Open source database company 10gen raises $3.4M

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,… Continue Reading

Ball in Foursquare’s court with $1.35 million round

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… Continue Reading

Boxee raises $6M more to bring web content to your living room

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… Continue Reading

Zemanta challenges link-preview startups with Zemanta Balloons

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… Continue Reading

Heyzap raises seed round for casual game widgets

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… Continue Reading

Simulmedia launches today to bolster TV show promotions

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… 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… Continue Reading

Outside.in gets fresh funding for local news

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… Continue Reading

Microblogging service Tumblr raises $4.5M more

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… Continue Reading

AdaptiveBlue takes a fresh tack with Glue, a semantic social network

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… 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… Continue Reading

Union Square’s blogging VC backs blogging tool Zemanta

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… Continue Reading

Disqus version 2 addresses concerns and improves capabilities

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… 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…. Continue Reading

10gen gets $1.5M from Union Square for its open source cloud

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… Continue Reading

Twitter finally gets its new round of funding; “very strong” valuation

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… Continue Reading

Outside.in gets $3M and a new CEO for local news

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… Continue Reading

Because you asked for it (right?): Disqus and Seesmic team up for video comments

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… Continue Reading

Covestor joins the ranks of funded investment sites

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… Continue Reading

Disqus, a quality commenting system, releases upgrades and raises round

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… Continue Reading