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Firehose Provider DataSift Raises $42M Led By Insight Venture Partners For Global and Non-Social Ambitions
DataSift, a social data platform that provides brands and enterprises with access to content from the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and dozens of other social networks, is today announcing a $42 million, Series C round of funding. Rob Bailey, DataSift's CEO, tells me that the company plans to use the new financing for a number of different purposes. Read More
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Access Industries Leads $112M Round In Rocket Internet Asia-Pacific Fashion Sites Zalora And The Iconic
Earlier this year, Rocket Internet announced the closing of a huge fund of $500 million that it would use to develop its portfolio companies in markets outside of Western Europe. Today, one of the big backers of that fund, Access Industries, is leading a $112 million investment into two of Rocket's big e-commerce plays in the Asia-Pacific region, Zalora in Asia and The Iconic in Australia. Read More
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Mallzee Is A Tinder-Esque Shopping App That Lets Your Friends Play Fashion Police
Swipe right if you like. Swipe left if you don't. Mallzee, a 'personal shopper' for iOS, has a Tinder-esque UI, underpinned by its own recommendation engine, to make clothes shopping simple, efficient and fun. But it also has a clever social twist. The app lets you share the item you intend to buy with friends. If the consensus is a thumbs-down, Mallzee will actually prohibit you from making a… Read More
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Blackhawk Network Picks Up Gift Card Startup, Retailo, For €50M To Bolster Its Reach In Europe
Blackhawk Network, the subsidiary of Safeway that IPOed back in April and which offers prepaid and payment products such as gift cards in North America and elsewhere, has announced it has acquired European gift card distributor startup, Retailo. Retailo was founded back in 2008, and its investors include Wellington Partners, Endeavour Vision, Seventure Partners and High-Tech Gründerfonds. Read More
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Index Ventures Leads €10M Series C In Online Plus-Size Fashion Retailer, Navabi
Index Ventures has led a €10 million Series C round in navabi, an online retailer for plus-size fashion. Existing investors, which include Seventure Partners and Dumont Venture, also participated in the round. The German startup was founded back in 2007, and has raised some €13.5 million to date. Navabi sells clothes from a range of designer fashion brands — including Anna Scholz… Read More
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TCTV
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After 20 Months Google’s Campus London Hub Has 22,000 Members, So Where Next?
Opened in April 2012, Campus London, Google’s East London 'startup hub,' was something of a new departure for Google. It was taking out a ten year lease on a building which would be populated by co-working spaces, accelerator programmes, hackers and startups that Google had nothing to do with and Google would not even have a financial stake it in. In part it might be construed to have been a… Read More
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Apple Gets “Significant Bounce” On 5c, 5s iPhones; Android Still Trumps With 71% Share Of All Sales
Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the WPP market research division that provides a rolling check-in on how smartphones are selling in key markets, has put out its latest figures this morning covering the 12 weeks that ended October 31, and it looks like the debut of new iPhones from Apple have given the company a "signficant bounce" in sales. But even with the launch of not one but two new models -- the… Read More
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Wedo Raises £3 Million Led By MMC Ventures. Because Furniture.
Admittedly, I didn't exactly jump at the chance to cover this story. Because furniture. But, as boring as this e-commerce category might seem, VCs continue to pile in money. This time the recipient is London-based startup Wedo. Read More
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Sold To Telefonica For $207M In 2009, Now-Neglected VoIP Provider Jajah Is Shutting Down
Chalk up another casualty in the consolidation of Internet voice services. Nearly four years to the day after getting acquired by Telefonica for $207 million, VoIP provider Jajah has announced that it is shutting down, effective January 31, 2014. Registered users of Jajah.com (its web-based service that provides a price-reducing VoIP bridge between two landline or mobile numbers) and Jajah Direct… Read More
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PingTune Raises $1.6M And Unleashes Messaging App Based Around Music
With the success of SnapChat, Line and others, many have been wondering who will own the next big messaging service. Now, we're not saying it's necessarily the next big thing, but it is interesting to us that PingTune (formerly named Tuneit) has appeared with a service which slices off a fascinating niche of the messaging space with an app for music fans that want to send slices of music to each… Read More
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Dutch Authorities Find Google Violates Its Private Data Protection Act
Google's decision to share user data across Google services, revealed in an update to its policy back in March 2012, isn't strictly kosher with Dutch privacy law, the Dutch Data Protection Authority said Thursday. Google doesn't "properly inform users which personal data the company collects and combines, and for what purposes," according to a statement by the DPA issued via press release. Read More
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MusiXmatch Aims For Bigger Slice Of Karaoke Market With Launch Of MusiXmatch Mic
In a bid to get a slice of the lucrative karaoke market, musiXmatch, the song lyrics database and maker of accompanying mobile apps that let you view lyrics of songs you're listening to, is getting into the hardware game. Partnering with IK Multimedia, the UK/Italian company is releasing a "custom-designed" microphone accessory and updated app targeting karaoke enthusiasts. Read More
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Wishlist Startup, Addwish, Nabs $1.8M Seed From Sunstone Capital To Grow Its Presence In The U.S.
Tis the season for wish-lists. Addwish, a Danish startup offering online wish-list services for consumers and online businesses has closed $1.8 million in seed funding from Nordic-based early stage VC firm Sunstone Capital. The U.S. is a core focus for the startup so the funding will be used to hire staff to support this international push. Read More
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MetaPack Gets $33M From Index To Help Businesses Beat Amazon In The Delivery Dept
We're entering the peak season for shopping, and along with it a big rush on e-commerce services and getting packages before the 25th. Timely news, then, that MetaPack, a London-based provider of delivery management technology, is picking up a round of £20 million ($33 million). The funds will be used to take MetaPack international -- with acquisitions a key focus -- and to swing at the biggest… Read More
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PayPal Launches A Mobile Check-In And Payments Service With Orderbird In Germany
PayPal has been bullish on boosting its payments business by tapping into the growing use of smartphones, and this week the company launched a service in Germany to extend that further into Europe. It is partnering with Orderbird, a Berlin startup that offers an iPad-based point of sale service to merchants, for a check-in service that will recognise users when they walk into participating… Read More
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Post-Snowden, European Commission Sets Out Actions Needed To Restore Trust In E.U.-U.S. Data Flows
The European Commission has today detailed the actions it believes are required to restore trust in data-sharing agreements between the European Union and the U.S. following revelations of surveillance dragnets operated by U.S. intelligence agencies. Read More
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FlatClub, An Airbnb For Elite Universities, Lands $1.5M Investment To Scale Up
Last year FlatClub, a sort of Airbnb for top university students and their alumni, launched across 30 U.S. and UK universities (such as Columbia Business School, INSEAD, King's College). It's now raised $1.5million from a network of Angels including Jeremy Coller of Coller Capital, Professor Eli Talmor of London Business School and David Wolfe of BrandJourney and InterCapital. Read More
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Multimodal Travel Startup, FromAtoB, Closes 7-Figure Series A To Expand Internationally & Go Mobile
Munich-based multimodal journey planner startup, fromAtoB – which operates under the rather less catchy name of VerkehrsmittelVergleich.de in its home market of Germany — has closed a seven-figure Series A expansion round. The startup, which was founded back in 2008 but only launched its internationalized fromAtoB brand name in July this year, has snagged investment from French VC… Read More
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Task Marketplace Mila Partners With Swisscom To Break Euro Fear Of Share Economy
In the wake of news that a potentially aggressive and well-tooled played is about to end the market for itinerant, time-based tasks (prompt.ly), and with TaskRabbit rolling out internationally to significant markets like the UK and existing players like BookingBug ramping up, this whole arena is getting hotter. But one of the missing pieces of the pie is trust and scalability. Many ordinary… Read More
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After Last Month’s Security Breach, Social Media Scheduling Service Buffer Adds 2-Step Login
Buffer, the social media scheduling service, experienced a potentially brand-damaging security breach last month that saw a slew of weight-loss spam posted to Twitter and Facebook on behalf of its users. Today the startup is announcing a host of new security measures, including encrypting user email addresses and access tokens, and 2-step login, in a bid to restore confidence in its wares. Read More
