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I’ve long suspected that the basic usage pattern for Twitter is that people try it, don’t get it or become discouraged because they don’t know anyone else on it, but it grows on them eventually until they start using it every day. Many people, of course, never come back, but for those who do, [...]
Mon, March 29 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
What do Accel Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Redpoint Ventures have in common? Besides being tier one venture capitalists, at least one thing: They are all fighting furiously to be the lead investor in Foursquare’s next venture round.
All that competition is driving the valuation massively upwards, too. A couple of weeks ago we’d heard [...]
Thu, March 25 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
We recently learned that AOL is pouring money ($50 million to be exact) into Patch, a hyperlocal news platform that operates local news sites for 41 small towns and communities in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California. Now AOL is launching a charitable offshoot of Patch, called Patch.org, which will support [...]
Wed, March 24 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
I mentioned in my last post that mobile is bridging the digital—not to mention analog— divide in India, with almost half as many new mobile accounts being opened just last January as there are Internet users in the entire country. And there are a host of interesting companies seeking to leverage that network as some [...]
Sun, March 14 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Fresh off a $12 million investment, SMS GupShup, a Twitter-like service in India that is primarily accessed via SMS, is launching an App Store. The store aims to expand SMS GupShup’s ecosystem by allowing developers to create SMS-based mobile applications based off of the microblogging service.
Launched in April 2007, SMS GupShup (spawned from [...]
Wed, March 3 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
When it comes to getting access to all the data that flows through Twitter, there are the 50,000 apps that drink from Twitter’s Streaming API, which is subject to various limits. And then there are the chosen few who get the full unlimited firehose of data, the more than 50 million Tweets a day [...]
Tue, March 2 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Hamburg, Germany based Qype, a Yelp-like site that’s focused on European markets, has recently had long acquisition looks from both Google and Nokia, we’ve heard from multiple sources. A deal with Nokia in particular was looking extremely likely until recently.
The site was first launched in 2005 and today attracts 9 million monthly worldwide visitors, according [...]
Sat, February 27 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners is pumping $50 million into a new online video company set up by Chinese Internet search giant Baidu.
The news comes roughly 7 weeks after Baidu confirmed plans to established a new independent company to provide licensed, advertising-supported online video content to Chinese Internet users.
Although it isn’t yet explicitly confirming [...]
Fri, February 26 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman is an occasional contributor to TechCrunch. And when he does take the time to write a guest column, they are certainly worth reading. In this post he laments cheapskate founders who trickle tiny amounts of equity down to early employees, and presumably he’s taken his own advice with the now-profitable Redfin. [...]
Fri, February 26 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
Yesterday we broke the news that Aardvark, the social search engine, was being acquired by Google for $50 million. Aardvark confirmed the acquisition to us yesterday (though they didn’t comment on the amount), and now Google and Aardvark have publicly announced the deal with posts to their official blogs, along with some more details [...]
Fri, February 12 2010 » Uncategorized » No Comments
