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Social TV Platform Loyalize Acquires Game Studio Savage Entertainment
May 17, 3:00PM
Loyalize, an audience participation company, has acquired game studio Savage Entertainment. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Savage has worked with numerous publishers, including Electronic Arts, Activision, THQ, Midway, and LucasArts. The studio has created games for a number of well-known movies, including Transformers, James Bond, and Star Wars. Savage has also created simulators for various branches of the US government, including the Army, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. 
Netflix Now The Largest Single Source of Internet Traffic In North America
May 17, 2:54PM
Netflix video streaming is now the single largest source of peak downstream Interent traffic i the U.S., according to a new report by Sandvine. The streaming video service now accounts for 29.7 percent of peak downstream traffic, up from 21 percent last fall. That puts Netflix above HTTP websites (18 percent), BitTorrent (11 percent), and YouTube (10 percent) as a source of downstream traffic during peak times in North America. (BitTorrent still accounts for half of all upstream traffic). As whole, "real-time entertainment" (which is mostly video streaming) accounted for 49 percent of downstream traffic in March, 2011, versus 19 percent for P2P file sharing, and 17 percent for Web browsing.
B&N Sends Invites For A Special Announcement
May 17, 2:53PM
Well, after several leaks, an SEC filing, and random speculation from random bloggers, Barnes & Noble just sent out an invite for a Special Announcement. Ready for more random speculation from a random blogger? Here! We! Go! So the B&N Nook Color is huge hit. In fact it might be the second most popular tablet right now, thanks to its low price, impressive feature set and hackable nature. Many have thought that B&N is ready to take it up a notch with a new Nook Color. Said tablet could be a slight revision of the currently loved tablet with maybe just the addition of a 3G radio. Or, it could be a total overhaul. Then there's always the possibility that the special announcement could for a new version of the company's original ebook reader, the dual screen Nook. Either way we'll find out next week on May 24th.
99 Percent Of Android Devices Are Vulnerable To Password Theft
May 17, 2:52PM
Researchers at Germany's University of Ulm have made some unsettling discoveries about the security of the Android platform. According to an article from The Register, the research group located a vulnerability that allows hackers to collect and use the digital tokens saved on a phone after a user inputs credentials for a password-protected service. 
Energy-Management Startup Hara Soaks Up $25 Million In Venture Funding
May 17, 1:58PM
Before companies can do anything about reducing their impact on the environment, they need to measure the damage they are doing. Energy management startup Hara helps them track their efforts to reduce their carbon footprint. The company announced a new $25 million C round of funding today. Investors included Energy Technology Ventures, Focus Ventures and Navitas Capital, with existing investors Kleiner Perkins, JAFCO and Nth Power also participating. In addition, Kleiner partner Ray LAne is taking a board seat.
Time Warner Invests In TV Advertising Technology Company BlackArrow
May 17, 1:28PM
BlackArrow, a provider of advertising solutions for 'New Television platforms', this morning announced a strategic investment by Time Warner Cable. Joan Gillman, president of media sales for TWC, has been named to the BlackArrow board of directors. The cable system operator joins BlackArrow's impressive list of backers, which includes Cisco, Comcast, Intel Capital, Mayfield Fund, Motorola Mobility, NDS and Polaris Venture Partners. 
SecondMarket Sees $115 Million In Private Stock Sales During Q1
May 17, 1:15PM
Are sales of private company shares taking a breather? Demand for private company shares resulted in $115.4 million worth of transactions on SecondMarket during the first quarter of 2011, down from $120 million last year. The value of shares trading hands was also down from $158 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to its first quarter report. The biggest buyers were high net-worth individuals, who accounted for 59 percent of completed transactions, compared to only 18 percent last quarter. VC funds stopped buying completely during the quarter, whereas the quarter before they made up a whopping 43 percent of completed transactions (with mutual funds making up another 13 percent). 
Jive Launches Facebook Connector To Integrate Social Content Into Support Communities
May 17, 1:04PM
Jive Software, the maker of an all-in-one social enterprise software, has launched a deeper integration with Facebook today with the release of the Jive Facebook Connector. The connector allows companies to integrate Facebook communities, fan pages and content into the Jive external customer support communities. Modeled to offer Facebook-like features to enterprises, Jive's software combines computing with social collaboration to offer fully-featured social networks for businesses. Its suite of applications help businesses collaborate on a variety of tasks, including holding discussions, communication, sharing documents, blogging, running polls, and social networking features and more. 
Most People Think Online Companies Are 'Too Powerful' (While Usage Soars): Study
May 17, 1:02PM
Research firm Harris Interactive asked 2,124 American adults if they agree or disagree that some online companies, singling out such companies as Google or Facebook, control too much of our personal information and know too much about our browsing habits, and found that more than three quarters of respondents agreed (76%) with those statements. Only one in six disagreed that these companies know and control too much (16%) and even fewer are 'not sure' (8%). These are some of the findings of a recent Adweek/Harris Poll survey of U.S. adults surveyed online between April 25 and 27, 2011 by Harris Interactive.
Patent Troll Sells Licenses For In-App Buy Buttons, Then Tries To Explain Itself
May 17, 12:42PM
Patent trolling is often a lucrative hobby for many companies that have fallen into hard times. Like the junkies they are, the trolls will spin all sorts of delightful stories exonerating themselves of their actions in order to grab another infusion of cash. That's why it's not surprising to read this discussion from the trolls at Lodsys, a company that is now charging small mobile developers for licenses to their unique IP, the use of an upgrade/buy now button inside of an app. That's right: they're charging for a button. Their M.O. is simple. They go after the little devs who may or many not have known about Lodsys' unique contribution to the programmers canon. They then ask for a percentage of revenue to "license" their IP. Why do they go after the big guys instead of Apple and Microsoft? Well, the little guys will probably pay up.
With 1 Billion Views Per Quarter, Blip.tv Becomes A Video Destination (Interview)
May 17, 12:00PM
Blip.tv started five years ago with a focus on helping budding video producers manage and distribute their shows across the Web. Slowly but surely, though, it's become a video destination in its own right with 3 billion cumulative video views—currently closing in on one billion a quarter. In light of that growth, it is now fully embracing its destiny as a video destination with a redesign that puts the most popular blip.tv Web series front and center. In the exclusive video interview above, CEO Mike Hudack takes us through the new look and features of the site. When you go to blip.tv, the first thing you see now is a grid of tiles for popular Web series. As you mouse over each one, you can view the latest show from that series in the main player on the home page, or click through for a more immersive experience.
Social TV Startup BeeTV Raises $1.5 Million, Releases iPad App
May 17, 11:49AM
It's been two years almost to the day when Israeli startup BeeTV raised $8 million in funding for a - really impressive - personal TV suggestion engine they'd been building. Fast forward to today, and the company has shifted its focus squarely on offering social tools for sharing the TV viewing experience with online friends. The company's co-founder and former CTO, Yaniv Solnik, is leading the pivot as the startup's chief executive officer, backed with $1.5 million in additional funding from Italian investment firm Innogest, a previous investor in BeeTV.
9flats, The European Airbnb, Secures 'Major Investment' From Silicon Valley's Redpoint
May 17, 11:42AM
9flats, the peer to peer apartment rentals site (or Airbnb-clone), has secured a "major investment round" led by Silicon Valley VC firm Redpoint Ventures. European-based eVenture Capital Partners also participated. Terms of the deal aren't being disclosed although 9flats says this brings its total funding to $10m just six months after the startup was founded. The new round will be used to expand 9flats' management team and service across Europe as it aims to become a "global player" in the online travel industry.
LinkedIn Ups Price Of IPO To $42 To $45 Per Share, Valuation Now Over $4 Billion
May 17, 11:19AM
Wow. According to this filing, professional social network LinkedIn has just upped the pricing of its IPO from between $32 and $35 per share to $42 to $45 per share. This latest pricing, which marks a 30 percent increase, values the company at over $4 billion (from a $3 billion plus valuation at the previous price). LinkedIn is still offering a total of 7,840,000 shares and is looking to raise as much as $406 million in the offering. LinkedIn says it will use these funds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including working capital, sales and marketing activities, general and administrative matters and capital expenditures. The funds could also be used for acquisitions or investments in complimentary technologies.
uma Raises $1.1 Million For Semantic Web Technology
May 17, 11:08AM
Vienna, Austria-based semantic web technology company uma has raised $1.1 million in funding from TheMerger.com and multiple private European investors. The company has also appointed new board members, including Heinrich Schuster, former founder and now retired chairman of EPAMEDIA, and Oliver Holle, CEO of TheMerger.com and occasional TC guest blogger.
Exclusive: Jobvite Recruits $15 Million In Funding For Social Hiring Applications
May 17, 10:17AM
The socialization of the Web has brought about changes to how, when and where we communicate with each other over the Internet. The same goes for companies who now look for and hire new staff by using online software, social networks and whatnot, although that shift - to what is often referred to as 'social recruiting' - is perhaps far less visible. Jobvite, a developer of software that enables companies to leverage the social Web for finding and hiring new employees, was one of the first to spot this trend a few years ago, and the startup is today growing faster than ever. We've learned that the company has raised $15 million in Series C funding, underscoring its momentum.
Advertising Giant Publicis Groupe Acquires Rosetta For $575 Million+
May 17, 9:24AM
Publicis Groupe, the French advertising colossus, announced today that it will acquire Princeton-based interactive marketing agency Rosetta for $525 million in cash, plus later milestone payments. As one of the "big four" advertising holding companies, Publicis competes with Interpublic, Omnicom, and WPP, which each generated at least $6 billion in revenue in 2010 and employ at least 40K people. With sizable competition and online advertising growth picking up by 15 percent in 2010, the French company is looking to increase its presence in digital interactive advertising. The company's proposed goal is to increase digital revenue from 28 percent of total revenue to 35 percent by 2013. 
What Happens When It's Google/Android Vs. Amazon/Android?
May 17, 9:12AM
Reading the news in recent weeks, it's becoming increasingly clear that there are the early signs of a new war brewing in the mobile computing space. And it's a war that promises to be the most fascinating one yet. It doesn't involve Microsoft or Nokia or RIM or HP or Palm. It doesn't even include Apple. It's all about Android. Whereas right now, it's all Google/Android vs. Apple/iOS, what happens when it becomes Google/Android vs. Amazon/Android? It's going to happen. It's just a matter of "when".
Eventually, One Of These Updates Will Make Google News Not Suck At Tech News, Right?
May 17, 3:14AM
For as long as I can remember, there has been one constant in tech news: Google News sucks at it. Now, that's not entirely fair since Google News doesn't actually provide any of their own content. Instead, they use the supposedly magical Google algorithms to curate others' content from around the web. Still, there's just no way around it — the product, at least for tech news, sucks. Again, this is nothing new. I've been writing this article at least once a year for five years or so. But what's amazing to me is how many updates Google does to the product and it still sucks. Even more remarkable is that a lot of people continue to go to it as a source of tech news. How do I know? When TechCrunch does appear on it, it sends a lot of traffic.
Instagram Adds Bios, Grid View For Profile Pages
May 17, 2:17AM
If you're like me Instagram has become a service you check the first thing you wake up in the morning, alongside Twitter and Facebook. My addiction has seriously gotten to the point where I anticipate the app's bi-monthly updates (Tilt Shift is the best thing to happen to photo sharing addicts since sliced bread). So what's new in Version 1.7 (which just got dropped into the App Store?) The most obvious change is that when you click on someone's photo history, the app now shows you a grid view instead of a laborious feed. Users also now have the option to add a bio to their profiles, upload a profile picture from Twitter and Facebook and drill down into which profile notifications they actually want to receive. 
Chrome OS 12 — AKA: The Shipping Version — Hits Beta
May 17, 1:09AM
Last week, just prior to day one of Google I/O, we noted that some updates in the Chrome OS code and forums indicated that a formal unveiling was likely very close. Sure enough, on day two of I/O, Google unveiled the first Chromebooks, the first shipping products running Chrome OS. But Google also noted that the first orders wouldn't start until June 15, about a month away. One reason: Chrome OS still needed a tiny bit more work. And an update today brings it very close. Google has just updated the Chrome OS beta channel to R12, aka Chrome 12. The version, which has been in the dev channel for a couple of weeks, will now be further tested in beta for a couple of weeks before it becomes the first version of Chrome OS to go stable. Expect this to happen slightly before the June 15 date.
Local Q&A Site Hipster Raises $1M From Google Ventures, Lightbank, 500 Startups And More
May 16, 11:39PM
Local Q&A startup Hipster has raised $1 million in seed funding from some prominent angel Valley investors including Mitch Kapor, Dave McClure/500 Startups, Lightbank, Google Ventures, Charles River Ventures, Max Ventilla, TechStars David Cohen and David Tisch, Google's Don Dodge, Paige Craig, Ludlow Ventures, Lerer Ventures and others. Many of you best know Hipster as the startup that launched a thousand blog posts, having insane hype and a couple of acquisition offers before its SXSW launch. While Hipster's initial launch page had over 10K signups in its first few days of existence, the startup's actual user numbers for SXSW were at just over 4K for the entire three day period. Were you using Hipster during SXSW? I wasn't either. 
Facebook's Own (Smaller) "OAuthpocalypse": Devs Have 48 Hours To Secure Apps
May 16, 11:35PM
For a group of developers on Facebook's platform, the clock is ticking. Last night and into today, Facebook has been sending out notices to developers they believe have apps in violation of their policy against sending authentication data to third parties. Those developers have 48 hours to fix their apps or they risk being "subject to one of the enforcement actions" — read: being booted. You may recall that all of this initially came up last week when Symantec wrote a blog post entitled "Facebook Applications Accidentally Leaking Access to Third Parties." That post detailed how the company found close to 100,00 apps that were inadvertently leaking auth tokens due to the use of iframes for app authentication. As a result, Facebook responded with a blog post of their own noting that by September 1 of this year all apps must migrate to OAuth 2.0, ensuring encrypted access tokens.
Ashton Kutcher On Stage At TechCrunch Disrupt
May 16, 11:29PM
Ashton Kutcher will be on stage next week at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York. The actor, entrepreneur and investor will talk with Charlie Rose on Tuesday morning, and joins what is clearly our most impressive list of speakers at any TechCrunch event to date. His talk with Rose will be entirely focused on his new job starring in CBS's Two and a half Men. Ok, hopefully not really. 
(Founder Stories) Michael Yavonditte On Going Toe-To-Toe With Google (TCTV)
May 16, 11:18PM
In this episode of Founder Stories with host Chris Dixon, Hashable founder and CEO Michael Yavonditte delves into the conventional (lack of) wisdom, power plays and power players that helped shape paid search as we know it today. Yavonditte, who sold advertising startup Quigo to AOL for $360 million, started his career running business development at AltaVista. Back then, Yavonditte notes "we used to have more queries than anyone else." Unfortunately it was during a time, as Dixon points out that "the thought was you cannot monetize search." Like most other search engines back then, Yavonditte and company got caught up in the trendy portal wars which turned out to be "a great lesson in failure" says Yavonditte. 
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