Yelp narrowed its net loss to $2 million for the third quarter after pulling in $36.4 million in net revenue. The company said total reviews went up by 49 percent to 33 million, while the number of local business accounts grew by 82 percent to 35,500. The company changed its guidance for the year, projecting net revenue of $40 million to $40.5 million, with adjusted EBITDA (or earnings before… → Read More
HyperFair, a startup with a platform for running online trade shows, says it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding.
The idea of a virtual trade show isn’t new, but the practice hasn’t exactly taken off. Perhaps that’s what you’d expect, since it’s hard to imagine an online experience taking the place of a real-world show. → Read More
Facebook added a search box to its App Center today, but what it might do next is more interesting. Facebook could soon let developers pay to buy search keyword ads in the App Center search typeahead, similar to the specific name ads in its site-wide search typeahead. And if App Center goes beyond the typeahead and launches a search results page, it could host full-blown AdWords-style search… → Read More
Facebook Gifts launched with the ability for you to buy something meaningful for a friend or family member on the social network. I’ve tinkered with it a bit and have bought a few gifts, including a bonsai tree and Starbucks gift cards. My mind immediately jumped to “wouldn’t it be cool if I could donate money to a charity on behalf of my friend for their birthday?”, and well, that happened today… → Read More
Path, the iPhone-based social network from Facebook alum Dave Morin, comes to the iPad today with a brand new app designed to take special advantage of Apple’s tablet. The new Path offers iPad-specific features, like a landscape mode which provides a mosaic view of daily activity, and more detailed info about individual updates, and a map tool providing a bird’s eye view of comings and goings. → Read More
A user milestone for social media management tool Hootsuite: the company has passed five million signups. It says expansion into Europe and Asia is driving its growth, and notes that while its first million users took it nearly two years, it clocked its fourth million in eight months and its fifth million in just two months. (It’s not clear how many of the five million users are paying customers.) → Read More
In a move that coincidentally sees two App Store rebels join forces, music streaming service, Grooveshark, has added support for Flattr, the social micro-payments offering. The new integration means that users of both Grooveshark and Flattr (which we’ve previously likened to a ‘Like button but with cash‘) can easily reward their favourite artists, tip jar-style, providing another way for those… → Read More
Instructure launched Canvas in 2011 to give educational institutions an alternative to the ubiquitous (but much criticized) software of educational giants like Blackboard. Today, the company is adding another piece to its learning management system with the launch of its own MOOC hybrid, which allows schools to define the structure of their online courses and customize the learning experience. → Read More
Electronic dance music (EDM) is all the rage with kids born after 1990 (Generation Z), and Turntable.fm founder Seth Goldstein is bringing the scene online. Today he launches DJZ, a news hub website, and DJZtxt, a messaging app that turns emojis into sounds. With $1 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins, music industry folk and more, DJZ could capture the youth’s eyes and dollars, or get… → Read More
Thomas Kjeldgaard, better known as the co-founder of Facebook Page builder Pagemodo (acquired by Webs.com in 2011), is today launching another startup aimed at helping Facebook Page owners. The new company is called SplashPost, and it’s a software-as-a-service offering that allows Page owners to create multimedia Facebook Timeline posts in order to sell to fans, collect email addresses… → Read More
Apple’s launch of its new mapping service, the ensuing backlash and management shakeup, have been anything but its proudest moments. Adding insult to injury, as Kim-Mai reported two weeks ago, Apple’s pain quickly turned into a gain for other map makers. However, for most, this was only a temporary blip. Only one company was able to sustain increased marketshare: Waze, which saw its share of U.S. → Read More
After more than a decade of helping to manage the friendly skies, it seems that mobile travel assistant WorldMate is coming in for a landing at its final destination as an independent company. Carlson Waglit Travel (CWT), one of the largest travel agencies in the world, has agreed to acquire WorldMate in an all-cash deal, TechCrunch learned today. According to sources with knowledge of the deal… → Read More
Zetrip, a new startup offering to help users find “travel inspiration” based on the activity of their Facebook friends, just raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Inspiration Ventures.
Co-founder and CEO Edouard Tabet said he came up with the idea last year when he was planning a trip to the Galapagos and wanted to see which of his Facebook friends had also been there. → Read More
Which mobile device you use says a lot about your buying habits. That’s why Facebook just began allowing advertisers to select which devices and operating systems their Facebook mobile ads show up on. This lets Android app developers avoid wasting money advertising to iPhone users, and luxury brands can target people with iPads. If Facebook is going to be a mobile ads company. → Read More
The fallout from Hurricane Sandy is still affecting startups left and right. New York’s Fab.com sent a memo out to customers today saying that it is temporarily halting shipments of packages because its New Jersey-based warehouses are currently without power.
The company’s headquarters in New York’s West Village also remain without power and are closed. CEO Jason Goldberg says that about a… → Read More
The big emphasis during Disney’s conference call discussing its acquisition of Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion was, not surprisingly, the enormous earnings potential of the Star Wars franchise. And that includes gaming — so one of the analysts on the call asked for more details about Disney’s interactive strategy.
CEO Bob Iger responded that the company is “likely to focus more on social and… → Read More
In the UK, the summer of 2012 is already being looked back on as the British summer of sport. It kicked off with a traditionally poor performance by the English football team in the Euros, followed by a much more successful Olympics and Paralympics held on home soil. All three events were a national and televisual spectacle, but it would seem that the second screen saw plenty of action too. And so… → Read More
QuantiaMD, one of a growing number of companies attempting to build the LinkedIn for the medical community, today announced that it has raised $12 million in venture financing from Fuse Capital. The expansion round is the company’s largest raise to date and brings its total outside investment to $27 million. → Read More
EverySignal, a social search startup incubated at Science, is launching a new service that alerts you to the important events from your friends and colleagues. Now, I know what you’re thinking: wait, don’t we have Facebook for that? But EverySignal isn’t trying to replicate Facebook’s functionality – rather, it’s about building value on top of Facebook’s data stream, as well as the data streams… → Read More
Most companies tend to test new features and product designs in the wild with a small subset of people. The great thing about that is on the Internet, the world is a tiny place. A few tipsters have sent in some screenshots and a video of a new design that YouTube is testing out, and we’ve confirmed that it’s legitimate. → Read More
Roamz, a startup which recently relaunched its mobile applications with a new focus on local search (as opposed to serendipitous discovery), is now bringing its local search engine to the web. Today, the company is debuting an online version of its service at Roamz.com, allowing users to view real-time content about nearby places and events, search for specific things, like coffee or shopping… → Read More
Ok, so this app made me feel really dirty when I downloaded it. It’s called Badabing! and it basically goes through your friends’ photos on Facebook to pull out the ones of them at the pool or beach. In other words, we’re talking about scantily clad photos here.
I of course, for the sake of technology journalism, had to download the app and give it a whirl. It actually kind of works and it’s… → Read More
very now and then, I’ll get sucked into the distracting, immersive, emotional habit of flipping through pictures online. Rifling through albums can stop time. It’s disorienting, like stumbling upon an old photograph in your drawer, the type of visually arresting trigger that takes you back through time. For me, I keep a small cigar box full of all my old photographs, dating back to childhood. → Read More
When I started using LinkedIn (in 2008) the service put a lot of emphasis on only connecting with people you had indubitably ‘done business with’. Which made it pretty straightforward to decide when to click ‘accept’ and when not to. But in recent years I’ve been getting increasing numbers of LinkedIn requests from strangers. So the old rules of interaction aren’t working anymore. → Read More
I’ve greatly enjoyed watching the petty controversies that erupted this week, controversies having to do with what can only loosely be described as buyer’s remorse: indignant iPad owners, a mysteriously banished Amazon customer, and a host of people calling foul on Facebook’s promoted posts. One of these is a legitimate and productive complaint, the others are nothing but a froth about the mouth. → Read More
Six of Facebook’s top officers (but not Zuck) filed Form 4s today to notify the SEC their RSUs will vest into 45.3 million shares on 10/29, but they won’t be selling any. Facebook will withhold 45% of those shares and keep them from the market in exchange for paying taxes on those issued so execs don’t have to pay taxes up front. That could keep the $FB price more stable as lock-ups expire. → Read More
The great thing about San Francisco is that it’s a small town in size. As I was walking to the office today I walked by Steve Streza of Pocket and we caught up on what he’s working on lately. Yesterday, there was an App.net hackathon and Steve showed me what he made, and it’s really cool. If you’re unsure, App.net is a project that is kind of like Twitter, for those who don’t want to necessarily… → Read More
Althea Systems, the startup behind social video app Shufflr, is launching the Windows 8 version of Shufflr today.
Of course, it’s hardly alone in releasing a Windows app this week, since the Windows Store itself just launched, with a reported 3,500 apps. However, Shufflr co-founder Rajnish (he goes by one name) pointed out that in the video category, most of the big names like YouTube and Vimeo… → Read More
My mom always said that the most dangerous lies are the ones mixed with truth. That’s why the internet, namely Twitter, can be such a spurious environment. We sometimes forget that with the real-time, viral benefits of the short-winded social network come the same negative effects. Truth can spread like wildfire, and so can lies.
Today, the Bieber nation has learned that lesson. Behold, dear… → Read More
This week, Pinterest cracked the top 50 most trafficked websites in the U.S. with its now 25.3 million stateside visitors, but the social photo-sharing site has yet to determine how it will monetize all those pins. However, that hasn’t stopped other companies from using Pinterest’s growing popularity to generate revenue for themselves. Case in point: today, a new startup called Pinbooster is… → Read More
The 6th Annual Crunchies Awards
San Francisco
Toronto, Detroit, Chicago
Toronto, ON
Detroit, MI
Chicago, IL
