Sonar, a social discovery service (and TechCrunch Disrupt alumni) which was among the top apps at last year’s SXSW in Austin, is today announcing new investment from Bing Fund. This angel fund and incubator program from Microsoft was publicly revealed this summer, allowing Microsoft to partner with entrepreneurs, who can then receive subsidies to use Bing APIs in their applications, as well as… → Read More
Recovering from Hurricane Sandy is no small feat as most of Lower Manhattan is still in the dark without power. I talked with a couple of people working in startups who had to find a place to get back work. But the most difficult part was probably to set aside the devastation and get the businesses back on track. Those companies are fragile and can’t risk a companywide blackout for a week. → Read More
Bizzabo, which provides a free self-service platform for event/conference organisers and a free app for attendees on iPhone and Android, has secured $1.5 million in funding to open a U.S. presence, hire and expand. Investors include Israeli figures such as Kaedan Capital Group; Gigi Levy; Prof. Yair Tauman; the AfterDox angels group and additional American and European angel investors. Pre-seed… → Read More
This time last year, Brett Martin took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York to launch Sonar, a mobile app that connects you to friends and other people nearby, based on your existing social networks. Fast forward to today and the Battlefield runner-up is rolling out a major update to its mobile app that will allow Sonar to finally become the “Here-Now” social network.
The app previously… → Read More
My first-ever Disrupt was a year ago, almost exactly. I had just started working for TechCrunch and Disrupt NYC 2011 was my initiation, of sorts. I had heard of Disrupt before — but witnessing the Battlefield first-hand, from the front row no less, is a totally different beast.
Every uncertain moment or slip-up during a presentation left me worried, and each triumphant joke or wondrous moment… → Read More
Social discovery service (and TechCrunch Disrupt alumni) Sonar has some big news today, and just in time for SXSW: it’s arriving on Android. According to founder Brett Martin, support for the Android platform has long been users’ most frequent request for the service.
But that’s not the only thing that’s new. Along with the Android launch, the company is also making a slight, but important… → Read More
Way back in the days of Android yore, the stock browser got the job done but did so with a minimum of flair. Now there’s no shortage of first-rate mobile browsers out there, but mobile browser war mainstay Dolphin has just released a new update that packs an equally new (and nifty) feature: it’s called Sonar, and it lets you navigate the web with your voice.
Once the update is installed, a… → Read More
This afternoon at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, Sonar announced that they’d added in what is likely their userbase’s most requested feature: LinkedIn support.
Launched just months ago at Disrupt NY, Sonar taps into your existing social network accounts and your current location to find potential connections between you and those around you. Up until now, Sonar supported only Facebook, Twitter, and… → Read More
Six-week old mobile application Banjo has been updated with a new feature that lets users virtually stalk locations, and the people there, in real-time. Banjo, for those unaware, is a new social discovery service which reveals the social network present at any given location at a particular time. To be clear, it’s not another social network, it’s a layer on top of social networks. With Banjo, you… → Read More
I am still recovering from Disrupt NYC. It was our biggest event ever, and we’ll be posting more videos and highlights throughout the next few days. But here are a couple of charts that give a snapshot of the activity around the event as measured by Tweets with the event hashtag #TCDisrupt (thanks for the charts, Simply Measured).
In the chart above you can see the distribution of Tweets across… → Read More
Three days and 32 startup pitches later, the winner of TechCrunch Disrupt has been determined. Out of the 30 startups and two audience choice winners, we whittled the list down to six finalists, which include Billguard, ccLoop, Do@, Getaround, InvoiceASAP, and Sonar. Without further ado, the two runners-up are Billguard and Sonar (that’s the first time we’ve had two runners-up). And the winner… → Read More
At the TC Disrupt startup battlefield finals, after Sonar CEO’s product demo (Sonar is an app that introduces you to the people relevant around you) TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington asked founder Brett Martin, how much he spent to build the service.
When Martin replied that Sonar took around $250K to date to build, Arrington commented, “This is better now than Color could ever hope to be,”… → Read More
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