The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- DotNetNuke Scores Another $8 Million In Series B Funding
- Bubble Motion Launches Twitter-Like Voice Blogging Service For Mobile Phones
- No Sense Of Humor, TechCrunch Is Blocked In China
- Fotomoto Upgrades Service; Attracts New Users, Investors And Board Members
- CrunchGear Reviews the Withings Tweeting WiFi Scale
- Pursway Scores $6 Million To Help Companies Leverage The Power Of Social Influencers
- IVT Raises $5.5 Million For Webcasting Software
- Twilio’s Telephony API Now Lets Applications Send And Receive SMS Messages
- Social Travel Guide Tripwolf Adds In-App Purchasing
- Company.com Debuts Social Community For Businesses
| DotNetNuke Scores Another $8 Million In Series B Funding Posted: 09 Feb 2010 09:09 AM PST
The company had earlier raised an undisclosed amount of financing from the latter two investors back in November 2008. DotNetNuke offers a flexible Web Content Management Platform for Microsoft .NET, available in a free Community and subscription-based Professional, Elite and Elite Premier Editions (click here for more info). DotNetNuke’s CMS is extensible and customizable through the use of skins, modules, data providers, language packs and templates. DotNetNuke says the new funds will be used to accelerate product development and expand marketing and sales, after a year of stellar performance. The company recently claimed that it has signed 500 paying customers and 50 certified commercial partners since launching commercially in February 2009. In 2009, DotNetNuke acquired Snowcovered, the premier online market for over 6,000 DotNetNuke modules, skins, services and related products offered by nearly 800 third-party vendors. The company says that the online marketplace has since completed nearly 40,000 transactions to almost 15,000 customers last year.      
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| Bubble Motion Launches Twitter-Like Voice Blogging Service For Mobile Phones Posted: 09 Feb 2010 08:57 AM PST
Sequoia-backed voice messaging company Bubble Motion is getting into the microblogging space today, that is the voice-based microblogging space. The startup is launching Bubbly, a voice-blogging social network built for mobile phones. With Bubbly, you can record and broadcast messages from any mobile device. When a users records audio messages and updates, followers can listen in whenever they want. To start voice-blogging, you enter a short code onto your phone, and start recording your messages. To follow another voice-blogger, users dial the phone number for whomever they want to follow. Whenever there's a new audio update, followers are notified via SMS with instructions on how to listen. Bubblers can also control who can listen to their messages, and have the option of masking their actual phone number to prevent followers from calling them directly. Deployed through partnerships with mobile operators, Bubbly is an extension of BubbleTalk, a click, talk, and send' messaging service that doesn't require any calling. The idea is slightly wacky, but has already been released in markets in Asia and has accumulated 150,000 users in India over the past week. I could see Bubble being used in markets where mobile device usage is higher than internet usage on a computer. And Bubbly could be used for celebs to stay close to fans. Bubbly is currently partnering with mobile operators in India and has launched with regional and national Indian celebrities using voice-blogging using Bubbly. India seems like a perfect market for Bubbly, especially considering the success and rapid growth of the Indian Twitter-like SMS microblogging network, SMS GupShup. Bubble Motion, which is based in Mountain View, Calif., has raised a total of $35 million in funding since the company’s launch in 2003.      
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| No Sense Of Humor, TechCrunch Is Blocked In China Posted: 09 Feb 2010 08:44 AM PST
Over the past 48 hours, and perhaps longer, it appears that TechCrunch is being blocked inside China. We’ve confirmed this with contacts and tipsters inside China who can no longer access our site, as well as through Web tools such as WebsitePulse and Just Ping which pings sites from inside China’s Great Firewall. Both of those services indicate that, at least in Shanghai, readers cannot connect to TechCrunch. Chinese readers have reported problems accessing the site in the past as well. If you are located in China and you can read this, please let us know in comments. We are not really sure why we are being blocked. Recently, we’ve covered Google’s decision to to perhaps stop doing business in China following a cyberattack on its servers in the country, but we don’t think that is it. Another possibility, which borders on the absurd, is that on Friday Michael put up a humorous post comparing a Google employee who stopped his SUV because he was talking on his cell phone to the Tank Man who famously blocked Chinese tanks at Tiananmen Square. The title of the post: “A Googler Has His Tiananmen Square Moment.” He followed up with another light weekend post, featuring pictures of him and Robert Scoble re-enacting the incident. That post also had the word “Tiananmen” in the title.
They were just goofing off, but perhaps the Chinese government didn’t think it was funny. China still has a policy of wiping out all references on the Web to the Tank Man and the Tiananmen uprising of two decades ago. China blocked Twitter on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen last summer, and has blocked Facebook, Bing and other sites during times of unrest. Our post hardly compares. Again, to be clear, this is all speculation on our part. We don’t know exactly why we are being blocked. There are so many ways we could have offended officials in China. If a Chinese censor is reading this (and we know you are) please let us know what we did via comments or an email. Photo credit: Flickr/ Michael Mooney      
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| Fotomoto Upgrades Service; Attracts New Users, Investors And Board Members Posted: 09 Feb 2010 07:43 AM PST
The product has grown a lot since then, and founder & CEO Ahmad Kiarostami informs us that they have signed up 2800 website publishers since launching publicly, which translates to some 610,000 photos to date. Some of these publishers are big names – Mirror.co.uk for instance uses Fotomoto to monetize its photographs on-site. Fotomoto’s website has recently received a make-over, and now doubles as a browser-based marketplace where photographers and publisher can promote and sell images, in addition to having Fotomoto power the payment capabilities on their own and third-party websites. When people add photos to their own sites, Fotomoto’s toolbar sends out a notification, after which new pictures are automatically added to the marketplace on Fotomoto.com. The startup refers to this decentralized way of selling photos online as self-commerce or “CafePress inside-out”, both of which terms reflect perfectly what the service is all about. (By the way: if you haven’t gotten your significant other something for Valentine’s Day yet, the startup is running a special right now with custom prints, cards, & e-cards on display.) Fotomoto has raised $623,000 so far from investors like Amidzad Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, but Kiarostami for the first time disclosed that Mehdi Maghsoodnia – former COO / VP of CafePress and currently CEO at BookRenter – has also participated in its second funding round, as well as joined the startup as a Board member. In addition, SGN founder and Chairman Shervin Pishevar made a minor investment and signed up as an advisor to the company. Another noteworthy advisor on the list is Touraj Parang, co-founder and COO of Jaxtr. Keep a good eye on this one.      
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| CrunchGear Reviews the Withings Tweeting WiFi Scale Posted: 09 Feb 2010 07:38 AM PST  So the Internet made me fat. That and all the beer. Anyway, now I'm going to depend on the Internet to make me skinny again and I think the Withings WiFi scale is just the thing to get me back in Abraham Lincoln mode. This glass scale features a body mass sensor complete with invisible electrodes as well as a backlit OLED readout. To start, you connect the scale to your computer via USB and assign your wireless hotspot. Then each time you hop on the scale you wait for the electrodes to sense your body fat (or if they can't it just transmits your weight) and then you check your progress online. New users are "added" when they weigh themselves and show up as unknown users until you assign their measurements to an account. Because folks usually float among a few data points, your wife's numbers won't get mixed up with yours and the dog's numbers will definitely not get mixed up with your son's (Note: Do not try to put a dog on this scale. They do not like it.)
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| Pursway Scores $6 Million To Help Companies Leverage The Power Of Social Influencers Posted: 09 Feb 2010 07:30 AM PST
We wrote about the power of brand buzz on social media sites yesterday, and one contributing aspect to buzz are individuals who are “influencers,” similar in some ways to the trend that Malcolm Gladwell highlighted in The Tipping Point. But how do companies find and then leverage the power of these influencers on the web? Israeli startup Pursway (formerly known as Datanetis), aims to help companies identify the influencers and followers for each product or offer within their customer database. The startup has just raised $6 million in Series A funding from Battery Ventures. Pursway will use the funding to expand its operations in Europe and North America and hire more engineers to contribute to product development. Pursway’s technology helps companies not only identify "everyday influencers" on Twitter and Facebook, but also searches blogs and other web portals to find social influencers who are writing about particular brands or products. The technology then identifies, measures, and shows exactly how opinion leaders shape their followers' purchasing decisions, giving clients marketing intelligence. And Pursway has several big-name clients who are using the startup’s technology. Vodafone Group, Orange and other companies are employing Pursway’s offerings to find the social influencers for products. Pursway faces competition from Media6.      
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| IVT Raises $5.5 Million For Webcasting Software Posted: 09 Feb 2010 07:28 AM PST
IVT, a company that produces enterprise-friendly webcasting software, has raised $5.5 million in Series B funding from Syncom Venture Partners with Barshop Ventures, Monitor Ventures and Tudor Ventures participating in the investment round. IVT raised $3 million in Series A funding in 2006. IVT’s SaaS offering not only helps power webcasts, but also converts multimedia files, such as slideshows, into viewable videos for the web. IVT also offers a YouTube-like hosting and social media site for companies to disseminate videos and webcasts. And the startup has a number of prominent companies that use its webcasting software including Oracle, Dow Chemical, IBM and NEC.      
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| Twilio’s Telephony API Now Lets Applications Send And Receive SMS Messages Posted: 09 Feb 2010 07:00 AM PST
The basic idea remains the same. As with its telephony API, Twilio’s SMS functionality is meant to make previously complex tasks as simple as possible. If you want to send a SMS message to a user from your web app, you can do that using a single line of code. CEO Jeff Lawson says that this new functionality removes many of the hurdles associated with running a service that uses SMS. He explains that it’s often very expensive and time consuming to get your own SMS shortcode, and that the logistical hurdles are substantial. With Twilio, you can get SMS up and running on your web app in a few minutes. Potential uses for the service are really limited only by developers’ imaginations. For example, a developer over at the Washington State Department of Transportation used Twilio’s phone API to build a call-in service that lets local residents call a number to listen to the schedule of the local ferry. Using this new SMS functionality, that developer could allow users to simply text a query like “When is the next ferry?”, to which the application could automatically send a reply. Businesses could use the service to occasionally ping their customers with new deals and discounts. Politicians could use the service for their awareness campaigns (they already make heavy use of Twilio’s telephone offerings). And Salesforce recently used a beta version of the service to build a custom audience polling app for its Dreamforce conference. One key aspect of the new service is that it lets you use the same phone number for Twilio’s phone services and SMS messages (it also means that you can use SMS with any existing Twilio numbers you may have). The service costs 3 cents per text message, and Twilio’s voice service costs 3 cents per minute during a call. Twilio isn’t the only company around that looks to make it easier to leverage SMS. Many of its competitors, like TextMarks, use a shared shortcode model — they own the rights to one shortcode, and then have all of their clients share it. Each client is given a keyword, which users are then instructed to include in their messages. For example, if we wanted to build an SMS app using one of these services, we might tell our users to “Text 41441 with keyword TECHCRUNCH”. Twilio has an advantage over these services because users don’t have to remember to include a keyword; they simply send their query to a standard phone number. Other options include more enterprise-focused shortcode aggregators, and Tropo, which is run by Voxeo.
There’s a broad appeal for SMS-based services — it’s just the hassle of setting one up (or the impression that it would be expensive) that keeps many businesses from doing it. Which is why I think Twilio seems positioned to do quite well with this new feature. That said, I think Twilio could appeal to a much broader set of users if they built some kind of wizard for its API. No matter how simple Twilio’s API is to use, most small businesses and retailers probably don’t have any developer resources to speak of. And given the fact that most of them will probably be interested in sharing the same information via SMS — things like directions, their hours, and sales — it probably wouldn’t be hard to fill most of their needs using a few template programs. Twilio has raised $3.7 million in funding, including a Series A round from Union Square Ventures and angel funding from Founders Fund, David Cohen, Mitch Kapor, Manu Kumar, Chris Sacca, and other angels.      
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| Social Travel Guide Tripwolf Adds In-App Purchasing Posted: 09 Feb 2010 07:00 AM PST
The premium content is garnered from the startup’s existing partnerships with travel guide publishers, which is supplemented with user-generated content from the tripwolf community. Additionally, the iPhone app offers a bunch interactive features, including photo-uploads, the ability to vote for locations, write reviews, search for points of interest, and add new locations or places to the tripwolf travel guides.      
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| Company.com Debuts Social Community For Businesses Posted: 09 Feb 2010 06:51 AM PST
Of course, there are hundreds of community websites for businesses out there, and so far it seems like the premium domain name is the only thing that makes Company.com stand out of that particular crop in any way. That said, the company is backed and advised by a slew of experienced entrepreneurs and field experts, so it would be premature to assess its fate upon launch. Company.com says it’s setting out to build a truly trusted community of vendors, offering exclusive deals to website members, while presenting their offerings in a Comparison Shopping Engine Environment (CSE). Initially, services will be focused on financial products and lending solutions that can help SMBs through the credit crunch, accompanied by user guides, answers to business-related questions, specific articles and interviews from experts related to the issues or products that solve for better efficiency and savings for the SMB. Subscribers can also promote their business on the Company.com website and gain access to other subscribers, giving them the chance to find new customers and partners within the ecosystem. Company.com aims to attract SMBs from a diverse set of distribution channels. The startup hopes to reach some 20 million SMBs through cooperative agreements that will launch in Q2 2010 – Company.com sais it has already successfully contracted relationships representing over 7 million small and medium-sized businesses in the States, although the company wants to keep the identity of these partners confidential until the agreements are fully implemented. Company.com is funded by a group of angel investors, led by the company’s CEO Bill Wade and selected angels that invested in his prior companies Network 1 Financial and Verus Financial Management. Prior to Company.com, Wade served as Vice Chairman of Sage Payment Solutions, a division of Sage Software. On its board, a set of seasoned executives: Kamyar Kaviani (Chairman and CEO of Application Corporation), Shervin Pishevar (founder and former CEO, now Chairman of social gaming company SGN), Colin Digiaro (one of the co-founders of MySpace, where he most recently served as SVP of International Corporate Development) and Peter Adams (former President of Matchpoint.com), among others. To date, Company.com has raised total of $3.2 million in two closings, one in March 2009 and the second in January 2010. As for the nice domain name: it has been under ownership of a private company co-owned by Bill Wade since 2001. It has no operational history, and Wade made the decision to launch a business around the attractive domain after he retired from Sage Software in 2008.
     
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In May 2009, we covered the 
Social travel guide 
Today sees the public launch of 
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