Roundup: Amazon’s ‘ham-fisted’ error, Facebook’s baseball surge and more
Here’s the latest action:
Gay books disappear from Amazon’s sales rankings — What caused the incident now known as “amazonfail”? The online retailer first blamed a glitch, and is now saying a “ham-fisted” cataloging error is at fault. Meanwhile, a hacker claims to be responsible.
With the start… Continue Reading
Venture fundraising: Going, going, gone?
Venture capital funds raised only $3.4 billion in the last three months of 2008, according to new data from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. Unsurprisingly, this is a big drop (about 70.9 percent) from the same period in 2007, when venture firms… Continue Reading
BitTorrent loses its $17M funding?
The news continues to be bad for file-sharing startup BitTorrent, according to a report at TechCrunch, which claims the San Francisco company’s recent $17 million venture round has been substantially reduced.
In a letter reportedly sent to shareholders, BitTorrent chief executive Eric Klinker writes that the… Continue Reading
Accel closes $60M India fund
Silicon Valley venture firm Accel has successfully established a beachhead in India, completing an expected $60 million close for a fund called Accel India that will invest in seed and early-stage startups in the country.
The effort is most notable because many Silicon Valley firms stick… Continue Reading
Playfish raises $17 million for Facebook games
Playfish, a social gaming company that has four of the top ten games on Facebook, has raised $17 million in funding.
The deal shows that the intersection of games and social networking remains a hot sector in spite of the weakening economy.
Playfish came out of nowhere… Continue Reading
Accel and KKR raise $600 million private equity fund
Accel-KKR has raised a third private equity fund of $600 million to invest in technology busineses.
The Accel-KKR Capital Partners III fund is a growth-oriented, middle-market tech fund. The fund was initially targeted at just $450 million and was significantly oversubscribed. Now two partners have more… Continue Reading
Roundup: MyHeritage raises funding, news feed psychology, Bell drops “basic research,” and more
Here’s the latest action:
Genealogy site MyHeritage raises $15 million — The Israel-based company has grown from 17 million to 25 million registered users over the past year. Investors include Index Ventures and Accel.
High-imaging satellite GeoEye-1 launches — It claims to take the highest-resolution images of any commercially-available… Continue Reading
Solarflare raises $26 million for networking chips
You can blame the popularity of YouTube for the success of Solarflare Communications. Because demand for internet video keeps on growing, the need for infrastructure to handle the growth is also on the rise.
Solarflare Communications has raised $26 million in venture capital for its high-speed… Continue Reading
WeeWorld’s WeeMee’s gather momentum
The Nintendo Wii may be getting a lot of attention. But the have you heard of WeeWorld and its WeeMee’s? They’re the kind of things that make you smile. Especially for teens and young adults.
A WeeMee is a virtual avatar that you can use as… Continue Reading
Mind Candy joins the online virtual pets fray
Virtual pets are a tried and true market for those targeting young kids. Mind Candy is joining the fray against larger rivals with a kids offering of its own this week: Moshi Monsters.
That’s a big right turn for London-based Mind Candy, which started out in… Continue Reading
Trulia booms amid a housing bust. Launches Google Street View integration
The real estate market is in serious turmoil and has likely thrown the entire economy into a recession, so you’d think a real estate search startup might not be a hot item. But you’d be wrong.
One such real estate search startup, Trulia, is not only… Continue Reading
Snap Summit 2.0 summary: It’s all about Facebook
updated
The Snap Summit 2.0 conference yesterday in San Francisco was supposed to be about the new wave of social applications, but it turned into a Facebook conference.
Here’s why: The number of Facebook applications and downloads just keeps growing — at a faster rate than other… Continue Reading
Alfresco gets $9M for Web 2.0 content management
Alfresco Software is the latest player hoping to kill high-priced software for large companies.
It’s one of a number of vendors of “content management” software. But it’s open source, and dirt cheap relative to others in the so-called enterprise content management (ECM) sector: Filenet (IBM), Interwoven,… Continue Reading
Kleiner steals Chi-Hua Chien, Web 2.0 guru, from Accel
For quite some time, renowned venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has been looking for a partner who can focus on investing in web startups, we’ve been hearing.
Now they’ve finally found somebody. Chi-Hua Chien, an associate at Accel Partners who has spearheaded a number… Continue Reading
Accel hires Richard Wong, mobile software expert
Silicon Valley venture firm Accel Partners has hired mobile software expert Richard Wong as a partner, the latest sign of where investors think the action will be.
Wong spent six years at OpenWave, which developed early mobile browsers (WAP), and where Wong worked with mobile companies… Continue Reading
Wetpaint raises $9.5M for consumer wikis, meanwhile Jot is absent
Wetpaint, the Seattle start-up that lets people build Wikis — or sites where multiple people can edit the same pages — has raised $9.5 million to grab more market share.
The move comes after Google bought popular Wiki site, Jotspot, last year and closed that company… Continue Reading
File sharing company BitTorrent raises $20M
Plenty of rumors have circulated about BitTorrent, the popular San Francisco file-sharing company, speculating on its latest funding round and the fate of its brilliant chief executive.
Here’s word from the horse’s mouth: BitTorrent has raised $20 million in its second round of capital, led by… Continue Reading
BitTorrent, file sharing co., about to raise more cash
See our story here.
BitTorrent trys to avoid squeeze — strikes deals, raises more cash?
San Francisco’s BitTorrent used to enjoy all the buzz surrounding video downloading. Its peer-to-peer file sharing technology allowed for cheap, easy distribution at a time when video streaming technologies were nascent. That’s changed, despite its announcement today of deals struck with major studios.
Today, it will… Continue Reading
Informatica buys unstructured data co., Itemfield, for $55M
Informatica, a public Redwood City company that provides data integration software, said it will acquire San Mateo’s Itemfield, a company that allows access to “unstructured and semi-structured data” for $55 million.
The deal provides a return to investors Accel Partners, Evergreen Partners, Foundation Capital, Gemini Israel… Continue Reading