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Twitter to rank "most popular" tweets

by Matt Bowman, March 19, 2010 | Comments

The switch will introduce even more jostling for position, rabid use among the twitterati.

Finally, Twitter will be allowing tweets to be searched by most popular and not just most recent, according to an update from Twitter Developer Advocate Taylor Singletary. The switch constitutes a plate shift for the company, which to date has given equal weight to all users in search results, filtering them only by time. Developers of Twitter apps will soon ...

Yale boosting venture capital coffers

by Matt Bowman, March 19, 2010 | Comments (1)

Despite dismal returns, university is upping its commitment to private equity. Gurley is vindicated.

Yale University, which has the second largest endowment behind Harvard and is the top performing endowment in the U.S., has increased its allocation to private equity, including venture capital, according to a report released yesterday. The endowment is boosting its private-equity allocation from 21 percent to 26 percent, despite having lost 26% of the value of its private-equity investments in ...

Formspring.me takes off with $2.5M and a hoax

by Matt Bowman, March 18, 2010 | Comments

Online Q&A site attracts heavy-hitting investors, millions of users in under 4 months.

I’ve used Formspring quite a bit for event registration purposes. The site lets anyone create an online form, and has robust data-collection backend. From the start, I thought the service was a great small businesses tool, but apparently I (and the company) got it wrong—the real opportunity is in social media. That’s why Formspring.com is soon changing its name to ...

Trada raises $2.2M to crowdsource paid search

by Matt Bowman, March 18, 2010 | Comments

Company wants to handle keyword search ad campaigns for mom-and-pop shops

We’re seeing a lot of crowd-sourcing enterprise companies help small businesses act more like big ones. Crowdspring takes care of design and writing projects, CrowdFlower finds hands for menial digital tasks, and Get Satisfaction handles customer support. Boulder-based Trada, which launches to the public today wants to take care of paid search. The company also announced a $2.2 million round ...

iPad losing the race to 1 million units

by Matt Bowman, March 17, 2010 | Comments (1)

Online casino Youwager lets users bet on whether Apple's latest game-changer will beat the iPhone

Seventy-four. Techies, scratch that number into the back of your Macbook. Spray paint it onto the highway overpasses in San Jose. Tattoo it to your bicep, just under the smartphone holster. It’s the number every new super gadget must beat. Since the iPhone reached 1 million units sold in 74 days, that number has become the new benchmark for game-changing ...

JamLink ready rock SXSW

by Matt Bowman, March 16, 2010 | Comments

If you're in Austin this week, give real-time online music collaboration a whirl

Last November I tested JamLink, a $299 device that lets musicians collaborate in real time over the internet with zero detectable lag. The sound was clear and immediate, and inspired visions of Jack Black leading a globally-distributed live-streamed revolution of awesomeness. Tomorrow, parent company MusicianLink will be demonstrating its device at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX. “We ...

Andreessen doesn’t need to worry about Ning

by Matt Bowman, March 16, 2010 | Comments

Co-founder can’t help but make a killing, regardless of executive shuffle.

By now you probably know that Gina Bianchini, the very visible CEO of white-label social network platform Ning has left the company and been replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. The reasons for the move remain shrouded in mystery, but it appears that Bianchini left of her own accord, in order to spend time with her family. Rosenthal told PE Hub ...

How to manufacture game addiction

by Matt Bowman, March 15, 2010 | Comments (6)

Gaming guru Sid Meier unpacks the psychology of gamers, and how to keep them coming back for more.

Thousands of aspiring game developers recently funneled into the main auditorium of San Francisco’s Moscone Center for the centerpiece keynote of this year’s five-day Game Developers Conference. The audience, which had an unusually high occurrence of dark trench coats and long unkempt hair, listened to a presentation on the psychology of game design from one of the industry’s founding fathers, ...

Hearst pumps out 70 iPhone apps

by Matt Bowman, March 12, 2010 | Comments

"Unlike the web, we've always trained people that everything on the mobile device costs money."

Steve Jobs thinks he can save media, and Hearst hopes he’s right. The publisher is pumping out iPhone apps—70 so far—that aggregate news around topics and celebrities with the aim of finding a revenue stream as print sales and advertising income dwindles. The apps, developed by Hearst’s LMK division ("Let Me Know") generally cost $1.99, with a few going for ...

Can Tweetsii corral Twitter, Foursquare?

by Matt Bowman, March 11, 2010 | Comments

App wants to be the portal for all checkins and tweets, raises $11M... and the digerati are silent

Overwhelmed by all the check-in and microblogging apps you need to use? There’s an app for you. Tweetsii, which launches today, wants to fit Foursquare, Gowalla, and Twitter under its one big umbrella app. Personally, I don’t use any of those services very much, but I might use Tweetsii if it can integrate them as effectively as it hopes. The ...

Bubbly spills across India, into Asia

by Matt Bowman, March 11, 2010 | Comments

Success of "voice-based Twitter" abroad confirms our cultural differences

If all the world’s billion plus tweets were converted to audio, I’d stock up on ear plugs. Apparently, though, that’s because I live in the U.S. In India, voice-based microblogging service Bubbly is spreading like wildfire with almost no marketing. It reached 500,000 users in its first four weeks, thanks largely to early adoption by some of Bollywood’s biggest stars. ...

Battery Ventures raises $750 million

by Matt Bowman, March 11, 2010 | Comments (2)

The multi-stage venture firm is looking to pump cash into tech companies at any stage.

Waltham-based Battery Ventures has finalized $750 million in commitments for its ninth venture fund. The firm casts a wide net for deals—it’s stage-agnostic, global (with most of its money going to North America, Israel and India) and almost sector agnostic (within technology). The firm says it wants to help companies focused on “Internet and Digital Media, financial and information services, ...

Milo, the anti-Amazon, spurns online shopping

by Matt Bowman, March 10, 2010 | Comments (4)

Comparison site reminds the world that 95% of retail purchases are still made in stores.

Shopping online is usually lame for two reasons. You can’t inspect what you buy before you shell out cash, and you have to wait days to get your stuff. That’s why roughly 95% of all retail sails are still made in brick-and-mortar buildings—a point that online price comparison site Milo.com is making with an infographic published today. The company’s mission ...

FarmVille’s magic fertilizer

by Matt Bowman, March 10, 2010 | Comments

Developer explains how his team built the #1 Facebook game in five weeks.

Zynga has become the envy of folks who want to make money in social games. The company says 31 million people are playing its FarmVille game everday. That’s a population 1/10th the size of the United States checking in every 24 hours. It's not news that the company has learned how to push “viral” to new levels. What many people ...

Israeli venture fundraising plummets

by Matt Bowman, March 9, 2010 | Comments

Funds raised by VC firms tumbled 72% in '09. $1.2B still available for investment.

It’s a little known fact that of all the innovation hubs around the world, Israel’s was hit the hardest by the credit crunch in terms of dollars invested in startups. New data out Monday from the country’s top venture capital research firm suggests that hard times are here to stay, at least for a while. Israel’s IVC Research Center found ...

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