Ingrid is a reporter for TechCrunch, joining February 2012, based out of London.
She comes from paidContent.org, where she was a staff writer, and has in the past also written freelance regularly for other publications such as the Financial Times. Ingrid covers mobile, digital media, advertising and the spaces where these intersect.
When it comes to work, she feels most comfortable speaking in English but can also speak Russian, Spanish and French (in descending order of competence).
Woot, the daily deals site that Amazon bought in 2010 for $110 million, built a reputation for its “pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap” business model for shifting goods. Now, the company is facing up to a shift of a different kind: that of its own talent. In the last week, TechCrunch has learned that five six key employees are parting ways with the company. → Read More
Looks like Bebo, once an early star in social networking, is progressing to the next step in the long and messy struggle between majority shareholder Criterion Capital Partners and minority shareholders that include co-founder Michael Birch, Hecker Consultancy and SV Angel: Bebo.com, Inc. has filed a voluntary petition for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the Central District of California. First spotted… → Read More
Alibaba Group is reportedly now the largest single shareholder in AutoNavi, a Beijing-based maker of electronic navigation tools and location-based services. The Chinese Internet giant has formed a strategic alliance with AutoNavi, on the back of a $294 million investment. This gives it a 28% stake in the navigation company, which is China’s largest, with 116 million users of its free mobile app… → Read More
GoPollGo, a real-time polling tool that lets brands and media properties collect and analyse feedback, has announced that it has been acquired by Yahoo. The news comes just one week after the search giant announced the acquisition of mobile personal organization app Astrid, as part of its ongoing acquisition spree. It comes at the same time that Yahoo has confirmed the acquisition of travel site… → Read More
Most people may not yet be using smartphones to pay for goods when they are out shopping, but that doesn’t mean that they are not glued to their handsets anyway. Some research out today from Google indicates that among smartphone owners, some 79% can be classified as “mobile shoppers,” using their devices for some aspect of the shopping experience, from finding store locations through to finding… → Read More
Facebook appears to be close to making another billion-dollar acquisition to once again ramp up its mobile efforts: according to three reports in the Israeli press at Calcalist and sister publication Ynet and The Marker (all in Hebrew), Facebook has approached Waze, the social mapping and traffic app maker, and is now in advanced due dilligence on a deal that Calcalist puts at between $800… → Read More
Microsoft is offering to pay $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media LLC, the digital book and college book joint venture with Barnes & Noble and other investors, according to internal documents we’ve obtained. → Read More
With the introduction of Siri on the iPhone 4S in 2011, voice recognition, not exactly a new innovation, suddenly took center stage with consumers. But before that, and especially since then, there has been a rush of developments to meet the demand for ever better, more responsive technology across smartphones, tablets, computers, phone services and whatever else will come next. Beyond Verbal, a… → Read More
OpenSignal, the UK startup that has made a name for itself with its Android and iOS apps that crowdsource cell phone coverage based on data picked up from users’ devices, is branching out into another area that consumers love to obsess about: the weather. Today, the company is launching a new app for Android devices, WeatherSignal, which takes data gathered from different sensors, such as light… → Read More
AOL (owner of TechCrunch) has just reported its Q1 results for the quarter, and it’s a mixed bag, with sales of $539 million, up 2%, beating Wall Street estimates, with diluted earnings per share coming in at $0.32. Analysts were expecting revenues of $537.15 million, with First Call’s EPS estimate of EPS at $0.32. Still, Q1′s EPS number is up 45% on the same period a year ago. Net income was up… → Read More
LinkedIn, now at 225 million users, continues to introduce more features to its site to keep people returning to it and staying there for longer. Today it’s the turn of LinkedIn Today, its social news page, which is getting a new feature called Channels. Channels is rolling out starting today to English-speaking users. LinkedIn says that it plans to announce the service formally on Wednesday. → Read More
BitTorrent is taking a new step today in its efforts to help creators make money (and make money itself) — it’s releasing a new content packaging format called the BitTorrent Bundle in alpha mode.
The company has already been working with different creators to launch promotional bundles. For example, author Tim Ferriss packaged chapters of his book with other supplementary media material as a… → Read More
Facebook has finally found a permanent person for one of its key leadership positions in its international operation: Nicola Mendelsohn, a longtime veteran of the ad industry, is joining the social network as its VP, EMEA. She replaces Joanna Shields, who left Facebook nearly seven months ago in October 2012 to run Tech City, the London tech cluster advocacy group. Carolyn Everson, VP of Global… → Read More
Urban Compass, a New York-based startup that last year raised an $8 million seed round while still in stealth mode, is coming out of the shadows of the city and debuting its first services in public beta: a hyperlocal social network, called the Urban Compass Network, and a housing rentals platform that brings online the whole process of finding, securing and subsequently paying for a place to… → Read More
Kim Dotcom and his legal team are seizing the moment of a meeting of attorneys general from the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in Auckland to bring more attention to his legal fight with the U.S. government, which wants to extradite Dotcom from New Zealand and try him for copyright violations related to his now-defunct Megaupload venture. Robert Amsterdam, a high-profile lawyer known… → Read More
The food delivery wars continue to heat up: today foodpanda, the Rocket Internet-incubated startup that offers a one-stop service to order food from a selection of restaurants and take-out joints to be brought to your door and now working with some 15,000 restaurants globally, is today announcing that it has picked up over $20 million in funding, with participation from Rocket regular AB Kinnevik… → Read More
A year ago, Evernote kicked off its strategy to bring its personal organization app to China, with the launch of Yinxiang Biji on its own dedicated platform. Now, with 4 million users of the Chinese version, Evernote is taking the next step in monetizing that with the introduction of Yinxiang Biji Business. Phil Libin, CEO and founder of Evernote, announced the news today at the GMIC conference in… → Read More
T-Mobile, fresh from the completion of its merger with MetroPCS and new NYSE listing, is now sharpening its focus on new customers and new products, beginning with small businesses and cloud-based, software-as-a-service phone deals. We’ve been passed a letter that T-Mobile is sending out to a selection of small companies (copied below), targeting those with 20 or fewer employees and offering… → Read More
McAfee, the Intel-owned security specialist, has just announced that it is buying Stonesoft Oyj,a Finland-based specialist in firewall protection products, for $389 million in cash. The move will let McAfee expand its product line specifically in cloud-based networked security products, to complement the antivirus services for which McAfee is best known. Stonesoft, a publicly-traded company in… → Read More
LinkedIn has just reported Q1 earnings of $324.7 million, up 72% year-on-year, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $0.45, both soundly beating analysts’ estimates (via First Call) of $317 million and EPS of $0.31; as well as LinkedIn’s own guidance from last quarter, when it said it expected between $305 million and $310 million in revenues. Net income for Q1 was $22.6 million a big rise on the… → Read More
“Happier, healthier, more productive.” That was the goal of mobile app Astrid, and now Yahoo is taking up the mission as it’s just acquired the social productivity platform. Co-founded by a former Palantir engineer, Tim Su, AngelPad-backed Astrid says that it has four million users, who as of September 2012 logged 30 million plans on the platform. → Read More
Facebook says that there are no plans for now to add advertising to Instagram, even though advertisers are approaching them, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said today during the company’s Q1 earnings call. But adding ads could end up stunting Instagram’s rapid growth. He said, more than once during the call, that Instagram is currently growing at a faster rate than FB did at the same age, and it now has 100… → Read More
Facebook has just posted its earnings for the quarter that ended March 31, 2013. Facebook hit $1.46 billion in revenue up 38% from Q1 2012, beating Wall Street estimates of sales of $1.44 billion. Facebook reported earnings of $1.06 billion for the same quarter a year ago. Earnings per shared missed estimates, staying flat at $0.12 (analysts had expected earnings per share of $0.13. Net income… → Read More
CopyTele, a “patent enforcement entity” based in New York, has filed a patent infringement suit against Microsoft in connection with its Skype IP calling and messaging service, now used by 280 million people every month. The two patents in question come from Secure Web Conference Corporation, a subsidiary of publicly-traded CopyTele. They are 6,856,686 B2 (’686 Patent), and 6,856,687 B2 (’687… → Read More
LinkedIn today announced another upgrade to its site, part of a bigger plan to add more features and reasons for people to hang around on its pages for longer: this time it’s the turn of profile pages, where users will now be able to add more images, videos, resumes, presentations and comments and likes from other users as part of the mix. While the site continues to add more features to… → Read More
Companies like Google, BlackBerry, Earthlink, Red Hat, and others in the tech community, have been piling pressure on the U.S. government to take a stronger stand against companies that file patent suits but don’t actually make any products themselves — known formally as “patent assertion entities” but more commonly as patent trolls and patent privateers (a term favored by Google). Now someone in… → Read More
A victory for Facebook in its case against typosquatters — those who own domain names that are similar to those of a popular site, which they use to confuse people and potentially capitalize on that. The U.S. District Court for Northern California has ruled in favor of the social network in an action it took against several squatters, recommending the turnover of 105 domains and statutory damages… → Read More
Looks like Lockerz, the social commerce and photo sharing service, may be moving on to yet another chapter in its life. After laying off 30% of its Seattle HQ staff, closing down its San Diego office, and shutting down its Plixi photo sharing API earlier this year, the company is now launching a new fashion site, Ador. A tipster tells us that Lockerz is shutting down altogether and relaunching… → Read More
Trustev, a Startup Battlefield company presenting today at TC Disrupt NY 2013, has developed a product to tackle online fraud using an algorithmic system of social signals, behavioural data and transaction history to create a “digital fingerprint” that lets companies verify that you are who you say you are when you are buying something online. The problem that Trustev — based out… → Read More
Online video is booming, and today AOL (owner of TechCrunch) unveiled three new initiatives that spell out how it plans to tackle it: 15 original, unscripted shows; a new creative studio, Be On, to create branded videos; and a deal with FreeWheel and Mediaocean to add in AOL’s video inventory to its platform, so that media buyers looking for multiscreen investments across TV and online video can… → Read More
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