TECH CRUNCH - May 17 - MessageMe, a messaging app that launched in March, has raised another $10M. This newest round will be used to help MessageMe keep up with growth in the future, as it faces up to an increasingly crowded field of competitors. They include biggies like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Two months ago, the app was seeing 500 notifications per second among 1M users, despite the fact that Facebook cut MessageMe off from Social Graph access one week after it launched. Facebook apps are not allowed to use “Find Friends” features to seek out Facebook contacts on third-party apps, when those third-party apps are deemed to be competitive to/replicating core Facebook services.
Tencent Eyes Revenue Growth
REUTERS - May 15 - China's largest online gaming and social networking company, Tencent Holdings, more than tripled the number of active users for its mobile chat app in Q1. Active user numbers soared 228% to 194M. Strong sales of online advertising and gaming helped Tencent report a 37% rise in Q1 profit to 4.0 billion yuan ($645M).
by Melanie Lee & Lee Chyen Yee
See full article at Global Post
Google Revamped Google+
SF GATE - May 15 - Google is making its strongest push yet to go after Facebook by revamping its Google+ with dozens of new features and enhancements, including self-editing photos, automatic hashtags and improved messaging. With photos, Google is gunning for the most popular activity on Facebook, which also owns mobile photo-sharing app Instagram. Google hopes people will use the photo tools to share more on Google+.
Founder2be Took A Lesson From Online Dating
FORBES - May 15 - Back in 2011, Oliver Bremer was seeking a partner, a co-founder, with which to kick off a B2B-type software startup. He was not having much luck. Then it struck him that if people take to social internet sites to find love and find jobs, why not startup co-founders? And so Founder2be was born. “It’s like Match.com meets LinkedIn for startups,” Bremer said. “It’s online dating to find a cofounder.” People sign up for the service and create a profile that reflects what they are all about in the hope of attracting like-minded potential partners. So far there are~ 14K profiles across 100 countries.
by Karsten Strauss
See full article at Forbes
This post also appears on OnlinePersonalsWatch.
Radisson Hotel Rolls Out Social Networking App LobbyFriend
EDMONTON JOURNAL - May 14 - The Radisson Edmonton South hotel is rolling out LobbyFriend, a social media platform that enables guests to connect with each other and with staff. Guests will be given a personal identification number when they check in and invited to download the free app.
by Bill Mah
See full article at The Province
CEO Of Power.com To Speak At The Viral Summit
WEBWIRE - May 14 - Steve Vachani, Founder of Power.com and Managing Director of Serendipity Ventures has acquired ~100M users via viral growth. He will present at the Viral Summit that is taking place on June 6-7 in Los Angeles.
LinkedIn Bans Users From Promoting Prostitution
MASHABLE - May 14 - Prostitutes and escorts will have to find another social network to promote themselves. LinkedIn updated its user agreement terms on Monday. A LinkedIn rep confirmed that the wording is new, but noted that LinkedIn has always prohibited users from "unlawful" activities. The reason for the new wording,is that there are some countries in which LinkedIn operates, where prostitution is actually legal.
Twitter's Latest Buy: Big Data Startup Lucky Sort
CNET NEWS - May 13 - Twitter has acquired big data startup Lucky Sort. Lucky Sort's goal was to make huge document sets easier to analyze, summarize, and visualize by building elegant and user-friendly tools for text analysis. It is unknown how the startup will be integrated into Twitter's larger plans, but several members of Lucky Sort's team would be moving to San Francisco to become part of Twitter's revenue engineering department.
Facebook Kills Social Roulette
TECH CRUNCH - May 13 - Social Roulette is an app that would delete one in six users’ Facebook account data, but its founder confirms it’s been blocked by Facebook so it no longer functions. Social Roulette launched on Saturday as an online version of Russian Roulette, the lethal real-life game where a player places one bullet in a six-chamber revolver pistol, spins the cylinder, and fires the gun at his head. You die, you lose. On Social Roulette, it’s implied that having your Facebook account deleted means you won. If you’re hit that one in six chance, the site explains “we can completely remove all your posts, friends, apps, likes, photos, and games before completely deactivating it.” The app capitalizes on exhaustion with social networks.
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo Resigns As Director Of Twitter U.K.
TECH CRUNCH - May 13 - Costolo stepping back from the U.K. directorship role appears related to the dissolution of TweetDeck: a U.K. startup which Twitter acquired in May 2011 for $40M. Late last year TweetDeck failed to file U.K. accounts with Companies House, and continued failure to file ultimately led to the dissolution of the company as a separate entity earlier this month, on May 7. Costolo’s position has been replaced by a Dublin-based chartered accountant, Laurence O’Brien.
Google+ Struggles To Win Over Brands
REUTERS - May 13 - Two years after introducing its social network, Google is struggling to win over the brands and businesses that have been its most loyal customers in the Internet search market.The biggest problem is that many more consumers use Twitter and Facebook. Google+ has ~135M users that it actively use the news stream, and ~500M that have set up Google+ account. Still, Facebook has 1.1 billion users who engage with the service at least once a month, while Twitter has 200M. The average U.S. visitor to Google+ spent 6 minutes 47 seconds on the site in March, versus 6 hours on Facebook. Of the 100 most valuable global brands in 2012, 72 have a presence on Google+, compared with 87 on Facebook. However, ~40% of the brands with pages on Google+ have either never posted any content, or do so infrequently. "I don't think that Google+ has enough creative options for brands to be able to marshal a lot of resources and activity around it," said Vince Broady, the CEO of Thismoment, which develops social marketing campaigns and Web pages for brands such as Coca Cola and Intel.
Twitter Seeks Australian Country Director
THE AUSTRALIAN - May 13 - Twitter is advertising for a sales-focused country director to head up its Australian operations. Last month the site advertised for an account executive and account manager, to be based in Sydney where it is expected to establish its Australian office, and previously announced it had hired Jonathan Simpson to manage relationships between the site and sporting codes. It is estimated there are ~2M active Australian Twitter accounts, posting 1.4M tweets a day out of 400-500M globally.
Twitter Buys Scalable Computing Startup Ubalo
ITPRO PORTAL - May 13 - Twitter has acquired scalable computing startup Ubalo. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The four-person Ubalo team, including its founders Jacob Mattingley and Ian Downes, will be joining Twitter.
Twitter Valued At $10 Billion By Investor
DNA INDIA - May 11 - Twitter fueled further speculation earlier this month that it could launch an IPO in 2014 after it appointed a prominent investment banker from Morgan Stanley, Cynthia Gaylor, as its head of corporate development. Twitter has been valued by one of its shareholders at ~$10 billion, 9% more than a previous estimate.
by Nathalie Thomas
See full article at DNA India
Bebo Has Filed A Voluntary Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Petition
TECH CRUNCH - May 10 - This appears to be the latest development in a case that was filed in February, in which some of the smaller shareholders requested for the courts to appoint a receiver to take control of the company after they judged that it had been mis-managed by Criterion. The receiver that got appointed in the Bebo case was Michael Ong, who is listed as an investing partner at Burke Capital Corporation. Chapter 11 Cases lists the largest unsecured creditors in the case as the “IRS ($380K); Criterion Capital ($314K – disputed); AOL Advertising ($121K – subject to setoff, according to Bebo); Quality Technology Services ($120K) and e-DBA Limited ($43,571).” The February suit might lead to the removal of Adam Levin as Bebo’s CEO. In April 2012, minority shareholders had filed a $5M suit against Criterion for “destroying” the site.
Pinterest Starts Out With Localizing Campaign To Drive More U.K. Posts
TECH CRUNCH - May 9 - Pinterest is kicking off a localisation effort in the U.K., tweaking the site so that it deliberately foregrounds U.K. content to U.K. users and also adding a British English language setting. UK is the first part in a bigger strategy to target more users outside of the U.S. According to one estimate Pinterest had ~40M users in February. Pinterest raised $200M in Series D funding in Feb.
Reports: Facebook Is Buying Social Mapping/Traffic App Waze For Up To $1B
TECH CRUNCH - May 9 - Facebook appears to be close to making another billion-dollar acquisition. Facebook has approached Waze, the social mapping and traffic app maker, and reportedly offered $800M and $1 billion. The negotiations apparently began six months ago. Waze currently has ~47M active users, more than double what it had in July last year when it reported 20M. Facebook has been putting a lot of effort into its mobile business, which now has 751M monthly active users, an increase of 54% YOY. Facebook reported that it passed 1 billion users, and it’s likely that the next billion will likely not be in the U.S. Waze has around one-third of its users in the U.S. with the rest worldwide.
Instagram Fairy Tale
VANITY FAIR - May 6 - The sale of Instagram to Facebook for $1 Billion in 2012 was the ultimate Silicon Valley fairy tale: 18 months from launch to offer. Instagram had just 13 employees at the time and managed to attract 30M iPhone. It launched on October 6, 2010 by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger. On that first day, the app had 25K users, and it grew exponentially from there. By February of 2011, Benchmark was leading a $7M Series A round of funding, which valued Instagram at $25M. While Krieger manned the tech operations, Systrom focused on product improvements and fielding interest from big companies looking to buy Instagram. Chief among the suitors were Dorsey, at Twitter, and Zuckerberg, at Facebook. At the same time, Systrom got a call from another young and aggressive venture capitalist, Roelof Botha, of Sequoia Capital, an investor in Tumblr. He committed to $50M in new funding. Then Twitter proposed to Systrom to buy Instagram for $500M - a combination of restricted and common stock—but no cash. The offer was turned down. Zuckerberg wouldn’t take no for an answer. What probably clinched the sale was one of the key promises to allow Instagram to operate relatively independently within Facebook. But then Instagram introduced new terms of service, prepared by a Facebook lawyer, which quietly allowed the company to access users’ photos for advertising purposes. Surprisingly Instagram’s user numbers grew during this period.
by Kara Swisher
See full article at Vanity Fair
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