Glossybox made a powerful entrée this morning, announcing that is has shipped its two millionth box and has received $72.4 million (55 million euros) in overall financing.

This European version of Birchbox delivers monthly packages filled with beauty products to its community of subscribers. Upon signing up, women choose their subscription plan and create a beauty profile. They will then receive a curated box of 5 travel-sized products, based on their preferences. A beauty magazine is included in the package along with cosmetics like hand cream, nail polish, perfumes, and so on.

Glossybox appeals to consumers that appreciate the element or surprise and ability to sample beauty products before buying, as well as to brands that want to put their products in the hands of an engaged audience. It was founded in Germany in 2011 and now has a presence in 16 countries.

Along with the fresh, sparkling funding news, Glossybox also announced shipping its 2 millionth box. The service has more than 200,000 customers around the world, and all these demonstrations of traction attracted the attention in investors looking to get in on the action.

German accelerator Rocket Internet, Holtzbrink Ventures, and Investment AB Kinnevik participated in this round, which is a first for Beauty Trend Holding.

Earlier this year, Birchbox acquired its French clone Joliebox in an attempt to penetrate the European market. However, with a presence in Asia and Israel, as well as wider distribution across Europe, Glossybox’s reach is already greater than its American competitor  and this large round of investment will only accelerate its growth. Europe has become a hot space for e-commerce startups this year, such as Zalando, another Rocket Internet company.

Hello Fresh is taking a Web 2.0 approach to Julia Child’s mission. This food startup has raised $10 million to expand its platform, which makes creating tasty, healthy meals at home as effortless as possible.

Each week, the site lets home cooks peruse five new recipes created by professional chefs and nutritionists. The recipes take 30 minutes or less to prepare, only require basic kitchen equipment, and come with step-by-step instructions. The featured recipes for this week included warm sweet potato salad with pan fried tilapia, duck a l’orange salad, and herb garlic beef with watercress, peanuts, and baby carrots. I’d say that sounds significantly tastier than ramen.

The next step is to select the meals you’d like to prepare. Hello Fresh operates a “soft subscription” service, which means users choose how many meals they would like a week and for how many people. Next is the real kicker: One of Hello Fresh’s people on the ground will serve as a “personal sous-chef” by grocery shopping for you and delivering a box to your door with all the recipes and ingredients measured out. The rest, what is left of it, is up to you.

The company was founded in Berlin and currently operates in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Australia, and the US. Since beginning in 2011, it has grown to more than 100 employees and recently delivered the millionth meal in Germany. This $10 million in growth financing will bring Hello Fresh into new markets. It was led by Vowerk Ventures, a firm based in Germany, with all the old investors — Rocket Internet, Holtzbrink Ventures, and Kinnevik AB — throwing in as well.

Food startups are growing in popularity with consumers and venture capitalists alike as Internet entrepreneurs find innovative ways to help people eat better. Farmigo is an online farmer’s market that also announced a significant investment round this morning. Recipe sharing network Foodily is backed by $5 million in venture capital, and chef-prepared meal delivery service Munchery closed $4 million for expansion last month. There is also LA startup Pop-Up Pantry, which distributes frozen, vacuum-sealed gourmet meals, and world food subscription service Hungry Globetrotter. Not to mention services like Seamless and GrubHub which tackle restaurants deliveries.

Eating is something people have to do every single day. There is an ever-present need for ways to eat tasty, healthy food in a cost-effective and convenient manner. Food, unlike various other consumer products, will never go out of style.

Subscription e-commerce is like dating. The excitement comes from anticipation of the unknown and delight in variety. However, with love, as with online retail, consistency has its benefits. OrderGroove is a startup that helps companies move their “casual daters” into committed partners, and it has raised $6.7 million to help customers take that next step.

OrderGroove’s platform powers subscription and membership commerce for large companies and their brands. This software-as-a-service technology can regularly deliver the products to customers. People can receive a package with dog treats every month, a shipment of vitamins three times a year, or baby diapers on a weekly basis. It gives companies the chance to build recurring revenue, guarantee retention, and increase the lifetime value of each customer.

Over the past year, OrderGroove has tripled its client roster and currently works with over 60 companies, including major names like L’Oreal, Jockey, Johnson & Johnson, Rogaine, and wine seller Lot18.

This second round of funding will go toward expanding OrderGroove’s team and adding services to the platform as well as moving into new channels. Fung Capital led the investment, with participation from Lerer Ventures, Legend and Swan Ventures, Allegro Venture Partners, Bee Partners as well as former Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez and NEW Corporation’s Chairman Fred Schaufeld.

OrderGroove has based in New York. Read the press release.

Peace Corps Volunteers and entrepreneurs have a lot in common. To be successful, both must be idealistic, motivated, adventurous, resourceful, and adaptable. Both groups pinpoint needs and endeavor to address them, and both are no strangers to bad food.

Vijay Rajendran served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cameroon from 2002 to 2004. Now a decade later, he has formed a startup called Hungry Globetrotter that gives people the opportunity to create authentic, delicious, ethnic meals in their own homes.

Hungry Globetrotter is a subscription service for food items that highlights an international destination every month. Users receive boxes designed around specific cuisines, with boutique ingredients that can be used to prepare home-cooked dinners. The packages come with recipes for a well-rounded meal, as well as a regional guide the tells the story behind the area and the products.

The first subscription box was called the South Indian Sampler. It contained a bottle of curry sauce and organic spices, among other things, that could be turned into a feast of madras curry, garam masala rice with vegetables and yogurt raita. Users must buy their own perishable items. October’s theme was Argentina, and included Gaucho Ranch Chimichurri sauce, balsamic pecan vinegar, paprika finishing salt, and gourmet quinoa. 

“I am someone who has lived my life pursuing good food everywhere,” Rajendran said. “I want to  introduce people to new brands, cuisines, flavors and cultures that they can experience through food. Culinary tourism is something people may only do a few times in their life and I want to empower them to have these experiences at home.”

After a youth spent living abroad, a stint as a venture capital consultant in New York, and a Peace Corps Volunteer specializing in micro finance in West Africa, Rajendran is trying to combat the standardization he sees in the American food industry. Most mainstream grocery stores are saturated with mediocre international options, while world food stores are few and far between outside of metropolitan areas,an can be overwhelming and expensive.

Another issue is a lack of knowledge. A home cook may want to create a Moroccan repast, but have no idea what ingredients to buy. The process of researching, purchasing, and preparing is time-consuming for a casual dinner in, and amateurs may be deterred from experimenting with cuisines they know nothing about. Rajendran said Hungry Globetrotter’s vision is about more than just foreign flavors. By encouraging people to roll up their sleeves and cook, it creates a global context and communal experience surrounding the food.

“When I was in Cameroon, I was thrown into a culture and a cuisine that I knew nothing about,” he said. “I became a part of the community through the people I connected with over meals. We would eat together and I would learn about traditions, rituals, festivals, agriculture, family life and so forth. Food became a medium for me to gather, socialize, and share. It gave me a way to genuinely explore their history and grasp a broader sense of culture.”

To this end, Hungry Globetrotter emphasizes content in addition to product. There is a smörgåsbord of food subsciprition services in the e-commerce space, such as Foodzie, Love With Food, Culture Kitchen, Global Grub, and GrubKit. Many of these sell international snacks and artisanal samples, or cater to niche markets. They are not geared towards full meal preparation which can potentially have an impact beyond exposure to new tastes.

“In American food culture, there is the over-communization of certain foods, people often don’t prepare foods at home, and obesity as an epidemic is troubling” he said. “There are studies that show that children who eat dinner at home eat more fruits and vegetables. We are not trying to be a health food company, but we know that something positive starts when people cook at home, and when that process is not a chore, but rather something exciting. The experience of preparing and enjoying home-cooked meals can address many elements of the food system that are broken today.

Hungry Globetrotter sent out its first box in September and is based in San Francisco. The November box will focus on Morocco and December will have a Japanese izakaya theme.

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JustFab will send you a to-die-for clutch and blouse for $40 a month, and The Fancy will Fedex just about anything that its members like for $30. And yes, men can get a “sockscription” from smart socks manufacturer BlackSocks.com, or for under $10 the Dollar Rubber Club can even deliver a monthly pack of condoms straight to your door, every 30 days.

But the recurring revenue stream has been around for long before Basecamp and online project management, the Wall Street Journal’s paywall, or even the local newspaper that your daddy paid $5/month for.

But news is where the subscription model seems to have started, with newspapers and periodicals, way back in 1440.

Aria Systems, the cloud-based subscription billing management company, compiled a short history of the recurring revenue model, from Spotify and Netflix to telephone service back in the 1800s, and all the way back to newspapers and periodicals back in the 1400s … four years after Johannes Gutenberg started working on his printing press in Mainz, Germany.

Here’s the infographic:

photo credit: Great Beyond via photopin cc

As of today, Google is allowing developers to build free trial periods into their subscription apps.

Developers can now determine the length of the trial period on the Developer Console, and you can try the Play apps before committing to a purchase. In order to participate in the free trial, you must complete a full transaction through the regular billing flow. You won’t be charged until the trial ends, at which point payment is automatically initiated. You  can cancel your subscriptions at any time.

Back in May, Google launched in-app subscriptions in the Play store that expanded monetization opportunities for mobile products. How to make money off apps is a persistent question within the technology community, perhaps people will actually begin to open their wallets after getting to try it for free.

Subscription boxes are all the rage these days. Online shoppers can receive monthly deliveries of beauty products, foodie treats, shoes, jewelry, sex toys, and just about anything that series their fancy. Which brings me to my main point.

Pinterest-meets-ecommerce fashion site The Fancy is hopping on the subscription delivery truck. It will now offer crowd-curated monthly goodie bags.  The service costs $30 a month for what will allegedly be at least $60 worth of goodies. Members pick their favorite categories and then receive boxes with items picked by The Fancy community.

The social element is strong on The Fancy. It encourages members to search, discover, and share things that strike their fancy. They can browse through a massive collection of images, things as varied as stiletto pumps, cute puppies, or special dispenser that keeps soda fizzy. Clicking “Fancy It” on an image attaches it to a user’s profile, which are expressions of a “museum of Me.”

In addition to collecting images, pin board-style, people follow each other, comment on pictures, and can buy the items directly on the site. This is one of the ways the site distinguishes itself from Pinterest, which is purely social.

The subscription service uses the input of The Fancy community to curate the boxes, which feature the most “fancy’d” items in the selected categories. Obviously, this excludes animals, cars, and luxury getaway retreats, but it still has the potential to offer a fun and surprising collection of stuff.

Hundreds of brands are in the The Fancy’s platform. The company also has close connections to the fashion industry, and relationships with high fashion labels like Oscar de la Renta, Gucci, and Yves Saint Laurent.

PPR is an investor, a $25 billion firm that owns major brands, as is Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The Fancy has received $18 million total in funding. It is based in New York.

Online natural grocery store Door to Door Organics has sowed $2 million in funding.

Door to Door Organics partners with organic farmers and creators of natural food products to deliver boxes of groceries to its customers. The company primarily focuses on produce, but its offerings also include sustainably raised meat, eggs, artisan bread, and local dairy.

The company takes the model of Community Supported Agriculture programs and puts it online.

CSA has become popular in recent years as Americans become increasingly aware of the physical and ecological benefits of consuming seasonal, local food. Traditionally, these programs require people to connect with a specific farm offline.

With Door to Door, customers can place and customize their orders online each week. They get to choose the size of the box and its contents. Families can select larger boxes than a bachelor, and someone with an aversion to eggplant can make substitutions. The company partners with multiple farms to diversify its inventory and can deliver to homes, offices, and schools.

This service cuts down on time spent going to the grocery store, and it makes organic produce accessible to people who may not otherwise be able to find it.

The foodies behind Door to Door also provide planning, shopping, and cooking tools to encourage people to live healthy lifestyles. It has recipe suggestions to go along with the boxes, as well as other suggested ingredients to prepare tasty dishes.

The network currently operates in Colorado, Chicago, Missouri, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. This first round of financing comes from Greenmont Capital, a Blouder Colorado based firm that focuses its investments on the “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability” market.

Door to Door is based in Lafayette, Colorado.

Culture Kitchen co-founders Abby Sturges and Jennifer Lopez want to share treasured recipes that have been passed down through generations of families. The San Francisco-based startup has turned home-cooking expertise into a viable small business.

Full disclosure: I was enrolled in a design and business class with the founders at Stanford.

Culture Kitchen connects foodies with local cooks willing to share tantalizing, home-cooked, ethnic food. ”These are men and women who have immigrated to the US and brought with them their incredible generations old recipes,” the team explains on its Kickstarter page. “No fancy chefs here, just really passionate people who love cooking and love sharing their culture through food.”

The founders hope to raise $150,000 on the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. In the first 24 hours since launching the funding page, they have already received over $8,000 in financing. If successful, they plan to develop six new cooking kits, which will include live videos filled with advice from the chefs. In the current form, the pre-packaged kits contain all the ingredients, 3 recipes with step-by-step directions and photos, and personal mementos from the cooks.

Culture Kitchen’s co-founders, mother’s with no formal training, spend months compiling recipes and rooting out hard-to-find ingredients for the kits. Place an order through the company’s website, and learn to cook Paloma’s Poblano Mole or Suchrita’s Chicken Tikka — personalization is core to the user experience. Included are tips and tricks from the chefs, so you’ll feel like you’ve inherited a family recipe.

Culture Kitchen’s co-founders, Jennifer Lopez and Abby Sturges

When I knew the two at Stanford, they were focused on organizing cooking classes to bring a second income to women who loved to cook, mainly drawn from nearby neighborhoods like East Palo Alto. Meanwhile, wealthy students from the university with limited skills in the kitchen were eagerly participating in the cooking classes, often held in local community centers. Suddenly, the smell of pumpkin curry was wafting through dorm rooms, replacing the usual ramen and Mac ‘n’ Cheese.

“Students often left classes inspired to go recreate dishes at home,” said Sturges in an interview with VentureBeat. “Sadly, they would report that they weren’t able to navigate the ethnic markets we sent them to and couldn’t get the ingredients they needed.”

This feedback inspired the team to eke out a new model to scale the business. Now they work with 15 master chefs and send kits to hundreds of subscribers on a monthly basis. It’s great for a dinner party of 4 to 6 people, or you could make like Jolie O’Dell (our resident domestic goddess) and singlehandedly prepare a week’s worth of recipes.

In a foodie city like San Francisco, we are inundated with options. Why choose to order a kit through Culture Kitchen? The founders feel they are onto something unique with the subscription model and the mingling of cooking and culture. “You know we all eat every day, and some of us cook every day.  That felt like such an untapped opportunity, taking the mundane activity and super charging it with meaning,” said Lopez.

Image courtesy of The Peninsula Press

Rhapsody’s European expansion begins today with the acquisition of Napster International, Napster’s European subscription music service. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Rhapsody will own and operate the Napster service in Germany and the United Kingdom, and the company sees it as a opportunity to expand its reach in that geographical area.

“The acquisition of Napster and its subscriber base in the UK and Germany gives us an ideal entry to the European market,” said Rhapsody president Jon Irwin.

“Through the benefit of scale, the strength of our editorial programming, and strategic partnerships, we can now bring the Napster service to even more consumers on a variety of platforms.”

Rhapsody bought Napster in October 2011; apparently, Napster’s European assets were not part of that deal.

No one will be getting a pink slip in this transaction; all employees of Napster International will be working for Rhapsody. However, the product will continue operations under the Napster brand in European areas, simply because it’s better known there.

Starting in March, Napster subscribers will be migrated to Rhapsody’s infrastructure and will have access to new web and mobile user interfaces and — Rhapsody claims — better performance, speed and improved playlist management. Users’ libraries will remain intact, and their subscription prices will not change.

“The acquisition is another important milestone,” said Napster International’s Thorsten Schliesche. “Combining Napster International subscribers with Rhapsody’s massive base in the U.S. will further strengthen our position as the leading music subscription service.”

Rhapsody, which launched more than a decade ago in 2001, says it is the largest subscription music service in the U.S. and claims more than 1 million monthly subscribers, a milestone it reached just last year. Rhapsody also places a high value on its editorial content such as reviews, features, playlists, and more than 200 radio stations programmed by a staff of music critics and professionals.

However, particularly in Europe, Rhapsody is up against Spotify, the white-hot startup that’s been carving out its place in users’ hearts since 2008. As of late 2010, Spotify was claiming 10 million active users, and by late last year — around the same time Rhapsody announced its 1 million subscribers milestone — Spotify told the world it had reached 2.5 million subscribers globally — helped along in no small part by a powerful partnership with Facebook.

Still, Rhapsody is putting on its best “undaunted” face for the showdown.

“This is the perfect time to extend our borders, both geographically and technologically, as we take our service to new places, including the automobile and the living room,” said Irwin in an emailed statement.

“Consumer demand for subscription music has never been greater, and our partners are eager to bring music to the masses in new and creative ways. There is a lot of room for growth in this market and I firmly believe that 2012 is going to be our biggest year yet.”

Although the game is initially free to play, if you want to upgrade your park quickly, you are going to have to cough up some real cash, with some single rides costing the equivalent of $60.

This move comes hot on the heels of EA’s decision to introduce a $30 a year subscription fee to its Tetris iOS game.

The game has not yet been released in the US, but Canadian iPhone owners can already get their hands on it. AOL has reported on the game, in which you build your own theme park, by choosing shops and rides, and says that progressing without spending any real money is a painfully slow process.

Users sticking to the free features in the game are able to unlock a limited selection of attractions, but any really ‘cool’ items cost Tickets, which are purchased with real money. AOL states that a Skull-Train roller coaster in the game costs the equivalent of $60 to purchase, and that the majority of the game’s rides are just as expensive.

There is certainly money to be made in the freemium game market on iOS, with Smurfs Village  and Tiny Tower both having proved their worth recently. Whether EA can replicate its Sims Social Facebook success on iOS remains to be seen, but with the average transaction value for iOS or Android purchase at $14, they may be a little off the mark.

Customers will be asked to pay $6.99 per month in order to access dozens of games, such as Mahjong Towers and Mystery Case Files, through the Big Fish app, which will initially require Wi-Fi access to operate. If it works, it could be a new source of ongoing revenue on a platform where it hasn’t been easy to make money in the past.

Traditionally the iPad subscription service, which was introduced in February this year, has been used more for magazines and newspapers. This is the first time that Apple has approved such an “all you can eat” service for games. Paul Thelen (pictured), founder of Big Fish Games, revealed that gaining approval for the service did not come easily: “It took longer than usual to be approved. They needed to be convinced there’s a reason to charge customers every month.”

At launch, the service will be available for $4.99 per month, which will increase to $6.99 early next year, when more titles have been added. There will also be a free version of the service, which will limit playing time to 30 minutes per day, and will be supported by advertising. The service competes in a way with iSwifter, which is charging a flat fee of $4.99 for access to its app that allows users to play Adobe Flash-based games on an iPad. iSwifter tried a subscription fee, but found users weren’t quite ready for it.

The iPad service may just be the start of the Big Fish subscription initiative, as the company has designed its application so that it can be easily modified to work on Android tablets and smartphones, as well as internet connected televisions. According to Thelen, an Android version of the app should be ready by the first quarter of 2012.

Big Fish Games was founded in 2002 and is now one of the leading developers and publishers of casual games. The company distributes more than two million games per day worldwide, and last year generated $140 million in sales revenue. Thelen revealed that most of its sales are from downloads to a PC or mobile device, with about 75 percent of customers being women over the age of 30.

The company is currently in a position to pursue a public offering, according to Thelen: “We’re at scale, have great momentum and remain in a position to pursue a public offering or any number of alternatives if the markets allow”. It will be interesting to see whether this subscription service will prove to be successful, and helps the company to meet that goal. If it does prove to be a hit, then other publishers in the mobile gaming market will no doubt start looking to develop similar models of their own.

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Social networking titan Facebook today unveiled a “subscribe” feature, which adds news feed updates to a user’s profile from other profiles without having to become “friends” on the site.

Any updates a Facebook user posts publicly go into news feeds of friends and followers. It’s a feature similar to Twitter’s followers and Circles on Google’s latest social network, Google+. Users can now “follow” updates from celebrities on Facebook, such as well-known writers or actors.

“It really lets you, along with the friend list, dial in your Facebook experience,” Facebook vice president of engineering Mike Schroepfer said. “You can see exactly what you want and who you want.”

Users can determine just how many updates they receive from other users they follow. If you choose “only important,” you’ll receive highlights like job moves or a move to a new city. Choosing “most updates” causes Facebook to send updates that would typically show up in a news feed.

Users can make the updates they see as granular as they want — down to removing updates from social games like Zynga’s Farmville.

“Pages are an awesome product for someone trying to maintain a brand presence,” Schroepfer said. ” [The new subscribe feature] allows me to share with my friends and with someone else who might be interested in what I say and do.”

It’s also worth noting that, along with the new follow button, users can now tweet from Facebook — something the social network has been against doing for profiles in the past.  As TechCrunch’s MG Siegler notes, users will soon be able to link their Twitter accounts with Facebook by visiting Facebook.com/twitter.

Facebook has more than 700 million users, compared to Twitter’s 300 million plus users.

Top film distributors in Europe stated that Netflix recently closed deals to offer its service in both Spain and the United Kingdom, according to the report.

Netflix was unavailable for comment about entering into Europe. However, this wouldn’t be the first time it set up shop in another country. The company entered Canada in September 2010 and recently announced plans to enter 43 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean by the end of 2011.

None of the confirmed international markets will offer Netflix’s DVD/Blu-ray disc rental-by-mail subscriptions, which are available only to U.S. customers. While news of the company entering Europe hasn’t been confirmed, it’s likely the company will follow suit and only offer streaming plans.

Netflix probably chose Spain and the U.K. as its first two European markets to test the waters before launching its streaming service across the entire continent.

Spain is known for being a hotbed for digital piracy, which makes it a good candidate for Netflix. The company has often been referred to as an attractive alternative to illegal streaming and downloading because of its relatively low subscription cost and enormous library of content. Also, unlike illegal streaming websites, the company can offer a quality video stream with few service interruptions.

The UK is quite the opposite. The British government provides a free streaming video of public programming through the BBC iPlayer — meaning streaming video is popular among consumers. The iPlayer isn’t a true competitor to Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service, but there is no shortage of competition. If Netflix does enter the U.K. market, it will be going up against Amazon-owned LoveFilm and News Corp.’s BSkyB streaming service.

That said, Netflix’s current library of content (as well as partnerships between media companies who own the rights to that content) will translate much easier to a U.K. audience than it will in Spain. It’s unknown if the  licensing from the company’s U.S. and Canadian content library will carry over.

The news of Netflix entering Europe makes sense since the company wants to derive the majority of its revenue through streaming subscriptions. It’s also trying to transition the U.S. market away from the DVD-by-mail subscriptions, since shipping costs eat into profits.

Netflix is understandably slower to enter Europe because operating costs in those countries are likely to be far larger than in the America region. The move also jibes with past comments made by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

“We think the international opportunities for us to build profitable businesses may be quite large, but the rapid expansion will lower global operating margins as long as there are additional markets in which we can wisely invest,” Hastings wrote in response to the company’s long-term future growth back in December 2010.

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Lovefilm is the top DVD-rental subscription service in Europe. As with Netflix, users sign up for a subscription online and then request DVDs, which are sent by mail. A digital streaming service to PCs, Internet TVs and the Playstation 3 is also available. LoveFilm offers 70,000 titles and has nearly 1.6 million members across the UK, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Norway.

I talked to Dharmash Mistry from Balderton Capital, one of the main investors in LoveFilm. He told me that one of the reasons Amazon decided to buy now is the success of Lovefilm’s nascent digital business (the digital streaming service launched in May 2010). 20 percent of Lovefilm’s movies are now consumed via streaming. The advent of smart, Internet-connected TVs, also represented a turning point.

I interviewed Lovefilm’s chief digital officer, Lesley MacKenzie, late last year. At that point, the company saw itself at the early stage of a transition from physical to digital delivery. The speed of that transition depends on the level of broadband access in various European countries as well as on whether users value the digital service as highly as a physical DVD.

Lovefilm supports Sony and Samsung smart TVs, but MacKenzie told me that Europe is 18 months to 2 years behind the US when it comes to TVs that support Internet connections and can display Web videos and other services. The company had noticed that smart TV users are 3 times as active as PC users. Mackenzie also said that, for more recent movies, if users are given the option of ordering a DVD or paying extra to stream the movie immediately, a large proportion of customers will pay.

Mistry pointed out that Amazon has a global distribution network and strong relationships with the studios. It also owns a plethora of assets, such as the IMDB movie database, that could be used to enhance LoveFilm’s services. Could this mean that Amazon plans to go head to head with Netflix?

Netflix is rumored to have plans to launch a European service soon. When I asked MacKenzie if Lovefilm felt threatened by those plans, she mentioned that Netflix pulled the plug on a previous UK rollout in 2004. In her opinion, Europe was not ready for a mainly digital service from a brand largely unknown in Europe. In the US, Netflix is charging ahead with providing a streaming-only movie service to compete with that of rival Hulu.

Lovefilm is based in London and was founded in 2003. Its backers include Amazon.com, Index Ventures, Arts Alliance Media, Balderton Capital and DFJ Esprit.

Zuora basically handles everything that happens behind the scenes when a user signs up for a recurring subscription on a site like GigaOm Pro. The company provides businesses with software to create and micromanage any recurring revenue model, and make tweaks whenever they want. Zuora also includes an analytics suite in its software to help business determine which payment models are working and which ones aren’t.

Subscription models have become increasingly attractive for content providers like Netflix and Hulu, which announced a premium service earlier this year called Hulu Plus, which runs on a monthly subscription. The whole recurring subscription market is worth around $7.1 billion yearly — of which Zuora says it has already captured $1 billion.

The announcement came on the heels of another major billing service provider’s funding news: Vindicia, which raised $20 million earlier this month, focuses on providing software to manage billing and fraud protection. But one difference is that Zuora allows for a greater degree of micromanagement than just automating the management of payment models.

“People have a tendency to say, ‘are you guys just a back-end function?’” said Tzuo. “That’s not exactly right, though it’s close — we want to provide people with a way to innovate their payment models and not just manage them.”

Zuora plans to use the funding to hire another 100 employees or so as it expands internationally. The company currently has around 110 employees. It announced it became cash flow positive in the first quarter of the year — so it’s not like Zuora actually needed the funds to manage operating costs, Tzuo said.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has raised $41.5 million to date from investors Shasta Ventures and Tenaya Capital. Redpoint Ventures led the most recent round of funding, and Redpoint Ventures’ Tim Haley will join Zuora’s board as part of the funding agreement. Zuora’s clients include business collaboration software provider Box.net and online news publication GigaOm. It has also partnered with PayPal to use it as a billing provider for subscriptions.

[Photo: Martz Agency]