VentureBeat

Profitable Paltalk acquires Vumber for phone number privacy services

Paltalk, the profitable chat startup that bought back its own stock earlier this year, acquired Vumber to offer phone number privacy services today. They didn’t disclose the acquisition price — but Vumber had 3,000 paying subscribers and a monthly rate of $9.95 per month.

Vumber gives you an extra number for your phone in case you want to keep your real one private. It’s a service you could use for dating or if you’re a salesperson… Continue Reading

Trilliant buys SkyPilot to extend its smart grid reach

Trilliant, provider of devices and networks that allow smart meters to beam energy data directly to utilities, has extended its reach with the acquisition of SkyPilot Networks, provider of mesh broadband coverage. No financial terms have been disclosed. Both companies had previously raised a substantial amount of capital.

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., SkyPilot specialized in broadband networks for surveillance data and other municipal applications. It served more than 500 customers in 50 countries. The deal… Continue Reading

Huffington Post’s Lerer teaches journalism students to think like VCs

[Editor's note: As newspapers watch their business models crumble, journalism schools are moving fast to restructure their curricula to emphasize technology and new media. Below, Columbia journalism graduate student Chikodi Chima reviews a new seminar with an entrepreneurial bent.]

Cub reporter Kenneth Lerer was sure his days as a journalist were numbered when then-Saturday Night Live star Chevy Chase stopped him in the middle of an interview to ask why he wasn’t taking any notes. Few… Continue Reading

KickApps raises another $14M to build social networks

KickApps, a startup that enables customers to build their own social networks, has raised $14 million in a third round of funding.

As every company in the world tries to add “social” features to their web site, the number of “white label” social network startups has exploded. In April, Ning, perhaps the best-known player in this field, raised another $60 million at a $500 million valuation. So for KickApps, the challenge is two-fold: To stand out… Continue Reading

Controversial ad company Jellycloud shuts down

The deteriorating economy, and cloudy horizon for the advertising industry, has claimed one more victim: Jellycloud, the ad company I wrote last month that was the latest incarnation of team that ran the controversial Gator and Claria.

Last weekend, it threw in the towel, sent home its 36 employees, and assigned assets to a liquidator that will sell them off to the highest bidder. The company had raised $5.75M just a few months ago, and will… Continue Reading

Roundup: IT budgets dying on the vine, Chrysler’s electric cars, a cure for the bees, and more

Datamonitor points to IT budget freeze — Major sector analyst Datamonitor says that half of IT organizations around the globe will cap spending levels next year.

Chrysler to roll out electric cars — Car maker Chrysler will unveil a line of electric cars to its dealers next week, according to the Wall Street Journal. The large car company has not previously shown off any electric vehicles.

Bee well — Remember when some researchers were blaming mobile phone signals for colony… Continue Reading

The ad network that keeps changing its stripes: Gator, Claria, and now JellyCloud?

Can a tiger change its stripes? JellyCloud, an ad network company with a controversial past, hopes so.

About eight years ago, it operated under a different name: Gator. The Silicon Valley company attracted lots of users with a useful online vault to save all their personal password/login data in a single place. Its logo was a cute little gator head.

Problem was, it extracted a lot of personal information about you and observed your websurfing habits in… Continue Reading

MC Hammer offers entrepreneurial advice to Intel Capital’s CEOs

It was Hammer Time tonight at the Intel Capital dinner.

With some 600 start-up chief executives in the audience, entertainer MC Hammer offered ministerial advice (embrace technology, don’t forget community) for tech entrepreneurs from a “content guy’s” perspective. With references to “tweets” and rubbing shoulders with the tech elite at the D6 conference, the middle-aged rap artist showed he knew his technology.

He started by showcasing musicians from his own music label (including his talented daughter) and… Continue Reading

Xiaonei, the Facebook of China, raises $430M — better funded than Facebook

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Xiaonei, the company that likes to call itself the “Facebook of China” has raised a whopping $430 million from financial backers, VentureBeat has learned from the company’s investors.

The backing gives it a larger financial warchest than Facebook itself, and sets the scene for a showdown with the American company. Facebook has just started to get serious about entering the huge, fast-growing Chinese market.

The backing of Xiaonei could be a statement that the company… Continue Reading

Associated Content’s bold media strategy — relying on Google

Associated Content, a company that delivers all kinds of information online, from movie reviews to tutorials about how to fix a kitchen sink disposal, has raised a $10 million in a second round of funding.

Associated Content is notable because its branding is all but unknown, but it is drawing five million unique users and 12 million page views monthly — almost entirely by tinkering with its content so that it appears high in search engine… Continue Reading

Citysearch snaps up Insider Pages in local search race

Citysearch, the division of IAC focuses on local reviews of restaurants and other services, has acquired the struggling local review start-up, Insider Pages.

The purchase (amount undisclosed) comes at a time of increasing competition in the race to deliver a compelling local search services. Citysearch’s parent, IAC, has already bolstered its local search offerings, namely with Ask City, a property that packages everything from local search to local maps, reviews, and ticket services.

However, more entrants have… Continue Reading