Babble raises $1.3M for online parenting advice
Babble Media , an online magazine and social network for hip, stylish parents, has added $1.25 million to a first round of funding , bringing its total to $3.25 million. The New York based company, a spin-off from digital lifestyle magazine Nerve, says it will use the money to build its community tools.
Aiming to appeal to what it calls "a new generation of parent," the site runs articles that you wouldn’t see on other parenting… Continue Reading
United Sample brings in $3M to gather market survey samples
United Sample, a firm that offers a web-based service for creating representative sample groups for market research companies, just bagged $3 million in a second round of funding for product and sales development. Based in Encino, Calif., the company recruits millions of panelists who can be grouped very broadly or specifically for demographic and geographic tests, allowing clients to customize their own samples based on what they hope to find out. The service also organizes… Continue Reading
WideOrbit snags $9.5 million for advertising analytics
WideOrbit, developer of software that manages advertising sales, traffic and billing functions, nabbed $9.5 million in the first tranche of a fourth round of funding that the company hopes will close at $10.3 million. The round was led by Mayfield Ventures and included existing backers Khosla Ventures, Greycroft partners and Hearst Ventures.
The San Francisco-based startup has raised $30 million to date, reports StartupWire. Its last round of funding, which brought in $14.5 million, was in… Continue Reading
Sportgenic raises $10M for sports ad network
Sportgenic, a company that claims to provide high-value market reach to sports advertisers and marketers, has raised $10 million in a second round of funding.
The company targets specific groups of sports enthusiasts based on their predilections, from country club members to outdoorsmen and team athletes. It claims to have 350 publisher sites that it places ads on.
Adams Street Partners led the funding round, with participation from previous investors Alsop Louie Partners, KPG Ventures and Greycroft… Continue Reading
Marketbright raises funding for automated marketing
Marketbright, which provides automated marketing tools on a subscription basis, has raised a first venture round of undisclosed size from Greycroft Partners and Knight’s Bridge Capital Partners.
The San Bruno, Calif. company says its products help customers with campaign execution, lead scoring and more, and that they can be integrated with customer relationship management (CRM) software. Marketbright’s customers include Serena Software, VMware and Avid.
Stealthy web publishing platform Crowd Fusion raises $3M from Velocity, Greycroft, Andreessen
How to publish on the web? Crowd Fusion, currently in stealth, is promising some fancy-sounding features like “Innovative content management, database management & performance evaluation/optimization tools” that has this web publisher interested in learning more.
The big blogging platforms — Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress — offer easy ways for anyone to create and publish their own blog. But Wordpress and TypePad also offer more complex versions to help larger publishers manage lots of content coming from many… Continue Reading
Bertelsmann invests in ImageSpan’s technology for automating royalty payments
ImageSpan hopes to make a mint by counting up the pennies that artists and media companies are owed every time someone downloads a song or plays a video over the internet.
One of the nightmares of the digital age is how to track what an artist is owed by all of the people who use that artist’s work online. Currently, that problem of tracking usage and royalties is solved using an army of attorneys. It often… Continue Reading
Buzzd gets funding for location-based mobile services
Buzzd, a location-based mobile startup, has raised a first round of funding from Greycroft Partners and Monitor Ventures. The company isn’t disclosing the size of the round.
Buzzd and competing companies such as Loopt and Google’s Dodgeball allow mobile users to access information and contact friends based on their location. With Buzzd, you send out your address or zip code via SMS message, and the New York startup’s service connects you to listings for nearby events,… 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
HuffingtonPost, politics blog site, raises $5M more to target elections
HuffingtonPost, the politics site that doesn’t pay its writers a dime, has raised another $5 million in financing to ready itself for the elections, which could be a defining juncture for the site.
The round included all previous investors: Softbank Capital, Greycroft Partners, CEO and co-founder Ken Lerer and Bob Pittman’s Pilot Group, according to PaidContent. USA Today published a profile of the site’s other co-founder, Arianna Huffington, and mentioned the financing. The company has now… Continue Reading
Doppelganger launches its musical virtual world, vSide
Doppelganger, a virtual world site, has just expanded its offering aimed at teenagers and young adults– with an emphasis on music, dance, and chilling out at bars.
The new site, called vSide, finds itself competing against a number of other virtual worlds, from Second Life, IMVU and Habbo Hotel. While it will have to fight for an audience, the market is hot for these companies if they are successful. Disney recently acquired another site, Club Penguin,… Continue Reading
Getty Images extends empire into music, buys Pump for $42M
Getty Images has acquired Pump Audio, of company that has built up a catalog of 100,000 songs from musicians not signed with traditional labels, for $42 million, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Getty, of Seattle, Wa., says it is the largest provider of still and moving images. Earlier this year, it bought MediaVast for $200 million, which added more images to Getty’s huge archive. Its acquisition of Pump, based in New York’s Hudson Valley, extends… Continue Reading
ImageSpan, a registry for digital images, raises undisclosed amount
ImageSpan, a Sausalito, Calif., company that lets people license photos and other images from the people who produce them, has raised an undisclosed first round of funding from investors.
The round was led by Alan Patricof and his new venture fund, Greycroft Partners, along with Ron Conway’s Angel Investors LP and Village Ventures, the company said.
The company said it wants to move into other media areas, such as music, digital video and film.
There are several companies… Continue Reading
Roundup: Doppelganger targets SecondLife, Draper bankrolls sex toys & more
The latest in Silicon Valley:
Doppelganger raise $5M more for virtual world focused on teens — Doppelganger is the San Francisco start-up taking aim at the teen, or MTV audience (see our earlier coverage). It launched last year with a virtual club featuring the band the Pussycat Dolls, and is signing deals with other bands. Teens can design their avatars, chat with other sexy avatars, including of the band members themselves, and dance. Chief executive Andrew Littlefield… 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