Open source database company 10gen raises $3.4M
10gen, a New York database company with some well-known customers and investors, has raised $3.4 million in a second round of funding.
The New York company developed MongoDB, an open source database for web applications that’s being used by open source repository SourceForge, commenting startup Disqus, and New York tech news site Business Insider. Companies can run MongoDB on their own servers or using online infrastructure offered by cloud computing providers.
The new round was led by… Continue Reading
Ball in Foursquare’s court with $1.35 million round
Location-based social network Foursquare, which has attracted buzz for making nightlife like a game, raised $1.35 million from Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures.
Co-founder Dennis Crowley, who was also behind a similar service called Dodgeball that Google acquired, said there were other angel investors he would reveal next week. This is Foursquare’s first round.
In Foursquare, you “check-in” to places like restaurants and bars through the startup’s iPhone or Android apps. Check-in enough times at… Continue Reading
Boxee raises $6M more to bring web content to your living room
Boxee, a company that has won ardent fans of its software for viewing online video and web content on your TV, has raised $6 million in a second round of funding.
The New York startup raised $4 million at the end of 2008, so it seems awfully soon to be bringing on more cash. Founder and chief executive Avner Ronen says raising a new round seemed like a good way to help Boxee build on its… Continue Reading
Zemanta challenges link-preview startups with Zemanta Balloons
Bloggers and other online publishers have a few options if they want to enhance their sites with previews of the sites and content they link to — there’s Snap, which has been around for a while, plus a newer startup called Apture. Now semantic publishing Zemanta has entered the competition with a product called Zemanta Balloons.
These tools are useful for publishers because they allow them to enrich the reading experience by linking to other content… Continue Reading
Heyzap raises seed round for casual game widgets
Showing there is still investor interest in games, startup Heyzap is announcing today it has raised a round of in seed funding from Union Square Ventures. The amount was $500,000 to $1 million.
Heyzap creates widgets that allow any web site operators to embed casual games on their sites. The San Francisco company launched the widgets in January and the widgets are now embedded on more than 20,000 sites. There are more than 12,000 free Flash… Continue Reading
Simulmedia launches today to bolster TV show promotions
Television channels spend a staggering $10 billion every year on commercial spots promoting their own shows. Riding this wave, Simulmedia launched today to increase the relevance of these ads and ultimately boost program ratings by better engaging viewers. The brainchild of Dave Morgan — founder of behavioral ad networks Tacoda and Real Media — the New York-based company just pulled in $4 million in first-round funding to ramp up operations.
Simulmedia will collect large stores of… Continue Reading
Return Path seals $6M for email management
Return Path, a company that manages marketing emails, announced that it brought in $6 million in a fifth round of financing, reports peHUB. Its investors include Union Square Ventures, Mobius Venture Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures and Western Technology Investments.
Based in New York, the company offers an array of services, including whitelisting of secure or trusted email transfers (much like Goodmail’s blue-ribbon service ). Actually, Return Path seems to be profiting from a candle burning at… Continue Reading
Outside.in gets fresh funding for local news
Local news and discussion site Outside.in has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from existing investors. Let’s hope the New York startup has enough money now to keep the going during a tough time for many media and news organizations.
Local search sites like Judy’s Book have failed, but it looks like Outside.in co-founder John Geraci may have been right when he told us the competition just launched too early; Outside.in says traffic grew 400… Continue Reading
Microblogging service Tumblr raises $4.5M more
Tumblr, a service that lets users publish short, simple blog posts, has raised $4.5 million in a second round of funding.
That’s not a huge amount of money, but as All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka notes, it’s still impressive since the New York company is “exactly the kind of startup that’s supposed to be gasping for air in today’s dismal economy.” Namely, it’s a web company without a broad audience or a clear business model. Tumblr… Continue Reading
AdaptiveBlue takes a fresh tack with Glue, a semantic social network
AdaptiveBlue’s latest version of its browser plug-in is a complete revamp of its BlueOrganizer product. Now called Glue, it aims to synthesize semantic technology that connects information about books, music, movies and similar subjects with the browsing habits and commentary of your friends.
Take a book listing on Amazon.com, for example. AdaptiveBlue’s plug-in directly injects links and information into the web pages you’re browsing without having to move to another site. So you’ll be able to… Continue Reading
AdaptiveBlue brings in $4.5M for browsing plugins
AdaptiveBlue, developer of the Firefox add-on BlueOrganizer, announced that it raised $4.5 million in second-round financing to continue developing semantic-based browsing tools. Union Square Ventures and Biltmore Ventures contributed to the round.
The BlueOrganizer links users to content based on their previous web searches and browsing habits. The Livingston, N.J. company’s secondary product, SmartLinks, is a plugin that adds shortcuts and context to blogs and social network sites.
Union Square’s blogging VC backs blogging tool Zemanta
Updated
Zemanta says it can make the arduous job of blogging a little easier by suggesting relevant content worth linking to or adding to your posts. It looks like well-known blogger and venture capitalist Fred Wilson has been making good use of the tool — Wilson’s firm Union Square Ventures just announced it’s investing an undisclosed seed round in the startup. [Update: Zemanta now says the financing was for nearly $750,000.]
Wilson describes Zemanta as “AdWords for… Continue Reading
Disqus version 2 addresses concerns and improves capabilities
You’ve probably noticed that the comments on this site aren’t your typical WordPress-run blog default comments. Instead, they’re run by a third party startup called Disqus. We use this because not only does it offer nice avatars and threaded comments, but also because Disqus is expanding conversations beyond a simple stand-alone comment on one site into truer interaction throughout the web. A new version launching today is a continuation of that trend.
Disqus version 2 eliminates… Continue Reading
Meetup.com raises undisclosed sum from Union Square Ventures
Meetup.com, a site that enables people to organize get-togethers around their common interests, has raised an undisclosed sum from Union Square Ventures.
Meetup, which was founded in 2002, has been used to organize political advocacy groups, book clubs, sports teams, urban tech meetups and much more. The company previously raised $2 million from eBay, Draper Fisher Jurveston, Omidyar Network, Allen & Company and Esther Dyson.
10gen gets $1.5M from Union Square for its open source cloud
Another player has entered the battle to dominate the Internet infrastructure known as the cloud: An open-source cloud company called 10gen just raised $1.5 million from Union Square Ventures.
The New York startup’s platform sounds similar to Google App Engine — namely, it’s an environment to build, host and scale web applications in the cloud. It’s a big day for 10gen; not only did the company announce its funding, it also released its software development… Continue Reading
Twitter finally gets its new round of funding; “very strong” valuation
It’s been in the works for several months, but Twitter has finally announced its new round of funding.
The new round was led by Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital and Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions (and also chief executive of Amazon). Existing partners Union Square Ventures and Digital Garage participated as well.
Sabet has also accepted a seat on Twitter’s board of directors.
In a post on the matter, co-founder Biz Stone writes:
Twitter will become a sustainable business… Continue Reading
Outside.in gets $3M and a new CEO for local news
Outside.in, a site for community news and discussion, has raised an additional $3 million and appointed a new chief executive.
The Brooklyn, New York startup named Mark Josephson, former president of marketing company Seevast Corp., as its new CEO. Josephson doesn’t appear to have experience in local news or local content, but that may not be a problem, since sites like Outside.in are still experimenting to find the best approach. His most relevant experience may be… Continue Reading
Because you asked for it (right?): Disqus and Seesmic team up for video comments
Updated
There’s another company jumping on the video comments bandwagon. Disqus, the startup whose system powers comments for more than 13,000 blogs (including VentureBeat), is adding video through a partnership with Seesmic.
You can see the system at work on Fred Wilson’s blog. There aren’t any particularly fancy or groundbreaking features yet — Disqus’ Daniel Ha (no relation to the writer of this post) says the company wanted to keep things fairly straightforward so it would be… Continue Reading
Covestor joins the ranks of funded investment sites
Covestor, an investing community site, has raised $6.5 million in its second round of funding. The London and New York-based company plans to build out its asset management platform, which helps its users make investment decisions.
Covestor targets both average investors and professional fund managers. The site mines information from real portfolios on online stock brokerages, giving a holistic view of different risk levels and investment strategies. In all, it tracks 150 variables
The fund management platform… Continue Reading
Disqus, a quality commenting system, releases upgrades and raises round
Disqus, a company that provides a commenting plugin for online publishers, has released a range of new features designed to integrate it more tightly with its partner sites.
When I first covered the San Francisco company last August, I was a little skeptical about its ability to differentiate itself. But it has. I’ve found it to have a more intuitive interface than rivals like SezWho and Intense Debate (our coverage) — it provides very obvious threaded… Continue Reading