What you need to know – 03/09/11

Avangate, provider of electronic software distribution and partner management solutions, raised €4 million in equity from 3TS Capital Partners, a central and eastern European-based firm.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark launched CraigConnects.org, a site aiming to connect and protect non-profits and other organizations across the Web.

Credit Sesame, a free online service that helps consumers make smarter credit decisions and optimize their loans for maximum savings, closed a $6.15 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures with Inventus Capital participating.

Facebook launched real-time analytics for social plugins, letting website owners track user interaction via likes, comments and more as they happen.

Online film service Fandor launched Wednesday with a library of over 2,500 licensed videos to be the Netflix for independent films.

Web-based advertising platform Flite (formerly Widgetbox) raised a $12 Million Series C round of financing led by General Catalyst Partners, with participation from existing investors Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad and NCD Investors.

 Foursquare, the location service that made a huge splash at SXSW 2009, has launched version 3.0 of both its iPhone and Android apps in time for SXSW 2011. The new app focuses on discovery, encouragement and loyalty.

GrubHub, an online site where consumers can make orders for delivery, raised a $20 million Series D funding round led by DAG Ventures with participation from Benchmark Capital.

HubSpot, a marketing software platform for small to medium-sized businesess, raised a $32 million round led by Google Ventures, Salesforce, and Sequoia Capital. Previous investors General Catalyst Partners, Matrix Partners and Scale Venture Partners also participated.

In celebration of National Breakfast Day, the Kellogg Company has created a campaign whereby for every picture that someone takes of their breakfast and uploads to the website, Kellogg will donate one meal to a child who might not get breakfast every day. 

Offermatic, a free online service that automatically saves people money on everyday purchases, secured $4.5 million in a Series A investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with participation from Ron Conway and others.

Enterprise platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company Tier 3 today raised $8.5 million in Series A funding from Ignition Capital and Madrona Venture Group.

Just five days after making a considerable update to its app for iPhone and iPad, Twitter has bowed (slightly) to crowd complaints about the “Quick Bar” by altering its visibility in the middle of the stream: it will no longer overlap tweets in the timeline.

A new personalized iPad magazine, Zite, launched Wednesday and expects to beat out the competition by simply being the best at learning what you like to read.