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DIY Music Management Platform Nimbit Raises $1.25 million

Mar 12, 4:47AM

Nimbit, a direct-to-fan marketing, sales and distribution platform for musicians, announced today that it has closed a $1.25 million series A investment round. The round was led by Common Angels and Hub Angels and, according to VP of Marketing Carl Jacobson, will be used to ramp up the company's hiring efforts. Nimbit adds to the cumulative $3.5 million of seed funding it raised during three prior seed rounds beginning in May of 2006. The seed rounds were also led by Common Angels and Hub Angels, with LaunchCapital and Rose Tech Ventures contributing. Founded in 2002, the Massachusetts-based Nimbit is a one-stop shop for musicians looking to manage their own direct-to-fan marketing and commercial music efforts. And though Jacobson said that Nimbit may have been "a little early to the party", there has been quite a bit of buzz in the last few years concerning shifts in music marketing and distribution -- like the success of Radiohead's releasing "In Rainbows" direct to fans via their website, for example -- and it now seems that the market may be ready to adopt the direct-to-fan model.

Zynga Enables Donations To Tsunami Relief Through In-Game Purchases

Mar 12, 4:41AM

Social gaming giant Zynga has joined the Internet's efforts at donating to Japanese Tsunami relief tonight, by enabling in-game donations through virtual good buying in Zynga games like FrontierVille, FarmVille and CityVille as of 7pm PST. 100% of the virtual goods purchase prices will be donated to Tsunami relief.

Meet The Guy Who Bought The First iPad 2 At The SXSW Apple Pop-Up Store

Mar 12, 4:34AM

Because the iPad 2 launch had the fortitude to coincide with SXSW, Apple did well by the thousands of fanboys and fanladies that have descended upon the city and built a pop up shop at 6th and Congress. We braved the line today and got the chance to speak to the lucky man who bought the very first iPad 2 sold in Austin, Texas. Austin native and conference attendee "Sweet" John Muehlbauer (an event planner at Revolving Events) got to the store at 5:30 am and endured a 10 1/2 wait to get his hands on the sweet sweet tablet.

Flickr Confirms Taking Down Egyptian Blogger's Photos, Cites Community Guidelines Violation

Mar 12, 3:32AM

Last weekend Egyptian protestors broke into Amn al Dowla, the Cairo headquarters for the Egyptian security agency, and removed a "treasure trove" of video disks, hard disks and CDs with government documents from the Mubarak era. Egyptian blogger Hossam Arabway came into possession of a CD from the raid and has been uploading a set of Secret Service officer pics to Flickr for the past week. Arabway posted on his on blog that Flickr removed the photos yesterday, citing copyright infringement. Arabway's post led to NPR's Andy Carvin asking Flickr for a response to the accusations of censorship.

A Group Messaging Roundup To Help You Stay In Touch At SXSW

Mar 12, 2:18AM

By now you've doubtless heard of the many group messaging startups looking to help multiple people keep in touch with each other — there's been endless buzz about how these will likely be some of the breakout stars of SXSW. However, most of these companies do far more than just send texts to multiple people: some of them offer location sharing, conference calls, and other features. Here is a roundup of some of the major services and their feature sets to help you choose which one is best for you, just in time for SXSW. Groupme Groupme is a group texting and conference calling service that originated at the 2010 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon, and has already received $11.5M in funding. Users can chat with or call multiple people at a time, by setting up a unique phone number that is shared with the members of the group. By texting or calling the number, groups of up to 25 people can share conversations. Users can also share photos with the group online, or through Android or iPhone Apps. Currently, Groupme users send about 1,000,000 text messages and make a few thousand conference calls each day.

LinkedIn Posts $243M In 2010 Revenue, $15.4 Million In Net Income

Mar 12, 2:06AM

Professional social network LinkedIn, which originally submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC in January, has just posted an amendment to its filing that includes 2010 revenue numbers (previously the filing only included 2010 revenue until September). As we wrote earlier, the maximum proposed total offering price is $175 million but this is just a placeholder amount. >From 2009 to 2010, net revenue increased $123.0 million, or 102%, to $243 million. Net income increased $19.4 million, or 487%, to $15.4 million. The company took a $3.9 million loss in 2009 terms of net income, with 2010 as the first profitable year for the network.

CrunchBoard Jobs: TechCrunch Is Hiring!

Mar 12, 1:34AM

Would you like to come work with us at TechCrunch? We have positions open and are currently looking for qualified applicants. Maybe you could be our next Executive Assistant, our new CrunchBase Manager, or our new Conference Program Chair who would help us out with our events. The positions available right now are: Product and Engineering: Web Developer - Ruby on Rails - San Francisco, CA CrunchBase Manager - San Francisco, CA

New Facebook Valuation Record As Shares Surge 5% To $31.50

Mar 11, 11:59PM

A little over $8 million changed hands in this week's SecondMarket Facebook shares auction. And the price surged $1.50 per share, or about 5%, over last week's record price of $30/share. 257,422 shares were bought and sold. That values Facebook, with roughly 2.5 billion shares outstanding, at $78.75 billion. Or, 17 Twitters and change. The confidential (lol) email and part of the attached report is below, and we'll soon be updating our Facebook valuation chart.

Vacation Home Rental Service HomeAway Files For $230 Million IPO

Mar 11, 11:42PM

Vacation home rental service HomeAway has just submitted its S-1 filing with the SEC, indicating that it will file for a public offering in the next few months. The maximum proposed total offering price is $230 million but this could be just a placeholder amount. HomeAway has raised close to a half a billion dollars in venture funding, and in its most recent investment round was valued at $1.4 billion. HomeAway, which has been eying an IPO, currently offers home rentals through 31 websites in 11 languages and provided listings for vacation rentals located in over 145 countries. In 2010, its sites averaged over 9.5 million unique monthly visitors.

Marissa Mayer: 40% Of Google Maps Usage Is Mobile (And There Are 150 Million Mobile Users)

Mar 11, 10:09PM

Today at a SXSW talk, Google VP Marissa Mayer took the stage to talk about location — mobile location, in particular. The theme isn't a surprise since Mayer recently shifted her role from leading Google's search team to heading their local efforts. Her talk was mostly an overview/demo of Google's recent product launches, but it did include some new stats.

Mayer revealed that 40% of Google Maps usage is mobile. And Christmas and New Years day had mobile usage of Maps surpass the desktop — which is a first for Google products. Google Maps now has 150 million mobile users. To put that in context, Maps for mobile had 100 million users in August of last year.