VoxPop.TV unites forces of casual gaming, pop culture trivia
VoxPop.TV, a site where users can build their own games, make money on them through advertising or sponsorship, and syndicate them to other sites, has brought in $1.5 million in a second round of funding. Based in San Francisco, the platform is tailored to quiz, trivia and prediction games based on happenings in pop culture. It will use the new money to continue developing its offerings and to build up its audience.
When you first go… Continue Reading
StockTwits raises $800K more for Twitter stockpicking
StockTwits, a startup that helps you see people’s stock-related comments on microblogging service Twitter, has raised a first round of venture funding. It’s a relatively small round — $800,000, the same size as the company’s angel funding, according to MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka — but it’s still respectable for a service that might initially seem rather limited.
The concept behind StockTwits is simple — basically, if you tweet using a “$” symbol to indicate a stock, that… Continue Reading
Socialcast raises $1M to help your company communicate
Socialcast, a startup that provides tools for communication within a company, has raised $1 million in funding from True Ventures.
In the announcement, True Ventures’ co-founder Phil Black cites Socialcast’s “impressive customer deployments” and its ability to exploit “a rapidly growing niche in the corporate market: social media for the enterprise.” (Socialcast says it isn’t releasing any user numbers) There seemed to be a flood of “build a social network” startups a couple years back, many… Continue Reading
Backtype launches comment-tracking tools, gets seeded
Backtype, a company that lets users aggregate and search comments across most blogging platforms and social sites, is rolling out a new feature today called Backtype Connect. Now, instead of searching for comments by keyword, users can enter the URL of a particular blog post or article to view comments written in response across the web. This includes tweets referring to the URL (even if it has been abbreviated). The Toronto, Canada-based company also brought… Continue Reading
SendMe nabs another $12 million for mobile entertainment content
SendMe, the San Francisco company that sells direct-to-mobile entertainment content through several linked web sites, just landed $12 million in a fourth round of financing to fuel its acquisition strategy. Its web sites, SendMeMobile.com, SoLow.com and mBuzzy.com, each offer a different type of content and have gained substantial traction in their own right.
Users can find and download games, ringtones and mobile wallpapers on these sites, and participate in sweepstakes for a subscription fee of $10… Continue Reading
TextDigger mines $4.3M for semantic search tools
TextDigger, a San Jose, Calif. firm specializing in semantic search and text advertising, announced that it brought in $4.3 million in first-round funding from True Ventures, Intel Capital, CBS Interactive and a handful of angel investors. The money will be used to expand its sales and marketing presence.
The company claims its technology enhances web site findability through major search engines like Google by disambiguating the various meanings of words and by matching queries to relevant… Continue Reading
Spectrum Bridge lands $8.1 for airwave marketplace
Spectrum Bridge, a company that lists licensed airwaves for sale, has raised $8.1 million in second-round funding from Espirito Santo Ventures, True Ventures, Telecommunications Development Fund, Milicom Venture Partners and its own founders.
Based in Lake Mary, Fla., the company launched its web site SpecEx.com in September, and already has 1,000 posted listings for licensed segments of the radio spectrum. About 100 buyers and sellers are registered on the site.
Spectrum Bridge previously raised $2 million in… Continue Reading
Spectrum Bridge closes $7.4M for radio spectrum auctions
Radio spectrum marketplace Spectrum Bridge just brought in a $7.38 million tranche of an anticipated $8.15 million second-round of financing. Espirito Santo Ventures, Milcom Technologies, Telecommunications Development Fund and True Ventures contributed. The Lake Mary, Fla.-based company aims to give licensed spectrum holders an opportunity to monetize unused segments by auctioning them off to other companies, educational institutions, and government agencies looking for a deal on quality, licensed airwaves.
Fitbit gains $2M to help you lose weight
Fitbit, the maker of a small device that tracks how many calories you’ve burned, has raised $2 million in a first round of funding. The San Francisco company was a hit among judges when it launched at the TechCrunch50 conference, and it plans to start selling its devices in early 2009.
There are other portable weight loss devices out there — for example, Weight Watchers offers its own mobile application. What’s exciting about Fitbit, however, is… Continue Reading
Appssavvy snags $3.1M to connect advertisers, app developers
Even though social networking companies serve tens of millions of users, there’s still bizarrely little advertising on the most popular sites. Many big agencies and brands have experimented, but they’re still looking for better ways to target the users they want.
The latest company hoping to serve these advertisers is Appssavvy, a startup that sells direct advertising space on social media applications like Flixster, MesmoTV, and Playfish — most of which have a presence on major… Continue Reading
Tech news network Giga Omni Media grabs another $4.5M
Giga Omni Media, the company that owns news blog GigaOM and its related sites, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in additional funding.
The last few months have been busy for Om Malik’s fledgling media empire. He acquired mobile blog jkOnTheRun in July, followed by TheAppleBlog just a few weeks ago. He also promoted chief operating officer Paul Walborsky to chief executive, and announced some new syndication deals, including one with The New York… Continue Reading
Space Pencil raises $800,000 for web analytics
Web analytics startup Space Pencil has raised $800,000 in a first round of funding, according to Private Equity Hub, citing a regulatory filing. Funding for the Emeryville, Calif.-based company comes from True Ventures and SoftTech VC.
RescueTime actually rescues time — nine percent of it for productivity
Anyone who sits in front of a computer every day — all day — realizes how many ways there are to get distracted. There are games, instant messaging software, music — hell, I even have fun using the calendar application when I’m procrastinating from doing work. Then there’s the Internet. If it wasn’t invented as a time suck, it has grown into just that. RescueTime is a startup that aims to evaluate and help you… Continue Reading
Kurtosys raising round for financial compliance software
Kurtosys Systems is raising a new round of venture funding for its financial compliance software business.
The London company was founded in 2002 with the aim of creating reporting and information management software for financial services companies. It creates software that enables a company to comply with financial reporting laws. The company has offices in London and New York. The company’s offerings include software for reporting portfolio results to investors such as private banks and wealth… Continue Reading
Semantic search startup TextDigger unearths a business model, and some venture funding
TextDigger, a semantic search startup that launched early last year at DEMO, has been much quieter in the interim than other companies in the space like Hakia, Powerset and Radar Networks / Twine. But now the company has come back to light, at least for us — a filing document reveals that the company has finally landed venture funding, raising $3.8 million so far.
A year or two ago, it wasn’t uncommon to hear the term… Continue Reading
MindBites: Where real people teach real things, like knife-throwing
MindBites is an online video site in which regular people share the knowledge they have in a particular field. For a small fee a user can then download or stream a video and learning something new.
I sat down and spoke with MindBites chief executive Jason Reneau at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, TX, where his company is based. Reneau was excited about the place video sharing sites such as YouTube have taken… Continue Reading
SendMe Mobile grabs $15 million for mobile media
SendMe Mobile, a provider of direct-to-consumer mobile entertainment has raised more funding to extend its market share for its core brands and to expand upon them.
The company not only operates SendMeMobile.com, but also in the past year launched SoLow.com, a mobile sweepstakes destination, and purchased mBuzzy.com, a mobile community site. This trifecta of sites helped bring in partners such as AEG Live, Interscope Records, MobiTV, and Universal Music Group, all of which want to extend… Continue Reading
BrightRoll takes online video advertising high-definition
BrightRoll, a company that provides high volume, targeted and branded video advertising has created the first high-definition ad network. Utilizing the widespread availability of broadband connections and HD-compatible LCD monitors on computers, the company expect this to be a quickly growing market. However, with major online video players such as YouTube shying away from HD-quality video, is the Internet ready for HD-quality advertisements?
BrightRoll chief executive Tod Sacerdoti believes so, and made it clear when he… Continue Reading
Spurning purchase offers, Automattic raises round and partners with NYT
Automattic, the company that owns the popular Wordpress blogging software platform, has raised $29.5 million from existing investors and a new partner, the New York Times. Some companies had offered to buy it, founder Matt Mullenweg writes.
The San Francisco company started out as an open source code project at WordPress.org, which provided software that anyone could download and then host on their own server (what VentureBeat currently uses). More recently, it also began offering free… Continue Reading
GigaOm, the technology blog network, raises more funding
GigaOm, a popular Silicon Valley technology blog network, has raised another round of funding from True Ventures, with angel investors participating.
Founder Om Malik says the money will be used to build out the editorial operation as well as hosting more events. For example, GigaOm blog NewTeeVee, which covers the online video market, will do a repeat next year of the industry conference it hosted yesterday.
The angel investors include Rakesh Mathur, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman,… Continue Reading