Rushmore.fm, a new London-based startup founded by Fictive Kin and Betaworks, is de-cloaking somewhat today with what sounds like the rather lofty but noble mission to fix the music industry. Described as a “music ecosystem”, the (currently) invite-only site initially consists of a Wikipedia-like music resource where you’re encouraged to contribute and follow content, although the site’s broader… → Read More
I’m addicted to Dots. It’s betaworks‘ new game. 389. That’s my high score. No power-ups. I’m pretty proud of it. The game consumes my time. I no longer browse reddit during my “private times”; I play Dots.
Dots is simple. It’s elegant. The game has restored my faith in mobile game development. But more importantly, it’s fucking addicting. I can’t put it down. → Read More
When this generation looks back to retell the best and most amazing past times of the early oughts, surfing YouTube will undoubtedly be on the list. But as we shift to a more mobile lifestyle, content discovery — with particular regards to internet video — is becoming less and less fluid.
That’s why betaworks is today launching Telecast, a new service that bundles internet video… → Read More
Dots, a game launched just last week out of betaworks, has reached over 1 million downloads in just one week of availability.
According to a blog post, the app hit number 1 in eight countries, and went into the top five in another fifteen countries. Right now, in fact, you’ll find Dots as the number three free app behind Hardest Game Ever 2 and Falldown2, two worthy opponents. → Read More
You remember the first time you played Angry Birds, right? What about the first time you picked up the iPhone 4 and realized just how beautiful a phone can be, both in hardware and software? Well, the latest company to launch out of betaworks mixes the addictive nature of Angry Birds with the minimalist beauty of Apple’s hardware and software. Meet Dots. The idea is simple: Everyone has… → Read More
John Borthwick and his investment company Betaworks made news last week by acquiring Instapaper, a popular read-it-later app. However, he’s not just looking for companies that are situating themselves on the virtual plane. Instead, he recommends entrepreneurs seriously consider New York as a launch spot, especially if they’re in the media, ad, or hardware game. → Read More
Betaworks is a fairly unique entity, as a holding company that creates, acquires and invests in a wide variety of startups and products, including most recently Marco Arment’s Instapaper. Betaworks founder and CEO John Borthwick took the Disrupt stage today to talk about his company and its investments, as well as the products it has created in-house like Giphy. → Read More
It was just last week that betaworks announced it had acquired a majority stake in fan-favorite reading service Instapaper, and today on the Disrupt NY stage betaworks CEO John Borthwick shed some new light on the process of striking a deal with Instapaper creator Marco Arment. → Read More
Last summer, New York-based hybrid investor/incubator/holding company thing Betaworks acquired social news site Digg and relaunched it soon after, hoping to bring back some of its mojo in the process. Nine months later, Betaworks has acquired news-oriented company, this time bringing Marco Arment’s popular story-saving app Instapaper into the fold. → Read More
We’ve heard musicians despair over the same issue for a while now: There’s great music creation software out there, but nothing that makes it truly easy to collaborate with people who are far away in real time. People have tried to solve this problem, with companies like Vinylmint launching on our Disrupt stage in SF, but these solutions often force musicians to learn a whole new program.
Long before the era of iPads and Snapchats and holographic Tupacs, some of the greatest minds in tech and science spent their life trying to understand weather patterns. Since, we’ve evolved to have an almost overwhelming amount of data on what today’s weather will be like, and it’s entirely possible that we’ve gone overboard with the notion of being ready for a little… → Read More
With Disrupt drawing closer, we’re pleased to announce that John Borthwick will be back for another Disrupt. As the founder and CEO of betaworks, he has a unique vantage point of all parts of the New York City startup scene and there’s likely no one better to give us a solid pulse on the city that never sleeps. → Read More
There’s something very thrilling about getting to play with something before everyone else does (that’s at least partially why I fell in love with tech journalism), but opportunities for that sort of early access can be hard to come by unless you’ve got an in. The folks at New York-based accelerator/app foundry betaworks are looking to change that, though. It announced a new initiative… → Read More
Today, the New York City-based don’t-call-me-an-incubator incubator known as betaworks is launching its latest startup following its acquisition of Digg this past summer. Betaworks is primarily focused on media startups, especially those playing at the intersection between social media and publishing. Digg would be one, Branch being another, Rap Genius, which recently raised $15 million being a… → Read More
About half a year ago, futurist, novelist and former media manager at Twitter Robin Sloan meditated on what the future of storytelling might look like on smartphones.
The product of that was ‘Fish,’ an essay about the difference between liking and loving something on the Internet. It was a beautiful, simple story that you could tap through with elegantly laid out type. Unlike web pages, which… → Read More
We have a story on our site today about that guy who accomplished a very long space jump. Baumgartner, or something. Apparently this story has made the front page of Digg, and now that front page of Digg is coming in third in referral traffic to that story, on a Sunday, bringing in around 40 unique readers to Facebook’s 100 or so at any given moment according to Chartbeat. → Read More
There are a number of forces that led to the disruption of traditional venture capital, including new models like Betaworks, and startup incubator Y Combinator.
So who better to help lead the discussion on how the venture industry has been innovated upon than John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks; and Harjeet Taggar, Partner at Y Combinator. And moderating this panel for TechCrunch is investor and… → Read More
After its new owners decided to go back to the drawing board and figure out what to do with the former Web 2.0 darling, Digg is relaunching on Wednesday. Today, a week after its new owner Betaworks explained why it bought the site and announced the August 1 relaunch, the company has published the first mockups and screenshots of the new Digg v1 and explained what the user experience on the site… → Read More
After Betaworks acquired Digg earlier this month, there was a lot of speculation about what the company planned to do with the service. Today, Betaworks’ New York-based News.me team, which is now in charge of Digg, posted its first update. The plan, according to this update, is to launch a new Digg v1 on top of a new infrastructure and fresh code base by August 1. With this launch, the team says… → Read More
Betaworks, the company behind bit.ly, news.me, Chartbeat and a number of other successful products, has acquired the social news site Digg.com for an undisclosed amount (rumor has it that the price was just $500k). Betaworks’ founder John Borthwick will become the new CEO of Digg. The site’s current CEO Matt Williams will join Andreessen Horowitz as Entrepreneur in Residence after the Betaworks… → Read More
Can early-stage tech startups be financed the way that Disney might fund a Pixar film? We’re about to find out.
New York’s betaworks is crossing the Brooklyn Bridge to do a deal with design collective Fictive Kin. It’s pretty unusual because it resembles the way a producer might bankroll a movie or a game publisher might work with a developer. In this deal, betaworks is paying Fictive Kin, a… → Read More
The news never sleeps, which is why news sites like TechCrunch are addicted to realtime information. That addiction extends to the analytical tools news sites use to determine which articles are resonating with people and which ones aren’t. Today, news sites are getting a special flavor of a tool many already use. It’s called Newsbeat. It’s Chartbeat on steroids for news publishers, and it… → Read More
As we reported in February, betaworks and the New York Times are collaborating to launch a socialnews reader for the iPad called News.me. And we heard more details on the app as it readied for launch this week. Today, Betaworks founder and CEO John Borthwick announced that the iPad app is finally live on the App Store for your viewing and browsing pleasure (link).
News.me, which has been in… → Read More
Tomorrow, all eyes will be on the launch of News Corp’s iPad newspaper The Daily, but huddled away in a downtown loft in New York City’s meatpacking district a team from betaworks and the New York Times are busy putting together their answer to what an iPad news app should be. The collaboration will be called News.me, and it won’t look anything like The Daily. I know because I’ve been playing… → Read More
As the CEO of betaworks, John Borthwick is one of the most influential architects of the social web. Borthwick, who used to run technology strategy at Time Warner, co-founded betaworks as a new medium company for the social economy. Today, betaworks is a network of around 30 companies – including Bitly, Tweetdeck, Chartbeat and SocialFlow – all, in Borthwick’s words, “loosely connected at… → Read More
Looks like Jaiku founder and former Googler Jyri Engeström is up to something new. According to an SEC filing, a startup listing Engeström as chief executive officer called Pingpin has just raised $775,000 in financing.
Backers are BetaWorks (the startup’s address matches that of the early-stage investment firm) and True Ventures, as founder and managing partner Jon Callaghan is listed as a… → Read More
Mobile social payments startup Venmo has some interesting backers and a new iPhone app. The Philadelphia-based company closed $1.2 million in seed funding last May led by RRE Ventures. Other investors include betaworks, Lerer Ventures, Founder Collective, as well as angel investors Dustin Moskovitz (Facebook co-founder), Dave Morin (founder of Path, senior platform manager at Facebook) and Sam… → Read More
In a short amount of time since its launch in April, 2009 and its redesign a year later, realtime analytics startup Chartbeat has gained an impressive following of more than 2,500 paying corporate customers. All of this was done so far with 5 employees, led by general manager Tony Haile.
Now, the betaworks-incubated company has gained an impressive roster of investors in a $3 million Series A… → Read More
Highflying stream reader TweetDeck just raised a $3 million Series B round led by its biggest investor, betaworks. That brings the total capital raised by the company to $5.3 million. Ron Conway and Danny Rimer also invested in this round, as did all existing seed investors, including the Accelerator Group, Roger Ehrenberg, and Howard Lindzon.
TweetDeck is the most popular Twitter client by one… → Read More
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