VatorNews

Hot Potato serves up social event stream

Ronny Kerr — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:22:00 -0800

Launching today, this startup's iPhone app geo-locates you and geo-locates the party

Hot Potato, a startup focusing on an iPhone app that streams updates from friends at events in your area, launched on Friday, just one month after the completion of its Series A round of funding. The Brooklyn-based early-stage startup has raised $1 million so far for its mobile brand of social networking via events.Backed by Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein, Hot ... [Read more]

Social networking sites are media portals

Chris Caceres — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:45:00 -0800

Time spent viewing video on social networking destinations up 98% year-over-year, reports Nielsen

One of the things I love about Facebook is how simple it is to view videos on your live feed. For the most part, videos from sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or those uploaded directly to Facebook play right in the feed without ever having to stray away to another destination. It just works. It makes sense that this ease of ... [Read more]

Facebook shares rise 42% in 4 months

Matt Bowman — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 07:04:00 -0800

Common stock is trading at $21/ share on SecondMarket, giving the company a $9.5 billion valuation.

Facebook’s valuation has been all over the map. In 2007, a $240 million investment from Microsoft pegged the company at a whopping $15 billion. After Wall Street imploded, the company plummeted to $3.7 billion in its own estimation, according to court documents discovered by the AP in February of this year. By May it climbed back to $10 billion with ... [Read more]

Adobe to release Acrobat.com for smartphones

Ronny Kerr — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

After a couple weeks worth of mobile news, Adobe keeps the updates coming

Adobe revealed Thursday that this weekend it will be launching a new version of Acrobat.com, an online platform which allows for PDF conversion, web conferencing, and more. Included in the announcement is the news that Adobe will likewise be releasing both iPhone and BlackBerry applications for Acrobat.com.The new Acrobat.com, which launches this Saturday, Nov. 21 at 3:00am PST, consolidates all ... [Read more]

Twitter's new question: What's happening?

Ronny Kerr — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:38:00 -0800

Biz Stone says "What are you doing?" was never the most important question

From the beginning, Twitter has asked its users one simple question: "What are you doing?" The original idea assumed the network would be a place for people to keep in touch with each other and the occurrences in their day-to-day lives.But, as co-founder Biz Stone acknowledges in a Twitter Blog post today, that question has taken a backseat to a ... [Read more]

YouTube launches automatic captions

Chris Caceres — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:54:00 -0800

Feature will grant online video viewing access to hearing impaired and translate to 51 languages

YouTube is taking initiatives today to help the hearing impaired by announcing a new automatic captioning feature across its millions of videos.This isn't your traditional hand written captioning either. Google is combing its automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions. So basically, the machines understand what is being said in the video and ... [Read more]

GettingHired gets $3 million

Chris Caceres — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:46:38 -0800

Career site focused on serving disabled, raises funds for its audience of 22 million

GettingHired, an organization focused on careers and community for people with disabilities, announced on Thursday it secured $3 million of additional investment from Zenith Insurance Company, Kamine Development Corp and Fisher Capital. Launched back in November of 2008, GettingHired.com serves as an online career center with social networking features for people with disabilities. People looking for jobs can use the ... [Read more]

The 100 top performing VCs

Matt Bowman — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:44:00 -0800

These 100 cutting-edge venture investors are keeping the global innnovation engine humming

When I'm not writing for VatorNews or working with Bambi on the next mixer, I'm doing research for AlwaysOn. Over there, we just released the VC 100--our pick of the top venture capitalists based on exit performance in the last four years. One thing we learned in the process was how many top dealmakers don't make it into the limelight. ... [Read more]

Olive Media launches first HD Hi-Fi server

Ronny Kerr — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

Reiterating its obsession with perfect audio, Olive creates a new genre of audio equipment

The high fidelity digital media designers at Olive Media just created a new category of audio equipment for audiophiles to drool over.On Wednesday, the San Francisco-based company unveiled the first-ever HD Hi-Fi server, the Olive 4HD, a device built for music at 24-bit sound and 192 kHz sample rate, 250 times the resolution of standard compact discs--the kind of quality ... [Read more]

Microsoft announces Office 2010 public beta

Ronny Kerr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:56:00 -0800

Releasing a line of productive applications in beta, Microsoft introduces social networking features

Microsoft released a slew of 2010 iterations of its Office-related products in public beta on Wednesday, including Office 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office Web Apps for businesses and Office Mobile 2010.Office, comprised of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and other software, will likely be held under the closest scrutiny as it is one of the most popular ... [Read more]

EveryZing RAMPS up

Chris Caceres — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:27:00 -0800

Content optimization platform announces rebranding to RAMP and upgraded product

EveryZing announced on Wednesday it has re-branded and is now called RAMP. The Woburn, MA-based startup offers universal search and publishing solutions for dynamic Web publishers. The re-branding was, "largely driven by the completion of our solution to a business-to-business SaaS provider to media companies. Everyzing was an older consumer destination name and we didn't feel it was reflective of ... [Read more]

Salesforce launches Chatter

Chris Caceres — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:29:00 -0800

Cloud computing giant stepping into social networking, launches a "Facebook for the enterprise"

With Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference kicking off this week in San Francisco comes a major announcement from the company. It's launching a product called Salesforce Chatter, which the cloud computing giant describes as a "Facebook for the Enterprise."Salesforce is stepping into a market already touched on, social networking for enterprises. Some startups playing in the space include CubeTree, a freemium enterprise ... [Read more]

A dating site worth hooking up with

Bambi Francisco — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 08:27:00 -0800

Angel investor Aydin Senkut is our guest host analyzing Thread, the dating site leveraging Facebook

The online dating market is a $1 billion annual business. One company - Thread - is trying to go after that market by leveraging the connections on Facebook by creating a dating filter on top of the massive social network. The value proposition? Why not meet friends of friends rather than some random person considered psychologically compatible? We take a ... [Read more]

Facebook adopts new privacy policy

Ronny Kerr — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

Lacking the minimum 7,000 commenters needed for a vote, policy changes go into effect unchallenged

On Tuesday night, Facebook announced that it has adopted its revised privacy policy changes, without the need to submit the changes to the site's user base for a vote. Facebook said that if 7,000 users commented on the proposal revision, then it would organize a poll, wherein all the site's users could vote on whether or not to approve the ... [Read more]

Common traits of A-Players

Auren Hoffman — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:30:00 -0800

An unscientific observation of what A-Players have in common

We often talk about this elusive "A-Player" - a person that everyone wants to hire but someone people can rarely find. In this article we'll attempt to discuss how to spot these people and see what they have in common.A few points up-front:1. It is almost impossible to determine if someone is an A-Player until you've worked with them for ... [Read more]

Zynga raises $15.18 million

Chris Caceres — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:06:00 -0800

Social gaming giant raking in more cash

Popular social gaming startup, Zynga raised $15.18 million on Tuesday, according to a regulatory filing. No new investors were listed, but the company now has raised $54 million in total. Previous investors include Kleiner Perkins, Avalon Ventures, Foundry Group, Union Square Ventures and Institutional Venture Partners. Zynga is the maker of a very popular game called FarmVille, in which users ... [Read more]

Google Image Swirl launches in Labs

Ronny Kerr — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0800

Building on Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition, new tool makes searching images easier

First, they gave us Image Search, then came Similar Images, and now, Google is adding a new application to Google Labs, called Google Image Swirl.Announced Tuesday morning on the Google Blog, Image Swirl functions similarly to Google Wonder Wheel, in that it creates an initial grid or cluster, based on an initial search query. Whenever the user clicks on an ... [Read more]

4200 startup job openings in California

Matt Bowman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:12:00 -0800

New data from the NVCA show available startup positions in all 50 states.

California has both the fourth highest unemployment rate in the country and, by far, the most job openings at startups. Go figure. Too many nice beaches, I guess. According to the NVCA, 39% of the 11,000 job openings tracked by StartUpHire.com are in the Golden State. Not surprising. Yesterday alone, California-based companies announced over $100 million in funding: Rockyou raised ... [Read more]

Ankeena introduces Media Flow Director 2.0

Ronny Kerr — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:00:00 -0800

With an updated media delivery platform, Ankeena seeks to attract more attention

Ankeena, the media infrastructure provider formerly known as Nokeena Networks, introduced on Tuesday morning Media Flow Director 2.0, an update to its 3-screen content delivery platform.Media Flow Director is a 3-screen delivery platform because it is optimized specifically for a world in which users watch video on multiple devices--TVs, mobile phones, and computers. New in the update is a mixed ... [Read more]

Can't make money off apps on social networks

Bambi Francisco — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:30:00 -0800

Angel investor Aydin Senkut on where he'd invest and sectors he'd avoid

Aydin Senkut, an early-Google employee-turned angel investor, is becoming known as one of the more prolific seed-to-early-stage investors in Silicon Valley, having invested in 40 companies since 2006. His portfolio consists of some well-known consumer Internet companies, such as Mint, which was recently sold, Disqus, Dogster, BrightRoll and Rapleaf. to Intuit for $170 million, Aardvark, In this second segment of ... [Read more]