Everything About Tech

When Six Apart launched Vox , a blogging/social network platform with strict privacy controls, in 2006, investor D avid Hornik had high hopes. Vox is an “amazing blogging platform,” he said, because “Finally I have a place where I can post pictures and video of my kids without concern about who is looking at them.” Vox will be shut down on September 20, says Six Apart. What they’re not saying is why. Part of it is likely cleanup for a merger that the company continues to flatly deny – CEO Chris Alden will have fun explaining his way out of that one if it actually happens. But it’s also that Vox is just pretty much a ghost town. The site has just 5.7 million monthly uniques, says Comscore. And if you really want to show family pictures to your friends, you’ll probably make the effort to just wade through Facebook’s privacy settings quagmire. As for private blogging, well, it just isn’t all that SEO friendly. WordPress ate their lunch, and they do private blogs, too. We’ve put Vox into the TechCrunch DeadPool .

Read more….

Heard of Tagged ? Back in 2005 it was a teenager-only social network, catering primarily to U.S. high school students as Facebook charged through the college crowds. By 2007 they were profitable and worth over $100 million . Just one problem though. Facebook eventually started letting high school students in, and then everyone else . Tagged responded by opening up to everyone, too. But by mid 2007, CEO Greg Tseng tells me, Tagged knew it was in trouble. “Facebook beat us,” he said. “We were just another social network…but not in the top five.” So Tseng and team decided to reach out to users and ask them what they wanted. “The most important thing we learned was that people were using our site to meet new people.” Bingo! Facebook isn’t big on helping you meet new people. You can search by name, and you can click on friends of friends, but you can’t just find new people you aren’t already connected to via someone else. At Tagged, people were using filtered search to meet people. For sharing activities, dating, or whatever. “We focused on being the best place to meet new people for any social reason,” Tseng tells me. Dating is obviously a big part of this. Facebook doesn’t have dating profiles. And there’s a stigma associated with Match.com and other dating sites, at least for some people. But on Tagged people can meet and date or engage in other activities. “Going to Tagged is like going to a bar with friends, and you will probably meet new people. Going to Match.com is link going to a singles event, and there’s a stigma with that.” Users definitely agree. In 2007 Tagged had 20 million active users. Today they’ve hit 100 million. 1/3 to 1/4 visit the site each month and the site has 5 billion monthly page views. And they’re spending money. Virtual gifts. VIP accounts that let you do things like see who’s viewing your profile for $20/month. Revenue has grown to $30+ million, and Inc. named them one of the 500 fastest growing companies two weeks ago. 2011 revenue should be $50+ million, says Tseng. CrunchBase Information Tagged Greg Tseng Information provided by CrunchBase

Go here to see the original….

Sometimes the titles just write themselves. On Tuesday Virgin America and Loopt partnered to offer people two-for-one tickets to Cancun or Los Cabos from California. All you had to do was check in on Loopt at SFO, LAX or one of a variety of taco trucks in San Francisco and Los Angeles in a four hour window. So how did it go? Loopt says 1,300 people checked in to a single taco truck in San Francisco, and 80% of those people have already bought tickets on Virgin America for flights. It was Virgin’s fifth highest revenue day ever, says Loopt (we’re confirming with Virgin). Added Loopt CEO Sam Altman by email: “You should also mention that we are on fire.” And indeed they are. Loopt has more than four million users , despite the fact that they are covered far less often than the smaller Foursquare. Loopt is quietly becoming a very large presence in the mobile, um, presence war. Also, Virgin America doesn’t suck . CrunchBase Information Loopt Information provided by CrunchBase

Go here to read the rest….

Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you have an iPad? Even if the answer to both is “no” right now, after you see Twitter for iPad, those answers are going to change — quickly. Yes, the wait is over. Launching tonight in the App Store is Twitter for iPad — the first official native iPad app from the company. We all knew it was coming (Twitter even said so a few months ago), but it has been a long wait. It was definitely worth it. Like most people, I wander into hyperbole from time to time. But it has now been a few days since I first played with Twitter for iPad, and I still think it is hands-down the best iPad app out there. It’s that good. With all due respect to Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Pulse, this is now going to be my go-to app for just about everything related to reading news. It’s simply such a great experience for reading tweets — and more importantly, reading the links your friends share. What Twitter has done is create an amazing user experience for reading information. This is thanks to an intuitive user interface that layers on top of itself. So, for example, if I click on a link in my tweet stream, I’ll have a new layer that rolls over to show that webpage in a customized browser window. If you’ve used Flipboard, it’s somewhat similar, but better because it’s much easier to go back to where ever you previously were before you clicked the link. You simply swipe something to the side to move it temporarily or swipe it again to get it off the screen (in portrait mode anyway, where there’s less space). Something else that’s awesome: when you highlight a tweet by clicking on it, it’s now pinned to the top or bottom of the screen as you scroll through your stream. This is great if it’s something you want to reference. A lot of thought has been put into these type of saving state actions within this app. It’s simple to save a draft and go back to it, for example (much easier than with Twitter for iPhone). Or to reference one of these pinned tweets in your own tweet. There are also some great new gestures that Twitter came up with for this app. For example, if you pinch-outward on a tweet, it will unfold to show you more information about the Twitter user. Better may be the way you can swipe down with two fingers on any tweet to see a full conversation in context. It’s the little things like this that make the app great — Apple-like, even. Overall, the app looks and feels quite a bit different from Twitter for iPhone (which Twitter built from Tweetie — developer Loren Brichter’s client that they acquired earlier this year). But Twitter’s Leland Rechis assures me it’s using all the same stuff on the backend. In fact, Twitter is now a universal app — meaning it’s one app that will work on both the iPhone and iPad, it will just look different depending on which device you’re using it on. Rechis also says Twitter started experimenting with some newer things on the iPad version that haven’t yet been brought to the iPhone version, but undoubtedly will. A great example here is that when you click through to a user’s profile page, you’ll see at the bottom a list of users similar to that user that you may like to follow. Rechis also notes the importance of the logged-out view — something Twitter worked on before the iPhone version launch. Twitter wants to make the service as useful as possible to people even if they don’t have an account. The idea, of course, is that they’ll hopefully sign up for one — and this app may give them the most reason to yet. When logged out, you’ll be able to see tweet streams based on hot topics. “ Tweets in general are not just what I’m doing, they have an incredible amount of metadata ,” Rechis says speaking to why they created this layering idea for the app. Almost 25 percent of all tweets now have a link in them, he says. This app is perfect for those tweets, and content consumption and exploration in general. Rechis notes that one of his favorite things about tablets is how they eliminate window management. At the same time, you need some way to manage all this information. He notes that Brichter’s original concept was stacks of sheets of paper that you quickly shuffle through. Other members of Twitter including Rechis refined that idea and the end result is Twitter for iPad. That’s roughly 750 words about the app — but you really just need to see it, and use it. It will definitely be my go-to way to browse Twitter from now on. It’s that good. Look for it in the App Store shortly. It will be a free download. Update : I should note that for some of these more advanced gestures, there is a slight learning curve. That said, you can do everything without using those gestures, so it’s not a big deal — it’s just icing on the cake. And yes, Twitter is trying to come up with the best way to teach users about these new gestures. CrunchBase Information Twitter iPad Information provided by CrunchBase

Read more from the original source….

Greenpeace, the organization with noble goals but a prickly way of going about things, has asked Facebook to stop using coal at its new data center in Oregon. Given Greenpeace’s history (seen here annoying Deutsche Bank), I should expect some attention-seeking prank if Facebook doesn’t comply. Watch out, Zuckerberg.

Go here to see the original….

Kenexa Corporation , which provides business solutions for human resources, has agreed to acquire compensation and talent management solutions provider Salary.com . The NASDAQ-listed company has made an all-cash tender offer and merger for $4.07 per share, or approximately $80 million . The agreement has been unanimously approved by the board of directors of both companies. Kenexa expects to complete the cash tender offer and close the transaction during the fourth quarter of 2010. Aside from customary closing conditions, the completion of the transaction is also subject to a majority of the outstanding Salary.com shares being tendered. Salary.com provides on-demand compensation software that helps businesses and individuals manage pay and performance. The company offers market pricing and compensation analysis software that helps companies benchmark, compensate and reward its employees. Kenexa CEO Rudy Karsan in a statement said Salary.com’s value proposition spans both software and proprietary content, and that their compensation management solutions complement its own suite of talent acquisition and retention services. CrunchBase Information Salary.com Kenexa Information provided by CrunchBase

The rest is here….

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 financing. The round was led by Index Ventures, and includes some serious superangels such as Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Freestyle Capital, betaworks, Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC, and Jason Calacanis. With the funding, Chartbeat will be spun off as its own separate company, just as betawork’s bit.ly was before it. Chartbeat gives you a realtime dashboard that shows you the activity on your Website as it happens: what stories, pages, or items are hot; where traffic is coming from, how fast your pages are loading. “Understanding what is going on with your business in realtime and being able to respond to that, we believe is the future of online business,” says Index partner Saul Klein. Chartbeat is especially popular with publishers and retailers. We use Chartbeat at TechCrunch every day. I always have a tab open to see what stories are gaining the most traction. Other publishers who use it include the New York Times, AOL, Starbucks, and Groupon. Gawker is testing a beta site where feature stories are determined by their Chartbeat stats. Today Chartbeat helps people monitor their sites, but the next step is to help them take actions based on the realtime data. Giving businesses actionable data and helping them take those action sis where the real value in this business lies—whether that is tying Chartbeat into an ad server throw more ads at hot stories, or linking it to a realtime merchandising and inventory systems for retailers. A month ago, Chartbeat passed one million concurrent active visitors across all the sites using the service. That number is now regularly past 1.5 million. The dial below shows the cumulative active visitors across all Chartbeat-enabled sites. CrunchBase Information Chartbeat Index Ventures Betaworks Information provided by CrunchBase

See the rest here….

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 financing. The round was led by Index Ventures, and includes some serious superangels such as Ron Conway’s SV Angel, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Chris Dixon’s Founder Collective, Lerer Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, Freestyle Capital, betaworks, Jeff Clavier’s SoftTech VC, and Jason Calacanis. With the funding, Chartbeat will be spun off as its own separate company, just as betawork’s bit.ly was before it. Chartbeat gives you a realtime dashboard that shows you the activity on your Website as it happens: what stories, pages, or items are hot; where traffic is coming from, how fast your pages are loading. “Understanding what is going on with your business in realtime and being able to respond to that, we believe is the future of online business,” says Index partner Saul Klein. Chartbeat is especially popular with publishers and retailers. We use Chartbeat at TechCrunch every day. I always have a tab open to see what stories are gaining the most traction. Other publishers who use it include the New York Times, AOL, Starbucks, and Groupon. Gawker is testing a beta site where feature stories are determined by their Chartbeat stats. Today Chartbeat helps people monitor their sites, but the next step is to help them take actions based on the realtime data. Giving businesses actionable data and helping them take those action sis where the real value in this business lies—whether that is tying Chartbeat into an ad server throw more ads at hot stories, or linking it to a realtime merchandising and inventory systems for retailers. A month ago, Chartbeat passed one million concurrent active visitors across all the sites using the service. That number is now regularly past 1.5 million. The dial below shows the cumulative active visitors across all Chartbeat-enabled sites. CrunchBase Information Chartbeat Index Ventures Betaworks Information provided by CrunchBase

See the original post here….

Apptio , a Bellevue, Washington-based provider of SaaS-delivered Technology Business Management solutions this morning announced that it has closed a $16.5 million Series C round - the company has now raised up to $37.5 million in venture capital. The financing round, which the company says was oversubscribed, was led by Shasta Ventures , with participation from all current investors including Andreessen Horowitz , Greylock Partners and Madrona Venture Group .

Read more….

Apptio , a Bellevue, Washington-based provider of SaaS-delivered Technology Business Management solutions this morning announced that it has closed a $16.5 million Series C round - the company has now raised up to $37.5 million in venture capital. The financing round, which the company says was oversubscribed, was led by Shasta Ventures , with participation from all current investors including Andreessen Horowitz , Greylock Partners and Madrona Venture Group .

Originally posted here….