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eMarketer: Online Ad Spending Expected to Accelerate This Year To $31 Billion
Jun 08, 4:11PM
Online ad spending keeps ramping up thanks to an upswing in display advertising. A new forecast from eMarketer puts online ad spending at $31.3 billion this year, up 20 percent. That is double the 10.5 percent growth rate it put out last December for 2011. The new forecast shows online ad spending reaching nearly $50 billion in 2015. What is driving this growth is display advertising. Brand-friendly ad formats such as banner ads, sponsorships, and video ads are all growing even faster than search. This year, video ad spending is estimated to grow 52 percent, sponsorships are growing 26 percent, and banner ad dollars will increase an estimated 22 percent, while search will grow 20 percent. When you add it all together, eMarketer predicts that display ad spending will surpass search by 2015.
Songkick Launches iPhone App To Connect Location To Gigs
Jun 08, 3:11PM
I have a confession to make. I'm a fan of live bands, but what with one thing or another, I just don't get to see enough. I signed up to all the obvious sites to get emails about upcoming gigs. I don't read their emails. I've scrobbled and playlisted and put in my preferences multiple times on numerous sites. Do I go back to visit? No. What I've been waiting for is an app which you can pull out in front of friends when they say "Yeah, let's go and see [band name]..." on the spur of the moment. But no apps on the iPhone have got substantial traction for concert discovery. Ticketmaster/LiveNations' app is only in the US, only presents Ticketmaster concerts and iLike's 'local concerts' app has been in life-support mode since they were acquired by MySpace. The odd thing is movie discover apps like Flixster have had 30 million downloads So I'm excited that Songkick the social platform for live music is launching an iPhone app today. 
Ericsson Money Launches In Europe To Send And Receive Money Via Mobile
Jun 08, 2:06PM
Remember Ericsson? Yeah, they used to make mobile phones on their own. Then they realised they couldn't compete against Nokia, Motorola and the rest, and spun out their mobile division to hook up with Sony, who also realised that they were getting squeezed. Sony Ericcson mobile has trundled along for a few years and are even coming out with handheld mashups like the Xperia Play. But the mothership of Ericsson itself has largely turned into a telecoms and services company. Today, however they are doing something unusually disruptive. Ericsson Money is launching across seven European countries (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Sweden) and allows anyone to send and receive money via mobile. Eventually there will be a commission fee for sending money but for a limited time it's free. 
SaaS Field Service Software ServiceMax Raises $14M From Mayfield, Salesforce And Others
Jun 08, 2:00PM
Startup ServiceMax, a company that develops SaaS field service software, has raised $14 million in new funding led by Mayfield Fund with Trinity Ventures, Emergence Capital and Salesforce.com also participating in the round. To date, the company has raised $26 million. As field service software, ServiceMax essentially helps manage other company's equipment at their sites. ServiceMax software automates workforce optimization, advanced scheduling and dispatch, parts logistics, inventory and depot repair, and installed base entitlements. ServiceMax is being used currently by 150 different customers including DuPont. And the company reports 380 percent year-over-year growth in first quarter 2011.
A New Mobile App For "Quickly Window Shopping The World." Do You Want.it?
Jun 08, 1:00PM
There are about a million Tweets a day with the word "I Want," and now there is a mobile photo sharing app that can capture all those things people want and share them with the world. The iPhone app is called Want!, the site is Want.it, and the concept is simple: you take a picture of things you want, give it a description, and share it with friends. The app can broadcast your wants to Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Tumblr. It pulls in locations from Facebook and tags from your description. "We want it to be a tool for quickly window shopping the world," says co_founder and CEO Gene DeRose, who gives me a demo in the video above. You can take pictures of anything you desire: a beautiful watch, a shirt your friend is wearing, a plate of ribs, a nap, a day at the beach. It's a mobile "like" button. "Like is kind of meh," says DeRose, "it is kind of meta and that is great. But want is more actionable. It has a possible end in commerce."
CapLinked Helps Entrepreneurs And Investors Intelligently Leverage LinkedIn Contacts
Jun 08, 12:57PM
We've previously written about CapLinked, the LinkedIn-meets-SalesForce for private investing, which was founded by former PayPal marketing exec Eric Jackson and funded by a number of well known members of the PayPal mafia. Entrepreneurs use CapLinked to raise capital and sell or buy assets, manage and contact investor prospects, centralize document flow on a secure platform and connect with new investors, advisors and companies. Investors can use CapLinked to manage deals, build public profiles and connect with promising startups. 
Paramount And Twitter Team Up To Offer Sneak Previews And Free Popcorn To Moviegoers
Jun 08, 12:21PM
Twitter has just announced a partnership with movie studio Paramount to offer Twitter users access to sneak preview showings of the studio's new movie SUPER 8 for on Thursday, June 9, in advance of the film's scheduled nationwide release on Friday, June 10. Twitter says this is the first partnership where twitter is hosting movie sneak previews. To promote the sneak previews, the companies have designated the hashtag #Super8Secret, which Paramount has also sponsored as a Promoted Trend, which gives users a direct link to buy tickets to the advanced previews. At select theatres, some Super 8 Sneak Preview moviegoers will be treated to a free popcorn (with a concession purchase) at each show. 
Buuteeq Raises $3.5 Million To Help Boutique Hotels Create, Market And Manage Websites
Jun 08, 12:00PM
Buuteeq, a digital marketing SaaS for independent hotels, has raised $3.5 million in Series funding led by Mike Galgon, Geoff Entress with Benaroya Capital and other angel investors participating in the round. The investment bring the company's total funding to $5 million. Buuteeq, which we previously covered here, gives boutique hotels a cost effective way to build and maintain a consumer-facing user-friendly Web site, manage Facebook pages and mobile sites, SEO and more. 
ARAMARK Sells Stake In Online Food Ordering Service SeamlessWeb For $50M
Jun 08, 11:17AM
Private equity firm Spectrum Equity has acquired from ARAMARK a minority stake in SeamlessWeb, which offers an online and mobile food ordering service, for $50 million. Following the transaction, SeamlessWeb's operations will be separated from those of ARAMARK. SeamlessWeb CEO Jonathan Zabusky posits that the transaction enables the company to pursue accelerated expansion and product innovation, as well as 'opportunistic' acquisitions.
Woman Has 152 Facebook Friends Tattooed Onto arm – Unfriending Tricky?
Jun 08, 11:15AM
Social networks have contributed to the Arab Spring, people getting arrested for jokes, you name it. Now one Facebok user has taken the social network to heart - or rather to her body. A woman in the Netherlands has had 152 profile images of her Facebook friends tattooed onto her arm. You Tube user Suzyj87 now has a permanent collection of her friends right to hand, as it were. Who need a smartphone? 
To See How We See – Cortexica Vision Systems Releases Its VisualSearch API
Jun 08, 10:34AM
This really is the stuff of Sci-Fi movies: Build a computer program that can see as the human eye does. Based on the principles of the human visual cortex, Cortexica Vision Systems claims to have done just that. The London startup, which was spun out of Imperial College London in February 2009 after six and a half years of research to understand how humans see and two years building algorithms to accurately mimic human visual recognition, today releases its VisualSearch API, which has been in private Beta for a while. It's aimed at brands who want to "directly engage with consumers" via their mobile device while bypassing the need to use QR codes or other barcodes or more traditional text search. 
The Cat That Roared: How Simon's Cat Went From YouTube To… Everywhere [TCTV]
Jun 08, 10:02AM
With over 24 million views for a single episode, there's every chance you're already discovered Simon's Cat. You might, however, be less familiar with Simon Tofield, the eponymous owner responsible for bringing his pet's animated adventures to YouTube. Unlike many online video producers who struggle to monitize even huge audiences, Simon has built an increasingly lucrative business by leveraging his creation into a series of bestselling books, a comic strip in a national newspaper - plus a line of t-shirts and other Cat-themed merchandise. 
'Many Apple Fans Around The World Wonder Which Sweaters Steve Jobs Wears'
Jun 08, 9:58AM
Ah, the marvel that is our tips inbox. Just landed: an email from luxury fashion label VONROSEN, bringing forth the revelation that Apple head honcho Steve Jobs was wearing one of their cashmere sweaters on stage at WWDC 2011 earlier this week (and later when he asked the Cupertino city council for space to park his spaceship or something). The email came straight from Dr. David Frederik von Rosen-von Hoewel, the label's CEO, and it went something like this:
Virtual Storage Company Virsto Raises $12M, Buys VMware Virtualization Startup EvoStor
Jun 08, 6:57AM
Virsto Software, a virtual machines storage company, has raised $12 million in Series B venture capital funding led by InterWest Partners with August Capital and Canaan Partners also participating in the round. This investment brings Virsto's total funding to $19 million. Virsto develops an hypervisor-based storage solution that can anticipate the evolving demands, barriers and opportunities native to server virtualization. Virsto One is architected to be storage- and hypervisor-agnostic and allows users to virtualize storage-intensive workloads, maximize consolidation of server and storage hardware, reduce storage management complexity and eventually reduce overall storage costs.
Jobs To Cupertino: We Want A Spaceship-Shaped, 12K Capacity Building As Our New Apple Campus
Jun 08, 5:42AM
After having a banner #WWDC start yesterday, Apple founder Steve Jobs humbly presented his idea for a new Apple campus at the Cupertino City Council today. I'm still watching this, but what I've seen so far is amazing. Jobs wants to build one building that holds 12,000 people on a former Hewlett-Packard property."It's a little like a spaceship," Jobs says. No kidding. 
This Is Where The Magic Happens
Jun 08, 4:32AM
Seventeen years ago Wired published Neal Stephenson's magisterial epic "Mother Earth Mother Board", about the web of undersea fibre-optic cables being built to connect all of humanity. Well - almost all. Africa, again, was left behind. Until 2009, all of East Africa could only connect to the Internet over slow and hugely expensive satellite links. Finally, two years ago, SEACOM laid a cable along the East African coast to Mumbai; then tributaries were run thousands of kilometers inland, as far as Uganda and even Rwanda; and later this year, a direct connection to Europe will be lit up. This has chopped the cost of bandwidth from US $5,000 per megabit/s per month to approximately $100, hugely increased capacity to 1.28 terabits/second, and given more than 100 million people (and counting) access to broadband Internet for the very first time. Today I visited their cable landing site in Mombasa, Kenya, armed with a camera. 
Founders Den: First Class — 11 Startups Emerge From The Non-Incubator Incubator
Jun 08, 3:27AM
This past January, we first wrote about Founders Den, a new shared office space based in the SoMa district of San Francisco. The idea was to create a private clubhouse where invited entrepreneurs (including California's Lieutenant Governor, Gavin Newsom) could come to hang out and small, referred startups could rent space. Today, the don't-call-it-an-incubator incubator had its first demo day. Overall, the quality of the 12 startups that gave presentations seem very solid. A number of them already have funding in place. And some even come by way of other incubators, like Y Combinator. We've covered a few of them already, but here's a rundown of all 12 startups that gave presentations today. Well, actually 11 of them. 1 is still in stealth mode and made me double pinky swear that I wouldn't reveal what I saw.
appMobi Acquires Hosting Platform; Launches Tech To Speed Up HTML5 In Mobile Gaming
Jun 08, 2:21AM
ppMobi likes HTML5-based mobile games, and it wants you to like them, too, which is why appMobi is focused on giving developers the tools required to make HTML5 and JavaScript mobile applications that run smoothly across platforms and browsers. Of course, many loudly pronounced HTML5 the new heir to the throne, as it would finally bring the native app experience to every mobile device, and take some of the iterative work in app creation out of the hands of developers. The problem is that this pronouncement jumped the gun by more than a few paces: HTML5, while an important step forward, is still a work in progress. But, today, appMobi announced a new technology, called DirectCanvas, that it claims speeds up the often slow graphic rendering of HTML5 in mobile games by 500 percent.
Actually, Sony Won E3 With The Vita
Jun 08, 12:16AM
Matt may think that the Wii U is the E3 champion, but I'm not convinced. It looks like a fun and versatile device, but I'm not sure it's as accessible as the Wii, which focused on motion and a few primary buttons to make gaming as simple as possible. The Wii U, on the other hand, seems powerful in some ways but not nearly the breakthrough device the Wii was. The Playstation Vita, on the other hand, isn't even trying to be a breakthrough device. It's simply an extremely powerful and versatile portable gaming system. While I have my reservations about the system, Sony convinced me today that it's going to at least fulfill its own mission. And the price? Perfection.
Jawbone Makes A Promo Music Video That Isn't Horribly Embarrassing, Hides A (Ridiculous) New Product Within
Jun 08, 12:02AM
I like Jawbone. They're one of the few companies out there that consistently surprises me which each step they take. Finding a sustainable business model in selling a series of expensive Bluetooth headsets with marginal, almost-entirely-intangible improvements between iterations? Surprise! Launching a somewhat niche product like the Jambox, then finding success in it by marketing to hipsters and urban kids (markets which largely ignored their previous products)? Surprise! Making a music video promoting their products that not only isn't horribly embarrassing or lame, but is actually pretty cool? Surprise! Oh, and the unannounced product they tucked into the video? It's probably the most surprising bit yet.
CleverSense's Seymour Takes A Different Approach To Local Recommendations
Jun 07, 11:58PM
Between Yelp, Foursquare, Facebook, Google and countless startups, there's no shortage of services looking to offer you restaurant and activity recommendations while you're on the go. But there's a reason there's so much competition: as smartphones become increasingly common, this market is going to be absolutely massive. Which means there's plenty of room for more than one winner. Which brings us to a new company called CleverSense that is about to join the fray. Led by CEO Babak Pahlavan, the company has spent the last two years working on an algorithm that Pahlavan says is better at making recommendations than many of the existing services. And he has a strong pedigree to back that claim up — his advisors include Prof. Jeff Ullman of Stanford, who was Ph.D. advisor for Google cofounder Sergey Brin.
Twitter Now Automatically Shortens Links
Jun 07, 11:20PM
In another step towards filling all its holes, Twitter has just announced its own link shortening service which starts rolling out today. The Twitter link shortening service will pass through t.co and shorten links to 19 characters, still allowing users to see what site the links are pointing towards. In an afterthought, Twitter users are still referred to third party apps like Bit.ly if they want analytics surrounding their links. [Insert well-trodden assertion that Twitter is breaking the hearts of its developer ecosystem here.]
Square Raising New Round, Joining Billion Dollar Valuation Club
Jun 07, 10:48PM
There are a bevy of startups in the process of raising big rounds of capital at billion dollar or higher valuations - something that was a rare occurrence even a few months ago. We're tracking most of these deals (and have written about the ones we've confirmed). Now, we've confirmed via multiple sources, is payment startup Square's turn. The company is raising $50 million or more, says sources, at a valuation that will likely be north of $1 billion. It's still fairly early in the process, though, and the company is rumored to be meeting with additional venture and private equity firms to either fill out the round or encourage a higher valuation. But at least one term sheet has been received by the company, says one source. COO Keith Rabois was in a particularly chipper mood when he sat down with me two weeks ago at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about how Square is doing. 
The Nintendo Wii U Won E3 2011
Jun 07, 10:14PM
Alright, everyone. You can go home. E3 2011 is a mainly bust besides Nintendo's amazing Wii U. Microsoft added Bing to the 360 and Sony announced the name of the NGP, the Vita. Sure, there are several clever games like Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3, and several new Zelda games. But there really isn't anything new per se here. It's a bunch of rehashing of the same, I'm sorry, tired story lines. Of course E3 is still fun. Hell, it's probably one of the most fun trade shows of the year. It's wall-to-wall video games. Stick around if you must, but once you see the Wii U, you may as well head home because that's the best as it gets here this year.
A Look At Who's Winning The Talent Wars In Tech (Hint: It Rhymes With Twitter)
Jun 07, 9:59PM
There's been a lot of talk about the fierce competition for talent among the top players in the tech industry. As the story goes, Facebook has been the primary source of anguish for its competitors, seemingly bearing the gravitational pull of a giant sun. Even the ubiquitous Google was forced to take some extraordinary measures to stem the flow of top talent to Facebook last year by offering exorbitant counteroffers as well as a 10 percent, company-wide salary increase. Then-CEO Eric Schmidt called it a "war for talent". Bringing in top talent can change (and cement) a company's future, and Google is not the only company willing to go to great lengths to keep (and nurture) talent within its ranks. But, up to this point, there's been little understanding of who is actually winning (and losing) the war for recruiting top talent in the tech industry, especially in Silicon Valley. Today, thanks to Top Prospect, the social recruiting site that rewards users for helping their friends find jobs, we now have a snapshot of where we stand in the great talent wars of the 21st century. (Not to over-dramatize or anything.)
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