Extole turns regular customers into brand ambassadors, raises $10M
Nearly every company has a social presence these days, but personal recommendations are often a more powerful way to boost sales. If you’ve never heard about a company before, but your friend has, you’ll likely trust her opinion over that of a complete stranger. But keeping track of how much customer referrals really help your business can be hard, so Extole has created a way to track word-of-mouth marketing.
The service seeks to find and … Continue Reading
Bionic Panda raises seed funding for Android mobile games
Bionic Panda Games has raised seed financing to develop mobile games for Google’s Android operating system, the company announced today. Not surprisingly, Google Ventures is one of the backers.
San Francisco-based Bionic Panda got its start in 2010 and has so far had one hit with Aqua Pets (pictured above), which has been downloaded more than 3 million times and is a top-100 grossing application on the Android Market.
That strong performance allowed it to … Continue Reading
Google Ventures funds RelayRides, again
Car sharing startup RelayRides has raised $3.6 million in a round of funding only five months after its last, according to a form D filed with the SEC. Involved in the round are Google Ventures, August Capital.
RelayRides takes advantage of the wasted hours in the day when your car isn’t being driven. With RelayRides, car owners can make their car available for short-term rental, and approve the people who make rental requests. RelayRides takes … Continue Reading
Reflections on GamesBeat 2011 and the road ahead in mobile games
Our well-attended GamesBeat 2011 conference took place this week, and here’s what you missed.
As I noted in a preview story on mobile games, the conference was all about the wide-open battle for control of the emerging mobile gaming market. The highlights below follow the chronological appearance of the speakers. It’s a long story, but it will tell you what the conference was like in case you missed it.
Fireside chat with Brian Farrell
Brian … Continue Reading
Badgeville raises $12M to lead the way in gamification
Gamification startup Badgeville has raised $12 million in a second round of funding to add game-like features to non-game applications.
Kris Duggan, chief executive of Menlo Park, Calif.-based Badgeville, said that the funding will help the company accelerate its growth and help it leave the other dozen or so gamification startups behind.
With its Dynamic Game Engine and Widget Studio, Badgeville makes it easy for companies to increase customer loyalty and engagement in a way … Continue Reading
17 reasons to attend GamesBeat 2011
We’ve been writing a lot of posts about our speakers at GamesBeat 2011. But here’s a summary of why we think this will be the must-attend game conference for you.
We’re gathering the industry’s top CEOs, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, journalists, marketers, developers and other key executives for a two-day gathering at the elegant Palace Hotel in San Francisco, from July 12 to July 13. The event is co-located with our MobileBeat conference this year … Continue Reading
Meet our all-star panel of judges for our game start-up contest, Who’s Got Game?
VentureBeat is delighted to announce our all-star panel of judges for our third-annual Who’s Got Game? contest. This contest selects the best game start-up after a grueling on-stage bake-off.
This year’s contest, to be held during the GamesBeat 2011 conference in San Francisco at the Palace Hotel on July 12-13, will be moderated by Sana Choudary, chief executive of the game accelerator YetiZen. A new start-up itself, YetiZen take start-ups under its wing and helps … Continue Reading
Blue Jeans launches “any(ware) video conferencing”
Blue Jeans Network came out of stealth mode Wednesday, making the cloud-based, multi-party video conferencing service commercially available. Dubbed “any(ware) video conferencing,” Blue Jeans Network makes video conferencing accessible to pretty much everyone with practically any video-enabled device.
“What was once an elite boardroom technology has moved to the cloud,” said Krish Ramakrishnan, co-founder and CEO of Blue Jeans Network in a press release. Alagu Periyannan, another co-founder is the company’s Chief Technical Officer.
Based … Continue Reading
Check out the latest speakers for GamesBeat 2011
Today we’re revealing the third set of speakers for our third annual GamesBeat 2011 conference. Our slate of speakers will include Bing Gordon, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and the former chief creative officer at Electronic Arts; Daniel Terry, chief executive and co-founder of mobile game maker Pocket Gems; and Tim Chang, partner at Norwest Venture Partners.
This GamesBeat 2011 conference takes place July 12-13 at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
We’re … Continue Reading
