Qwiki, the startup that won Disrupt in 2010, is announcing a new platform today for bloggers and other online publishers.
The company’s initial product basically assembled a multimedia “story” around Wikipedia articles, with images, videos, maps, and more. But the vision was bigger — to present a new kind of information experience. → Read More
This morning at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012, Chris Dixon, co-founder and partner at Founder’s Collective (and co-founder of SiteAdvisor and Hunch, acquired by McAfee and eBay, respectively), sat down with ZocDoc CEO Cyrus Massoumi to talk about ZocDoc’s road to success. The company, for those unfamiliar, is a professional booking platform for doctors. Users go online to search, find and book a doctor, dentist or other health care professional, and can even make same-day appointments thanks to ZocDoc’s real-time access to doctors’ schedules.
Although ZocDoc has now raised $95 million in funding to date, it didn’t necessarily have that many early believers. → Read More
Every time I think TC Disrupt’s Startup Alley can’t get any better, it does. TC Europe Editor Mike Butcher and I ventured into the chaos, accosted at every turn by startups from across the world. We even had a startup, iLiftOff, fly all the way in from Mumbai on a 21-hour flight.
It’s almost a shame that we can’t have all the Startup Alley companies in the Battlefield, but at the same time, the beauty of the alley is that we can talk to them for far longer than six minutes. And we often do. → Read More
Online advertising company Rubicon Project just announced that it’s getting into the mobile market by acquiring a startup called Mobsmith.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in the initial announcement. I’ve asked Rubicon for more details and will update if I hear back. → Read More
shopkick, the location-based shopping app backed by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is having its biggest rollout yet — Target says it’s making the service available in its stores nationwide.
Target was already announced as a shopkick partner, but until now, it was limited to testing integration in seven cities. Now, thanks to what the company says were “rave reviews,” it’s expanding its shopkick integration to all of its 1,764 stores in the United States, making it the largest shopkick retailer. → Read More
Security and anti-spam firm McAfee today reported that it saw a massive uptick in mobile malware last quarter. Mobile malware has “exploded,” the company said (PDF), “with a significant increase on Android devices. In addition, McAfee also found a slight increase in malware targeting the Mac, but the report notes that this trend was not “extreme.” Despite the increase in mobile and Mac malware, as well as password-stealing Trojans, the good news in today’s report is that global spam level dropped quite a bit during the last quarter, though we are still talking about a trillion messages per month. → Read More
For the past two days, web companies and mobile apps have peppered our Startup Alley here at Disrupt NYC, but today we’re doing something a little different. Those startups have cleared out for Disrupt’s first ever Hardware Alley, where we turn the spotlight onto some wonderful hardware projects.
There’s plenty of great stuff on display here today, and all these devices run the gamut — the folks from MakerBot Industries have set up shop here, as well as the makers of the MicroStylus. → Read More
While we don’t make a habit out of covering every iteration of the Google Doodle, today’s version is especially awesome. The doodle is celebrating the birth date of Dr. Robert Moog, the inventor of the electronic analog Moog Synthesizer. The what?, you may ask. The synthesizer was an instrument Moog created in the mid-1960′s, which took the music world by storm, and was picked up by artists like The Beatles, The Doors, Stevie Wonder, Kraftwerk, and others. It transformed how people thought about electronic music. Instead of producing a “synthetic” sound, as previous synthesizers did, the Moog version created a richer, organic sound. Today, some 50 years later, musicians still hold the Moog Synthesizer in high regard.
And, if you’re curious to see what all the fuss is about, you can try out the Moog yourself now on the Google homepage via a working, playable version of the instrument. → Read More
In its latest move to get top technical students to New York and started on new projects, the city’s Cornell campus has named a top technologist to a new position. Greg Pass, the former CTO of Twitter and previously the co-founder of search startup Summize, is now its Founding Entrepreneurial Officer.
I’ll be getting the details on what the hire means when I talk with Dan Huttenlocher, Cornell’s dean for the new campus, later today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City. → Read More
TechCrunch has discovered and confirmed that software giant Oracle has bought social marketing platform Vitrue for $300 million. [Update: A press release has confirmed the buy at an undisclosed price, though we know it to be $300 million.] As if Oracle didn’t offer enough products and services already, the acquisition will give it a strong Facebook marketing platform to offer its enterprise clients.
Vitrue had taken $33 million in funding over the years and grown to become one of the most popular solutions for big companies trying to win Facebook fans and push out marketing messages to the news feed. Vitrue, according to a source, was on course for revenues of just under $100 million this year, although we have other sources disputing it may have been that high. TC understands there were a lot of potential acquirers interested. Several bidders approached the company but Oracle was the most aggressive.
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BodyMedia, one of the growing number of companies that offers wearable body sensors, just announced that it has raised a $12 million funding round led by Comcast Ventures. The company’s products, including its BodyMedia FIT on-body monitoring system, currently focuses on tracking users’ activity level, but the company plans to use the money raised in this round to focus on products related to chronic diseases like diabetes, as well as remote elder care and sleep disorders. BodyMedia is a new investment for Comcast Ventures. Other investors in this round include Draper Fisher Jurvetson ePlanet, Draper Triangle Ventures, Ascension Health Ventures and InCube Ventures. → Read More
Hundreds have entered. But only one will walk away with the coveted Disrupt Cup. Who will it be? Stick around to find out but in the meantime we’ve got a rockstar lineup on our final day, including a sit down with a handful of local maker types, Chi-Hua Chien and a Hollywood star.
If you’re just joining us be sure to check out previous coverage of the show here.
Here’s what’s on tap for today: → Read More
Paddle8, Artsy, Zazzle, and Art.com are all part of a growing contingent of startups that are on a mission to democratize the purchase, discovery, and enjoyment of art by bringing it online.
In August 2010, Boston-based TurningArt joined this cadre of art industry disruptors, launching its own unique spin on the democratization of art commerce with a Netflix-esque model that allows any and all to “rent” and enjoy contemporary art. To support its mission to transform the way people buy artwork, the startups is today announcing that it has raised $1.5 million in funding from a number of institutional and angel investors. → Read More
SV Angel founding partner David Lee joined us backstage today for an informal discussion about a range of topics. Lee recently began writing on the new blogging platform Svbtle, sharing wisdom from his vantage point as a leader of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful early-stage funds. In this talk, Lee shares his motivations for blogging more, how he uses Foursquare as a search tool, and why Skillshare is important to the NYC tech community and could be a major platform. Toward the end of the video clip, he candidly reveals the most effective ways to get in touch with him and his partners at SV Angel, encouraging founders to send links to their products. With roughly a quarter of their portfolio in the NYC area, Lee and his partners are undoubtedly bullish about all the new companies sprouting up in the Big Apple. → Read More
MapMyFitness is a veteran of the online health and fitness space, with the first iteration of its website appearing back in the summer of 2005. Since then, the startup has developed a suite of fitness-oriented websites (like MapMyRUN.com, MapMyRIDE.com, MapMyWALK.com, et al) to let users track and store their running, cycling, walking and hiking endeavors, along with accessing a database of international routes, fitness calculators, events listings and more. MapMyFitness has long had a solid community of committed users, but it’s seen a significant bump in adoption of late, this week passing 9 million registered users.
Building on this uptick in adoption, MapMyFitness is today launching one of the most significant updates to its platform since its rebranding back in 2007. The startup has completely rebuilt its portfolio of websites, adding a number of new features, with the main attraction being a new service called “Courses,” which includes “one of the most advanced integrations of Google Maps’ API to date,” says CEO Richard Jalichandra.
It has been a wild week so far at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City. Rainstorms and traffic jams couldn’t stop nearly 2,000 people from making it to our big weekend hackathon, and our last two days of interviews, panels and startup presentations over at Pier 94 in Hell’s Kitchen.
Tomorrow is going to be the grand finale.
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We’ve learned that Airtime, the video startup founded by famed Napster alums Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, has allegedly made its first acquisition — before truly exiting stealth mode. The target? Erly, the Kleiner Perkins-backed startup aimed at letting people create social experiences around their experiences.
Update: We’ve confirmed the acquisition with a source at Airtime, and have been told that it will be announced along with a new $25 million round of funding led by Kleiner Perkins, including Andreessen Horowitz, Google Ventures. As part of the new round of funding, Kleiner Perkins partner Bing Gordon will be joining Airtime’s board of directors as part of the new funding.
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If you’re someone who thinks gamification is just a fad, you may want to look away now.
To be clear, Bunchball isn’t just jumping on the latest buzzword. The company was founded to deliver gamification tools all the way back in 2005 — founder and Chief Product Officer Rajat Paharia has told me that he probably came to the market too early, and has had to keep the company alive while the industry caught up. Now it’s focused largely on enterprise customers who want to use game mechanics to turn employees into better workers. → Read More
Disrupt NYC day two has just wrapped up. During the conference today, Michael Arrington demanded to know from Ron Conway when he was going to run for Mayor of San Francisco (he kept saying he would “never”), our very own Josh Constine grilled Tim Armstrong with questions about AOL, layoffs, which publication he likes more: Huffington Post or TechCrunch (he said “both”), and we watched 15 more amazing startups battle it out for the ultimate Disrupt prize — the Disrupt Cup and $50,000.
Starting tomorrow at 3:30pm ET we will have our Startup Battlefield Disrupt finals. Yesterday, we wrote detailed articles with pictures and pitches from all of the startups who presented. Below are the ones who were featured today. Out of these 30 companies, both from yesterday and today, five will be chosen to fight it out for the ultimate prize. We will have an all-star panel of judges tomorrow for the finals and things will probably get intense; people always get a little crazy at the finals, but as you can imagine, it’s a blast to watch. So, take your time in reviewing all of the stellar startups below. Compared to the brilliant ones yesterday, which startup do you think will make it to the finals? Going further, any guesses on who you think will win it all? → Read More
As TechCrunch was the first to report, Ellen Pao, a partner with Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, has filed a lawsuit alleging that during her seven year career there she has been the victim of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and acts of retaliation for rebuffing sexual advances and complaining about her experiences and the workplace environment.
The whole affair is shocking for a lot of reasons, one of them being how it all seems so contrary to Kleiner Perkins’ longtime reputation. Kleiner Perkins has had a sterling image for years, and it has actually become known for being especially female-friendly. → Read More
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