YuMe takes $2.9M for broadband video ads
YuMe, an advertising network specializing in broadband video, has brought in $2.9 million of a $4.5 million round of equity. In the past, it raised about $16 million in capital from Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures and Khosla Ventures, reports VentureWire. It is very similar to video ad network Blinkx.
Eucalyptus Systems raises $5.5M for a hybrid approach to cloud computing
Eucalyptus Systems, which supports an open source platform for companies that want the benefits of cloud computing on their own infrastructure, has raised $5.5 million in a first round of funding led by Benchmark Capital.
Eucalyptus came from research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where the company’s chief technology officer Rich Wolski was a computer scientist. Companies can use Eucalyptus to create a private cloud on their infrastructure, an internal environment for cloud applications… Continue Reading
Angie’s List swells with $7M for consumer reviews
Angie’s List, the site that lets users rate and review local service providers from doctors to dog walkers, just nabbed $6 million in subordinated debt financing and $1 million in equity. The investment comes less than a month after it took $18 million in venture debt, and less than a year since its $35 million round from Battery Ventures in April. The Indianapolis-based company, fairly unique in its ability to combine local search and user-generated… Continue Reading
AppFolio takes $22M for property management software
AppFolio makes software for property managers and the real estate business, designed to track details like applications, vacancies, work orders and accounting.
The Santa Barbara, Calif.-based company is based on a software-as-a-service model to reduce the need for special training, and can also be used in the field on mobile devices.
BV Capital led the $22 million round, according to socalTECH. Other investors included Cisco and the Investment Group of Santa Barbara. It was the year-old company’s… Continue Reading
Peanut Labs, social network turned market research company, raises round
Peanut Labs is a great example of how an inexperienced yet scrappy team can scramble toward a new strategy to save themselves. The company, formerly called Xuqa, has just raised a $3.2 million round of capital to bolster it in its new mission.
Xuqa, you’ll recall, was a fast-growing social network when it started in 2005. It got big in Turkey and Iran, but rivals like MySpace and Facebook quickly took over the US and started… Continue Reading
Vuze takes $20M for IPTV
Vuze, an high-definition internet protocol television service based out of Palo Alto, Calif., has picked up $20 million in a third round of funding.
The company, which was previously known as Azureus, says its downloadable client has been installed 15 million times. However, it did not disclose how many active users it has.
Vuze isn’t the only company to receive a large amount of funding for IPTV recently. Two weeks ago, VentureBeat reported that Avail Media had… Continue Reading
YuMe, Blinkx latest video ad companies to make splash
With all the video content online, the video advertising market is booming. Investors are still placing bets on new companies, and existing companies are getting more aggressive with ad techniques.
The latest company to raise money is YuMe, a Silicon Valley company offering a video-centric ad network. It has just raised $9 million more from prominent firms DAG Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Accel Partners, and BV Capital.
A second company, Blinkx, is already public, but its latest video… Continue Reading
Fotolog acquired by Hi-Media for $90 million
Fotolog, a popular photo-sharing service, has been bought by France’s Hi-Media for $90 million, GigaOm reports.
New York-based Fotolog is a photo blog that encourages users to post daily photos of themselves; a user’s profile page is centered around a main picture with a date underneath and a place for friends to leave comments. It wants to be more than simply an online collection of photos, for example a Flickr, where users are encouraged to upload… Continue Reading
Xuqa becomes Peanut Labs, targeting online market research
Xuqa began as a social network two years ago and distinguished itself by finding clever ways to make money — most notably getting paid by market researchers to administer surveys to its users. While the site is profitable, the company decided five months ago to change direction: Build out its survey technology to integrate with any social network or online community site.
The new focus fits in with a broader trend: Companies trying to gather more… Continue Reading
NCircle, a corporate network security company, buys Cambia, and raises $5M
NCircle, a San Francisco network security appliance company, has acquired Cambia Security, of Alpharetta, Ga, a provider of compliance management equipment.
See announcement here.
NCircle has also raised $5 million more in capital, according to VentureWire:
The all-stock transaction will give shareholders of Cambia a 15% stake in nCircle, making JK&B Capital, Cambia’s largest shareholder, one of nCircle’s four largest shareholders, according to Abe Kleinfeld, president and chief executive of nCircle, who declined to provide the value of… Continue Reading
YuMe uses humans and machines for video ads
YuMe Networks is new start-up using a machine and human approach to help advertisers decide when to run ads by videos.
YuMe reminds us of Yahoo’s old approach to search engine technology: Helping along machines with a little bit of human intelligence. Let’s face it, machines still aren’t good enough to classify video accurately enough for cautious advertisers. No one wants to repeat the blunders committed by Google a few years back, when its machines inserted ads… Continue Reading
Azureus soaks up $12M and launches Zudeo, but not simple
Azureus, a Palo Alto company that delivers a popular application to distribute video files, launched a new service named Zudeo, which it apparently hopes will become the next YouTube for high-quality video.
It has raised $12 million in a second round of capital, led by Redpoint Ventures, which also included Greycroft Partners and previous investors Jarl Mohn, chairman of CNET Networks, BV Capital, Stanford University, UC Berkeley and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.
At Zudeo, users can… Continue Reading