The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Paper.li Raises $2.1 Million For Social News Curation, Hits 2 Million Users
- NYC Turing Fellows Drawing Top Tech Students To Big Apple Startups
- Hands On With the Verizon iPhone
- The Verizon iPhone Product Pages And More Are Alive For Your Ogling
- Why No LTE iPhone For Now? “Design Compromises” Apple Would Not Make.
- So What’s So Special About The Verizon iPhone? Personal Hotspots.
- It’s Official: The Verizon iPhone 4 Is Coming On February 10th
- iPhone Aside, What Else Happened On January 11 In History?
- Verizon And Apple Began Working Together To Make The CDMA iPhone In 2008
- Live From The Verizon iPhone Announcement
- Digital Audio Advertising Company TargetSpot Lands $8 Million
- LaunchBox Introduces 7 New Portfolio Companies
- Citrix Invests In Data Center Consulting Services Firm GlassHouse Technologies
- SeeClickFix Gets Seen, Clicked And Funded (By Omidyar Network And O’Reilly)
- Amazon Promotes Gold Box Daily Deals With New iPhone App
- SurveyMonkey Acquires A 49.9 Percent Stake In Clicktools
- Google Wants To Find The Next Larry Or Sergey With Online Science Fair
- Can GoSquared Put The Heat On Chartbeat In Real-time Site Analytics?
- Pixable’s Photofeed Sorts And Categorizes Your Facebook Photos
- Searchmetrics Raises A $6.75 Million C-round To Expand Globally
- Wow – Online Advertising Company Adknowledge Raises $45 Million
- Groupon Acquires Its Way Into Israel, South Africa And India
- TagMan Grabs $2.3 Million To Track Online Ad Campaigns
- Report: Number Of Mobile Broadband Subscriptions To Surpass 1 Billion In 2011
- The Rise Of Facebook’s Valuation From 2004-2011 [Graphic]
| Paper.li Raises $2.1 Million For Social News Curation, Hits 2 Million Users Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:59 AM PST Exclusive - SmallRivers, the Switzerland-based company behind Paper.li, a service that taps social streams from users and turns them into personalized online newspapers, has just raised $2.1 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners, SoftBank Capital and Endeavour Vision. The fresh capital and relations will service to grow SmallRivers’ team, establish partnerships with global service and content providers and set up shop in the United States and Asia. For starters, SmallRivers is planning to move part of its team from Switzerland to California. Paper.li aggregates and filters news from social networks like Twitter and Facebook and turns the incoming content into personalized daily online ‘newspapers’ (examples for ‘Technology’). Launched last summer, Paper.li currently boasts 2 million unique users, operates in four languages (English, Spanish, German and French) and publishes 140,000 user-created daily newspapers. Read more about what they’re doing here. In conjunction with the financing round, Dan Nova of Highland Capital Partners and Ronald Fisher of SoftBank will join the company's board of directors.        
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| NYC Turing Fellows Drawing Top Tech Students To Big Apple Startups Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:57 AM PST
The NYC Turing Fellows program will grant scholarships to the brightest students in computer sciences and engineering from the U.S. and Canada, while matching them with paid summer internships at some of New York’s hottest tech startups. It was organized by: a venture partner at Canaan Partners, Warren Lee; Brian Hirsch, managing partner at GSA Venture Partners; Mike Hudack the chief executive and co-founder of blip.tv; and Brendan Dickinson an associate at Canaan Partners and MBA student at NYU Stern. Undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and computer science are eligible to apply for the fellowship online, via NYCturingfellows.org before February 7, 2011. Fifteen finalists will be selected by a jury of local investors and entrepreneurs. Fellowship winners will get the aforementioned summer internship, and $5,000 in cash upon completion of their work, on top of their summer salary. The intern-fellows will also be required to attend mentoring and networking events throughout the summer, held by startups, universities, venture and law firms in the city. The rock-starry list of startups that agreed to interview qualifying NYC Turing Fellows, and put them to work this summer includes: AdKeeper        
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| Hands On With the Verizon iPhone Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:47 AM PST Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Here it is: the Verizon iPhone. The only visible differences are the new Verizon logo in the corner and the hotspot feature. Everything else is exactly the same. We haven’t been able to make a call and surf yet – but it would obviously work (or not work) as we always expected – and they were getting full bars in the room here, which is better than the AT&T 3G I’m getting (between 3 to 4 bars).        
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| The Verizon iPhone Product Pages And More Are Alive For Your Ogling Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:40 AM PST
But fear not, while we’ll have plenty of Verizon iPhone stories for you to peep in the coming days, Verizon just went live with a slew of iPhone pages that should keep you entertained until the lines start forming at Verizon stores everywhere.        
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| Why No LTE iPhone For Now? “Design Compromises” Apple Would Not Make. Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:37 AM PST Today during Verizon and Apple’s press conference in New York City announcing the iPhone 4 on the carrier’s network, Apple COO Tim Cook fielded a question that has been on a lot of people’s minds: why won’t the iPhone on Verizon be a next-generation LTE version? "The first generation LTE chipsets force some design comprimises. Some of which we would not make," Cook said. That’s a bit vague — “design compromises” could mean a lot of things. Part of what he likely means is that LTE chipsets require more battery consumption (something which has been seen in the 4G Android devices). Another part is that an LTE version of the iPhone would likely have to be a bit bigger because radio engineers haven’t yet learned how to squeeze every ounce of real estate into these newer chip designs. And there was another reason Apple is bringing a CDMA iPhone 4 to the table first. “Verizon customers have told us they want the iPhone NOW,” Cook made clear. In other words, Apple could certainly do the work on an LTE iPhone — and they undoubtedly will eventually — but in order to get this product out right now, they went with a product they’ve already developed, the iPhone 4. All that being said, as you can see in the image above, the Verizon iPhone does appear to be designed a bit differently than the iPhone 4 on AT&T’s network. For example, look at the two ridges on the left side of the device. When a question from the audience asked if this was about the antenna issue, Cook deflected it, saying that Apple had to make some changes to make the device CDMA-ready. Earlier in the event, Verizon’s Lowell McAdam revealed that Verizon and Apple had actually be working together since 2008 on this device. Cook later confirmed that. And both noted that this is just the beginning of their partnership.        
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| So What’s So Special About The Verizon iPhone? Personal Hotspots. Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:34 AM PST Yes, Verizon is getting the iPhone 4. And other than the fact that it will work on Verizon’s 3G CDMA network, it will look a lot like . . . AT&T’s iPhone 4. It will have a retina display, FaceTime, a 5 megapixel camera, HD video recording, and an Apple A4 chip. But it will also have one new feature exclusive to Verizon dubbed “Personal Hotspots.” The Verizon iPhone will let you create a personal hotspot and share your data connection via WiFi with up to five other devices, such as laptops or other cell phones. It is much like Verizon’s popular Mifi data cards which allow users to share their wireless broadband with other people, and now you can do that with the iPhone, and tether your laptop to it. AT&T also allows tethering, but you can only tether one other device through a USB or Bluetooth connection. Connecting via WiFi is just easier and supports more devices. AT&T charges extra for tethering. Verizon typically charges $20 a month extra as well for personal hotspots on other devices such as Android phones with that feature. It is not clear whether Verizon will charge extra for personal hotspots, but don’t be surprised if they do.        
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| It’s Official: The Verizon iPhone 4 Is Coming On February 10th Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:24 AM PST It’s over. Finally — after years and years of speculation, the Verizon iPhone is real. As Verizon president Lowell McAdam put it, “If the press writes something long enough, eventually it becomes true.” The word comes fresh out of Verizon’s press conference in New York City, where the company has confirmed that they plan to offer the iPhone 4 early next month. From what we know so far, the Verizon iPhone 4 appears to be identical to the AT&T iPhone 4 (save for the obvious radio chip differences). FaceTime support, 5 megapixel camera on the back, App Store, Retina Display, etc. More details as they come in.        
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| iPhone Aside, What Else Happened On January 11 In History? Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:11 AM PST
       
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| Verizon And Apple Began Working Together To Make The CDMA iPhone In 2008 Posted: 11 Jan 2011 08:09 AM PST Today at the Verizon event in New York City, Verizon President Lowell McAdam took the stage to present the worst kept secret in the tech world: the iPhone on Verizon’s network. But what you may not know is that Verizon and Apple have been working together on the device since 2008, McAdam said. “Our strategic relationship with Apple has evolved over the past 2 years. Before many of you were writing about it,” he joked. He noted that the two companies needed to start talking back then to make sure they could get a CDMA version of the device. That work will finally come to fruition early next month, he said. To be clear: this will be a CDMA version of the current iPhone 4. Apple COO Tim Cook then took the stage to give Apple’s perspective on the partnership. He said Apple was very excited to bring the iPhone 4 to Verizon’s 93 million customers. And he hopes more will join. “We had been talking to Verizon for a while,” Cook confirmed. “This is just the beginning of a great relationship between Apple and Verizon,” he said. The Verizon iPhone 4 will launch on February 3 exclusively first for current Verizon customers. It will launch on February 10 for everyone else. It will be the same $199.99 price for the 16 GB model and $299.99 for the 32 GB model. One key difference from the AT&T version is that will be able able to be used as a personal hotspot — you’ll be able to connect up to 5 WiFi-enabled devices. Which is awesome. "The most popular question has been: when will the iPhone work on Verizon's network?," Cook noted. Now we have that answer. More: Why No LTE iPhone For Now? "Design Compromises" Apple Would Not Make.        
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| Live From The Verizon iPhone Announcement Posted: 11 Jan 2011 07:11 AM PST It’s Time. After years of whispers and hearsay, the most persistent rumor in the recent history of the Tech World is finally coming to fruition. It’s Verizon iPhone day. At least, we think it is. Verizon hasn’t come right out and said it (that’d ruin the fun a bit, wouldn’t it?), but every sign, signal, and suggestion points to iPhone. We’re Live from Verizon’s Press Conference in New York City, battling the frigid air and an anxious army of tech reporters to bring you the latest details as they happen. Join us, won’t you? Read the Live Blog at MobileCrunch >>        
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| Digital Audio Advertising Company TargetSpot Lands $8 Million Posted: 11 Jan 2011 07:08 AM PST TargetSpot, which operates a large digital audio advertising network, this morning announced that it has secured $8 million in equity financing from Union Square Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, CBS Radio and Milestone Venture Partners. The New York City-based company says it will use the capital to fuel growth investments in its advertising technology, expand its network and to grow its national sales force. TargetSpot connects brands and advertisers to Internet and mobile audiences. Advertisers can use TargetSpot’s self-service advertising platform or work with its account management team to create campaigns delivering audio, display and pre-roll video advertising across a network of “thousands of online properties”. TargetSpot, which launched in 2007, boasts more than 77 distribution partners, including CBS RADIO, AOL Radio, Live 365, Yahoo Music and MySpace Music.        
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| LaunchBox Introduces 7 New Portfolio Companies Posted: 11 Jan 2011 07:05 AM PST LaunchBox Digital, a VC firm specializing in angel, seed, and early stage investments, just wrapped up its third annual 12-week startup mentoring program. Similar to Y Combinator and TechStars, LaunchBox invests seed capital of $20,000 into startup teams and provides them with 12 weeks of education, mentorship, and access to advisers. The following 7 LaunchBox10 companies are graduating from this year’s program and will be going live as part of LaunchBox Demo Day, where the companies will present their businesses to potential investors and strategic partners. Without further ado, here are the graduates:
CityPockets.com is a real-time, self-serve merchant CRM platform that aims to address customer retention issues by allowing merchants to more easily capture user contact info and to offer repeat discounts. In addition, the platform empowers merchants to manage gaps in supply and demand by sending out time-sensitive, limited-quantity offers whenever it makes sense for their businesses. Customers opt-in to follow their favorite merchants via CityPockets’ web and mobile apps. Businesses interested in being part of the CityPockets Merchant Network can sign up here, and Daily Deal users can sign up at CityPockets.com to access and keep track of all voucher purchases from across popular Daily Deal sites on a single platform, and eventually receive more offers from relevant merchants of their choice.
FiscalPie works to make the myriad sources of financial information on the Web more reflective of your own specific circumstances—while keeping your information private —by creating an anonymous network of people that share similar financial profiles. Until the individual truly becomes part of the conversation, financial information has little significance. FiscalPie is hoping to start that dialog—socially.
Keona has partnered with UNC and Duke to develop a decision engine that has already analyzed over 1,000 real medical records, and UNC Campus Health Services is acting as Keona’s first beta customer. During 2011, Keona Health plans to expand to several additional universities.
Drawing on the online poker model, Leaguescape provides all things a fantasy sports bettor could need, including a variety of gaming types, rewards, and promotions.
Slipstream will soon be launching its third prototype, a Chrome extension that lets you hide tweets on Twitter.com. It works seamlessly to help you get rid of things like Foursquare checkins, paper.li mentions, or when people you’re following start live-tweeting events. Simply click the “Hide” link that Slipstream adds to the end of every tweet and begin filtering your stream. It’s that easy.
With an easy-to-use interface that requires no coding knowledge, Spring Metrics eliminates the hassle of creating conversion funnels and goals. The company’s real-time dashboard offers an array of conversion-oriented metrics, and the “Insight Engine” unearths actionable patterns in the data—patterns aimed at helping turn more visitors into paying customers.        
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| Citrix Invests In Data Center Consulting Services Firm GlassHouse Technologies Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:44 AM PST  Citrix Systems has made a strategic investment in GlassHouse Technologies, a global data center consulting and managed services firm, expanding the existing relationship between the two companies with Citrix becoming a premier desktop virtualization partner of GlassHouse. The investment also provides Citrix with an observer's seat on the GlassHouse board of directors. Others terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
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| SeeClickFix Gets Seen, Clicked And Funded (By Omidyar Network And O’Reilly) Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:26 AM PST SeeClickFix, developer of technologies that enable citizens to report and monitor non-emergency issues in their local communities, has raised equity funding from O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Omidyar Network, the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. According to the press release, this marks Omidyar Network’s first for-profit investment in its Government Transparency investment area and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ first investment in a Gov 2.0 initiative. SeeClickFix provides online and mobile platforms that empower citizens, community groups, media and local governments to care for and improve neighborhoods. It was founded in New Haven, Connecticut in 2008, on the belief that citizens who take the time to report even minor issues and see them fixed are likely to become more engaged in their local communities. SeeClickFix lets citizens report such issues through its website, a range of mobile apps, widgets, and voice mail. Tim O’Reilly, CEO and founder of O’Reilly Media, a general partner of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, commented on the financing thusly:
Sure enough, O’Reilly Media co-produces the Gov 2.0 Summit together with UBM TechWeb. Mark P. Jacobsen, managing director at the investment firm, will join the SeeClickFix board of directors. Other terms of the investment were not disclosed.        
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| Amazon Promotes Gold Box Daily Deals With New iPhone App Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:15 AM PST
Called Amazon Deals, the free app features the daily deals listed on Amazon Gold Box. Consumers can browse deals, shop directly from the app itself and also receive notifications if certain products go on sale. The interface is similar to shopping via the dedicated AmazoniPhone app. The app will also include “Lightening Deals,” which are limited, discounted offers on Amazon products. For Amazon, the new iPhone app is a way to more actively promote its deals feature, and allow users to access the deals on the go. This also means that Amazon is getting more serious about the daily deals space, and could be a sign of things to come. Amazon has steadily been ramping up its mobile shopping offerings, most recently launching Price Check, which allows users can scan the barcode of a product, take a picture of an item or say the product's name to access product listings on Amazon.com's marketplace. The company also released Window Shop, a shopping app for the iPad.        
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| SurveyMonkey Acquires A 49.9 Percent Stake In Clicktools Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:13 AM PST Web-based survey giant SurveyMonkey has acquired a 49.9 percent interest in privately owned Clicktools, a survey provider on Salesforce.com's business app marketplace AppExchange. Clicktools and SurveyMonkey will also form a partnership that will provide joint customers cloud-based survey tools integrated with Salesforce CRM. As part of the investment, SurveyMonkey's VP of Business Strategy, Brent Chudoba, and VP of Business Operations and Finance, Tim Maly, will join Clicktools' Board of Directors. Other terms of the investment were not disclosed. Clicktools, founded in the United Kingdom back in 2000, provides a robust solution for creating surveys, scripts and forms with tight Salesforce integration. For example, survey responses can be linked to any information in Salesforce CRM and certain survey responses will trigger specific follow-up actions with customers. Last November, SurveyMonkey completed a debt financing round to the tune of $100 million, and the company says it is actively evaluating additional opportunities to partner and invest in “complementary businesses and geographies”. The last acquisition the company made was phone-based survey company Precision Polling in June 2010 (after learning about the company on TechCrunch).        
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| Google Wants To Find The Next Larry Or Sergey With Online Science Fair Posted: 11 Jan 2011 06:00 AM PST
The Google Science Fair, which is in partnership with CERN, The LEGO Group, National Geographic and Scientific American, is open to students around the world who are between the ages of 13-18. Either individually or in teams of three, contestants can build and submit a project (via photos and videos), hypothesis, as well as written observations online using Google Sites. Click here for an example. Prizes include a trip to the Galapagos Islands with a National Geographic Explorer, scholarships and real-life work opportunities (i.e., a 5-day trip to CERN in Switzerland). Google will post semi-finalist selections online (the public will be encouraged to vote for their favorite project), and 15 finalists will be invited to Google headquarters in mid-July to present their projects to a panel of judges, which will include Dean Kamen, Vint Cerf, Spencer Wells, Kary Mullis, Marion Nestle, and Peter Norvig. Of course, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are living proof that the world’s best ideas can come from young students. And not only is the Science Fair is a great marketing tool for Google to connect with a younger demographic, but the search giant could also scout for potential talent as well.        
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| Can GoSquared Put The Heat On Chartbeat In Real-time Site Analytics? Posted: 11 Jan 2011 05:15 AM PST Last year realtime analytics startup Chartbeat raised an impressive $3 million Series A financing with a glittering array of backers including Betaworks and Ron Conway. Realtime analytics of sites, especially publisher sites like TechCrunch where we use Chartbeat, is a hot space right now, since anything slower is just no longer viable. Having a realtime dashboard that shows you what stories, pages, or items are hot and where traffic is coming from, or how fast your pages are loading is crucial to just about any site today. Chartbeat launched in launch in April, 2009, got 2,500 paying corporate customers, largely on 5 employees. However a new upstart of just three young guys is poised to produce, I would say, at least as good a product on a fraction of the backing and resources. GoSquared provides real-time website analytics that lets you to see who’s on your website right now.        
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| Pixable’s Photofeed Sorts And Categorizes Your Facebook Photos Posted: 11 Jan 2011 04:58 AM PST
Photofeed aims to act as a personal "photobot" scouring Facebook for the photos from your friends that you will find interesting. The app allows you to browse, search and categorize all the photos your Facebook friends have posted and will also sort photos into groups such as “top photos of the day,” and “Best of the month.” The virtue of using Photofeed is that it supposedly acts as a Pandora for your Facebook photos. As you use the app more, it recognized which friends’ photos you like. Photofeed is available as a Facebook app as well as an individual web app on Pixable’s site. The startup also has an iPad version of Photofeed in the works. Founded by 3 MIT graduate students, Pixable’s service allows people to use of all their Facebook and image sharing site photo content like captions, tagging information, comments, and birthdays to make albums, slidehows, calendars and nor artwork. Pixable’s browser-based simplifies the creation of albums, making it easy to use for anyone. Pixable even launched a nifty tool that allows you to make mosaics of your Facebook photos. The startup has raised $3 million from investors and has an advisory of notable entrepreneurrs including Ofoto founder and xMarks CEO James Joaquin.        
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| Searchmetrics Raises A $6.75 Million C-round To Expand Globally Posted: 11 Jan 2011 04:09 AM PST
Searchmetrics was founded in late 2007 and financed by Holtzbrinck Digital in a Seed round financing. In January 2010 Neuhaus Partners joined in a B-round.        
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| Wow – Online Advertising Company Adknowledge Raises $45 Million Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:50 AM PST Adknowledge, which bills itself as the operator of the world’s largest privately held Internet advertising network, has raised $45 million in funding, an SEC filing reveals. This isn’t the first time the company has raised a monster round – Adknowledge secured $48 million in funding from Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) back in 2006. According to the filing, the equity round wasn’t in relation with an acquisition or merger, which rules out that the funding was raised in relation to the company’s recent purchase of SocialMedia.com’s ad network. We’ve contacted the company for more information on the financing. From what I can gather, TCV invested again, with JMI Equity participating as well. According to the filing, certain proceeds from the round will be used to repurchase securities from existing shareholders, including Adknowledge CEO Scott Lynn, President Brett Brewer and an unnamed affiliate of Will Griffith, General Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures. Founded in 2004, Adknowledge employs over 300 employees and has revenues of $300 million, according to its website. It’s been quite acquisitive over the past few years, as you can tell from the list of bought companies on CrunchBase. Its most recent notable recruitment was the hiring of former Yahoo chief data officer Usama Fayyad, who advises Adknowledge in its quest to build what it refers to as an “Amazon-like recommendation engine” for online ads. Headquartered in Kansas City, Adknowledge has offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Ft. Myers, New York, and international offices in the United Kingdom and Australia.        
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| Groupon Acquires Its Way Into Israel, South Africa And India Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:07 AM PST Groupon is determined to launch daily deal sites in markets all over the world, as we’ve seen in the past. This morning, the social commerce company announced that it has acquired SoSasta (India), Grouper (Israel) and Twangoo (South Africa). Terms of the deals were not disclosed. SoSasta has only been around for about three months, but already offers daily deals in 11 Indian cities, according to Groupon. Grouper was launched in Israel almost a year ago and primarily serves Tel Aviv, while Twangoo covers the most cities of any deal site in South Africa, the company adds. Grouper for one is rumored to have been acquired for $15 million, according to local media (update: Globes, for one, pegs it at $8 million). All three daily deal sites will transition to the Groupon brand name and site design in coming months, and will serve deals in the local communities' primary languages: English in India and South Africa and Hebrew in Israel. Groupon has earlier acquired three deal websites in Asia (uBuyiBuy, Beeconomic and Atlaspost) in an effort to expand its reach across East and Southeast Asia. In 2010, Groupon also expanded to Europe, Latin America, Russia and Japan through acquisitions. They don’t only shop outside of the United States, though – Groupon also moved to acquire San Mateo-based Ludic Labs, the local marketing services startup behind offerfoundry.com and diddit.com, early December 2010. Groupon says it now employs more than 4,000 people worldwide. The company just yesterday closed on a whopping $950 million in funding. With that kind of money in the bank, it isn’t particularly challenging to get very acquisitive, and rolling up smaller, local players modeled after its own success happens to be a big part of Groupon’s international growth strategy. Expect more of these.        
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| TagMan Grabs $2.3 Million To Track Online Ad Campaigns Posted: 11 Jan 2011 03:00 AM PST
TagMan allows advertisers to manage online marketing tags/pixels (these are pieces of TagMan users, which include Subaru and Virgin Atlantic, simple embed a small piece of JavaScript code on a page that needs tracking. All tags and the data they provide can then be viewed and managed directly by the advertiser or agency through TagMan’s web-based interface. The company says it will use the new funding to develop and release a new version of its technology, to build out its infrastructure and to provide customer support.        
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| Report: Number Of Mobile Broadband Subscriptions To Surpass 1 Billion In 2011 Posted: 11 Jan 2011 02:36 AM PST Ericsson, which provides tech and services to telecom operators around the globe, estimates that the number of mobile broadband subscriptions has grown to a whopping 500 million during the course of 2010, and that this number will double before the end of this year. Ericsson forecasts that the majority of subscriptions, roughly 400 million in total, is expected to be concentrated in the Asia Pacific region, followed by North America and Western Europe with more than 200 million subscriptions each. The strong surge in mobile broadband adoption is of course largely a result of the accelerating growth of smartphones, laptops and tablets, and the increasing usage of mobile Internet services and apps. Ericsson says global mobile data traffic continues to grow rapidly – the company announced in August 2010 that it had tripled in just one year. By 2015, Ericsson believes mobile broadband subscriptions will top 3.8 billion, with 95 percent driven by HSPA, CDMA and LTE networks. (Photo via Ericsson)        
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| The Rise Of Facebook’s Valuation From 2004-2011 [Graphic] Posted: 10 Jan 2011 11:24 PM PST The panic at absurd rumors of Facebook’s demise over the weekend, coupled with the Goldman Sachs Facebook investment frenzy at the beginning of this year got us thinking; Did initial Facebook investor Peter Thiel, who invested 500K early on and still thought Facebook was undervalued at $30 billion back in September, actually make the most impressive investment call in tech history? So artist Audrey Fukuman and I set out to capture what the Facebook valuation trajectory looked like. And while trudging through all the speculation on this has raised some discrepancies concerning exact valuations, (I’m seeing anything from $4.9 million to $5 million for the Thiel financing but rounded up for consistency’s sake) I did my best to capture the zeitgeist through consensus, leaning heavily on reports on TechCrunch through the ages. And there were a lot of them, I think we did about three posts dealing with the Elevation Partners investment alone. In researching this I also borrowed heavily from the official Facebook timeline, Crunchbase, The Harvard Crimson, Vator.tv, the WSJ, the NYT, countless TechCrunch posts as well as Adam Rifkin’s answer to the “How did Mark Zuckerberg retain 26% of equity after so many rounds of financing?” question on Quora. Hey Facebook, you’ve come a long way baby. Assorted thumbnails /via Crunchbase, Time, WWN, The Social Network, The Age and Data5.blog.de        
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A group of venture investors and entrepreneurs who love the growth and potential of New York City’s startup scene, but think it could benefit from an infusion of talent, today launched an initiative to draw top tech students to the big apple. 
According to just about every publication under the Sun, and possibly a few publications outside of the solar system, 
Amazon has been offering deals of the day via its 
Many of you may have gone through the rite of passage in grade school called the science fair. For any one who is interested in science and technology, the annual Science Fair is actually a fun (and educational) experience for young kids. Today, Google is 
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