Yahoo! buys Koprol

May 25, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

Yahoo!  has acquired Koprol. Koprol, a company headquartered in Jakarta, Indonesia, allows people to connect and share photos, reviews and additional information about locations in real-time using just their mobile phone browser, making the service accessible to a larger percentage of mobile users. Once on Koprol, people can “check-in” to their current location and see where others are and what they are doing. The service helps people find local businesses, such as popular shops or restaurants, based on user ratings including a “thumbs-up” feature to elevate favorite places to the top of the ranking. Users can also start or join discussions based on particular locations and invite friends to participate, creating a unique city-based social mobile community resource.

Yahoo! will continue to invest in evolving Koprol’s service, such as the newly introduced BlackBerry application, and expects to announce new mobile applications for both local and global mobile platforms in the future.

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Location: USA, Sunnyvale, CA & Indonesia, Jakarta

Ref: F231109-464

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  • The Yahoo!/Maktoob acquisition deal has officially closed Posted on November 12, 2009
    • Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, ~Asia, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Constant Contact acquires NutshellMail

    May 25, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Constant Contact has acquired privately held NutshellMail. the terms of the deal were not disclosed.

    NutshellMail is a free service that makes it easy to monitor, manage and interact with friends, fans and customers through social media. It works by collecting and organizing the latest messages and activity from social networks — including Twitter?, Facebook and LinkedIn — into an interactive email snapshot that is delivered directly to your email inbox. Users can customize the content they want to track, add search terms, and choose how frequently they want to receive email updates. Signing up for a NutshellMail11 account takes just a few minutes, and the time savings start right away.

    With NutshellMail, users can easily monitor and interact with social networks all in one place, including posting updates right from their email inbox. The free service helps busy professionals keep track of critical conversations about their company and the competition, and keeps them informed about what their customers are talking about — all from the place where they spend most of their online time.

    “We started NutshellMail to help solve the problem of social network overload. As part of the Constant Contact family, we’re going to help some of the busiest people on the planet, small business owners, turn what might seem like social media chaos into a smart marketing tool for growing their business. It’s like a DVR for your social networking activity,” said Mark Schmulen, co-founder of NutshellMail.

    Location: USA, Waltham, MA

    Ref: F231109-463

    Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Swaptree.com raises $6 million

    May 25, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Swaptree.com, has completed a $6 million financing round led by Safeguard Scientifics, with participation from numerous private investors. The capital raised will be used for new hires and marketing initiatives focused on fueling growth. The new round of financing brings Swaptree.com’s total capital raised to date to $11.95 million.

    “Swaptree.com is poised to become synonymous with the category of ‘online swap’ in the same way eBay has become synonymous with ‘online auctions’,” said Jeff Bennett, CEO of Swaptree.com. “I look forward to making Boston-based Swaptree.com an iconic Internet business and one that will positively impact the health of the planet.”

    Swaptree.com its offers its members an easy, feel good way for people to recycle the stuff they have and get things they want while reducing consumption of new products.

    The company has also announced that Jeff Bennett been named Chief Executive Officer. Bennett was the Founder, President and Chief Operating Officer of NameMedia.

    Location: USA, Boston, MA

    Ref: F231109-462

    Posted in Content Media, e-Commerce, Internet Media, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Cloud based video game streaming service Gaikai raises $10 million

    May 25, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Gaikai, a cloud based video game streaming service has raised $10 million from existing investors TriplePoint Capital, Rustic Canyon Partners, Benchmark Capital and an un-named partner have invested. Nate Redmond of Rustic Canyon Partners will join the board.

    Gaikai’s cloud based streaming service will allow gamers to experience the latest video games via the Internet at any time, through multiple devices and platforms. It is due to launch in North America in the near future.
    “The involvement of TriplePoint Capital, Benchmark, Rustic Canyon Partners and our un-named investor allows us to gear up to our US launch, support more devices and deliver a service that will dramatically reduce the cost of acquiring new customers for video game publishers and retailers worldwide,” said David Perry, CEO of Gaikai Inc.

    Location: USA, Los Angeles, CA

    Ref: F231109-461

    Related article – Games on demand company Gaikai raises $5M Posted on January 7, 2010

    Posted in Content Media, Games, Internet Media, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    A few fundings we missed this week – Babble, Grockit & The Hotlist

    May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Babble Media, a magazine and parenting community site for new parents, has completed a Series B round of $3 million in equity funding. The round was led by Village Ventures with Greycroft Partners and iNovia Capital participating. Read more at citybizlist Boston abd at TechCrunch

    Location: USA, New York, NY

    Grockit, a social network for studying that uses collaborative learning and develops adaptive programs for students, announced today that it has completed a $7 million round of funding led by Atlas Venture. Existing investors Benchmark Capital and Integral Capital Partners also participated.

    Location: USA, San Francisco, CA

    The Hotlist, the first geo-social aggregator that shows people what’s going on today, tomorrow and throughout the week among their personal networks, today announced that the company closed $800,000 in angel financing led by Centurion Holdings. Funds from the angel round will be used to support The Hotlist’s platform development and formation of an expanded service suite. Read more in the release.

    Location: USA, New York, NY

    Ref: F231109-460

    Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, Publishers, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Payvment raises $1.5 million

    May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Payvment, a company that provides a free Facebook application that allows businesses, organizations and individuals to set up virtual storefronts, has raised $1.5 million in a Series A funding round led by BlueRun Ventures. Angel investor Dave McClure has also joined as an individual investor

    BlueRun investments include PayPal, Slide, WiderThan, Wavemarket, Fwix and Chomp. McClure is an investor in over 50 startup companies including,  Mint (acquired by Intuit), SlideShare, Twilio and Simply Hired.

    Location: USA, San Francisco, CA

    Ref: F231109-459

    Related article: Payvment has raised $1.15 million Posted April 6, 2010

    Posted in Content Media, e-Commerce, Internet Media, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Zynga acquires Beijing-based XPD Media

    May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Zynga has acquired Beijing-based social gaming company XPD Media. It is Zynga’s first Asian acquisition.

    “As the largest Internet market in the world, China is at the vanguard for virtual goods based gaming innovation,” said Robert Goldberg, VP of Corporate Development. “We expect our new office in Beijing and the incredible talent in the local market to play a strategic role in our mission to create the best social gaming experiences worldwide.”

    XPD Media’s CEO, Robin Chan, will become Zynga’s GM of Asian business development. Co-Founder Andy Tian will lead the Zynga Beijing studio. The XPD team of 40 employees will be immediately integrated into Zynga’s global workforce and focus on engineering and product development.

    XPD Media, backed by True Ventures and Pilot Group, launched in early 2008 focusing on social game development for Asian and international social networks.

    Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

    Location: China, Beijing & USA, San Francisco, CA

    Ref: F231109-458

    Previous reports about Zynga on FusionDigiNet

    Posted in Content Media, Games, Internet Media, ~Asia, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Rakuten to acquire Buy.com

    May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Japanese internet shopping company Rakuten is acquiring Buy.com. The acquisition is valued at approximately $250 million and will be carried out by Rakuten’s U.S. subsidiary, Rakuten USA.

    In March this year Buy.com reported 146% year-over-year sales growth and said it had 11.5 million product listings. Buy.com’s Marketplace represented 46 percent of the company’s site orders in the fourth quarter of 2009 and more than 50 percent of Q1 2010 site orders to date. The growth of the Marketplace also helped contribute to Q4 2009 being Buy.com’s 13th consecutive profitable quarter.

    Combined, the Rakuten and Buy.com represent one of the world’s largest online retail marketplaces, offering consumers more than 60 million products from close to 35,000 merchants around the globe.

    Location: Japan, Tokyo and USA, Aliso Viejo, CA

    Ref: F231109-457

    Posted in Content Media, e-Commerce, Internet Media, ~Asia, ~North America. Leave a Comment »

    Poken raises $1.8 million

    May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

    Swiss businees Poken, a business that describes itself as bridging online and real world social networking, has received a strategic investment from Swisscom Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Swisscom AG – Switzerland’s leading telecom operator. Swisscom is participating in a $1.8 million round, and will be represented on Poken’s Board of Directors by Dominique Mégret, Head of Swisscom Ventures, a seasoned executive and entrepreneur.

    Poken is helping customers build solutions for bridging the gap between online and offline social networking needs. The new pokenEVENT service offering is gaining significant traction in the events and corporate networking space — helping customers such as Adobe, BMW, IBM, Microsoft and Tempo Music host powerful networking events. In addition, event organizers such as PublicisLive — host of the World Economic Forum — have also used the pokenEVENT networking platform to help reduce the clutter of business cards and streamline the process for distributing digital materials at their events.

    “Over the last 6 months Poken has narrowed its focus and is building a world-class suite of hardware and software solutions to meet the needs of the events and corporate networking space” said Stephane Doutriaux, CEO of Poken. “We believe Swisscom can add considerable fuel to our growth, as well as provide assistance in working with leading event organizers and corporate partners. This is a significant partnership for Poken, our customers, and our network of resellers.”

    Location: Switzerland, Lausanne

    Ref: F231109-454

    Posted in Conference/Exhibitions/Events, Content Media, Internet Media, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »

    Huddle raises $10.2 million

    May 21, 2010 — Fusion DigiNet

     

    Huddle, the company that lets you connect and work securely with other people in the cloud, today announced that it has closed a $10.2 million Series B round of funding led by Matrix Partners, with participation from existing investors Eden Ventures and Charles McGregor, Huddle’s chairman.

    Huddle, which employs more than 40 staff in the UK and U.S. and recently became cashflow positive, expects to quadruple in size in the next year. Including the most recent investment, Huddle has raised in excess of $15 million in equity funding since its launch in 2007. The company is using the capital to expand its U.S. presence and build a team in San Francisco led by its newly relocated co-founder, Andy McLoughlin.

    “Huddle makes it possible for people to connect and work with each other regardless of their location. However, for us as a company it’s crucial to be closer to the people who use our product,” said Mr. McLoughlin. “With more than 50 percent of Huddle users based in the U.S. our intention is to give them even more on-the-ground support.”

    More in the release

    Location: UK, London

    Ref: F231109-455

    Posted in Content Media, Internet Media, ~Europe. Leave a Comment »
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