Don’t you just hate when you’re out skateboarding, minding your own business, and suddenly one of the wheels comes off and you break a kneecap? Well now there’s a new startup called BoardProspects, which aims to help companies build better boards. A quick glance at their website reveals that the company is not going to be able to solve your skateboarding woes, however, but it may help your business roll more smoothly.

If your company is in need of new members for the board of directors (cough Yahoo cough) or the advisory board (cough Honeywell cough), you may want to give Boston-based BoardProspects’ upcoming offering a second look.

Having just raised a $650,000 seed round, BoardProspects basically offers a platform that connects individuals (‘prospects’) with organizations, and also provides educational resources and tools to improve boardroom service.

The online community is set to launch some time in the second quarter of this year, but the first 1,000 people to pre-register for the service will receive a free lifetime premium membership (the company didn’t mention what this entails, but surely it must be good!).

Here’s the problem that BoardProspects says it identified:

There are more than 60,000 publicly traded companies in the United States that are required by law to have a board of directors. In the Fortune 1,000 alone, there are more than 1,100 directors currently serving that are over 70 years old, according to GMI Research, the leading independent provider of global corporate governance, ESG and accounting risk ratings and research.

The number of vacancies for the nearly 1.6 million non-profit organizations in the United States is exponentially larger, with more than 1.8 million of these seats turning over each year. These dramatic numbers do not include the hundreds of thousands of private companies that could benefit from building a board of directors or an advisory board, recruiting valuable members, or applying best practices to improve board performance.

Poised to prove that it’s not just about ‘who you know’, BoardProspects aims to apply social networking mechanics and technologies to “transform the way that boards and prospects connect, communicate, and serve”. It’s unclear whether they also make rad skateboards.

Angel investors who participated in the seed round include Mike Verrochi (managing partner at Blue Rock Ventures), Brendan McCarthy (managing director of Goldman Sachs) and Paul Sullivan, partner of family-owned Sullivan Tire.

Oracle this morning announced that it is acquiring cloud-based talent management solutions provider Taleo for $46 per share or roughly $1.9 billion, net of Taleo’s cash and debt. Taleo’s solutions basically help organizations attract, motivate and retain human capital, and will serve to boost Oracle’s Public Cloud offering.

The transaction is expected to close in the Summer of 2012. Here’s how Oracle pitches the buy:

Together, Oracle and Taleo expect to create a comprehensive cloud offering for organizations to manage their Human Resource operations and employee careers.

The combination is expected to empower employees and managers to effectively manage careers throughout their entire employment, enable organizations to retain talent and optimize costs, and improve the employee experience through faster on boarding and better collaboration with team members via social media.

Until the deal closes, Oracle and Taleo will continue to operate independently. According to Taleo, more than 5,000 organizations use its solutions today.

Its stock price closed at just south of $39 yesterday.

Also see:

SAP Will Buy SuccessFactors For $3.4 Billion

Salesforce Buys Social Performance Platform Rypple; Will Launch ‘Human Capital Management’ Unit Successforce

Google has been going to great lengths to keep advertisers who sell counterfeit goods online out of its AdWords program, but as far as Montblanc, the Germany-based maker of ‘writing instruments’, watches, jewelry and whatnot, is concerned, they ought to be doing more. Montblanc-Simplo GmbH, as the holding is called, is taking Google to court in an effort to obtain the identity of a certain – or more – persistent counterfeit goods seller(s).

TechCrunch has obtained the court documents, which make for an interesting read.

Montblanc says it has received numerous complaints from customers who’ve been misled by keyword ads that appeared on Google.co.uk. According to the complaint, many were tricked into purchasing counterfeit Montblanc products from websites that were specifically designed to look like official Montblanc communication channels.

The luxury goods company subsequently turned to Google UK in an effort to identify the advertisers, who were bidding on keywords like ‘montblanc pens’, but according to the complaint, the search giant’s UK office has consistently said that they simply don’t have access to that kind of information, directing Montblanc instead to the U.S. mothership.

From the court docs:

Montblanc has attempted to determine the identity of the Advertisers through numerous alternative means, with no success. Because the identity of the Advertisers is in the exclusive possession of Google, and Montblanc has no other source from which to obtain the requested information, Montblanc has no choice but to file this Complaint in Equity for a Bill of Discovery in order to enforce its trademark rights.

Once Montblanc has identified the Advertisers through this Bill of Discovery against Google, it intends to file a lawsuit to enforce its trademark rights against the identified Advertisers. Without the requested information, however, Montblanc does not know who the Advertisers are and therefore does not know whom it needs to sue to enforce its trademark rights.

As Montblanc points out in its complaint, it has been using the ‘montblanc’ mark for a wide range of products since its founding in 1906, making it one of the world’s well-known trademarks.

Understandably, the company asserts that the sale of counterfeit goods, bearing the ‘montblanc’ trademarks, has caused it “significant reputational and financial harm”.

For the record, Montblanc acknowledges that Google UK has been responsive to its complaints in discussions dating back to September 2011, and that the search company repeatedly told them that they “removed the offending ads and taking action against the Advertisers”.

The only problem is that they keep coming back, and Montblanc is getting desperate.

From an earlier Google blog post, describing the game of cat and mouse:

AdWords is just a conduit between advertisers and consumers and we can’t know whether any particular item out of the millions advertised is counterfeit or not.

Of course, we do more than simply respond to brand owners’ removal requests. We use their feedback to help us tune a set of sophisticated automated tools, which analyse thousands of signals along every step of the advertising process and help prevent bad ads from ever seeing the light of day. We devote significant engineering and machine resources in order to prevent violations of ads policies, including counterfeiting.

In fact, we invested over $60 million last year alone, and, in the last 6 months of 2010, more than 95% of accounts removed for counterfeits came down based on our own detection efforts. No system is perfect, but brand owner feedback has helped us improve over time – as our system gets more data about ads it has misclassified before, it gets better at counteracting new ways that bad guys try to cloak their behaviour.

While our systems get better over time, counterfeiting remains a complex challenge, and we keep investing in anti-counterfeiting measures. After all, a Google user duped by a fake is far less likely to click on another Google ad in the future. Ads for counterfeits aren’t just bad for the real brand holder – they’re bad for users who can end up unknowingly buying sub-standard products, and they’re bad for Google too.

This makes sense; Google has nothing to gain from counterfeit advertisers in the long term.

In Montblanc’s view, however, Google should be more actively helping them determine the identity of counterfeit advertisers by handing over the contact and financial details they store – due to the nature of the AdWords program – so that the company can name them as defendants in litigation.

We’ll be following this case with eagle eyes.

(Photo courtesy of Luigi Crespo Photography on Flickr)

Here’s a puzzler. Back in September 2011, less than 6 months ago, Jesta Digital loudly committed $15 million to establish Jesta Labs, a New York-based mobile services startup incubator. Fast forward to today, and the incubator has vanished from the face of the planet. Their website has been taken down, and we hear pretty much everyone who had anything to do with Jesta Labs has moved on.

For the record, I’m not the only one who caught on to the incubator’s curious disappearance – see Ben Yoskovitz’s report (Next Montreal). Here’s the full account of what we’ve pieced together.

Jesta Digital, which owns notorious mobile ringtones, games and apps provider Jamba / Jamster, used to be Fox Mobile Group when it was still part of News Corp (which acquired Jamba back in 2006 and combined it with its Fox Mobile Entertainment assets). Jesta Group took the division off News Corp’s hands for an undisclosed sum in late 2010. Still with me?

Jesta Digital also operates Bitbop, an interesting wireless subscription service for TV and movies delivered on-demand to smartphone, in case that brand is more familiar to you.

Update: PaidContent recently reported that the future of Bitbop is also uncertain.

Anyway. When the company launched Jesta Labs, they said it would become “an independent business unit dedicated to the entrepreneurial development and growth of new direct-to-consumer products for the web, mobile and social spaces”. From the release, which was widely picked up:

Jesta Labs will introduce several new digital and mobile products to the consumer market this year and plans to open funding to other entrepreneurs worldwide next year. Jesta Labs will focus its creative efforts and technical know-how on identifying capital efficient digital business models that will benefit from the company’s experienced full-time staff of developers, product managers, and marketing professionals.

Sounded good, and the first startup to come out of Jesta Labs was actually rather nice: Gush let people store an infinite amount of photos on a ‘hard disk in the cloud’. I used Gush, and liked it.

But, 5 months after its debut, Jesta Labs is no more. A source familiar with the situation asserts that the division is going to kill every product that was being developed under its wings (3 according to Next Montreal’s report), and that Jesta Digital simply “lost interest in the whole incubator thing”.

My source tells me there’s no one left working on Gush anymore, though the service is still live, and that Jesta’s NYC offices are now basically empty. Most of the people that were working on Gush have moved on to mobile payments company ISIS, I gather.

Judging by his LinkedIn profile, former Jesta Labs managing director Joe Bilman has also moved on from the incubator – he’s now CEO of gogofire, which has a mission statement that sounds suspiciously similar to that of Jesta Labs.

And thus, quietly, a $15 million incubator vanishes less than half a year after its debut, almost without a trace. If there’s anyone reading this that knows more about this, and would like to share it – on or off the record – it would be great if you could let us know what happened.

Sprint Nextel this morning released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2011 as well as the full-year results.

The company reported a net loss of $1.3 billion for the quarter, and $2.9 billion for the whole of 2011.

The company reported total net subscriber additions of 1.6 million during the quarter, the best quarterly result in six years and bringing total subscribers to the highest level in Sprint’s history.

Now serving roughly 55 million customers, the company said it is seeing “strong iPhone sales”, selling 1.8 million of the popular smartphone in Q4, of which 40 percent was to new customers.

However, the iPhone launch also had a negative impact on its balance sheet, due to increased equipment net subsidies and sales expenses, the company said.

From the press release:

Strong revenue growth and cost management partially offset the impact of increased equipment net subsidies and sales expense associated with the successful launch of the iPhone. Forty percent of Sprint’s 1.8 million iPhone sales in the fourth quarter were to new customers.

Based on internal estimates, including incremental costs associated with iPhone sales, the combined impact of iPhone and Network Vision costs reduced fourth quarter Adjusted OIBDA margin, which was 10.8 percent, by approximately 8.8 percentage points.

Based on internal estimates, Sprint Nextel says the combined impact of iPhone and Network Vision costs reduced fourth quarter Adjusted OIBDA of $842 million by approximately $684 million.

In case you were wondering: OIBDA is operating income (or loss) before depreciation and amortization. Adjusted OIBDA excludes severance, exit costs, and other special items.

Vonage has been battling Skype for many, many years, but they’re not letting up now that the latter has been acquired by Microsoft.

The Internet calling company, which came dangerously close to dying a few years ago, this morning launched a new Vonage Mobile app for iPhone and Android, offering free calls and texts to anyone who also has the app installed (as predicted a few weeks ago).

This is hardly the first time Vonage has debuted apps for smartphone platforms, but this one is definitely worth checking out.

Vonage says the app, which works over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G wireless data networks, provides users with international per-minute calling rates that are, on average, 70 percent lower than major mobile carriers and 30 percent lower than Skype (based on per-minute rates to the top 50 countries called).

Vonage Mobile users can instantly add calling credit directly from the app through iTunes or Android Market, in increments of $4.99 and $9.99. Also worth noting: the app utilizes the phone’s existing mobile number and contact list, removing a lot of the hassle of using such a service.

Also important: users do not need to be a Vonage customer to use the app. However, as an added benefit to all app users, calls to Vonage home or business lines are also free.

Also read: Call All Your Facebook Friends Free With Vonage

Telecom expense management (TEM) solutions company Xigo, which Greg likened to a Billshrink for large companies, has been acquired by one of its partners, IT services and solutions provider Dimension Data for an undisclosed sum.

Dimension Data says the acquisition of Xigo, formerly known as Invoice Insight, will enable them to offer enterprise customers an integrated cost optimization solution for spend analysis, sourcing, provisioning and invoice processing.

The company adds that it will focus on increasing Xigo’s market share in the United States and roll out the services to other countries “over time”.

Dave Spofford, CEO of Xigo, will continue to lead the Xigo team and report to Dimension Data’s Americas CEO Jere Brown.

Here’s a roundup of recent stories on TechCrunch Europe:

— Internet publishing company Populis is expanding its network operations to South America with the acquisition of Cidade Internet, a popular Brazilian Web portal. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

— Moscow-based Heverest.ru, an online retailer of sportswear, leisure and travel goods, has scored $4.3 million in financing from an unnamed “large” Russian investment fund and previous backer eVenture Capital Partners, bringing its total raised to $6.7 million.

— Fits.me, the Estonian “biorobotics virtual fitting room” startup for e-commerce clothing retailers and shoppers, has been around for a while. We first covered them in 2010 when they secured €1.3 million, taking their total cash to €2.6 million.

They’ve now taken another €1.5 million, taking their funding to €4.1 million. Fits.me lets customers “try on” clothing before buying from online clothes retailers.

— Berlin-based game deals provider HitFox has purchased Chili Entertainment, thus adding the latter’s game advertising network ad2games to its own game marketing portfolio. Chili Entertainment was previously majority-owned by Gameforge, but the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

— Israeli startup Appoxee has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from early-stage investment firm Cyhawk Ventures, and has opened its gates to all.

Jeff Atwood, the co-founder and CTO of Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites mostly about programming and gaming, and Stack Overflow, is stepping down from day-to-day operations at the beginning of next month.

Atwood writes on his Coding Horror blog that startup life was having too much of an effect on his family (Atwood has a son and twin daughters).

Startup life is hard on families. We just welcomed two new members into our family, and running as fast as you can isn’t sustainible (sic) for parents of multiple small children. The death of Steve Jobs, and his subsequent posthumous biography, highlighted the risks for a lot of folks.

…

You may have more discipline than I do. But for me, the mission is everything; I’m downright religious about it.

Stack Overflow and Stack Exchange have been wildly successful, but I finally realized that success at the cost of my children is not success. It is failure.

I concur with Instapaper creator Marco Arment, who says Atwood clearly has a healthy perspective on life, and others praising him for the decision, though maybe that’s because I became a first time father myself not too long ago.

You may also want to check out the Hacker News thread on the topic.

Stack Exchange has raised $18 million from Union Square Ventures, Index Ventures, Spark Capital and individual investors like Ron Conway, Naval Ravikant, Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Joshua Schachter and many more.

Commenting about the move some more on Twitter, Atwood says his decision to leave Stack Exchange’s day-to-day ops has also to do with his “personality and temperament”.

He adds: “Either I’m all the way in, or all the way out”.

Atwood blogs that he doesn’t know what’s next, though it seems he’s already pondering about it:

What’s next for me?

I honestly don’t know. I do know that I love the Internet, and I remain passionate as ever about making the Internet better – but right now I need to be with my family. In six months, perhaps I’ll be ready to choose another adventure.

Also check out our video interview of the other Stack Exchange co-founder, Joel Spolsky: (Founder Stories) Joel Spolsky On Startups: “Have A Co-Founder Otherwise You’ll Go Insane”

Israeli startup Appoxee has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from early-stage investment firm Cyhawk Ventures.

The company offers a service that helps app developers and publishers increase user engagement through rich push notifications and helps them with things like audience segmentation, targeting, analytics and reporting.

Read more over at TechCrunch Europe.

Today, Rdio is releasing a brand new application for Android phones chock-full of fresh features, which is awesome. Mainly because it gives me an excuse to write up a related rant I would have published at some point anyway.

But let’s get the new Android app part out of the way first:

“The new app offers intuitive navigation with one-click access to features previously available on Rdio for Android, along with several new enhancements and key features including collection, playlists, new releases, top charts, recommendations, and support for Android Ice Cream Sandwich’s new remote control client.

Now Android users not only have easy access to Rdio’s catalog of more than 12 million songs, they can also take advantage of Rdio’s rich social features and extensive music discovery options.”

Great. Swell. Cool. If you’re an Android phone user. Which I’m not, at least not anymore.

A few months ago I started using Nokia’s Lumia 800 as my primary smartphone. One of the apps I really need on any platform happens to be Rdio, which I gladly pay for every month. There has been an official WP7 Rdio app since November 2010, so no problem. At least, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Instead, it’s a major source of daily frustration. You see, the Rdio app for Windows Phone has one fatal flaw: it doesn’t actually play music. It also doesn’t go out to buy my groceries for me, nor does it clip my toe nails, but the point is that I have a right to be flabbergasted by its lack of music playing ability. You know, because I pay the company for being able to play music on my phone.

Not for crashing apps. Not for playlists, albums and songs that never load. Not for ‘black screens of death’ while I’m discovering new music. Not for half-assed offline syncing features.

Browsing the company’s help forums, it seems I’m not the only one who’s frustrated by the extremely poor quality of Rdio’s Windows Phone app (with some people even taking to canceling their subscriptions as a result of their justifiable dissatisfaction).

For months, Rdio employees have been promising complainers that the issues will be resolved on those very forums, but so far these promises have not been kept. I mean, they’re still asking users to restart their devices to see if that fixes the problem. Well, it doesn’t.

Rdio folks, please just look at those ratings and user reviews on WP Marketplace, and be ashamed.

Look, I get it. I’m in the minority as a Windows Phone user, and there’s no critical mass in sight yet. You have every right to focus your development efforts on apps for iOS and Android, given that most of your users likely use devices that run those operating systems. It’s a sensible thing to do.

The thing is, I’m a paying customer. I fork over $9.99 a month to access my Rdio account on the Web, my Sonos system and my phone. That phone happens to be a Windows Phone device, which you built an app for, which you’re actively advertising on your website. Yet, it’s helplessly broken.

The Spotify app for Windows Phone, meanwhile, works perfectly.

There’s absolutely no reason for me to put up with this, and I’m close to canceling my subscription over this. Not really because your Windows Phone app has issues, which is understandable, but because you’ve demonstrated clearly that you do not care about repairing them and giving your paying customers any reasonable indication of how to fix it themselves, or when a problem-fixing update will finally make its way to the Marketplace.

My view is this: either you develop an app for a mobile platform and proudly commit to enhancing and supporting it over time, and fixing problems that may arise within a reasonable timeframe, or you stay away from that platform entirely. I don’t know or care if Nokia or Microsoft paid you to build the app, but you should hang your heads in shame for offering it to users in its current state.

Rant over, for now. But hey, at least the new Android app apparently rocks, right?

Tsavo Media, which operates a network of roughly 300 websites and blogs as an indirect subsidiary of Canadian online publishing and advertising company Cyberplex, is being retroactively charged $4.8 million “over a reasonable time period” by Yahoo for sending the latter company’s advertisers “low quality traffic” in 2011.

To boot, Cyberplex president Ted Hastings (formerly Tsavo Media’s CEO), apparently jumped ship.

It’s a curious story, to say the least.

Tsavo Media, once led by former MySpace CEO and previously AOL SVP Mike Jones, was acquired by Cyberplex back in May 2010, for a reported $75 million.

The company’s network of Internet publications includes crappy websites like LumaGardening.com, ThinkFashion, TechSerious, WealthyGeek, Twirlit, DiscoverFame and KidGlue.

Now, according to a press statement released earlier today, a Special Committee of the Board of Directors of Cyberplex has been appointed to “review the status of Tsavo Media and strategic alternatives available to create shareholder value out of that division, which is currently heavily encumbered by debt under Tsavo Media’s credit facility with American Capital”.

I bet this wasn’t what they had in mind when they acquired Tsavo Media. But then again, what good could have come out of buying a crappy content generation machine anyway?

Cyberplex had this to say about the sticky Yahoo situation it now finds itself in:

The Company reported today that Tsavo Media has been engaged in discussions with Yahoo! to address concerns regarding the quality of traffic provided to the Yahoo! advertising base, and Tsavo Media’s reliance on Yahoo!’s traffic quality reporting system. Tsavo Media has now been informed that it will be required to pay to Yahoo! approximately $4.8 million over a reasonable time period currently being discussed, notwithstanding prior information that indicated good quality traffic at that time.

This amount may be partially offset by achieving certain performance incentives and anticipated improvements in average revenues per click, but the Company noted that there can be no assurance as to how much, if any, of this payment to Yahoo! would be offset through these incentives and improvements.

Translation: unless a miracle happens, we’re going to have to cough up some serious dough, and we can only hope we don’t have to pay everything all at once and in the near future.

The Company noted that Yahoo! provides bi-weekly quality reports to Tsavo Media, which are extremely important to Tsavo Media in the management of its systems, analysis, forecasting and ultimately its day-to-day business decisions. Yahoo! recently communicated to Tsavo Media that notwithstanding the good quality score reports that had been provided throughout most of 2011, Yahoo! would retroactively charge Tsavo for what Yahoo! is now saying was actually low quality traffic, ranging back over many months during 2011.

While the Company and Yahoo! remain in discussions on this issue, the Company now expects that Yahoo! will enforce its decision to charge back this amount citing its right to do so pursuant to the terms of Tsavo Media’s agreement with Yahoo!

Translation: first Yahoo says we did a good job last year, but now they say we did a bad job, and according to the deal we agreed upon they can actually retroactively charge us for it.

“We are very frustrated by the timing of these events after spending almost one year rebuilding the Tsavo organization while negotiating a settlement with American Capital”, said Geoffrey Rotstein, CEO of Cyberplex.

“These events are disappointing given all of the hard work the Tsavo employees have invested to rebuild the organization and because they continue to take away and distract from all of the other positive developments and momentum being created within both Tsavo and the other divisions of Cyberplex.”

Translation: Oh FFF******CCCKKK.

In an effort to expand its reach into the e-learning market, Kenexa, a publicly listed provider of business solutions for human resources and talent management, has agreed to acquire Boston-based OutStart.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

OutStart offers SaaS-based social and mobile learning solutions and will help Kenexa bolster its suite of talent management products, the latter company said in a statement.

OutStart is said to have more than 300 customers, ranging from large global organizations to mid-size companies and government agencies.

Kenexa says it expects to fund the acquisition of the privately-held software company with its existing cash balance. The company also expects the transaction to be at least neutral to non-GAAP net income available to common shareholders on a per share basis for 2012.

Also read: Kenexa To Acquire Salary.com In $80 Million Deal

Smartphones and tablets maker HTC this morning said it foresees a huge drop in revenue (PDF) in the first quarter, citing “short-term difficulties” as it gears up to – reportedly – launch four new phone models at the Mobile World Congress later this month.

The Taiwanese company sees revenue dropping as much as 36 percent in Q1, to between NT$65 billion and NT$70 billion (roughly $2.2 and $2.4 billion) due to this “product transition”.

In PR speak, that sound something like this:

Despite short-term difficulties, momentum will resume in the upcoming product cycle driven by HTC’s brand strength, innovation, and design/engineering capabilities

The smartphone maker also said it expected gross margin to come in at around 25 percent, and operating margin at 7.5 percent, which is down from 27.1 percent and 12.7 percent in the previous quarter. Again, HTC says it expects these margins to “normalize” after the debut of the new phones.

In other words, HTC has a heck of a lot riding on these new smartphones selling like hotcakes, as it feels the pressure from Apple’s overwhelming iPhone success and an increasing number of manufacturers churning out and selling competing Android-powered devices by the millions.

Also read:

It’s About Time: HTC To Refocus Smartphone Efforts Around “Hero” Devices

Is HTC’s 20% Revenue Dip Last Month A Sign Of Things To Come?

BTjunkie, a popular BitTorrent search service, has been ‘voluntarily’ shut down by its operator(s). In a goodbye message, BTjunkie writes:

This is the end of the line my friends. The decision does not come easy, but we’ve decided to voluntarily shut down. We’ve been fighting for years for your right to communicate, but it’s time to move on. It’s been an experience of a lifetime, we wish you all the best!

BTjunkie’s founder went into more detail in a conversation with TorrentFreak, stating that the recent legal actions against other file sharing services such as MegaUpload and The Pirate Bay played an important role in the decision-making process. In other words, the war that’s being waged upon file storage and sharing services, many of which are used to upload and distribute copyrighted content, has claimed another casualty. It won’t exactly be the last to falter as a result of the MegaUpload fallout, although you have to wonder how many competitors – or brand new sites – will now be jumping on the opportunity to provide an alternative to BTjunkie users.

As Accel Partners VC Max Niederhofer points out on Twitter, the shutdown of BTjunkie follows other abrupt decisions made by the likes of QuickSilverScreen (closed) and FileSonic (file sharing functionality terminated). Of course, there’s also Uploaded.to (suspended service in the United States), FileServe (disabled file sharing functionality, closed affiliate program), and more.

With even more likely to follow suit soon enough.

Founded in 2005, the unceremonious shuttering of the site now puts BTjunkie in the deadpool.

(Also check out the reddit thread on BTjunkie’s shutdown.)

Wow btjunkie.org has shut down where am I going to get my music from now—
Marquis Iveys (@kease2kool) February 06, 2012

Mobli, the startup behind the eponymous, much-hyped realtime photo and video sharing service, has struck a partnership with road racing cyclist and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong.

Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion, will be making use of a private Mobli channel to keep his fans and followers up-to-date on his life through videos, photos and whatnot.

The man is also joining the startup’s boards of advisors, not too long after another major celebrity, actor Leonardo DiDCaprio, participated in a $4 million funding round for the company.

Said Armstrong:

“When I was first introduced to Mobli, I immediately thought it was an extraordinary platform and an innovative yet accessible way for different audiences to share their stories. I’m excited to use Mobli as a direct channel for my social media followers to get a personal look at my experiences day to day.”

The former pro cycler says he will use Mobli to share moments from his training sessions as well as his work with the Lance Armstrong Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on cancer research and support.

Armstrong is no stranger to social media. At the time of writing, he had about 3.2 million followers on Twitter, while his Facebook page has garnered over 2 million ‘likes’.

Bill Stapleton, founder of Capital Sports & Entertainment and Lance Armstrong’s long-time agent, will also work together with Mobli and has also joined the startup’s advisory board along with Armstrong and Andrew Razeghi, an author and professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

History teaches us that celebrity backers and endorsers can only contribute so much to the chances of success for a startup, but this kind of exposure can certainly help this type of service get some early traction more rapidly than usually. If you’re an early user, tell us what you think.

Olery, an Amsterdam-based startup that offers reputation management and media monitoring tools for the leisure industry, has raised 750,000 euros ($1 million) to boost its international expansion and develop new products.

Founded in 2010, Olery offers simple online brand, reputation management and performance benchmarking tools for hotels that help turn online reviews and social media feedback into actionable business intelligence.

Read more at TechCrunch Europe.

Exclusive - On a mission to democratize e-commerce and help take the concept of social shopping from fad to reality, Shoply is making its formal debut today after a year of bootstrapping.

The bootstrapping days are over, as Shoply has raised an undisclosed amount of seed financing from former Facebook VP Chamath Palihapitiya and serial entrepreneur and scarily prolific angel investor Fabrice Grinda for its “Fab.com and Pinterest love child” (among other backers).

In essence, Shoply is a marketplace where any small brand or local business can sell wares online. Since quietly launching last year, 10,000 sellers have already found their way to the platform, generating “thousands” of monthly transactions according to founder and CEO Liad Shababo.

Shoply aims to give anyone who wants to sell – from individuals to SMBs – virtually anything online a way to do so quickly and easily, but also actively bring them a steady stream of customers by leveraging social media and technologies, and help them promote their businesses on the Web.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done, but Shoply appears to have nailed what businesses need to successfully establish and promote an online store.

Shoply stores are free to get up and running, with no setup or listing fees, and the startup charges either a 10 percent commission fee on sales, or a premium flat rate of $29.99 per month.

The downside of not charging listing fees is that Shoply will need to a better job monitoring what sellers are putting up on the site (I noticed some – expensive – spam products on the marketplace).

They also don’t currently police shipping fees charged by sellers, so that means you’re bound to raise your eyebrows at total prices sometimes when you shop (e.g. sellers charging a $85 shipping fee for a $45 item is just ridiculous and downgrades the overall experience).

Shababo tells me that they’ve built the site with only 3 people so far, and that those kinks will be gradually removed as they grow the team and take the site to the next level. He also points out that a lot of what gets showcased on the site is there based on user activity, so lousy offers should get organically pushed down anyway.

Indeed, for consumers, Shoply provides a social shopping experience where they can discover and buy unique products from a trove of independent sellers on a single platform. Users can curate products they love and share them with others, but there’s more to it than that.

By following other users, Shoply members can remain updated on all the happenings on the site, such as new products listed by their favourite sellers, or new collections of items created by the users they follow. Shoply uses the available data to provide consumers with suggested lists of products, shops they should be following and other members with similar tastes. I like it.

Shoply is based in London, UK, with offices in San Francisco opening soon.

Forgive me if you’ve seen this on Boing Boing yesterday already, but I’m always looking for interesting startups in the digital music space, and I think The Sound Supply‘s idea is, well, sound.

Basically, The Sound Supply bundles 10 DRM-free digital music albums and lets you buy the lot online for a mere $15. According to the website, all participating bands and artists – including the wonderful Sophie Madeleine and Colour Revolt – agreed to collectively share their music this way.

The site lets you pre-listen to all albums in the bundle (dubbed the Supply Drop) and also offers a video with a short introduction to all participating artists and bands.

As a commenter pointed out on Boing Boing, the website could be a little more informative. There’s nothing on the site that tells visitors how they can purchase the bundle (you find out this is can be done exclusively via PayPal only after you kick off the buying process), and there’s also no information about the sound quality, format, length, size and so on.

In an email to us, The Sound Supply referred to the site as a music group-buying service, implying that you can buy discounted music albums by purchasing them as a group (e.g. if 50 people agree to buy the bundle for $15, the sale goes through – see fipster) but as far as I can tell this is not the case. Likely, they mean that you can buy multiple albums in one go for a limited time (10 days), but the wording was confusing nonetheless.

All in all, The Sound Supply is not such a bad idea. If you’re into this kind of thing, also check out Sony’s daily deals site for music Pop Market, GroopEase and Hello Music (deals for musicians).

HouseParty.com, a site that helps people throw brand-sponsored home parties, has raised $5.3 million in Series C funding in a round led by New York-based Acadia Woods Partners.

Partiers need to apply online, indicate what type of in-home event they’re planning and take charge in spreading the word to their friends and relatives. Once selected for a house party, they receive a package of products from sponsoring brands – ‘Party Packs’ have included food, baby toys, health and beauty products and action figures in the past.

The idea is for brands to get some relatively cheap word-of-mouth marketing by gathering people in real life (who do this in exchange for freebies) in the hope that the parties will spark conversations about the brand and, ultimately, turn the people who show up into customers or even advocates.

People can also shop for party supplies on HouseParty.com.

The company has raised about $8 million to date.