Hi there!
Here's the latest feed from TechCrunch.
Add feeds@feed2email.net to your contact list to make sure you receive all your emails
Make sure to visit feed2email.net to get more feeds sent to your inbox.
To find out which feeds you are subscribed to, or to get further help, just reply to this email.
ingridlunden
Dec 19, 11:21AM
When people think of consumer VoIP services, the first name to come to mind for many is Skype. But while Microsoft’s recent acquisition begins to explore a new role as a social advertising network, the world’s number-two VoIP provider, Rebtel, is hoping to gain some new ground. The Stockholm-based company, which has been in operation since 2006, today is announcing that it has passed 20 million active users, with 2012 revenues of $80 million and projected turnover of $100 million for 2013. It has also seen a 250% increase in app downloads and paying users since 2011, with overall users growing currently at a rate of 500,000 each month. The business of over-the-top telephony services is a hot space right now, with companies like Whatsapp nabbing business away from carriers by becoming users’ default mobile messaging service. As of August 2012 Whatsapp was delivering 10 billion messages per day. And as we’ve said in the past, we’ve heard that its been an acquisition target for Facebook. Rebtel very much fits into that mold by offering a more cost-effective way of making calls on mobile devices, with a particular emphasis on long-distance calls that can cost a fortune otherwise if made via a mobile network. ”Our average users are consumers with a lot of first- and second-generation immigrants among them,” Bernström notes, so many of them will want to be calling family abroad. And while we don’t know whether Skype is profitable today (it wasn’t when Microsoft bought it), Rebtel’s CEO Andreas Bernström tells me that his company is, and has been for the past two years. That’s one reason why Rebtel has yet to raise more money since picking up a Series A round of $20 million from Index Ventures and Benchmark the year it was founded. “We have $10 million in the bank today,” he tells me. That strategy may change in the future, as Rebtel gears up for further expansion. Earlier this month, it announced a new line of business as a white-label VoIP provider, releasing an SDK so that developers can incorporate Rebtel’s VoIP service into their apps. Rebtel is primarily targeting mobile developers with the service, because that is where Rebtel itself focuses most of its business, with apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone (in addition to PCs). As a point of comparison, although Skype makes a big point of how popular its mobile apps are, Bernström says that about 90%nelomas
Dec 19, 11:02AM
BlackBerry maker RIM has clearly been on the phone to its carrier chums in the UK: EE, O2 and Vodafone have all this morning announced they will be offering BlackBerry 10 devices starting in January next year when RIM's next-gen platform launches. The EE deal covers the U.K.'s first 4G network, 4GEE, but also means EE's other mobile brands -- Orange and T-Mobile -- will offer BB10 handsets.nelomas
Dec 19, 8:59AM
SumUp, another Square-style mobile payment dongle that launched in Europe in August backed by more than $20 million from b-to-v Partners, Shortcut Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures and Klaus Hommels, is continuing its rapid rollout by expanding into three more markets to take its total business footprint in Europe to 10 markets. The three new markets SumUp is adding are Belgium, France and Portugal.catherineshu
Dec 19, 7:11AM
Google may have to wait a bit longer until negotiations in its antitrust case with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission finally draw to a close. The New York Times reported that the FTC is unlikely to finish until January, according to sources briefed on the investigation. At the beginning of this week, observers speculated that a settlement was in the works after Google reportedly promised to change some of the business practices that the FTC had called into question.SantaGoogle
Dec 19, 6:45AM
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) may have decided to ditch Google in favor of Microsoft for its official Santa tracker, but the search giant is still keeping tabs on the fat man. On Christmas Eve, kids and anyone else with a vested interest in the whereabouts of the gluttonous gift giver from the North Pole can follow his progress using Google's Santa Tracker.catherineshu
Dec 19, 5:58AM
Fab founder and CEO Jason Goldberg announced on his blog that Times Internet has made a seven-figure investment in the company, which help the design-focused e-commerce site expand its India market strategy. Times Internet is the digital arm of The Times of India Group, that country's largest media company. The investment was overseen by Times Internet Group CEO Satyan Gajwani, who is intent on diversifying the company's holdings.atsotsis
Dec 19, 5:57AM
We've been hearing from multiple sources that Twitter will bring in $1 billion in ad revenue in 2013 -- The company as of now, according to these sources, has a $1 billion revenue run rate which means that if you take its current monthly revenue and 12x it will hit the big $1 billion mark by the end of next year. In addition to us hearing this anecdotally, the New York Times' Nick Bilton breezily tossed off the milestone in his Instagram article over the weekend, "Twitter is expected to make $1 billion in revenue next year." Oh really?Screen shot 2012-12-19 at 1.14.38 PM
Dec 19, 5:36AM
While most travel booking sites ask you to enter a destination, Flocations wants to know your budget--and in return, the simple but attractive Web site offers a map of possibilities for even the most cash-straitened of travelers. While there are other sites that offer reverse-lookup by ticket price for destinations, such as FareCompare, Flocations creates a "fun visual experience" by getting rid of price lists and matrices and instead mapping out potential destinations, says co-founder Florian Cornu. Click on a city and you'll get a list of fares and airline carriers, as well as hotel suggestions.zillow_rentals
Dec 19, 5:01AM
It's no secret that real estate site Zillow has been putting quite a bit of emphasis on the rental side of the housing market recently. Today, the company is expanding its portfolio of tools for rental professionals with the launch of its free property management websites for property managers and rental agents.catherineshu
Dec 19, 2:37AM
Yahoo China announced today that it will bid farewell to its Chinese music service on January 20. A statement posted on the Web site in Chinese says: "Thank you for your continued support of Yahoo services. Due to an adjustment in our product strategy, we have decided to take Yahoo Music offline on January 20, 2013, when the service will no longer be available."Alex Williams
Dec 19, 2:30AM
In another sign of the emerging market for cloud monitoring, Cloudability announced it now monitors more than $250 million in cloud spending for customers, more than double what it did fewer than six months ago. It illustrates how customers are shifting perspectives to more detailed and analytical views of their compute and storage costs. The news shines a light on a market that is going to get much tighter in 2013. That's evident in Amazon's news that AWS is now offering more granular billing to help customers get a picture of what they are spending. Cloud spending is increasing and so is the competition to monitor it.anthha
Dec 19, 2:16AM
Kleiner Perkins-backed Cooliris is taking the next step in international expansion today with the launch of a localized version of its photo-browsing app in China. To give Chinese adoption an extra boost, it has also partnered with Renren, the social network that's often called the Facebook of China. Chinese growth has been a priority for the company, said Sebastian Blum, the company's vice president of international development. Cooliris was already available in China, but the combination of the localized app and the Renren partnership should definitely accelerate things. Through this deal, Renren has now been integrated into the Cooliris app, and it will also be cross-promoting the app to its audience.catherineshu
Dec 19, 1:35AM
Amazon has announced that Kindle e-readers are now available for sale in Brazil--but not from Amazon's website for that country. Instead, the e-reader is available from electronic e-tailer Pontofrio.com.br and Livraria da Vila bookstores with a suggested retail price of R$299 (about $143).screen-shot-2012-12-18-at-11-10-41-am
Dec 19, 12:53AM
You always fear what you don't understand. - Gotham City mob boss Carmine Falconi. Tech companies need to wise up and end the cycle of pushing policy updates in confusing legal terms, watching press and users alike panic and threaten to jump ship, and then issuing an apology and clarification. The fact is that the outcry is always louder than the apology, and you lose trust.ryanlawler
Dec 19, 12:45AM
The House of Representatives voted earlier today to approve a bill that would make it easier for users to share movies that they're watching on social networks like Facebook. That could eventually lead more video services, like Netflix, to integrate with Facebook's Open Graph and enable "seamless sharing" of that content.Alex Williams
Dec 19, 12:16AM
Dell made its own move into the bring your own device market today with the acquisition of Credant Technologies and its data protection technologies designed to encrypt information from smartphones and other devices to servers and the cloud. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.google+ mentions
Dec 18, 11:59PM
If you're using Blogger for your daily personal or business writings, you might be happy to know that it has gotten a bit more of the Google+ social treatment. You can now mention anyone on Google+ within your post, and they'll see it as a notification. It's a good way to get people's attention, also a good way to provide context to your content. We haven't heard much about Google's blogging platform since its redesign in March of last year, sadly. This is the platform that Ev Williams, co-founder of Twitter, sold to Google in 2003. MG
Dec 18, 11:35PM
The real world: Quit, verb, to leave (a place), usually permanently. The internet: Quit, verb, to threaten to leave as loudly as possible, usually over something stupid, then do nothing. Some days I feel like the blogosphere is full of paranoid attention whores. Other days, I'm sure of it. Today is one of those days.john
Dec 18, 10:33PM
While I don't often hold stock in random pronouncements by magazines, I'm shocked and thrilled that Entrepreneur Magazine named Limor Fried, founder of Adafruit Industries, as their 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year. Limor runs a $4.5 million company with 25 employees and she produces some of the coolest electronic gadgets around.apple-maps-icon
Dec 18, 10:29PM
Apple Maps was so bad that people refused to upgrade to iOS 6 until they could get Google Maps, says data from massive mobile ad exchange MoPub. The 12,000 apps it supports saw a 29 percent increase in unique iOS 6 users in the five days after Google Maps for iOS was released. Chitika reported just 0.2 percent growth immediately after the launch but it seems people waited for the weekend to do the long install.If at any time you'd like to stop receiving these messages, just send an email to feeds_feedburner_com_techcrunch+unsubscribe-hmdtechnology=gmail.com@mail.feed2email.net.
To stop all future emails from feed2email.net you can reply to this email with STOP in the subject line. Thanks
