the “tag” button on in the background. I spent some time playing with the new app this morning and found it to be much more accurate in tagging TV shows, as well as background music, while watching television. Flipping the channels around gave me a catalog of my viewing, too.

The app also puts a much greater emphasis on TV, with a revised interface that pulls in links to a show’s IMDb, Wikipedia, a list of all the music featured, and more.. This is in line with what new Shazam CEO Rich Riley said was in the pipeline for the company, as VentureBeat reported last month.

However, just because there’s plenty of opportunity to grow Shazam’s business in the realm of TV, that doesn’t mean it’s turning a blind eye to music. The Shazam iPad app will now include auto-tuning integration with two huge streaming services Rdio and Spotify. (Spotify does require a premium membership to hook up the Shazam integration.) There’s also a new mapping tool that shows which songs are getting tagged across the world.

The app is available for free in the iTunes App Store. For a closer look at the app itself, check out the demo video embedded below.

The world’s largest streaming music service, Pandora, is finally adding some deep integration with the world’s largest social network, Facebook, giving its users a much easier way to socialize their musical activity with friends.

Following on the heels of yesterday’s Pandora Premieres announcement, the new Facebook integration adds a helpful social layer to the streaming music service, and may help assure investors that Pandora is moving forward despite a grim business outlook ahead of tomorrow’s Q1 FY2014 earnings report. Previously, Pandora’s now former CEO Joe Kennedy testified at a congressional hearing that Pandora would be unable to sustain its business if music royalty rates weren’t lowered, (and it doesn’t appear the rates will drop). There’s also the matter of increased competition in smart radio services from giant tech companies with lots of money to burn. Google recently launched its own Google Play All Access streaming radio service, while Apple and Amazon are rumored to debut similar offerings later in the year.

As for the new Timeline app integration, Pandora isn’t following other media companies that have provided deep integration with Facebook’s Open Graph, which allows people to see all of your activity from both the Facebook news feed and from an activity ticker. Streaming services like Spotify allow friends on Facebook to see songs you’re currently listening to, which I’ve never found very compelling.

Pandora’s Facebook integration is a bit different because it focuses on adding things to your Timeline under a music section. When people are exploring your Timeline page, they’ll see a record of your songs played, favorite artists, and custom radio stations that others can then listen to. It also pops up in the Facebook news feed, but as a past event that behaves more like a news story than an activity. And determining exactly what listening activity you want people to see is pretty easy — meaning I can hide most of the random 90s slow jams that pop up. You can toggle the automatic sharing on and off as needed, which I can’t really say about the fire hose of activity offered by other music services that integrate with Facebook. Those sharing controls are also available on Pandora itself.

The new Facebook Timeline integration is available across all of Pandora’s applications and platforms (iPhone, iPad, Android devices, Pandora’s website, etc.) today. Obviously, the company is committed to a more social Pandora experience, but the more interesting observation is in how it’s not at all trying to promote an increase in listening (or consuming) activity.

Media companies like Spotify, Viddy, Vevo, Ustream, and others all saw a “Facebook bump” in new users and time spent on their respective services after integrating with Facebook’s open graph. But that sort of move could actually hinder Pandora’s overall business strategy. It’s already one of the largest streaming music service almost to a fault, with 200 million total registered users and over 1.49 billion hours of music listened to per month.

Despite record growth, the company said it’s unable to generate revenue and grow long-term profitability without the aid of any “Facebook Bump” due to what it sees as unreasonably high music licensing fees. Those fees have forced Pandora to implement a 40-hour monthly music listening cap on users of its free, ad-supported service. Therefore it would appear that a large growth spurt would end up hurting the company’s bottom line, since its advertising revenue isn’t able to keep pace with Pandora’s operational growth and increasing music licensing costs. But preventing the service from growing and attempting to lower the amount of interaction spent on it from its most loyal would be a very backwards strategy — not that I think Pandora’s Facebook Timeline integration is an attempt to do either of those things; still, the addition focuses more on keeping current users than grabbing new ones.

We’ll have to wait until tomorrow’s earnings call to find out if recent developments (Kennedy’s departure back in March, the Facebook Timeline integration, and new unreleased album station Pandora Premieres) are enough to keep the company’s stock from taking a dip.

Disclosure: VentureBeat is one of Zite’s publishing partners, which permits us to place house ads within the VB publisher section of Zite free of charge.

Zite was one of the first companies to answer cries from loyal Google Reader users when the service was shuttered back in March, building a “replacement” in six hours. Yet in the news reader’s latest iOS app update, Zite’s management team makes one thing very clear: It’s time to let Google Reader die.

At its core, the CNN-owned Zite is sort of the anti-Google Reader, anyway. Google Reader pulls in RSS feeds from any news website as they become available, which creates an unruly fire hose of content that most people couldn’t possibly keep up with, and the design is bland and basic. Zite, on the other hand, curates news from the best publications on the web using your preferences and arranges them in a visually pleasing digital magazine layout.

“We realized we didn’t need to shift focus of the company for the next two months trying to build a Google Reader replacement, because we already did that in 2011 with Zite,” Zite CEO and founder Mark Johnson said in an interview with VentureBeat. “I think part of the reason Google Reader’s death was so prominently covered was because a large group of Google Reader users were people in the media. A very small portion of people — reporters, analysts, VCs and news junkies — are actually benefiting from seeing every single one of those articles in one place.”

I tend to agree with Johnson’s assessment, as I had a front row seat when my boss, Dylan Tweney, and colleague Sean Ludwig communicated their frustrations over Google Reader going away. I imagined them pulling their hair out trying to find a replacement. [Not counting Canadians, all the men on VentureBeat's editorial staff have -- or have the ability to grow -- full heads of hair, but Google Reader's death almost changed that -- Ed.]  But those that just want a good mix of articles from trusted sources that can reasonably be finished without having to block out half a day on the calendar, Zite already did a pretty good job of delivering. The latest update, however, makes some important tweaks to the user experience that will help ease those former Google Reader fans into Zite’s news curation service.

With Zite, you can “thumb” up or down articles, but now you’ll be able to see a prominent list of sources that you’ve “thumbed up” in the topic drawer (aka category or section) — sort of like a list of favorites. You’ll also be able to click through to any of those sources to read and vote on everything they’ve published recently. All the content you’ve read will now appear gray to signify what you’ve seen previously — a nod to Google Reader’s bold/gray headlines. And finally, Johnson said, Zite wants to fix the problem Google Reader had with burying really good content from sources that published something only once or twice a week (or month) by giving it a higher placement within Zite’s magazine layout. That means the algorithm for news curation is changing slightly to unearth what would be the best content from a Google Reader account with hundreds of headlines collected from lots of handpicked sources/publications.

“The goal is to give Zite more of a magazine feel that’s inviting, not a huge list of headlines and photos,” Johnson told me. Zite is also rolling out more diverse “story cards” that help break up what’s shown on the screen. For instance, some topic drawers will have only headlines and photos from sources, while others may feature a headline and a good pull quote from an article, which I’m guessing is similar to how Flipboard presents content. In other words, unlike Google Reader, there isn’t a flawed display that’s exactly the same for every story, since a one-size fits all approach really doesn’t work when dealing with content from more than a handful of publications.

Johnson said Zite’s strategy focuses on streamlining the news curation and consumption experience for new Zite users. He nicknamed this process “frog cooking,” a term I was previously unfamiliar with.

“It’s said that if you slowly raise the temperature of the water inside a pot with a frog inside, you’ll be able to cook [the frog] without it noticing,” he said.

I didn’t ask, but I’m quite positive no frogs were harmed during the development of Zite iOS version 2.3. And while Johnson was likening the “frog cooking” to new users unfamiliar with Zite (and walking them through the process with tutorials as shown in the screenshots below), I’d characterize most of the new tweaks in the iOS update to “Google Reader-er cooking.”

In addition to various UI and algorithm tweaks, Zite is also bringing on a slew of new publishing partners, including Atlantic Media (The Atlantic and Quartz), Business Insider, Fast Company, GigaOM, Salon, SAY Media (Remodelista and ReadWrite), and Serious Eats. Zite users can add any of these publications a separate section within the Zite app, as VentureBeat previously reported. And while the latest updates are only available on iOS devices, Johnson said the team is planning to launch a new version of its Android application later this year.

Zite’s iOS app update should be available for free later today via the iTunes App Store. Check out the gallery of screenshots below for a closer look at the latest version of the app.

Thanks to Amazon, writing fanfiction about popular television show characters just became more than a passionate hobby that earns you ridicule from friends and co-workers.

Today the online retail and digital media store announced a new publishing platform called Kindle Worlds that allows anyone to write their own, original stories based on licensed content from a number of TV shows currently airing on the CW and ABC Family — the two channels best known for angsty hour-long dramas adapted from young adult book series. Under a deal between Amazon’s publishing arm and Warner Bros. Alloy Entertainment division, fanfiction authors can publish stories about Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, and Vampire Diaries within Amazon’s Kindle store. Not only that, but those authors will even earn royalties when people buy their work.

So to recap, Amazon just MONETIZED FREAKING FANFICTION. (I never thought I’d be addressing the idea of fanfiction writing as a profession, but here it is.)

Royalty rates are actually pretty reasonable under the Kindle Worlds platform. Amazon will pay copyright owners of the original work an undisclosed percentage, while the author of the new stories will get a 35 percent cut of net revenue on each sale, provided the work is at least 10,000 words. Amazon is basing net revenue on the sale price, not the wholesale price that traditional book publishers offer authors — meaning authors should get a better payout if successful. Authors of stories that are under 10,000 words can earn a royalty of 20 percent off net revenue, with most stories priced at $1 or less. And Amazon said royalty payments will come once a month.

Amazon said it plans to announce additional licensed works for the new Kindle Worlds platform in the near future. Kindle Worlds itself will launch on the Kindle store in June with more than 50 commissioned stories from bestselling authors like Barbara Feethy, John Everson, and Colleen Thompson. So even established authors wanting to write their own original stories derived from a licensed work can jump into Amazon’s new program.

Beyond the new opportunities Kindle Worlds creates for authors, Amazon also points out that this is a new revenue stream for licensed content. It allows the rights owners of those original works to generate money from good stories that they otherwise wouldn’t see if an author had to change all the names and affiliations of their story so it could legally be published. For example, as VentureBeat’s Ricardo Bilton just pointed out to me, mega-successful book series 50 Shades of Gray started as Twilight fanfiction. That said, every big book series or popular body of work (Star Trek, Star Wars) likely won’t be signing a deal with Kindle Worlds. Still copyright owners of franchises that don’t do much business with book publishing will likely be interested.

Top image via The CW

Streaming music service Pandora is launching a new radio station today that features songs from albums that aren’t available for sale yet.

The station, called Pandora Premieres, features a slew of unreleased music, interviews and other extra content from both established and emerging artists about a week before you can buy them via retail stores. You can listen to those songs as often as you’d like in any order, (so basically, its on-demand), and kicks off with music from John Fogerty and Laura Marling. The content itself receives a refresh once a week, in which case you’ll have to either buy the album to continue hearing those previously unreleased tracks or wait for them to get played on your custom smart radio stations.

The move marks an important step in Pandora’s attempt to become just as vital to the music industry as the traditional radio stations were decades earlier. I’m curious about whether Pandora is paying for its users to play these tracks, or if Pandora Premieres is primarily a promotional vehicle that music companies can pay for to help sell new albums. And given Pandora’s problems with generating enough revenue, I’m guessing they probably aren’t paying for on-demand licensing, which is far more expensive than the digital radio fees.

If Pandora is getting paid for what it plays on Pandora Premieres (at least in part) by the music industry, then it could prove to be an extremely smart move, too — and one that traditional radio has turned into a source of revenue. This is also something that Grooveshark is exploring with the launch of their new Grooveshark radio service that debuted last month.

Navigating to the new station reveals that Pandora is maximizing its advertising by pulling in a sole sponsor, as you can see from the screenshot above. Beyond that, Pandora’s Tim Westergren only had this to say about the new station in a company blog post:

“Pandora Premieres is also a new and unique vehicle for artists, both established and emerging, to reach and expand their audience. Seeing the impact of Pandora on the careers of working musicians continues to be one of the most gratifying parts of this experience.”

We’ve reached out to Pandora for clarification about its strategy for Pandora Premieres and will update this post with any new information we find out.

With Microsoft’s introduction of the new entertainment watching experience through its new Xbox One console, one of the biggest winners will obviously be for those that love live sports.

The company announced a new partnership with the NFL that will see America’s most popular pro sports league bring original content to the Xbox. There was plenty of talk about being able to integrate sports scores, play-by-play views, socialization, and more into the TV screen as well as making fantasy football leagues more centralized to your experience. Specifically, we don’t know which games or sports shows will get the new Xbox One treatment, but I assume Microsoft and the NFL will reveal more in the weeks to come.

I got the sense that the NFL programming will seek to use all the available devices in interesting ways that either don’t overlap or take away from the central experience of the content.

The NFL programming isn’t the only nongame content that Microsoft revealed during today’s Xbox One event. The first was a new interactive Halo TV show produced by the legendary Steven Spielberg, who created roughly half the childhood favorite films for anyone born during the ’80s.

For more on the Xbox One reveal, check out our complete coverage.

Microsoft just blew the doors off of every integrated television experience with the reveal of its next generation Xbox One video game console.

The new Xbox will bring improved voice and gesture controls to watching TV. It also brings in live TV from the Xbox One (something you could do a bit clunkily on the Xbox 360 with Verizon FiOS and Xfinity TV from Comcast), Skype Internet calling, a new Trending feature that shows what’s popular among all Xbox Live community members and multitasking while watching programs.

Seriously, if the demonstration is any indication for how it’ll actually work, you’ll never watch TV the same way again.

Microsoft entertainment VP Yusuf Mehdi showed off how you’ll be able to turn on all the devices in your living room by speaking “Xbox On,” which pulls up your Xbox Live profile without the need to click through several sign-in screens or software updates. Apparently, the console will recognize your voice to do this, and it could possibly even distinguish between others that might use the console.

From there, Mehdi proceeded to change the channel by speaking. For example, you change from watching ESPN to Syfy by simply saying “Watch Syfy.” That’s right — no more “flipping” through the channels when you know exactly where you want to go. Mehdi didn’t make this clear, but I think this means those with a cable subscription (to Comcast at least, which was what they used in the demo) will no longer need to rent one of those crappy cable boxes that was probably made a decade ago.

As for the gesture controls, they seem to be utilized when switching between functions, like Live TV or another app. And speaking of other apps, the new controls make me think that multitasking on a television screen isn’t just an unnecessary pain in the ass. The demo showed off the ability to pull up sports stats during live games, chat rooms with friends, and pulling in a Skype voice call while you’re watching something.

For more coverage, check out our complete coverage and our liveblog and livestream.

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Streaming video service Crunchyroll has just rolled out a new platform that allows its viewers to purchase merchandise related to the shows they’re watching, the company told VentureBeat today.

Crunchyroll is well known among anime lovers because it’s the largest source of Japanese animation programming in the U.S, with over 15,000 hours of officially licensed content localized into multiple languages. The service provides access to content the same time it airs in Japan for those that sign up for premium subscriptions that cost between $5 to $12 per month. There’s also a free, ad-supported service that offers viewers access to content weeks after its initial premiere.

“Our goal is to bring our loyal viewers a surround-sound consumer experience with the ability to purchase DVDs, video games, figures, and other highly relevant merchandise related to their favorite shows,” said Crunchyroll COO Brady McCollum in a statement.

Selling products alongside a streaming video services is hardly a new concept, as Amazon is just now getting into this with its Prime Instant Video service and online store. However, Crunchyroll is worth paying attention because of how much its matured over the years and what it could predict about the future of the online video business. It started out as a company that enabled its users to upload bootleg copies of anime for others to watch without obtaining the proper licensing deals. Today, it’s got licensing deals, a successful streaming subscription (more than 200,000 customers), and ad-supported services with over 8 million monthly viewers and 127 million monthly views across the world.

And now that Crunchyroll is starting to generate revenue by selling merchandise from the programming it offers could point to the future of the streaming video service business in general. For example, Hulu could easily adopt this model in the near future should the licensing first-run TV episodes become greater — especially if Hulu finds itself sold to a company that doesn’t own one of the major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, Fox).

As for Crunchyroll, the move to sell merchandise isn’t actually a huge gamble, as the company points out that 70 percent of revenue for companies that produce anime comes from merchandising. The merchandise itself is being sold via deals with Asian distributors that aren’t partnering with any other U.S. companies.

Founded in 2008, the San Francisco-based startup has offices in Los Angeles and Tokyo. It’s previously raised $4.8 million in funding from Venrock and TV Tokyo.

Just a day shy of it’s superimportant and highly publicized event to showcase the next-generation home video game console, Microsoft’s Xbox team has announced a new interactive TV show that’s definitely worth paying attention to.

The show itself, called The Music Room, is a two-part program hosted by Laura Jackson and Carl Barât, and will feature music from Everything Everything, Don Broco, and Swim Deep. Much like accessing other entertainment services on the console, you’ll need to be an Xbox Gold subscriber to watch the show, which premieres May 29 at 8:30 p.m. Eastern.

What’s interesting is that Xbox users will be able to vote on the outcome of the program as it airs, which could signal Microsoft’s future approach to original content through the Xbox Live platform. Of course right now its only a two-part music show you can interact with, and we really won’t know more about the company’s entertainment plans until after tomorrow’s big event.

For a closer look at the new show, check out a video preview embedded below.

Via Engadget

Streaming video and TV programming guide startup Dijit just released a new web app version of its NextGuide app that’s every bit as useful as the mobile versions.

The NextGuide web app brings a universal search feature to the web, which allows you to find what’s available across tons of streaming video services such as Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, and Netflix. And if what you want to watch isn’t available on those services, you’ll be able to see options to buy or rent it on iTunes or Amazon. And that’s on top of its ability to pull up channel listings and DVR controls for your local TV service provider (Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, etc.).

Another refreshing thing the NextGuide web app carries over is the universal watchlist (aka queue). This is something that pretty much always bugs me whenever I’m watching stuff across lots of services, because I can’t remember what I added and if I watched it or when. (More often than not, this pushes me to use a single service like Netflix on a single device like my Xbox.) But the NextGuide app pulls all those shows into a single list for you to check out quickly.

But probably the biggest thing you’ll notice is the new social interaction tools that mimic functionality from social TV check-in service Miso, which Dijit acquired back in February. The service now allows you to follow your friends or others with similar interests in TV shows and movies. These tools help power a new social recommendation engine as well.

The NextGuide Web app is currently operating in closed beta right now, but does allow you to invite three friends. Dijit said it plans to make the new app available to Miso users within the next month. We’ve embedded some screenshots of the new service below for a closer look at NextGuide’s web app.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer held a press conference today to flesh out more details about its $1.1 billion acquisition of blog platform Tumblr, which was confirmed yesterday after days of rumors.

“Tumblr prides itself on being a home for brands, established and emerging, we at Yahoo are all about brands,” Mayer said on the call. She also compared some of the more obvious talking points about the new companies, such as Tumblr skewing a much younger audience to Yahoo’s very aging populace. Yahoo has about 700 million to 1 billion users to Tumblr’s 300 million users, so there will be some spillover, but not in terms of how people are using these two services since both are very different. She also said eight of the top 10 most valuable brands are using Tumblr to promote themselves on Tumblr, which should continue in the future.

But the biggest thing Mayer touched on was Yahoo’s commitment to monetizing Tumblr, which is something the blog platform struggled with as it grew. Mayer highlighted that she would bring the company’s newly launched streaming ads product to the site, which are now featured on both Yahoo’s homepage and its newsfeed. Not only that but Yahoo’s commitment means hiring new engineers and ad sales people to boost revenue from Tumblr.

“You only do an acquisition of this size and scale if you find an exceptional company… and find an exceptional fit,” Mayer said, adding that Tumblr is that company. Yahoo plans to keep the entire Tumblr team in place with founder David Karp in place as CEO. Both brands will also stay separate with Karp reporting directly to Mayer.

“We want to let Tumblr be Tumblr, she said.

“In terms of advertizing, David and I both share a love for pop culture and… [he] talked wistfully about the ads he saw as a child that would make him want to see a movie or want a particular car. Where are the ads that are like that [online]? Where are the ads that are great content in and of themselves?,” Mayer said of the deal. “The current state of Internet advertising doesn’t aspire to be as good as the content itself. We think that should change.”

Any new ad products that Yahoo introduces to Tumblr will likely be native-based, and enhance the whole experience. That’s nice to hear if it ends up being true, because the last thing Tumblr users want is to notice is Yahoo’s strategy to grab cash.

Image via Marissa Mayer/Tumblr

Simeon Simeonov is founder of Swoop.

The coverage of Google I/O 2013 developer conference has focused on Google’s plans for world domination through an increasingly more interrelated and stickier set of consumer services. What’s gone unnoticed is Google’s radical developer ecosystem management strategy. The company has made a fateful choice that may leave Google with an exposed flank at a critical time.

Consider the following: in 2012 95 percent of Google’s revenue (a cool $43 billion) came from advertising. Yet, at this year’s Google I/O conference the Google Ads track has only five sessions — a mere 2.5 percent of the conference topics. And the number of sessions related to search advertising, where the majority of Google’s ad revenue comes from? Zero.

Out of curiosity, I checked out the sessions for last year’s I/O conference. It didn’t even have an ads track. If this doesn’t seem surprising to you, think about Apple’s WWDC event not covering OS X and iOS; Microsoft’s Build event ignoring Windows, Office, and Xbox; or Oracle’s OpenWorld event without sessions on databases, middleware, and applications.

The lack of sessions on ads is clearly a strategic decision made at the very top. The unedited version of the pitch goes like this: “Dear developers, please help us grow market share where we don’t make much money: Android, Chrome OS, cloud, apps, social, etc. We are fighting on too many fronts and we can’t win without you. At the same time, please do not concern yourself about all the money we make through advertising. We got that covered. There is nothing for you there, except for maybe paying us to advertise your apps.”

This ballsy move may turn out to be brilliant. Google is fighting a five-front war with Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and web publishers as a whole. By leveraging its tech cool and focusing developers on the key platform battles Google needs to win to extend its control of consumer services and advertising, the company may end up perfectly positioned for the long game. At the same time, Google is taking a big risk by closely and independently managing the advertising portion of its business.

Successful platform companies rely on strong and vibrant vendor ecosystems, whose combined revenues often far exceed the revenue of the platform companies. Microsoft did it by making Windows the dominant desktop OS but staying away from most types of infrastructure and apps for a long time. Oracle did it by creating products that required tons of customization and ongoing service & support. Apple did it by creating market-dominating devices with great developer tools while leaving the apps space wide open. These companies deeply understood the importance of bringing third party developers close to the very core of their revenue engines because developers, while they may be hard to win, tend to stick with what they know. They provide stability and support for platform companies when hard times come.

Some people on the Google Developer Relations team are trying to change things from the inside by associating organizational success metrics to the revenues of Google ecosystem partners. So far they have been unable to convince the powers that be that the financial success of Google partners is worth focusing on.

Google’s developer ecosystem positioning adds to the growing consensus that the company doesn’t like to share where it counts. Its moves to disintermediate publishers in a broad range of user tasks are another prime example. This fact is not lost on some of its large competitors as well as many of its publisher & advertising partners, who’d like to see more innovation and choice. Google may be helping publishers and agencies make billions but there is no deep allegiance there and no real stickiness. There are significant opportunities for startups and investors bold-enough to ignore the “we’ve got it covered” message from Google.

Simeon Simeonov is founder of Swoop, which extends search advertising to content, and Evidon, which brings transparency to online advertising. A lifetime ago  his first startup built the first large web developer community. Sim tweets @simeons and blogs at blog.simeonov.com.

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Stitcher Radio is rolling out a new feature on its iOS app today that makes it much easier to use the streaming service while driving in a vehicle — which is exactly where radio belongs.

Unlike the majority of streaming audio services, Stitcher focuses entirely on radio shows and podcasts. The company said about 60 percent of listeners are already using the app in their cars, which is why it decided to add a “Car Mode.” Essentially what you’re getting is a new interface that makes the audio player controls easier to see, with larger buttons and very little clutter. Because when you’re driving, you don’t want to be screwing around with a hitting the wrong buttons on a touchscreen.

You can flip on Car Mode by hitting the Stitcher logo at the top of the screen, and you can operate in both landscape or portrait orientations. The new app update also includes a revised front page view with top headlines, access to an archive of favorite shows, a sleep timer, and various improvements that make playback quicker.

The updated Stitcher Radio app is available for free via iTunes App Store.

If you’re like me, you’re wondering who actually uses Yahoo newsfeed service when there are plenty of popular competitors available. However, for the second time in the last month, the company is making some changes to its newsfeed that will presumably attempt to boost interest and improve the overall experience of reading the news.

Crazy, I know. But this sort of strategy (of doing something instead of, well, nothing) is part of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s plan to revitalize the company’s products through building, buying, and partnering. Back in April, it debuted newly built Yahoo newsfeed advertising units. And now, Yahoo has forged a partnership with Twitter that will bring embedded tweets directly into Yahoo’s U.S. newsfeed service. (See screenshot below.)

“Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information. 140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate,” Mayer wrote on the company’s blog today. “Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed.”

Essentially, that means the news feed will now feature tweets from important people (or even random users if their tweets are relevant) from each respective news genre (celebrity, sports, politics, etc.), lovingly curated by the newsfeed’s editors. Overall, it seems like a pretty good way for  the Yahoo newsfeed to pull in new users, who don’t have time to review all the important updates in their Twitter feed and keep up with the daily news.

The new Twitter integration into Yahoo newsfeed is rolling out now in the U.S., and I’d suspect other regions to follow if this partnership proves successful.

Media company and cable TV provider Time Warner Cable is rumored to be reviewing a deal to buy an equity stake in streaming video service Hulu, according to a Wall Street Journal report that cites unnamed sources familiar with the matter.

Hulu’s current owners — News Corp., Disney, and silent owner Comcast  — have disagreed on the best way to grow the service, which initially led to them trying to sell Hulu last year for around $2 billion. When no one came close to that asking price, the Hulu sale was officially terminated. However, renewed interest from several potential buyers made the owners flip-flop once again on the idea of selling.

But not much has changed between now to drastically increase Hulu’s value in the eyes of buyers, which means either the asking price is lower or the owners are exploring alternatives. One of them is apparently adding Time Warner Cable as a minority shareholder. I’m not entirely sure how bringing in another decision-maker to Hulu would be the best idea, especially since News Corp. and Disney already can’t agree on the site’s future business strategy. At the same time, it would give them less liability should Hulu fail.

If true, TWC would definitely get the better end of the deal. Hulu is a great brand when it comes to streaming current prime time TV shows legally. Hulu is seeing record growth in paid subscribers, advertising revenue, and users — not to mention its original content strategy. Time Warner could also forge a deal to offer its cable TV subscribers free access to Hulu, just as other cable providers have done by having them authenticate that they subscribe to a cable TV service package.

But Time Warner Cable isn’t the only company expressing interest in purchasing Hulu. Other potential buyers of the site include Yahoo, Amazon,  Guggenheim Digital Media , and former News Corp. president Peter Chernin with a rumored $500 million offer. WSJ‘s report also indicates that another large TV media company could be interested in buying a partial stake in the company along with Time Warner.

h/t a Bloomberg

Over the last few years, media companies and brands have turned to Mass Relevance’s social curating platform for plenty of projects, and now the startup said it’s hit a big milestone.

Today, Mass Relevance announced that it’s pushed 25 billion pieces of “social content” (tweets, Vines, status updates, Instagram photos, and such) through its platform from the more than 250 big media companies that are its clients. That’s a lot of social content when you consider that Mass Relevance’s tech is focused on reviewing everything  before it goes out and doing it in a way that’s, well … pretty. And if you haven’t heard of Mass Relevance, that’s because the company stays largely behind the scenes.

Mass Relevance is worth keeping an eye on because it’s helping Twitter and Facebook use their social interaction data in unique ways that are appealing to media companies and big brands during live or notable events. For example, it’s in the CBS’s best interest to curate and increase social interactions during the Super Bowl because it can then justify the higher advertising rate prices to advertisers that want to run a commercial during the big game.

The platform itself allows highly visible media companies to manage the flow of social information they’re consistently getting hit with. It takes social data streams from various social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Vine, Instagram, YouTube, and others) and weaves them into a single console for clients. From there you can set word/hashtag filters, audience demographic filters (age range, gender, geography), media or social network filters, and so on — basically fine-tuning all that social data for a specific purpose. The platform can also help its clients display that “social content” intelligently through mobile apps, live TV broadcasts, websites, projector screens at conferences, stadium displays, and other visualizations that run alongside media events.

Source: Mass Relevance

Mass Relevance CTO Eric Falcao presenting to President Obama during his recent trip to Austin, Texas.

You’ve probably experienced Mass Relevance’s tech in action without realizing it, too. It’s already working with all four major broadcast TV stations (Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC) as well as the most socially engaged prime time television shows (X Factor, Glee, American Idol, and The Voice). Previously, the company curating tweeted questions from audience members watching panels at SXSWi back in March, helped launch the first Twitter Town Hall for President Barack Obama, managed Twitter data during the 2012 Olympic Games, integrated Facebook data for CNN’s coverage of the 2012 election, and also worked with some of last year’s biggest media events (2012 Grammys, MTV music video awards, Super Bowl XLVI, the BET awards, NBA Finals).

Mass Relevance isn’t the only startup offering media companies (and brands) a way to streamline interactions from across multiple social networks. One example is indirect competitor Echo, which has seen success of its own platform of social curation tools with clients like pro wrestling company WWE. Yet, Mass Relevance does seem to be emerging as a leader when it comes to building tools for large events. While it didn’t disclose financial figures, the company said its revenue quadrupled in 2012 (compared to the previous year), and estimates doubling revenue again by the end of 2013.

Founded in 2010, the Austin-based startup has previously raised $5.5 million in total funding to date. Mass Relevance has 90 employees, but plans to double its R&D team in the next year as well as open an international office in London, U.K. this month.

Photos via Mass Relevance

Add one more Google announcement to the large pile that’s been accumulating all day from the company’s Google I/O conference. Today YouTube announced that it’s rolling out livestreaming to many of its channel partners.

If you’re thinking that YouTube just became equal to Ustream, then think again. The livestreaming feature is only available for channels that are in good standing and have at least 1,000 subscribers. That seems like a fairly reasonable set of stipulations since the resources for livestreaming a video broadcast is more expensive than uploading them for people to watch at their own convenience. Hopefully, this will also cut down on the amount of needless livestreams that pop up, allowing you to sift through only the good stuff.

Here’s some of the key features of the new livestreaming service from the site’s creator blog:

• You get real-time transcoding in the cloud, so you only need to send us your highest quality stream and we make it instantly available in all resolutions and device formats
• You can show multiple camera angles, add closed captions, and insert ads and slates
• Viewers can watch the live stream from any device, get the best quality constantly adjusting to their Internet connection, and can skip back and forth in the live stream

And of course since the I/O conference is in full swing, YouTube is providing developers with a YouTube Live API, which presumably we’ll hear more about during YouTube’s session tomorrow. Users can check the Account Features page to see if their channel is eligible for livestreaming.

Photo via Korosirego/Flickr

Normally, when a company claims that it’s bringing the helpfulness of a Federation starship’s onboard computer to everyday technology, I sort of roll my eyes and prepare to be disappointed — except this time, that didn’t really happen.

Today, Google demonstrated its new conversational search feature during its annual Google I/O developers conference. Conversational search basically means that you’re asking questions rather than strategically typing in search terms to get the answer you want from a query, something that’s been available on Android mobile devices and Apple (via Siri) for a while now. However, Google is now bringing that conversational search to the desktop. (Check out a demo video below for a better look at voice search.)

To take advantage of this tool, you need to use Google’s Chrome web browser and also have access to a working microphone. From there, you can start by saying “OK, Google…” and proceed to ask it a question or bark out an order. (But beware of barking too harshly in case this new tech is really just the precursor to a future where Cylons take over our planet.)

During the demo, Google’s conversational search was able to pull up travel destinations for a long trip, pull up restaurant data, see flight itineraries, etc. — nothing we haven’t already seen. But what is impressive is how much the voice instructions are actually like talking to someone who had information you need to know. Part of that is in anticipating what the conversation would be and what the person making the query actually wanted to know. Obviously, the technology is getting better, and its far closer to the Enterprise‘s computer than it was when the service first rolled out.

But just because the conversational search is branching out to the desktop doesn’t mean the company isn’t still working to improve the mobile experience. More specifically, the company will be adding plenty of new cards that will appear in its Google Now service, including those for public transit, music album, movies, TV shows, reminders, and books.

After months of speculation and rumors, Google finally announced its own streaming music service called Google Play Music All Access today at its annual Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.

“We wanted to build a music service that was focused on music where technology was in the background,” said Google’s Chris Yerga. “Choosing your music shouldn’t be such a chore.”

The new service, which is available today, will be $9.99 per month in the U.S., and will give everyone a free 30-day trial. If you sign up by June 30 you’ll be able to get it for $7.99 per month. Unlike many of its new competitors, it doesn’t look like Google will be offering a free tier of the service, which lines up with rumors that we’ve heard in the past.

The service itself will compete with on-demand music services like Rdio and Spotify as well as Pandora and other smart radio services. The company apparently was able to wrap up negotiations with all the major record labels prior to I/O, but admittedly it is a bit odd that it chose a developer-focused event to make such an announcement. The service will also face plenty of competition from other streaming music services as well as those from rival tech companies that are rumored to be launching their own offering.

“This is radio without rules,” Yerga said.

You can use Google Music All Access to create a radio station from any song you’re currently listening to. It also lets you peer into the future of what’s scheduled to play within that station — and in a move that’s not like any of the other music services, Google will let listeners get rid of music within those stations that they don’t like. The algorithm then changes to fit your revised musical tastes on that selection.

Google already has a streaming music offering in its “Google Music” service, which you can use to upload your entire library of digital songs to the web and play from anywhere (or “pinned” for offline listening on Android devices). That service is also heavily connected the Google Play store that sells music, among other things.

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google Play is doing pretty darn well, according to an update at today’s Google I/O developer conference today.

Currently, the Google Play has processed over 48 billion app installs from all the various devices using Android. In the last month alone, the company said it’s seen around 2.5 billion app installs, which is pretty impressive.

As for revenue, Google said it’s paying out more to developers than ever before. Also, revenue per user is 2.5 times what it was a year ago across the globe.

Check out VentureBeat’s liveblog of the Google I/O 2013 conference.

Developing.

Travel news startup Skift has closed a new $1.1 million round of seed funding, the company announced today.

Skift is a hybrid news publication that seeks to provide data and reporting services to the travel industry as well as those who are interested in following it. The site was co-founded by paidContent founder Rafat Ali, who decided on the idea after his many travels made him realize how much the travel industry converges together, with hotels, transportation, tech services and startups, and more. By all intents and purposes, Skift does sound like it wants to be a digital offspring of those old school trade publications common in many industries during the heyday of print — except this one is aiming to be something that’s not only useful, but also something that will appeal to the everyday consumer audience. It also wants to be more diverse in what it offers, both in terms of its products/services and business strategy.

“All media companies need a diverse revenue stream,” Ali said in an interview with VentureBeat. “Advertising is one part, but at least for us we’d like to build out our data services and premium offerings.”

The funding, he said, will be used to double Skift’s team of employees from 5 to 10. Those positions pretty much span across all areas, with 2 developers, a social/audience manager, a data analyst, and an additional reporter. Skift will also use the new capital to further develop its travel-brand index SkiftSocial as well as two premium subscriptions services that will roll out in June.

The new funding is led by Leer Ventures, with participation from Advancit Capital, Ironfire Angel, Mesa+, and Growlabs/LX Ventures as well as angel investors including Martin Nisenholtz, Michael Yavonditte, Shakil Khan, Paul Noglows, Sean Keener, Duncan Jennings, Skift CFO Michael Cunniff, and Eric Lawson.

Founded in 2012, the New York-based startup has raised a total of $1.5 million in funding to date.

Photo via Skift

The latest city that incubator program TechStars will expand into is bustling tech city Austin, Texas, the organization announced today.

TechStars is an incubator program that selects only a handful of startups in each city it operates in, which receive $118,000 in seed funding ($18,000 plus optional $100,000 convertible note), support from plenty of mentors at successful startups, opportunity to pitch investors, and lots of perks that an up-and-coming company would need to make a big impact. Hundreds apply for a spot in the program, but it only selects 10 in each location. The program itself runs three months and is only conducted once per year.

Austin seems like a shoo-in for the program, as its already a booming tech city with tons of vibrant startups and a good base of offices from large tech companies like Intel, Dell, Samsung, Applied Materials, IBM, National Instruments, and plenty of others. A handful of the company’s successful startups — Mass Relevance and Stormpulse, both of which count the White House as a client of its services — even got praise from President Barack Obama on his recent trip to Austin last week. There’s also the week-long (or two weeks, if you count music) SXSW event every March.

So, what exactly took so long for TechStars to get here?

“We know that Austin is one of the top startup communities in the country. But timing is everything,” TechStars cofounder David Cohen told VentureBeat via email. “We don’t do anything unless we can do it with very high quality, and we haven’t been ready until now. It’s not so easy to just launch new locations and do it with extreme quality.”

Jason Seats will manage TechStars Austin. He previously founded Slicehost and was VP of software development at RackSpace. He’s also managed TechStars Cloud in San Antonio for two years, which means he has a very good background when it comes to running the Austin branch.

Applications for the Austin program open today. As for what TechStars is looking for, Cohen said:

“In terms of company selection, we’ll be opportunistic in Austin, like we are anywhere else. We are not focusing on any particular vertical area for that program – it’s just like our others in New York, London, Boston, Chicago, Boulder, and Seattle in that sense. As you know, we generally see about a 1 percent acceptance rate, so we’re looking for disruptive companies which leverage the power of the Internet, most importantly founded by amazing entrepreneurs. Team, team, team, market, progress, idea – in that order.”

The new Austin branch will also see support from the city’s most notable venture firms and investors, including Austin Ventures, Silverton, Live Oak, Brett Hurt, Sam Decker, Jeff Dachis, Josh Baer, Rony Kahan, Bill Boebel, and others.

Austin downtown skyline photo via Dylan Tweney/VentureBeat

It’s been years since community news sharing site Reddit has made a major change to how things appear on its coveted front page of popular submissions, but today the company announced a new feature called multireddits that could do just that.

Reddit enables its users to submit links or self-authored posts to a variety of “subreddits” (aka a specific category). The multireddit feature enables you to combine several of those subreddits together, which can then be subscribed to on its own. It’s worth noting that the capability to create a multireddit has been around for a while (manually typing each subreddit’s name in the URL), but now the Reddit team is making it easier to share and browse through them. Previously, if you wanted this kind of functionality, you’d have to create another user account and subscribe to only the subreddits you wanted to collect or create a new folder of content on iOS app AlienBlue.

“We’re working on making browsing reddit easier and more diverse,” Reddit developer Max Goodman (aka chromakode) wrote about the new feature. “The first step is giving you deeper control over what makes up your front page.”

The new feature is only available to those with a Reddit Gold account, the company’s premium subscription service that gives members early access to new features. Gold account users can choose to toggle on the multireddit feature by visiting a separate page. After that, you’re brought to your personalized homepage that feature a new sidebar on the left with a list of all the multireddits you’re currently subscribed to. For instance, you could create a “Reddit Pets” multireddit that contains submissions from subreddits like aww, dachshund, cute, and corgi. Or maybe you want a multireddit for comedy, which would contain submissions from funny, humor, and advice animals.

Each multireddit has its own tab that pulls up submissions in your main feed/river when you click it, and not all the submissions from subreddits you’re subscribed to on your personal front page. The new sidebar also adds tabs for all submissions across the entire site, submissions from subreddits you moderate, and saved submissions. [See screenshot below]

This is a bold move for Reddit and one that has the potential to really change up the way people are interacting with the site. There are certain subreddits that I didn’t want appearing on my front page, but would happily navigate to separately. And now I have the option of throwing all of those subreddits into a multireddit. It’s also a smart move because it keeps people checking their front page, a central location that is extremely valuable to advertisers and promoters, especially because the company is ultraselective about those advertisements. (And I don’t at all think Reddit will change its stance on advertising based on its strategy with multireddits.)

The multireddit feature is currently in beta testing, which means it could change depending on what works and what doesn’t. Reddit said for now, the multireddits you create aren’t sharable with other users, but that may be added in the future. The company is also providing an API for the multireddits feature for developers.

What do you think of the new multireddit feature? Let us know in the comments below.

Top image via Reddit Postcards

While Star Trek Into Darkness is still a few days away from premiering in theaters, Microsoft’s Bing is teaming up with Paramount to celebrate a little early with a brand-new feature.

Now, trekkies can use Bing’s Translator to translate text and whole websites into Klingon, the alien language spoken by the wrinkly headed warrior race. (For instance, majQa’ means “well done!,” which is exactly what I have to say when using this new tool.)

The translations themselves are done using the Klingon alphabet Kronos (see screenshot above) or a direct translation using the English alphabet. From here on out I will most certainly use the latter option to insult VentureBeat copy editor Jason Wilson in responses to all inquires he has on my articles.

You can access the Klingon translations via the Bing Translator website or through the Windows Phone Bing Translator app.

Aereo has announced that Atlanta, Ga. will be the next market to receive its streaming TV service, with a roll out scheduled for next month.

Aereo’s service enables people to watch and record the free over-the-air local television content (from the likes of ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS, CW, and other) online via desktops, computers, set-top boxes, and mobile devices. It does this by providing tiny antennae for each subscriber (thus making the service legal in the eyes of at least East Coast federal judges so far). The company recently simplified its payment model to give subscribers the option of a $8 or $12 per month plan, depending on how many hours you need to record programming.

The service is already available in New York City and Boston, but the company is planning to launch in a total of 22 markets by next year. And even with Atlanta, Aereo should still be too small to cause any real disruption to the TV industry, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Major broadcast stations have taken Aereo to court, claiming that it’s illegal for the company to provide access to its broadcasted content without paying some kind of licensing fee to them. But since federal judges have ruled on the legality of Aereo, those broadcast companies are taking drastic measures.

Both CBS and Fox’s parent company News Corp. have threatened to take its programming off the air and convert it into cable networks, while CBS has even invested in technology that would mimic Aereo’s functionality for local viewers. Recently, ABC even announced that it would be making the local broadcast streams available via iOS devices.

It’s definitely an interesting development because Aereo is still too young to determine if its got a viable business model (with customers in only a handful of cities able to subscribe to its service), but big TV companies are responding by making their services better for consumers. Aereo might be an unlikely rival, but it’s definitely driving competition.

Incubator program 500 Startups is debuting its sixth batch of companies today, and this group features quite a few that come from not just outside Silicon Valley but also the country.

500 Startups is an early-stage seed fund and incubator program that’s become a brand name over the last few years, mostly through the sheer volume of companies it’s invested in. The Mountain View, Calif.-based group invests between $25,000 to $250,000 in startups, primarily those aimed at consumers and small to medium-size businesses as well as related web infrastructure services.

The new batch contains 28 companies, two-thirds (20) of which are international. 500 Startups also brings lots of firsts in this new crop of companies, such as its first investments in Africa with the lead generation service startup Dropifi and two Middle Eastern startups Dakwak (provides website translation services) and Tamatem, a mobile gaming dev company focused on the Arabic audience. The new batch also contains eight companies with founders that are women.

500 Startups points out that it’s very committed to international companies, with 15 percent of its overall portfolio coming from outside the U.S. 500 Startups also recently added a Beijing-based venture partner Rui Ma, who will concentrate on companies in China.

We’ve gone ahead and listed a short description of each company in the sixth batch below. You can learn more during 500 Startups’ tentative demo day in July.

(And just like in the past, 500 Startups has provided a promotional video — embedded below — that’s a bit different than what you’d expect from other accelerator programs. This time? They’re borrowing those familiar bumpers from Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim programming.)

AppSocially (Tokyo, Japan): Provides an API that lets you track activity and conversion that enables clients to take action using customer data.

BinPress (Israel): Service that increases adoption of open­-source tech in SMBs and enterprise.

BoxC (Los Angeles and Shanghai, China): BoxC makes buying directly from sellers in China easier.

Credii (Bangalore, India): Enables businesses to make smart software and tech service decisions for their company.

Dakwak (Amman, Jordan): Provides effortless website translation technology.

Dropifi (Accra, Ghana): An intelligent replacement for mail­-to’s and dumb contact forms. It makes customer support more effective, increases lead generation, and generates business insights.

Feast (San Francisco): The online cooking school for the common man. It offers simple cooking guides that teach cooking techniques and recipes. It also features an online community where you can get feedback on your cooking.

Floqq (Spain): Makes it easy for anyone anywhere to learn the skills they need.

Flyer (San Francisco): Service that enables commercial real estate agencies to create property flyers online.

Geekatoo (San Francisco): Offers local onsite tech support where customers receive competing bids from rival companies that are verified by Geekatoo.

GreenGar (Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Los Angeles): A platform that enables mobile applications and people to collaborate together.

InstaGIS (Chile): Geographic information system that allows retail stores to target their audiences.

KiteReaders (Santa Clara, Calif.): Publishing platform for publishers and authors to create, distribute, and market their children’s books on iBooks, Kindle, and Nook.

Koemei (Martigny, Switzerland and San Francisco): Algorithmic transcription of videos for search and accessibility, helping education and large enterprise get more value from video investments.

Mayvenn (Oakland, Calif.): Service that maximizes profits for hair stylists.

PinMyPet (Brazil): Software that allows pet owners to monitor and track their pets to keep them healthy and find them if lost.

POPAPP (Taipei, Taiwan): An app that lets you sketch out app prototypes quickly.

PriceBaba (Mumbai, India): A product search engine that helps you find things in your general vicinity.

Reesio (San Francisco): Service that simplifies the work process for real estate transactions.

School Admissions (Delhi, India): Service that helps parents choose the right school for their children.

Seat 14A (Delhi, India): From the company’s description: “A complete and affordable ensemble for the discerning man every week.”

SeMeAntoja (Monterrey, Mexico): Service that lets restaurants accept orders online.

Sverve (New York): Self-serve marketing platform for small businesses that connects with female social media influencers to promote products and services.

Tamatem (Amman, Jordan): A mobile gaming development and game publishing company that’s focused on creating culturally revelvant games in the Arabic market.

TRDATA (Ukraine): A self-described “Bloomberg for emerging markets” tht collects accurate real-time market information from remote places.

Tushky (Mumbai, India): Self-­serve online platform to monetize free time by offering interesting activities.

WHILL (Tokyo): Next generation of personal mobility for wheelchair users and the elderly.

France isn’t exactly known as being the friendliest country for big businesses, especially when it comes to tech companies.

Now the country is contemplating a new set of taxes on companies like Apple and Google to fund cultural projects, reports Reuters.

What’s the reason for the new “culture tax”? Apparently, France is looking for ways to fund its cultural projects despite its economy being in the dumps. The country thinks that such projects should be shielded from funding cuts across the board due to an economic downturn.

The news comes weeks after French Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg told Yahoo he didn’t want an American company to buy the “French Internet success story” that is Dailymotion (for which the French government is a partial owner of). France has also fined Google over a breach of privacy due to its maps product and also tried to force the company to pay royalties to local news publications for featuring links to their websites within Google News. These things all paint France as a place that’s anti-big business, and this new tax certainly won’t help.

The report indicates that French president Francois Hollande will make a decision on the new set of culture taxes by July.

French flag image via Shutterstock

After waiting a good year, Arrested Development fans can finally see the first glimpse of the forthcoming new season.

The first official trailer for the show’s fourth season is now available online, originally posted by The Hollywood Reporter yesterday. The show itself will debut on Netflix May 26, and it won’t force subscribers to wait a full week to watch all 15 episodes of the season. That means you can lounge in your underwear and watch every new episode as one long marathon.

Netflix is also is coming off of two successful launches of its other original series, House of Cards and Hemlock Grove. And if the Arrested Development trailer, (which is packed with crazy antics from the entire cast) is any indication, fans won’t be disappointed.

Via The Verge