Anthony Ha is a writer at TechCrunch, where he covers media, advertising, and random startups. Previously, he worked as a staff tech writer at Adweek, a senior editor at the tech blog VentureBeat, and a local government reporter at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco.
Disclosure: I own shares in VentureBeat, as well as diversified investments through my 401(k) and Roth IRA.
Action.IO, a startup promising to make it easier to create, configure, and share development environments, just announced a new name — Nitrous.IO — and $1 million in seed funding.
The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners with participation from Draper Associates, CrunchFund, 500 Startups, TIBCO Software, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Golden Gate Ventures, and Peanut Labs… → Read More
BlueKai and Information Resources, Inc. just announced a partnership that will enable consumer packaged goods manufacturers to access IRI’s offline shopping data through BlueKai and use it to target ads.
This is the first time BlueKai has built a product for CPG advertisers and their agencies/ad buyers, the company said. BlueKai’s senior director of business development Jeffrey Teng told me… → Read More
The Internet Advertising Bureau just released its full-year report for 2012, showing that digital ad revenue set a new record of $36.6 billion, up 15 percent from 2011.
Mobile was the fastest-growing category, though it still accounts for a relatively small part (9 percent) of overall revenue. Mobile ad revenue totaled $3.4 billion, compared to 2011 when it grew 149 percent to $1.6 billion. → Read More
The Pulitzer Prizes were announced today, and among the winners was the staff of The Denver Post for its coverage of the Aurora, Colo., shootings last summer – coverage in which Twitter and Facebook (and to a lesser extent, Storify) played a big role.
At this point, it’s so obvious that it seems almost silly to note that social media plays a role in how reporters break stories. However, it also… → Read More
A new report from online advertising company Turn suggests that costs for display advertising, video ads, and other rich media are rising, while those for mobile and social ads have fallen. The report also looks at a category of consumer that advertisers are spending heavily to reach — a group that Turn calls the “digital elite.” The report is based on activity on Turn’s ad-buying and… → Read More
CodeNow, a nonprofit program that teaches coding basics to high schoolers (with an emphasis on reaching girls, ethnic minorities, and other underrepresented groups), is in the middle of a significant expansion.
After launching in Washington, DC in 2011, the program has now launched in New York City and is currently holding training sessions with its first NYC group. In a few months, it’s going… → Read More
Schmap already helped advertisers and other companies understand their Twitter followers through its Know Your Followers product, but today it launched a new, upgraded service called Demographics Pro — CEO Paul Hallett described the concept as “Nielsen for Twitter.”
Nielsen does its own social media analysis, and it announced a partnership with Twitter last fall, but that was focused on… → Read More
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick just wrapped up a press phone call where he discussed the policy paper that the company released earlier this morning. The apper stated that Uber would be rolling out ridesharing services in cities where it had received “tacit approval” in the sense that regulators didn’t crack down on other services.
To kick things off, Kalanick noted that ridesharing is kind of a… → Read More
Wanderful Media, a startup backed by of a bunch of major news publishers, announced today that it’s launching a dramatically improved version of its Find&Save service.
The company’s vision is to create the online version of the deal- and coupon-filled circulars that are delivered with newspapers and in the mail. The first version of Find&Save seemed to take that idea quite literally —… → Read More
Sticky, a startup using eye-tracking technology to measure ad effectiveness, has raised $3 million in new funding.
The company is a rebranding of EyeTrackShop, a webcam-based eyetracking service which spun out of Tobii Technologies. The big selling point is the ability to determine not just whether an ad was served and rendered on a consumer’s screen, but whether they actually saw it. → Read More
Members of Want Me Get Me, a startup promising its members a VIP experience at any partner hotel, should have an easier time finding the right hotel starting today.
The site connects travelers with luxury and boutique hotels looking to attract new customers and build loyalty. Every booking through Want Me Get Me includes a spot on the hotel’s VIP list, free WiFi, and a room upgrade when… → Read More
Swipely, a startup that allows local businesses to manage customer loyalty programs using credit card purchase data, is announcing new features, so those businesses can measure the impact that their online efforts have on in-store sales.
First, there’s a new capability called Campaign Insights. Founder and CEO Angus Davis said it’s built on the analytics capabilities that Swipely launched last… → Read More
The team behind share-your-purchase-information startup Blippy has started talking about its new direction. After pivoting from Blippy to another e-commerce project, it has pivoted again and is now working on a live auction website called Tophatter, and it launched an iPhone app today.
Like Blippy, Tophatter is a social shopping product. The vision, according to CEO Ashvin Kumar and COO Andrew… → Read More
SmartAsset, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that built tools to help you answer tough financial questions, is expanding its offerings today with features for choosing the right neighborhood and the right mortgage.
Founder and CEO Michael Carrvin said that there are four broad stages to the home-buying process. The company’s initial product focused on the first part — whether it makes sense… → Read More
Sendicate, a startup aiming to make it easy for businesses to create beautiful email newsletters, is moving out of beta testing today with the launch of version 1.0. In addition to removing the beta label, the company is launching an API, so that other products can integrate with the Sendicate service.
When the company launched its open beta in November, it was pitched as an attempt to reinvent… → Read More
ComiXology just published a blog post discussing (and ultimately backing down from) a recent decision to ban the latest issue of Saga from its iOS comics store.
Yesterday, Saga writer Brian K. Vaughan described the situation thusly: “Unfortunately, because of two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex, Apple is banning tomorrow’s SAGA #12 from being sold through any iOS apps.” → Read More
Optimizely, a Y Combinator-incubated startup that helps companies A/B test different versions of their website, has raised $28 million in Series A funding.
That would be a sizable Series A for most startups, but it’s a particularly big step for Optimizely, which had only raised $3.2 million thus far. The last round was announced a year ago, but the company didn’t disclose the amount at the… → Read More
Gamification startup Badgeville just announced that it has appointed Ken Comée as its new CEO. Co-founder and outgoing CEO Kris Duggan will become the company’s chief strategy officer, and he will also remain on the Badgeville board.
Comée was formerly the CEO of Cast Iron Systems, a cloud company that was acquired by IBM, and of PowerReviews, which was acquired by Bazaarvoice. He might not… → Read More
Y Combinator-backed Coderwall started out as a social site for developers to list their achievements and projects, but it has been moving into recruiting — first by allowing companies to build their own profiles and now with the launch of a new service called Pitchbox.
It’s a separate site from Coderwall, where developers describe the salary and work they’d want from their dream jobs. Then… → Read More
Aol CEO Tim Armstrong sang the praises of programmatic, automated advertising today during his keynote presentation at the Ad:Tech conference in San Francisco, and he announced a new Marketplace tool to help publishers manage their ads. So when Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky took the stage to interview him, he asked: Was it meaningful that Armstrong didn’t talk about Aol’s content and publishing… → Read More
Blab is launching a platform that allows businesses to predict — up to three days in advance — which social media conversations are going to be important.
Co-founder and CTO David Snelling gave me a brief demo of the product yesterday. He showed off a visualization tool that highlights the up-and-coming topics at any given moment, a “magazine view” featuring the most engaging content in a… → Read More
Y Combinator-backed Firebase is expanding the infrastructure that it offers to app developers with its first module — Firepad, a Google Docs-style text editor that allows you to collaborate with others.
To a consumer, that might not sound very exciting. After all, we’ve already got Google Docs. However, co-founder and CEO James Tamplin said that those kinds of capabilities are limited to big… → Read More
Mosaic, a startup allowing people to invest in solar projects, announced today that it has received regulatory approval for its next wave of crowdfunding efforts in California, worth a total of $100 million in investment.
The site opened to the public back in January with three projects that were fully backed in fewer than 24 hours. In total, the company says that it has raised $1.1 million… → Read More
Online ad company Adknowledge just announced that it has acquired SocialWeekend Labs, a startup that built tools for developers to promote their apps, and also built its own Facebook and mobile apps (such as Birthdays+ and Photos+).
It sounds Adknowledge is most interested in the startup’s developer tools, as well its team — the company says it plans to integrate those tools into its own… → Read More
Digital advertising company OpenX announced today that it’s launching a new service called Revenue Intelligence, allowing online publishers to calculate and increase the amount of ad revenue that each piece of content is earning.
Last fall, OpenX acquired JumpTime, which provided a similar service. OpenX’s new Revenue Intelligence team is being led by JumpTime co-founder Anke Audenaert, and the… → Read More
Mobile ad startup Drawbridge offers technology that helps identify when multiple devices are being used by a single user — something that’s pretty appealing to advertisers, but could also have significant privacy implications. Drawbridge is announcing today that it’s partnering with privacy management company TRUSTe so that people who see Drawbridge-served ads can opt out of the targeting.
We… → Read More
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be discussing the latest trends in digital advertising with representatives from Facebook, Google, and Twitter at the end of April during TechCrunch Disrupt in New York.
My goal for the panel is to give attendees from both Madison Avenue and the startup world an overview of the latest products and opportunities from the major online ad platforms. We’ll talk about… → Read More
Tempo, the smart calendar startup that spun out of Siri birthplace SRI International, is beginning its international expansion today by launching in Canada.
The app tries to enhance the events in your calendar with additional information based on the type of event. It can show you relevant documents, social network profiles, and directions to a meeting. It can also send automatic messages if… → Read More
There are plenty of smartphone karaoke apps, but no one has really figured out how to turn the act singing into your phone into addictive social experience (at least not in the United States), according to Alec Andronikov, CEO of mobile startup AnyoneGame.
That’s why Andronikov and AnyoneGame have developed a new app called Just Sing It. The app allows you to choose a song (based on genre and… → Read More
With a new feature called Slingshot, marketing tech startup SteelHouse wants advertisers to look beyond the click.
President and CEO Mark Douglas told me that he’s trying to tackle the problem of “viewthroughs” — people who see an ad and, even though they don’t click on it, are prompted to visit the advertiser’s website. → Read More
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