It’s no secret that many social gaming companies are looking to become less dependent on Facebook as a centralized platform for games. Zynga just announced its first, direct to consumer, independent gaming platform. Today, social gaming company CrowdStar has unveiling its social games strategy, called Project Trident, to help create a global, mobile platform and franchises, as well as Facebook titles.
It’s important to note that CrowdStar isn’t fleeing the Facebook platform all together, but merely looking to diversify its interests. Through Project Trident, CrowdStar is focusing on creating social gaming franchises across Facebook, global and mobile platforms.
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Vanity phone number provider Zoove is today announcing it has raised an additional investment of $5 million from Rogers Ventures to help it further accelerate its U.S. operations. The startup is the exclusive provider of “StarStar numbers” (e.g. **FLOWERS) for the four largest mobile operators in the United States, reaching over 250 million consumers.
Mike Lee, VP of Roger Ventures, the venture capital arm of Canada’s Rogers Communications, will also be joining Zoove’s Board of Directors as a part of this deal. → Read More
Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley doesn’t think that you should have to open up a mobile app to interact with it. I caught up with Crowley a couple days ago at the Web 2.0 Summit, where he was a speaker. In the video interview above, he compares Foursquare’s newest feature called Radar to the Siri personal assistant on the new iPhone 4S. For Crowley, it’s all about getting mobile apps to push relevant information out to you at exactly the right place and time. “If you have a problem to solve with your phone, you don’t have to go to the search box.” → Read More
MuckerLab, a new startup accelerator and member of the TechStars Network, is launching today in L.A. The three-month program will provide its selected startups with $21,000 in seed funding, plus the typical incubator benefits like shared office space, legal assistance, infrastructure and hosting, and, of course, mentorship from a network of advisors. → Read More
Fresh off a $40 million raise, flash sales site for home décor, furnishings and accessories One Kings Lane, is bringing on a new CFO from eBay, Dinesh Lathi. In his new role, Lathi will lead finance, operations and customer service for the retail asite and will join the company’s management team.
Previously, Lathi was employed by eBay where he spent nearly seven years. He most recently served as vice president of managed marketplace and seller experience and was a member of the global marketplaces executive staff. While at eBay, Lathi and his team were responsible for a number of the core marketplace products including the Top Rated Seller Program, Buyer Protection, Fashion Vault, Daily Deal, Store Subscriptions and Zero Insertion Fees. → Read More
Social mobile app directory Appolicious is announcing a major new partner today—Best Buy. The consumer electronics retail giant is launching the Best Buy App Discovery Center, an Appolicious-powered mobile app directory designed to make it easier for consumers to locate and find recommended iOS and Android apps.
On the new platform users can search for apps that are organized into more than 1,200 categories, such as “Preschool Early Reading” and “Travel Destinations.” Search also features auto complete, making it easier for consumers to see if the directory has the app they are looking for. All search uses Appolicious’ algorithmic app search based on social, user-generated and editorial signals. → Read More
BuyWithMe, a daily deals startup that had been acquiring companies right and left this year, appears to be going under. The startup has failed to find funding and is now laying off half its workforce. CEO Jim Crowley announced yesterday that at least 100 people will be let go today unless the company finds a last minute buyer.
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You, too, can be just like Hard Harry, dropping the truth on your neatly manicured suburban hellhole from the privacy of your sweat-stinking bedroom. Tell the man off. Rail against the principals. Get the FCC on your tail (not really.) Because FlipZu is here to help you build your own pirate radio station.
The browser based app (Android and iPhone versions are also available) lets you broadcast live. That’s basically it. You press a button, perform a mic check, and start railing against the Illuminati and the Bilderberg Group. People can listen to you live or they can listen to your previous recordings. → Read More
Asus has long been a niche brand trying to break into the mainstream but two of their upcoming products won’t help their cause. The Transformer Prime and Padfone scream geek. They’re clearly aimed at the techie demographic that’s increasingly getting the cold shoulder from the top CE brands. And why not? The Transformer Prime seems like a worthy successor to the original and the Padfone looks mighty fun although not that practical. Asus (hopefully) doesn’t expect to sell these products to your mom. They want you to buy ‘em. → Read More
It would seem that the iPhone 4S is one helluva record breaker. Apple recorded over 1 million pre-orders in the first 24 hours the phone was available, and a record 4 million devices sold in the first weekend. That’s double the amount of any other iPhone’s first weekend sales.
But the iPhone 4S isn’t just breaking records at Apple.
AT&T has just announced that its iPhone 4S activations have topped 1 million. → Read More
Sony Ericsson has joined HTC in offering up a general plan for pushing the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich updates to existing handsets.
In a message on its Dutch Facebook page, the company has said it will roll out Ice Cream Sandwich to all 2011 Xperia handsets. Phones that should receive the update include the Xperia Play, Xperia neo and neo V, Mini Pro, Xperia Ray, and the Xperia arc. → Read More
Augmented Reality company Total Immersion released a free, Augmented Reality SDK today called D’Fusion. The updated kit is specially designed for multi-platform developers of games, apps and marketing solutions.
To mark the occasion (and demonstrate the tech) Total Immersion are also launching a free iOS game in the app store called Skinvaders. The game, which takes advantage of Total Immersion’s face tracking technology, uses the player’s face as the battlefield. It’s freaky, yet cool. → Read More
BranchOut, a professional social network for Facebook, is announcing the launch of RecruiterConnect, a tool for recruiters and hiring managers to source job candidates on Facebook and build private talent networks. BranchOut says that RecruiterConnect is also the first enterprise software product available on the Facebook platform.
Launched in July 2010, BranchOut is sort of like a LinkedIn for Facebook because it allows you to network and find jobs through your friends on the social network. BranchOut’s Facebook app lets you search for companies and then shows you all your friends who either work there or know somebody who does. The application basically unlocks the massive amounts of career data about your social graph on the world’s largest social network. → Read More
Think Finance, a company that helps serve the banking needs of the “unbanked”, is unveiling Presta, a new consumer electronics retail site that gives customers the option to lease-purchase electronics.
Think Finance caters to the 60 million “unbanked,” individuals in the U.S., which designate consumers who don’t have traditional bank accounts or cannot qualify for credit cards. The company says that 25% of Americans have FICO scores less than 600 and are facing dramatically reduced access to credit and banking services. Think Finance provides this population with pre-paid debit cards, online installment loans, financial literacy tools, and more. The company has served more than 1 million customers through its existing products. → Read More
BlueStacks, the startup that has developed software to let Android users run their apps on all Windows PC, tablets, and laptops, is announcing this morning that it has closed a $6.4 million series B round of financing. The round was led by AMD, Citrix Systems, and included participation from existing investors like Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Ventures, Radar Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and more. BlueStacks raised a $7.6 million series A back in May. → Read More
As my colleague Sarah Lacy reported in April, investment firm DCM launched a $100 million Asian A-Fund to support early-stage Android entrepreneurs. DCM partnered a number of notable Asian tech players including gaming giant Tencent, Japan’s largest mobile gaming social network GREE and Japan’s second largest mobile operator KDDI, to fund startups that are leveraging the Android ecosystem. Today, the A-Fund and DCM are announcing seven startups that received funding through the vehicle.
Jason Krikorian, general partner at DCM, tells me that the investments range anywhere from $250,000 to $5 million in companies and each investment is ‘stage agnostic.’ Krikorian says that over the next three years, the A-fund will make approximately 30 total investments. He said the fund is mainly interested in companies that are pursuing global market opportunities on the Android platform. → Read More
Visual.ly, the team built from the infographics team behind Mint’s spectacular infographics, has raised $2 million in seed funding, led by Crosslink Capital, SoftTech and 500 Startups as well as angels Kapor Capital, Giza Ventures, Naval Ravikant, Mark Goines, Josh James and others.
According to its financing release, Visual.ly has had 26K users sign up to be a part its beta (coming soon), over 300K infographics created, received over one million pageviews monthly to its website and has doubled the number of indexed infographics it hosts since it demoed in April. → Read More
Qwilt, the provider of network video-infrastructure technology, has raised $24 million in two rounds of funding from Accel Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Crescent Point Group, RealNetworks founder Rob Glaser and other investors.
The company, which was founded in 2010 by veterans of Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks, helps Internet-service providers more efficiently and cost-effectively deliver high-quality video to their customers. That means more consumers can see video from sources like Netflix, YouTube and Hulu in the highest possible quality, when they want. → Read More
Exactly two weeks after the death of Steve Jobs, Apple closed its store doors for a few hours today in remembrance of its fearless co-founder and leader.
Perhaps more poignantly, Apple has set up a very simple “Remembering Steve” web page, where you can view the tributes sent to rememberingsteve@apple.com in streaming format. According to Apple over a million written homages were collected in the past fourteen days. → Read More
Google+ SVP Vic Gundotra and Google Co-founder Sergey Brin took to the stage today at The Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco to talk about their new social network and what exactly they’re up to these days.
Among other things, Gundotra touched on the success Google+ has seen since its launch, most notably that users have uploaded 3.4 billion photos over the last 90 days — a statistic which “blew his mind”. Because of this early success, much of which was unexpected, Gundotra said, Google has been focusing on scaling the social network to make sure that it works for all of its users. → Read More
