Apple announced its record-breaking financial results for the first quarter of 2011 on Tuesday, with revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion.
A new report from mobile advertising network Mojiva finds that Android users were more engaged with their devices than iOS users for the first time last month.
Customer service company RightNow has acquired Q-go, a natural language search provider, for $34 million in cash.
Document sharing site Scribd has raised a $13 million Series C round led by MLC Investments and SVB Capital, with participation from existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Charles River Ventures, and Kinsey Hills Group.
Starbucks says it will now let shoppers buy coffee at around 8,000 stores nationwide with a BlackBerry, iPhone or iPod Touch.
Twitter it is now available in Korean, its seventh language.
Video conferencing startup Vidyo has raised $11.5 in new funding, according to an SEC filing.
Vook, a mixed media reading platform (vook= book+video), closed a $5.25 million Series A round led by VantagePoint Venture Partners and Floodgate.
Social gaming company Zynga just launched in beta a site called RewardVille, where users who earn "zCoins" in Zynga games can cash in for "sweet game items."
In Today's Entrepreneur, VatorNews profiles Matt Malden, the founder of Yield Software. Malden is a self-described "first time entrepreneur."
It will complete and submit forms, and integrate with state benefit systems
Read more...
Steven Loeb
The bill would require a report on how these industries use AI to valuate homes and underwrite loans
Read more...
Steven Loeb
The artists wrote an open letter accusing OpenAI of misleading and using them
Read more...
Steven Loeb
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Zynga is the largest social gaming company with 8.5 million daily users and 45 million monthly users. Zynga’s games are available on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Yahoo! and the iPhone, and include Texas Hold’Em Poker, Mafia Wars, YoVille, Vampires, Street Racing, Scramble and Word Twist. The company is funded by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, IVP, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel. Zynga is headquartered at the Chip Factory in San Francisco. For more information, please visit www.zynga.com.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Twitter is an online information network that allows anyone with an account to post 140 character messages, called tweets. It is free to sign up. Users then follow other accounts which they are interested in, and view the tweets of everyone they follow in their "timeline." Most Twitter accounts are public, where one does not need to approve a request to follow, or need to follow back. This makes Twitter a powerful "one to many" broadcast platform where individuals, companies or organizations can reach millions of followers with a single message. Twitter is accessible from Twitter.com, our mobile website, SMS, our mobile apps for iPhone, Android, Blackberry, our iPad application, or 3rd party clients built by outside developers using our API. Twitter accounts can also be private, where the owner must approve follower requests.
Twitter started as an internal project within the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, and engineer, had long been interested in status updates. Jack developed the idea, along with Biz Stone, and the first prototype was built in two weeks in March 2006 and launched publicly in August of 2006. The service grew popular very quickly and it soon made sense for Twitter to move outside of Odea. In May 2007, Twitter Inc was founded.
Our engineering team works with a web application framework called Ruby on Rails. We all work on Apple computers except for testing purposes.
We built Twitter using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to work quickly and easily--our team likes to deploy features and changes multiple times per day. Rails provides skeleton code frameworks so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every time we want to add something simple like a sign in form or a picture upload feature.
There are a few ways that Twitter makes money. We have licensing deals in place with Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft's Bing to give them access to the "firehose" - a stream of tweets so that they can more easily incorporate those tweets into their search results.
In Summer 2010, we launched our Promoted Tweets product. Promoted Tweets are a special kind of tweet which appear at the top of search results within Twitter.com, if a company has bid on that keyword. Unlike search results in search engines, Promoted Tweets are normal tweets from a business, so they are as interactive as any other tweet - you can @reply, favorite or retweet a Promoted Tweet.
At the same time, we launched Promoted Trends, where companies can place a trend (clearly marked Promoted) within Twitter's Trending Topics. These are especially effective for upcoming launches, like a movie or album release.
Lastly, we started a Twitter account called @earlybird where we partner with other companies to provide users with a special, short-term deal. For example, we partnered with Virgin America for a special day of fares on Virginamerica.com that were only accessible through the link in the @earlybird tweet.
What's next for Twitter?
We continue to focus on building a product that provides value for users.
We're building Twitter, Inc into a successful, revenue-generating company that attracts world-class talent with an inspiring culture and attitude towards doing business.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Yield Software's complete Yield Web Marketing Suite for Business and for Agencies includes a Paid Search Optimizer for management of PPC campaigns; Natural Search Optimizer for improved SEO and page rank; and Landing Page Optimizer, which includes a multivariate test engine to ensure landing pages are converting as well as possible. Our system enables businesses of all sizes and growing agencies to fully embrace the potential of search marketing across Google, Bing and Yahoo! All of which leads to increased traffic to websites at a lower overall cost, resulting in greater conversion rates and increasing revenues. Try a free 15-day trial or learn more at www.yieldsoftware.com.Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Vidyo’s solutions address known cost and performance challenges impacting the broad scale adoption of internet-based video communication and collaboration. We bring the price, performance and quality of video conferencing in line with user expectations by applying Vidyo’s unique intellectual property that leverages the recently approved H.264/SVC standard — Scalable Video Coding. The result is a VidyoConferencing™ solution that delivers HD/Telepresence quality at the industry’s best resilience and lowest latency over converged IP networks. We encourage partners and customers to experience the difference our products can make to the quality of video communications.
Startup/Business
Joined Vator on
Vook was created in 2008 by Internet entrepreneur Bradley Inman, with the vision to unite the disparate worlds of books and videos into one complete, blended story.
Vook has created an innovative platform where
all forms of media come together to create a whole greater than the sum
of its parts. Vook weaves together content from incredible writers and
professionally shot and edited videos by filmmakers from TurnHere.
Vooks also enhance the community and discussion associated with reading
great books and watching great films.
You can read your book, watch videos that enhance the story and connect with authors and your friends through social media all on one screen, without switching between platforms.
Vooks are available in two formats: As a web-based application you can read on your computer and a mobile application for reading on the go.
With the web-based application you don't have to download programs or install software. Just open your favorite browser and start reading and watching in an exciting new way. You can also download and install the mobile applications through the Apple iTunes store and sync them with your Apple mobile device.
Joined Vator on
