What you need to know – 04/22/11

  Big Switch Networks, building a platform to bring the benefits of virtualization and cloud architecture to enterprise networks, secured $13.75 million in a Series A financing led by Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures.

BO.LT debuted to allow brands and marketers to share pages via Facebook and Twitter, but with an interesting twist: they can change the content.

BUMP.com, a social network for your car (and so much more), completed a $1.2 million Series B-1 round from Wilson Sonsini Investment Co., DLA Piper Venture Fund, Hany & Summer Girgis and others. The company also announced the launch of its first Android app.

Venture capital firm DCM launched A-Fund, a $100 million investment fund to be focused entirely on startups developing for the Android platform.

Consumer information service companies, those in the exploding social media, gaming and e-commerce markets, raised $875 million for 81 deals in the first quarter of 2011, according to data released by Dow Jones VentureSource on Thursday. That’s triple the amount raised during the same period last year.

Groupon has has officially hired Margo Georgiadis, who will step in as COO and oversee the company’s global sales, marketing, and operations. Georgiadis replaces Rob Solomon.

In other daily deal news: It turns out that some 23 million Americans—or 10% of the adult population—purchased deals from daily deal sites like Groupon and LivingSocial in 2010.

Microlending champion Kiva announced Friday that it has added a new category to its wildly popular microfinance network: Green Loans

AOL subsidiary MapQuest announced Friday that it has a new VP of Product Management: former Googler Vijay R. Bangaru, who is the third executive hire in the last three months.

Sequoia Capital made a multi-million dollar investment in China-based retailer and wholesaler Milanoo.com’s business operations fund.

GREE Inc., operator of Japan’s largest mobile gaming social network, paid $104 million for all shares in OpenFeint, a social gaming developer for Android and iOS devices.  The acquisition signals GREE’s “entrance into the global market.”

Pixable, the destination to discover and enjoy social photos, closed $3.6 million in Series B financing led by Menlo Ventures.

Social mobile gaming startup Playmatics raised a $1 million round backed by several prominent Swiss-based business angels.

MMJK, parent company of online poker site PurePlay, has raised $2.8 million of a $4.8 million round, according to an SEC filing published this week.

Discount ticketing service ScoreBig raised $14 million in Series B financing led by U.S. Venture Partners, with participation from Bain Capital.