After announcing its deal to acquire Tumblr for $1.1 billion, mostly in cash, Yahoo today started to lay out some of the details for how it intends to make use of the property while trying to stick to its promise “not to screw it up.” Expect more advertising by next year as well as more Tumblr content on Yahoo properties, but more of a cautious step as to how Yahoo will deal with some of Tumblr’s more NSFW content.

Here are some of the more interesting details revealed in the call:

What are Tumblr ads going to look like? Tumblr apparently made only $13 million in revenues last year but CEO David Karp apparently thinks the site is “ready” to make more now that it understands its users, according to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer. But she also noted that they will be working from a challenged position, not just because of user resistance but because Karp himself has been “skeptical” about online ads.

In the conference call, Mayer made an early reference to how Tumblr would be able to make good use of Yahoo’s advertising technology, in ways that fit Tumblr’s so-far successful, image-based, quick-blogging, youth-oriented format — what she called “native advertising formats.”

As one example, she pointed to an ad format that Yahoo launched at the end of April, in-stream ads that it runs on its news pages. “On Tumblr we feel we can monetize in ways that are meaningful and add to user experience,” she said. She cited the Tumblr dashboard, or as she called it, the inbox for the blogs you follow. “Today Tumblr already does some ads in that feed. We would like to look at that and understand how to introduce more ads where the ads fit the expectations and follow that form and function.” She also noted that Yahoo may possibly work with bloggers to provide ads that will be run with their permission.

On top of this, expect to see more search ads: there are also plans to integrate Yahoo’s search functionality into the site as well. “We think there is a complelling search story,” said Mayer. “Their body is 50b posts and 5 billion posts of original content so search is already vast. We see an opportunity to integrate with search and provide that. That’s one area we are excited by the acquisition.”

Throughout this, a focus on trying to be Tumblr-centric about whatever Yahoo tries to do there. “It’s not a choice between creativity and monetization,” insisted Mayer.

So when are those ads coming? CFO Ken Goldman said that ad revenues from Tumblr will be “modest” this year — the acquisition is not expected to close until the second of of 2013 — but that they will “ramp up” in 2014 “and beyond.” “We do think those revenues will start monetizing materially [and] will contribute to revevenues in 2014 and beyond,” he said on the call, “not just standalone for Tumblr but also incrementally, helping Yahoo to growth.”

Porn? The NSFW, notorious part of Tumblr was never referred to by name, but an analyst did ask about what Yahoo, while courting mainstream brands to market to that attractive Tumblr audience, would do about content that is not “brand safe”. “The richness and breadth of the content… is what makes it more exciting,” enthused Mayer. “In terms of addressing concerns around brand safety we need to have good tools for retargeting.” [Another acquisition, methinks? In any case, no outright announcement that Yahoo intends to get rid of all those sites that Tumblr has more or less accepted into the fold.]

Mayer continued: “Tumblr is now at the point that they do know what it is and what makes sense to monetize in way that is tasteful.” She also mentioned due diligence but also something else, effectively implying that Yahoo will figure out a way of getting around the NSFW content and serving ads where they want them to go, because that’s what the advertisers want: “There are a lot of marketers eager to participate in Tumblr platform and the demographics,” she said.

What does the $1.1 billion “substantially in cash” mean? Goldman noted that it’s effectively an all-cash deal, save for some shares in Yahoo for David Karp. He also noted that Yahoo still has “ample cash” for more acquisitions and investments, to the tune of about $6.2 billion. These will not likely be along the lines of Tumblr in terms of size. “This is an exceptional company and team,” she said of Tumblr. At 300 million monthly unique users, Yahoo is paying about $3.67 per user for the acquisition.

Complementary properties. Mayer made a lot of the fact that Tumblr and Yahoo actually fit “really beautifully together,” like South America and Africa, in her words. In addition to Yahoo skewing older and Tumblr skewing younger, “We are strong on sports, finance and news; Tumblr’s strong on architeture, travel and fashion. We need great tools for content publishing and creation. They have them. Tumblr prides itself as a home for brands. Yahoo is all about brands.”

Tumblr comes to Yahoo. While a lot of the expectation so far has been about how Yahoo may mess up or spiff up or monetize up Tumblr, another theme that emerged during the call was the idea of Tumblr content going out to Yahoo properties — a way of attracting users to Yahoo that may not have gone there before.

“Our strategy is to let Tumblr be Tumblr,” said Mayer. “There are some who will always prefer Tumblr and will never come to Yahoo. [But] as we pull Tumblr content into our news feed and media experiences it will cause them to become that much more interesting and richer and will cause more to come to Yahoo. I imagine engagement will improve as we incorporate that content.”

Flickr. There is a separate news conference today that will likely concentrate on updates to Flickr, but today Mayer appeared to douse out speculation that it will be a move to begin integrating its online photo site with Tumblr in any way: “In terms of how the content of Tumblr evolves it depends on the creators,” Mayer said in answer to a question of what this acquisition will mean for Flickr. “It’s something that we will turn our attention to in the future. It will provide great storage, but we will see how those two cousins should relate to each other.

Image: Tumblr (where else)

There is no sadder moment than the one where you realize it’s time to upgrade your computer. The load times are too slow, the battery no longer holds a charge, and it’s just too damn heavy. Now, imagine a school with dozens of outdated computers, and think just how bad that moment of realization can really be.

Neverware, a company based out of NY, is aiming to change all that with a turnkey solution that automatically boosts performance of old computers for a low monthly fee. Obviously, demand for this type of service is high, especially in the education industry, which is why Neverware has just closed a $1 million round from investors that include Thrive Capital, Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Collaborative Fund, and Nihal Mehta.

Founder Jonathan Hefter started Neverware back in 2011 and launched in January 2013 with around $600K in seed funding. Since then, the company has been working to evangelize the product to NYC schools, and the response has been great. According to Hefter, Neverware’s latest seed round is somewhat of an emergency raise, considering that the demand from schools is much higher than expected.

Hefter explained that they expected to sign on with between five and seven schools for the first semester, starting in January. However, they’ve blown way past that number and seen around 3x the customer sign-ups. According to Neverware, most of the new seed round will go toward smart engineering hires, as Hefter looks to double the seven-man team with more employees who care about what Neverware is doing.

Neverware works by setting up a Juicebox 100 in the schools. That piece of hardware integrates with the school’s network to bring automation and intelligence to the system. The Neverware virtualization technology then boosts performance to each computer, giving kids the access they need to actually get things done.

Schools pay an adjustable fee per month, per computer, and the Juicebox comes free.

“There is a huge challenge in deploying software on appliances across a wide variety of networks that we do not control,” said Hefter. “In order to be a reliable solution, we engineer an incredible amount of intelligence and automation into our system that allows it to function in many types of network environments that schools might have and recover from a wide range of network-related issues, without any associated downtime. These are engineering challenges that you simply don’t face when you’re running a website on uniform Amazon instances in the cloud.”

For now, Neverware is focused on expanding within the greater New York area, and will eventually expand beyond that into new regions.

Jolla, a Finnish startup formed in response to Nokia’s decision to ditch MeeGo in favour of Windows Phone, has finally taken the wraps off the smartphone hardware that will be paired with its “unlike” Sailfish UI. Being a startup is challenging enough in any business sector but Jolla is seeking to compete in the fiercely competitive smartphone space, going up against giants Samsung and Apple who hold the majority of the market in a pincer grip. So it’s hard not to dismiss their efforts as too late. But it’s a lot harder to accuse them of doing too little.

Jolla’s strategy for fighting the mobile industry’s Goliaths is all about standing out by doing things different. Today’s hardware underlines how this startup is hoping to disrupt the concept of a single flagship device — such as the Samsung Galaxy S4 — that’s hankered after and owned by millions yet with only a little variation in case colourings to tell the difference between each one.

In seeking to break down software homogeneity with its Sailfish UI and a business model that encourages working with third parties to develop new types of smartphone experience that loop in others’ data, Jolla is also taking aim at hardware commoditisation via a cross-over feature in its debut device that it’s calling the Other Half. The Other Half refers to removable hardware shells that snap on to the back of the handset and can be changed and customised by the user. But the feature goes further than interchangeable shells — which is not at all new, dating back in spirit to early Nokia mobile phones of the 1990s with their removable facias, and more recently to a device like Nokia’s Lumia 820, which has a coloured and swappable backplate.

Jolla’s Other Half isn’t just decoration but links to the software on the handset — using an unconfirmed bridging technology that sounds to my ear like NFC — allowing content on the phone to be tied to the addition of a new shell, or even for new physical features to be incorporated and supported.

Jolla’s Marc Dillon, now head of software but until recently CEO, gave some examples of how the Other Half feature could be used — noting that this is about opening up the back of the device for others to come in and augment.

“You have the processor side of the device, the power side, the engine, and then the Other Half is about adding to that. This is a new kind of media where it could be anything from your favourite artist could release their latest album on the other half of the Jolla device, and then when the user buys this they have a physical thing from their favourite artist then when they snap it on to the other half of their Jolla device, then everyone can see it, that they support and love their artist and then on the inside they could get the content. They could get maybe special content, that could only be released in this format like videos or links to websites or tickets or special offers, things like that but because of this interface between the two halves,” he told TechCrunch.

“It can not only be media, it can be very simple things — so maybe you have a colour palette, so when you go out of an evening you might have a different colour depending on your outfit and that colour then carries through to the software updating the Ambience of the device. So you might have — if you have a green dress, you might have a green device and then you have green icons and green Ambience [Sailfish UI theme] on your phone. But it can also be more interesting — you can add features. Like the camera is a good example, the native camera of course has a flash but maybe you’re going to a party and you want to have a big flash so you can take pictures in the dark at a nightclub. So really the imagination is the only limit here.”

“Instead of having a device with some bulky things attached to it or some things sticking out the side of it to extend the capabilities of the device, or to add content, we’re giving a new way for users to actually design and co-create with us new ways of using the device,” Dillon added.

“Of course we will be offering a choice of Other Halves for the user to buy but this is a place where we want to see others get involved. Designers can design Other Halves for the device, engineers or hackers or techies can design new interfaces and maybe add physical hardware features that they wish they had on their device but might have a smaller market than to deserve having a whole entire device,” he said. “We talked about 3D printing them today. So it could be those kinds of things, but really we’re offering a new kind of interface for a device so that people can really take their imagination, and I believe there will be a lot of third parties and a lot of people who have a lot of great ideas in order to help you use the Other Half of the Jolla device.”

The Other Half may be a bit of a clumsy name but it’s a savvy move that taps into the custom hardware trend that’s growing off the back of the rising profile of 3D printing. That said, it does of course remain to be seen how much interest Jolla can spark for others to get involved in co-creation with only one device to its name and that device not launching for another six months. It will need enough traction to get the co-creation party started.

The idea to link the hardware and software has been part of Jolla company discussions and plans since the beginning, according to Dillon. “It’s been something that we’ve been planning and working towards the whole time. The Ambience was a hint of how this can come together,” he noted, adding: ”Hardware like many things, it’s become a commodity, so the problem with commodities is it generally forces things down — things become kind of lowest common denominator… We set out to make the greatest device that we could, and we understood that the software and the user experience is key because that’s where the value comes from in the device and the hardware is the realisation of that, it’s a productisation of the software.

“So we kind of took this tack, then of course the hardware has to be fantastic it has to support the software and support the user and be something the user can be proud of and my belief is that when people see the Jolla device they want to see what’s inside.”

“This iteration, the direct stuff here, has been about a year in development. It started getting really good for me about six months ago and I’ve been using the device for a while now, and it’s really started to feel fantastic, when the hardware and the software have come together. They were done by the same designers and the same people so it has been kept in mind that the two go together, that the two have a synergy the entire time. We’ve had a roadmap the entire time as well so we’ve had a set of hardware specifications to work with,” he added.

It’s worth flagging that Jolla is not the only mobile maker to take an interest in 3D printing and custom hardware, even if it’s taken that further by creating a link between custom hardware and phone content. 3D printing is something Nokia has done with the Lumia 820 shell, for instance. Dillon said Jolla may also look to open source the 3D design of the Other Half, telling TechCrunch “I could see that happening”.

Asked specifically about the bridging technology between the hardware shell and the software, Dillon declined to give specific details, saying: “There’s a number of options here but there is a connection between the Other Half and the software. And of course all of that needs to be open as well.”

Asked whether the device will launch in the U.S. he said Jolla is looking at other markets but opting for Europe and China first. ”We’re starting with Europe and China and we will be extending to other markets as we go. We’re in the delivery phase at the moment so we’re building the infrastructure, and the logistics in order to be able to deliver and care for the users of the device, and we’re of course going to look at other markets as we go.”

“It’s the target to get the Christmas market in Europe, Chinese New Year. That’s the big milestones,” he added. “The most important thing is we come out with a fantastic product… When we’re shipping at the end of the year if it’s a fantastic product then it’s really going to resonate and I think we’re really going to have a lot of demand.”

Today is turning out to be quite a memorable Monday — hot on the heels of Yahoo’s Tumblr acquisition announcement, online food ordering services GrubHub and Seamless have officially confirmed that the two companies will merge into one as we previously reported.

Many of the juicy details — like what this new entity will actually be called — are still shrouded in secrecy, but the announcement has shed some light on how the new company’s executive structure will be set up. GrubHub co-founder and CEO Matt Maloney will take the reins as the entity’s chief executive, while Seamless CEO Jonathan Zabusky is slated to become the company’s president.

As our own Rip Empson pointed out on Friday, the tie-up is set to take place as the online good delivery and ordering space has begun to heat up. A handful of new startups have their respective eyes set on cracking the market (think ChowNow and HealthyOut, just to name a few), while more entrenched players like Delivery.com continue to putter along.

Now that two of the most prominent companies in that space are dedicating to combining forces, we may soon see some of those small fries get pushed out. After all, by combining the resources of both companies (which jointly generated over $100 million in revenue in 2012), the new combined entity will have enough resources to grow its business both in the United States and in the U.K. where Seamless has maintained a foothold for some time. Of course, this whole shebang is still subject to regulatory approval, so it’s possible someone could raise those same sorts of anti-competitive concerns down the road. For now though, I suspect that more than a few people are just happy knowing that they’ll be able to order even more food from a single service.

Developing…

Sprint has decided to get deeper into the social and mobile space, announcing today that it has acquired Handmark and its subsidiary OneLouder. The acquisition is meant to beef up its Pinsight Media+ advertising group, specifically.

Through Handmark, OneLouder has built social apps like Twitter clients Tweetcaster and Slices, and Friendcaster, a Facebook client. The acquisition price hasn’t been made known, but it’s a huge win for the Kansas City tech space, a place that I visited just a few weeks ago.

Sprint hopes that this acquisition will bring a more “entrepreneurial spirit” to its mobile program, hoping to lure developers to use its own advertising platform. Mike Cooley, VP of New Ventures at Sprint shared: “The business, culture and technology they bring will be a huge asset to our business, and ultimately the customers of Pinsight Media+.”

Through building all of its apps, OneLouder found a niche in advertising, having its own team that has worked on the ad platform and used its own apps to test it out. This deal also brings Sprint some strategic partners like CBS, which has a sports app powered by OneLouder. Tying the work that OneLouder has done on its ad platform with Sprint’s customer base should juice its mobile advertising efforts immediately.

The great thing about the acquisition is that Handmark and OneLouder will stay in its current home of Kansas City, serving as an example of what a budding tech hub it really is. Sprint has been trying to get involved with the KC tech crowd, as all of the activity surrounding Google Fiber has inspired companies to be formed and money and time to be spent on building communities and refocusing on making the area attractive to both coasts as an alternative base.

In what can only be called an exodus, WordPress’ co-founder Matt Mullenweg posted on his blog Sunday night that over 72,000 new blog posts were imported within a single hour. This is a massive spike considering that WordPress usually just sees 400 to 600 imported posts on most Sundays. It’s a tiny percentage of Tumblr’s 50.9B posts but it’s an important consideration that Tumblr – and now Yahoo – cannot ignore.

Yahoo is officially buying Tumblr for a lot of cash. $1.1 billion to be precise. This move makes a few people very happy and very rich. But Tumblr’s content creators – you and me – are the primary reason Yahoo is buying the site. Unfortunately, that content engine isn’t very happy.

WordPress will likely have another banner day as even more Tumblr users look for alternative platforms to host their saucy Brony slashfic.

Tumblr is currently an unfettered corner of the Internet. Nearly anything goes, and with that users have enjoyed this freedom to create a vast variety of blogs and sites. Anything from questionable pornography to vegan cooking blogs are hosted on Tumblr. While Yahoo promises to keep Tumblr independent, it’s unclear whether this includes maintaining Tumblr’s loose posting guidelines.

This has happened before. A small percentage of Instagram users loudly quit the service when Facebook purchased the social network. Likewise, Facebook is losing users as it becomes an established service. WordPress is likely going to be the largest benefactor of Tumblr’s exodus. As Mullenweg notes, the two services have long enjoyed a close relationship. It only takes a few clicks to import a Tumblr site to a WordPress install.

Tumblr users are afraid Yahoo is going to ruin it. After all, Yahoo has set that precedent after scooping up sites like Geocities and del.icio.us only to abandon development and let the sites rot in the Internet sun. But the Yahoo of today is not the Yahoo of yesterday.

Yahoo is booming under Marissa Mayer. The company is a on buying spree, scooping up hot startups, resulting in the acquisition of content, talent, and, press coverage. If anything, Wall Street likes what Yahoo is doing as the company’s stock price is up nearly 71% for the year. But despite Yahoo’s frank promise that it will not screw up Tumblr, a social network is only as strong as its users and in a very direct way, Yahoo is already screwing up Tumblr.

Sensopia, a company which actually uncovered a practical application for augmented reality, has raised a $1.2 million Series A round for its floor plan capturing application called “MagicPlan.” The app allows users to hold up their phone and then scan the dimensions of the room around them in order to create an instant floor plan that can be exported to various formats, including DXF, PDF, JPEG and HTML, the latter for viewing the plan on the web.

To perform the scan, the app “sees” the room in the camera’s viewfinder, and then you tap on the screen to label things like corners and doors.

Participating in the new round were Partech International, Tekton Ventures, Normandy Ventures, and other private investors. The company says it will use the funding to accelerate growth and further develop the application, making the software easier to use and allowing for the capture of rooms in three dimensions.

The startup had released an updated version of the MagicPlan app around a year ago, which at the time had introduced an upgraded user interface, a full HD iPad version, and improvements to the “MagicPlan Cloud” service – a web service that allows for data-sharing with partners. Although consumers are, of course, welcome to use the app themselves for free (for non-commercial use), Sensopia’s revenue comes from its subscription plans and enterprise adoption.

The company had previously formed agreements with Seloger (France’s Zillow), RTV (Real Tour Vision – a provider of real estate tours in the U.S.), Moobz (the Century 21 technology provider), and Cocontest (a crowd-sourced platform for interior design).

This March, it rolled out version 3.0 of the MagicPlan software, and announced a key partnership with Home Depot. Through this agreement, users could share their floor plan with Home Depot and make an appointment with an associate who would then use the plan to better assist the customer while in the store.

To reach its preferred market (i.e., paying customers), Sensopia is also releasing its MagicPlan software development kit today, which will allow MagicPlan’s technology to be integrated into other applications. The first customer to launch using this SDK is Symbility, a software company that makes claims processing applications for insurance companies.

Symbility will allow its inspectors to create floor plans while on site, while completing a claims adjustment using their iPad.

“It would not be a stretch to imagine that, in the future, claim management data for smaller cases could be generated by consumers, rather than the adjusters, and sent to the insurance company directly,” says Richard Adair, President and COO of Symbility. ”This would, of course, lead to significant savings in both time and money,” he adds.

Until now, Sensopia had been operating as a bootstrapped company. CEO Pierre Gaubil explains, “we wanted to reach real traction before raising money.” Today, he thinks it’s there. The app now has over 4 million downloads and over 20,000 floor plans created per day, Gaubil also notes – up from a million when version 2.0 was released last April. He declined to provide revenue figures, but says growth is at 20 percent month-over-month.

MagicPlan is available in the App Store here.

Yahoo has now officially confirmed that it is buying blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion mostly in cash, after reports on an impending deal first surfaced last week. It says it will keep it as an independent company, with founder David Karp at the helm as CEO. “The product, service and brand will continue to be defined and developed separately with the same Tumblr irreverence, wit, and commitment to empower creators,” it writes.

The deal will close in the second half of this year.

With a lot of negative comments coming in from Tumblr users in lead-up to the deal, and some competitors claiming that they’re witnessing a kind of exodus from Tumblr as a result, Karp has also weighed in with his own announcement about the deal, emphasizing the same independence line: “We’re not turning purple,” he wrote:

“We’re not turning purple. Our headquarters isn’t moving. Our team isn’t changing. Our roadmap isn’t changing. And our mission – to empower creators to make their best work and get it in front of the audience they deserve – certainly isn’t changing.”

Karp also points out that Tumblr, joining up with the “original Internet company,” will be getting more resources to create the “ultimate creative canvas.” Some users have complained about certain features around the site, such as how video works, so the implication here is that areas like this will be addressed faster from now on, but — again — in a way that “doesn’t compromise the community and product we love.”

To get into the spirit of things, Marissa Mayer has fired up her very own Tumblr account and has posted on the news herself, complete with her own GIF to commemorate the deal (and, yes, also respond to the negativity):

Although both Karp and Mayer are pushing hard on the “we will not screw this up” line, there are of course business reasons behind it.

The deal, as many have pointed out, will give Yahoo not just access to more younger users (Tumblr is strongest in the 18-24 age bracket), but a fast-growing number of consumers who are in general very engaged online. Yahoo notes that Tumblr currently has 300 million monthly unique visitors and is growing by 120,000 signups every day, “one of the fastest-growing media networks in the world” with 900 posts per second and 24 billion minutes spent on site each month. There is also a strong mobile story that fits with Yahoo’s new emphasis on that platform: more than half of Tumblr’s mobile users using the mobile app on an average of 7 sessions per day.

Yahoo says it expects Tumblr to expand Yahoo!’s audience by 50% to more than a billion monthly visitors, and to grow traffic by approximately 20%.

That’s presuming there will be advertising against all of that content and all of those users. While Yahoo and Tumblr say that we won’t be seeing the birth of Yahooblr here, it’s also careful to note that advertising and Yahoo’s other monetizing services will most certainly be finding a place at Tumblr.

Tumblr, it appears, will be using Yahoo’s “personalization technology” and search infrastructure in its services to help users find content that fits their interests better. This is directly connected to advertising: “In turn, Tumblr brings 50 billion blog posts (and 75 million more arriving each day) to Yahoo!’s media network and search experiences,” Yahoo writes. Still, these apparently won’t be standard Yahoo display ads like the ones we see everywhere else: “The two companies will also work together to create advertising opportunities that are seamless and enhance the user experience.”

Tumblr has been working on services like this for some time, for example with its Spotlight highlighting Tumblrs from brands. This last year helped the company make some $13 million in revenues — not much by Yahoo standards. It will be interesting to see whether Yahoo will be able to raise that figure without lowering the others around usage that attracted it to Tumblr in the first place.

The companies are holding a conference call at 9am Eastern time; we’ll be listening in and updating from that.

Some more consolidation afoot in the worlds of mobile marketing and mobile payments: Payvia, one of the many startups working in the area of carrier-based mobile billing, is buying Mogreet, a mobile marketing company that delivers campaigns via text, video and picture messaging services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed — although we have contacted the company to ask. Payvia says that the whole of the Mogreet team will be coming over, including Mogreet founder and CEO James Citron, who will become Payvia’s Chief Marketing Officer.

Update: Payvia tells me it is profitable company, with $400 million in sales last year, and that it will look at other acquisitions in the future “as we expand our focus onto emerging markets,” says a spokesperson. Today 80% of Payvia’s business is in the U.S. but it wants to expand that to build on the carrier connections that it has in 40 countries (among those, it powers carrier billing for Skype in the U.S.). Together the two companies will have 150 employees. [Original article continues.]

The move is an interesting one, in that it signals how Payvia, to differentiate itself from the pack, is creating applications itself that utilize its payment services.

“Our mobile payments offer resonates strongly with the market because it is built on our proprietary carrier connected technology that gives us a unique ability to understand consumer mobile usage,” said Darcy Wedd, CEO, payvia, in a statement. “Our clients have told us they also need a simpler way to link targeted mobile transactions to their marketing campaigns. By integrating Mogreet’s solutions on our platform we answer that need. As the only company to solve a known disconnect between traditional mobile commerce and engagement solutions, Payvia is well positioned to increase mobile’s share of the $252 billion* e-commerce market.”

Payvia says that it has the largest direct carrier connected messaging and mobile payments platform in the U.S., covering 120 million unique mobile users and processing billions of mobile messages every year. The company says it has paid out to merchants and developers worldwide more than $2 billion in global mobile commerce revenues. (There are other carrier billing platforms that will claim they are bigger, but the qualification here seems to be around the messaging platform that Payvia does this through.)

The trick with carrier billing services is that they give publishers, developers, and in this case brands and marketers, ways of offering goods and services to consumers on mobile devices, letting them complete purchases by charging those goods/services directly to their mobile bills. Services like these mean more seamless payments because they do not require users to enter credit card details, which can be painful to do on handsets and in some markets are a dead end because of the low penetration of payment cards. Other carrier billing companies like Bango claim that as a result carrier billing services are a more lucrative channel overall for getting users to pay for things on mobiles.

Last year, Payvia hit the news when it won a deal to power mobile/SMS-based donations for the Obama re-election campaign: a more classic example of how many mobile payments companies generate revenues, as the backend provider for services created by others, and also a sign of how Payvia was already formulating services that basically let users make transactions from within messages.

What the Mogreet acquisition will give Payvia is the ability to apply this to a wider variety of messages, and also a client base. Current customers of Mogreet’s include Cox Media Group, Emmis Communications and Gamefly.

The acquisition also signals a potentially new phase in the development of mobile marketing campaigns. While Mogreet’s services up to now have been more focused on encouraging people to click through to mobile web sites, or to enter short codes to receive further information, this potentially could mean that now marketers could create campaigns that encourage purchases from within the message.

Payvia is backed by Silver Lake Sumeru, Montgomery & Co., and Trinity Ventures (amount undisclosed), while Mogreet has raised some $14 million from DJF Frontier, Black Diamond and others.

More to come.

A new report commissioned by research giant GfK claims that the growth of the high density cluster of technology companies in East London (dubbed Tech City by the UK government) is being “stunted” by a talent shortage and lack of access to capital. The ‘Tech Futures Report’ – commissioned by publishing company TechCityInsider and sponsored by accountant Grant Thornton, recruitment firm Vitamin T, City University London and Digital Shoreditch is based on 141 interviews of ‘tech’ company senior management. In fact, only less than half of these admitted to developing technology products and platforms. It’s simply the latest in a long line of reports that conflate consultants and digital advertising agencies with technology companies, leading to yet more confusion about the state of the cluster.

When quizzed by TechCrunch, the reports authors admitted that only 41% of those surveyed made apps, while 21% did social networking, 17% retailing/ecommerce, 12% publishing, 12% IT consulting and services, 8% data processing/management and 7% were in gaming – though it’s not clear whether than meant games or gambling. And of those 141, only 77% of respondents were CEO/Founders of the business they represented.

As a result of this over-sight, an important opportunity has been missed to find out more of the needs of real high-growth technology companies in the cluster, rather than normal growth advertising agencies.

But for what it’s worth we present the rest of the reports findings below. Make of them what you will.

Among the reports key findings:

• Nearly a half (44%) find a shortage of skilled workers is the biggest challenge they face
• Over three quarters (77%) say a lack of skilled workers is restricting their growth
• A third (33%) believe a lack of access to capital is hindering their business.
• In terms of the businesses represented, 30% had an annual turnover of <£200k, 34% £200,000-£999,000, 17% £1-£5m, 7% £5-£10m and 12% over £10m. 24% said their main location of business was London, 44% UK, 17% Europe 14% North America and 1% ROW.

The report says the 141 executives surveyed had "mixed feelings" about the the effectiveness of government support, with some liking it, others not. Not eactly ground breaking news then.

Clearly, despite the 'glass half empty' tone, the situtation is in flux. Ryan Garner, Research Director for GfK said: "Our research shows Tech City is at a tipping point, and hopefully this report will help it find its way in spearheading that economic growth." Indeed, the reports authors could equally have spun the situation as a 'tech hiring boom'.

Unfortunately, the report struggles with some of the common terms of the technology world. The top skills most in demand are said to be "coders and developers" and something called "research and development" leading one to wonder if the reports authors could possibly be more vague. The others skills said to be in short supply (again, not news) are marketing and PR, business development, web design and user experience specialists. Someone is hiring. Hold the front page.

The report claims that staff retention remains a challenge, though is not clear on whether that is because it's a booming startup market generating more spin-out startups, or if people are leaving for big corporate jobs.

As for accessing capital, a third of those surveyed said their businesses are hindered by a lack of capital, whether sourced from investors or banks. Once again, because the report conflates technology businesses that might be fundraising with digital agencies that might just want a bank loan, the picture here is vague. Of course, it's common knowledge that most startups fail to raise external funding anyway.

If there is a gem of new information here it's in the finding – which has been largely anecdotal till now – that there is a growing gap for businesses requiring investment of £500,000 to £2 million. The "Series A gap".

However, the report mistakenly thinks that all startups which can't raise a Series A in London will skip of to bag "the Silicon Valley dollar" when doing so is far from a simple move or likely.

TechCrunch is hereby placing a ban on all reports about London's Tech City from now on unless they actually talk to 100% tech companies with an actual product or platform. Not guys coming up with a new hip flash site for Coca Cola or selling tech support to banks.

Alteryx has raised $12 million for its business intelligence service designed for data analysts to build tools out of their own internal data and that from third parties.

The investment comes from SAP Ventures and Toba Capital, a new firm founded by former Quest Founder and CEO Vinny Smith. Quest sold to Dell last year for $2.4 billion. Total funding for Alteryx is now $18 million. SAP also participated in the first round.

The Alteryx platform streams data into a data engine. The analyst then packages apps and publishes to the cloud. The analyst works with data behind the firewall, pulling in third-party information such as social streams. MongoDB, the NoSQL database, is used to serve up data to the app gallery.

The apps are pretty easy to use once set up for the user. I tried the service when I looked at the company late last year.

Alteryx plays in a very hot market. President Chief Operating Officer George Mathew said the business intelligence sector is estimated to be $10 to $12 billion by IDC. It’s evident in the news of the past week with Tableau having a very successful IPO.

Alteryx sees the market as defined by the total number of data analysts, which is estimated at 3 to 4 million. In contrast, there are only 200,000 data scientists.

Alteryx compares itself to products such as SAS and Tibco Spotfire, which Mathew says takes more time to integrate than its platform.

There is a reason why the business intelligence market is growing at such a clip. It’s the volume and velocity of data that requires tools that can get to the data fast and be accessible so the analyst can package it and provide to the end-user.

Adelphic is announcing that Michael Collins (pictured), previously global CEO at WPP-owned mobile marketing agency Joule, has joined the mobile ad startup as its new chief executive. The current CEO Changfeng Wang will remain on-board as CTO.

Wang and his co-founder Jennifer Lum both worked at Apple-acquired mobile ad network Quattro, and they announced last year that they had launched a new company. Adelphic says it helps mobile advertisers find the most desirable audiences for their ads, addressing the lack of a persistent ID for mobile users by analyzing different signals that allow it to predict a visitor’s demographic data.

At the end of last year, the company raised a $10 million Series A led by Google Ventures, bringing its total funding to $12 million. It now has a team of 33 full-time employees, Lum said.

As for Collins, he launched Joule in 2007, according to the company website. Before that, he was US General Manager for Refresh Mobile, which spun out of T-Mobile, and a partner at e-business consultancy USWeb/CKS.

“Adelphic has an amazing technical and product team with a clear vision for what to build,” said Google Ventures partner and Adelphic board member Rich Miner in a press release. “As one of the most respected leaders in mobile advertising, Michael complements the team. His skills and expertise will be invaluable as Adelphic implements the platform for top publishers and advertisers.”

There’s no shortage of channels for brands and celebrities to stay in touch with their customers, followers and fans in these socially connected times — whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Vine, YouTube, you name it. Of course, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for something more. Today’s addition to the mix is the launch of a broadcasting and animation platform for smartphones called Headcast which lets brands and celebrities record and push out short voice messages to their audience — accompanied by an animated, virtual avatar which lipsyncs with the voice recording and can also mimic hand gestures and facial expressions.

The company behind the tech, HeadcastLab, describes these broadcasts as “visual tweets” since they are limited in duration to 60 seconds, so have the same bite-sized character as a tweet, but are also designed to be watched, thanks to the avatar component. There’s no getting away from the uncanny valley phenomenon here, but presumably in an effort to make that effect comic rather than sinister, the avatars have a cartoonish air, rather than going after exact photo-realism.

The cartoonish air can also be explained by HeadcastLab’s CEO’s background as a designer and builder of puppets and characters. Chris Chapman also ran the animatronics team at Spitting Image Projects and went on to join the creative team. HeadcastLab was founded in 2011, after Chapman had also co-founded smart interface business ElekSen.

British actor and tech lover Stephen Fry is the first to launch a Headcast-powered app, called Fry, on iOS. Fry is also a small investor in Headcast, holding a sub-one per cent stake in the company. Other investors are David Gilbert, former chief operating officer of Dixons, and Charles McGregor, founder of Fibernet, along with CEO Chris Chapman. Headcast’s total funding to date is £340,000, through two separate funding rounds.

Here’s how the technology works from the presenter side:

Headcast performers, such as Stephen Fry, simply speak into their tablet device in ‘self-animator’ mode to record the audio, their character auto-lipsyncs and the in-built technology then animates the character, faster than sending a Tweet.  Extra animations, such as trademark gestures, shrugs and topical images within the background, add extra life to the Headcast and can be included at the touch of a button. The followers receive the Headcast within a minute and can interact through the use of polls to gauge fan opinion, tapping the character, and adding sequences into the Headcasts.

Following its iOS launch, with Fry as the first celebrity on board, Headcast’s platform is due to launch on Android in July.

Headcast CEO Chapman said Fry is “just the first of many” brands and celebrities that will be launching on the Headcast platform. “We are looking forward to shortly revealing many other global stars, in particular from the sport and music industries,” he said in a statement.

The news that Google has launched its own all-you-can-eat music steaming service, catchily named ‘Google Play Music All Access‘, didn’t come as a surprise. There had been rumours that the search giant was planning to create a Spotify/Rdio/Deezer competitor for some time. Why has it done so? Apparently it had to. Music is at the centre of the mobile computing experience, which is where Google wants to remain.

And yet — and yet — it appears to have brought nothing new to the music streaming table. Certainly from a consumer proposition, Google Play Music All Access looks just like Spotify et al, right down to the business model and pricing. This from the company that’s bringing us self-driving cars.

It’s therefore nice to see a startup trying something different and garnering some promising traction along the way. The UK’s Bloom.fm is a mobile-first music streaming service — it currently exists as an iOS app only — that launched four months ago out of the ashes of the deadpooled music social network mflow. Since then the service, which offers an innovative mix of free and paid tiers that start from just £1 per-month (~$1.5), has amassed 150,000 subscribers, growing 50% in the last month — though, tellingly, it isn’t saying how many are free versus paid users.

Offering a catalog of 18 million tracks, the app can be used entirely for free in internet radio mode. There are over 150 curated stations and many more based on artist. However, these are streaming only and therefore don’t support offline playback, a fairly important feature for a mobile music service. But it also serves as a natural dividing line. You want total control over the tracks you listen to and how, then you need to pay.

For many users, however, particularly the younger teen demographic, going from free to the £9.99 per month ($9.99 in the U.S.) that Spotify et al charge for mobile usage is a step too far. Bloom.fm thinks that this is holding back true mass adoption of mobile music services.

Its solution is a paid subscription that employs what it’s calling a “borrow, enjoy, return” model. Starting at £1 per month (or £1.50p as an in-app purchase thanks to Cupertino taking a cut), users can temporarily download 20 tracks at any one time. That’s roughly two album’s worth of music, which doesn’t sound like much, but these can be refreshed at any time. Besides, teens are a fickle bunch.

Need more? Bloom.fm also offers £5 and £10 plans for 200 tracks and unlimited respectively. Obviously, the latter plan is just like those of its competitors and it will be interesting to see how many users Bloom.fm can eventually up-sell to that tier. My guess is that the middle tier may well be the sweet spot. Either way, it’s nice to see some innovation in what is fast becoming the streaming music as a commodity space.

Jolla, the Finnish MeeGo startup composed of ex-Nokians building their own mobile hardware and Sailfish OS, has finally taken the wraps off its first handset, revealing what the hardware will look like on its website. The design is a clean-looking, elegant slab, with the most stand-out feature being the coloured shell on the back that wraps around half the sides of the phone to create a dual-tone sandwich effect.

The shell colours, which appear to be user-customisable, can also influence the theme colours of the Sailfish UI. This is a feature Jolla is calling “the Other Half”. “Attach the Other Half and your Jolla becomes alive and unique,” the text notes. “Magically, the software changes to match your selected colour and design. Your Ambience. Your Jolla.” It’s unclear exactly what technology is linking hardware and software but it sounds like it could be NFC.

The removable, customisable shells bring to mind Nokia’s Lumia 820 — a device for which Nokia has released the 3D print files so owners of 3D printers can  design and print their own custom shell. The Lumia 820 shells, however, do not have any link to the Windows Phone software.

Jolla’s handset will cost €399 ($513) and is slated to ship at the end of the year. Jolla notes:

Expected availability by end of 2013 subject to demand in your local market. Sales will start in European countries with more countries to follow. If you join the Movement and get the pre-order number to buy the phone when available, you’ll pay no more than 399€; including applicable VAT in Europe, but excluding shipping costs, duties and any local taxes.

Specs wise, the device has a 4.5″ Estrade display, a dual-core chip, 4G, 16GB internal memory plus a microSD card slot, an 8MP auto focus camera, a user-replaceable battery. The device is powered by Jolla’s Sailfish OS but can also run Android apps, giving it something of a leg up. Jolla is also encouraging developers to build native Sailfish apps too.

The hardware reveal is also the start of Jolla’s pre-order sales campaign, announced last month. Jolla confirmed it is taking pre-orders from today, with the first shipments due at the start of Q4 2013. It is accepting pre-orders of either €100 or €40 for a limited edition Jolla (plus exclusive Other Half for those making the higher payment). It is also accepting pre-orders without any down payment to be among the first to get a Jolla handset.

The big question for Jolla is has it done enough to sustain people’s interest in a device that won’t ship for at least half a year — during which time scores more Android-powered handsets will arrive, and companies like Samsung will continue to push the limits of flagship phone hardware.

Jolla is holding an event in Helsinki today — dubbed the Jolla LoveDay — to promote the handset and encourage fans to pre-order the device, having kept the design tightly under wraps up to now.

Ok, admittedly, the headline is a slight misrepresentation. However, in the best online dating tradition, not only did it hopefully catch your attention but it has more than a grain of truth, too.

YouLike, a startup backed by the founders of Turkish eBay clone GittiGidiyor (which in 2011 was acquired by the online auction giant for $217 million), describes itself as an interest-based social network and dating site that takes into account a user’s dislikes, as much as what they do like, when helping to find like-minded people to friend or date.

Unlike a lot of other dating sites that ask you to fill out a lengthy and data-heavy questionnaire or simply pen an open-ended profile, YouLike presents a series of fun questions ranging from what activities you love or hate, your food and entertainment tastes, or your relationship preferences. Each question requires a simple multiple choice response — “love”, “like”, “dislike”, “hate”, or “skip” — which forms the basis for how YouLike matches users.

This home-grown approach to generating a user’s interest graph is also intended to produce less so-called dirty data that simply importing a user’s Facebook ‘Likes’ (a technique used by other dating sites and interest-based social networks) can produce. Not only is the site intentionally starting out clean, but Zuckerberg’s social network famously lacks a ‘Dislike’ button, which for YouLike’s match-making purposes would only tell half the story. After all, they do say that opposites attract.

So, for example, YouLike might ask a user to rate an activity related to “cooking” or “shopping”, or to express their disposition to “waking up early” or “never being late”. Other questions drill down to a user’s dating preferences more explicitly, such as “a guy should always make the first move” or whether or not “kissing on the first date” is the done thing.

This data is then employed when visiting another user’s profile. Members can compare their rated likes and dislikes with those of a prospective match. The results are displayed as “you both like”, “you both dislike”, “you like but he/she dislikes”, and “you dislike but he/she likes”.

The idea is to surface not only a user’s interests but their “morals, habits and beliefs… and the things that make them angry or happy,” says the Istanbul-based startup. Arguably that’s a much better reflection of how people really click (or don’t) in real life, since not all differences of opinion or taste are weighted equal in importance and aren’t necessarily a deal-breaker when it comes to matters of the heart.

However, whether or not this amounts to enough of a USP for YouLike to cut through the plethora of online dating sites (or broader interest-based social networks) that already exist is a different question entirely. It’s also a question that YouLike isn’t shying away from. “Online dating is a highly saturated industry with many competitors fighting to find people looking for love online,” says YouLike co-founder Levent Gültan. “Many start-ups try to differentiate themselves by playing the innovation card, however very few to none has successfully replicated the track record of OkCupid or HowAboutWe.”

As canned statements go, that’s an unusually honest appraisal of the status quo and the difficulty faced by any new entrant in the online dating sector. But that isn’t stopping Gültan and YouLike’s other co-founders, which include Ersan Özer who previously founded a Turkish dating network, from giving it a shot. In the end, however, the site’s success will ultimately hinge on if users like, dislike or skip it entirely.

MediaCorp, one of Singapore’s two largest media companies, has poured $40 million into Reebonz in a deal that values the designer brand flash-sales site at about $200 million. This is the first time that MediaCorp has invested in an online retailer, according to a story on Channel News Asia (a site that is also owned by MediaCorp).

The media conglomerate hopes that Reebonz will help it tap into the Asia-Pacific region’s booming e-commerce market, which eMarketer says will make $1.3 trillion in 2013, leading the world in B2C online sales.

“We see great alignment between what Reebonz does and what MediaCorp has–audiences, content targeted at the luxury market and our star power. We are confident that by collaborating closely with Reebonz, we’ll see even more breakthroughs from the retailer,” MediaCorp CEO Shaun Seow said.

Reebonz was founded in 2009 and has raised a total of about $79.7 million from investors including Vertex Asia Investments, Granite Global Ventures, Intel Capital, Matrix Partners China and Infocomm Investments.

MediaCorp’s investment in Reebonz is notable because it follows its main rival Singapore Press Holding’s decision to take a $1.4 million, or 27.8% stake, in restaurant booking site Chope. Both companies are much better known for operating newspapers, magazines and other traditional media outlets than investing in startups.

Pinterest announced two new features today that will help make the site more attractive to potential advertisers. The first is pins embedded with additional information about products, recipes and movies. The second is a Pin It button that is now available on nine mobile apps.

The company says that its new features are a “first step toward making pins more useful.” The move, however, won’t just benefit users. It will also make the site potentially more appealing to advertising partners as Pinterest, which currently does not make revenue, hashes out its monetization model. Sites Pinterest has partnered with on its “more useful” pin initiative include retailers and publications popular among Pinterest’s users, such as e-commerce sites eBay, Etsy, Modcloth and Overstock; magazines like Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple; and entertainment sites Flixster, Netflix and Rotten Tomatoes. The first crop of mobile apps to get Pinterest’s new Pin It button are Behance, Brit+Co, Etsy, Fotopedia, Jetsetter, Modcloth, Snapguide, TED, The North Face and Zulily.

The new pins are only available in Pinterest’s new look, which began rolling out in the middle of March. The new version of Pinterest was designed to increase user engagement, which in turn will help the company decide how much to charge for services like analytics and marketing opportunities.

Amid grumblings of a “general fatigue” when it comes to software-based startups, a potentially transformative technology called 3D printing is poised to reach critical mass and mainstream awareness. Today’s news headlines about the technology tend to focus on the extreme possibilities in being able to print objects on demand – from the terrors of things like a homemade 3D-printed gun to heartwarming tales of printed robotic hands for children born without fingers. But the innovation is also powering a revolution of a different kind. An emerging class of creatives are using 3D printing techniques, not to either save or destroy the world and the people in it, but simply to create a little beauty along the way.

These creatives, makers of the new “handmade” goods, are selling their art in online storefronts like Etsy and Shapeways, as well as within brick-and-mortar stores, and even museums.

They range from technically adept programmers who never dabbled in hands-on art involving paint or clay or other materials, to formally trained artists and even do-it-yourselfers who taught themselves 3D modeling by watching tutorials on YouTube.

Regardless of how they got there, the end result is an output of affordably priced, print-on-demand goods that reflect their own unique vision and inspirations, whether that’s a new kind of jewelry that couldn’t exist before the capabilities introduced by 3D printing, one-of-a-kind items used to decorate your home, or objects which buyers help craft themselves, using simple online tools.

Here are some of their stories.

This is part one of an ongoing series which will showcase some of the art that’s being fueled by the increasingly accessible 3D printing technology, and the artists behind the work.

~~~

Part One: The Formally Trained Artist

Summer Powell has always been an artist. She has both undergrad and graduate degrees in graphic design, and has worked on a number of products involving mixed media, vacuum forming, and lenticular technology, while exploring the intersection of art and technology in years past.

Along with a collaborator, she once produced a clock which used high-resolution animations to tell the time, for example.

Powell says she first heard about 3D printing around 10 years ago and had been watching the space ever since waiting for it to become viable for use in her art.

“I had industrial designer friends in New York, and I’d go see their prototyping 3D printing machines,” she says. “They were making prototypes of consumer electronics and some furniture.” But it wasn’t until a few years ago before Powell had the opportunity to begin playing around with 3D printing techniques herself.

She decided to pay a visit to Silicon Valley-based TechShop, one of the earlier “maker spaces,” as these tool-filled workspaces are called. TechShop, which has since expanded to several cities in California, New York, D.C., and elsewhere, offers a wide range of professional equipment which members can train on and use for just about any kind of project. It was where Square co-founder Jim McKelvey once built the first three protoypes for the Square card reader, and where a datacenter technology startup called Clustered Systems designed a prototype of a fanless liquid-cooling system which outperformed IBM in a “chill-off” contest.

But Powell didn’t want to build gadgets or technological components; she wanted to produce art.

“I created a prototype of this idea I had – which I still want to produce – of salt and pepper shakers,” she says. The object is designed to look like a wall socket, if laid flat on a table. The actual shakers then extrude upward from that. “It’s sort of a funny, visual pun,” says Powell.

Coming from a background in graphic design, Powell was used to doing a lot of what she describes as “virtual” work. But 3D printing was different.

“It was really wonderful to envision an object or a form, and be able to hold it in two weeks time, and actually have a tactile object,” she explains.

Today, she thinks of the art of 3D printing as falling somewhere in between the world of graphic design and metal working, another artistic medium she’s practiced in the past, noting the “hands on” nature of the latter tends to be a bit more satisfying of the two.

~~~

It was about two years ago when Powell begin working on 3D printed jewelry. Her items were first sold to consumers on Etsy, an online marketplace known best for handmade items from DIY crafters, who sell everything from homemade clothing and accessories to watercolor paintings and woven baskets.

It’s not, perhaps, the first place you would think to go for items outputted by machines.

But Powell’s jewelry fits right in.

Still, despite the nature of those early designs, her first clients were often men who were drawn to the jewelry because of its technical underpinnings and geometric patterns, buying them as gifts for girlfriends, wives, and other women they knew.

Today, that client base is now starting to shift – around half of the shop’s customers know what 3D printing is, and those who don’t are just interested in buying because of the jewelry’s modern look.

Powell declined to discuss her sales saying that her business is still in its “growth stages,” but notes that one of her more popular items is her “Andromeda Necklace” (pictured above). This item is especially interesting because it comes out of the 3D printer with its interlinking, moving parts already hinged together, no assembly required.

The necklace, like many of her pieces, is made of a nylon-based material – a material she prefers because of what it can allow for.

“There are possibilities beyond what you can achieve in metals sometimes – thinnesses or having one object inside another – there are just all these great possibilities with form with the resin,” she explains.

After sending her designs off to a 3D printer following a customer’s order, the turn around time is about two weeks before she gets the items back so she can finish them by adding coatings, clasps or chains. Meanwhile, when inspiration strikes, Powell sometimes still turns to pen and paper to sketch, and other times, she skips straight ahead to the 3D modeling software she uses: Rhino 3D, a CAD program she taught herself to use.

Most of the time, Powell designs out of a desk she’s had at a local co-working space, Sandbox Suites for several years, but is planning to expand to a larger space where she can be more physical with the work – not only in assembling the jewelry, but also sculpting objects and then scanning them with a 3D scanner.

One that recently caught her eye was the Matterform, which just wrapped up a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to help build an initial batch of scanners. The company was seeking $81,000 but ended up raising nearly half a million in just 35 days. It was the largest non-U.S. fundraise the site had seen to date.

Today, Powell sells her designs on her own website, as well in San Francisco Bay area retail stores. Her rep is also bringing her work to showrooms in New York and L.A., as she prepares to expand her business nationwide.

“I’d almost become a metal sculptor, and chose graphic design instead because of my love of pattern and symbol,” Powell says, looking back on how she came to 3D printing . “Now I can realize my vision and unite those loves in a 3D medium.”

BrandYourself is expanding its efforts to take on the big names in the online reputation market (particularly Reputation.com) with the launch of a new version of its service.

The company started out as a fairly simple self-service tool for trying to improve your presence online, for example by creating a website and other content to push down undesirable results when someone Googles your name. (It has become increasingly focused on Google results over time.) The basic service is free, but BrandYourself charges $10 a month for additional features and usage.

With BrandYourself’s freemium, self-service product, it seemed to be serving a difference audience than Reputation.com, but now the newer startup is challenging its more-established competitor in a direct way. With a recently launched concierge service, users aren’t just presented with a list of to-do items for improving their Google results — they can also pay BrandYourself team members to work with them on a strategy and actually do the work for them. So if, say, you don’t have the time to create and maintain your own personal website, BrandYourself will create and maintain one for you. And co-founder and CEO Patrick Ambron said that where Reputation.com can cost thousands of dollars per month, BrandYourself’s concierge services can cost as little as $200 or $300.

Why the dramatic price difference? Ambron insisted that it’s not because BrandYourself delivers lower-quality, cheaper work — he showed me one of the websites created for a BrandYourself customer and it did look like a real personal page. In contrast, he showed me content that he said had been created through his account with Reputation.com, and it was basically just an empty template. (I emailed Reputation.com to discuss how the company saw itself stacking up against BrandYourself, but I did not receive a response.)

The big difference, Ambron said, is that existing online reputation services are built around a model of high acquisition costs and low retention rates — they pay for a lot of advertising to attract customers, and those customers don’t stick around for very long, so the companies have to charge high rates. BrandYourself, on the other hand, can treat its free tools as the marketing funnel for its paid version and concierge service. Plus, Ambron said that with lower prices, customers can use BrandYourself on an ongoing basis.

“We’re really trying to fix the online reputation space, ” he said. “Until it was only meant for rich people and it was notoriously ineffective.”

In addition to the concierge service, BrandYourself is launching a new interface that makes it easier, among other things, to submit links that you want to promote in your Google results. And there’s a new report card showing users BrandYourself’s score of their current search results, the progress that they’ve made with the service, and details about who is actually visiting your BrandYourself website.

The company says it has been used by more than 200,000 people. It has also raised more than $1.5 million in funding and is now based in New York City.