What you need to know - 04/19/11

Ronny Kerr · April 19, 2011 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/1978

Twitter bid-battling UberMedia over TweetDeck; Wal-Mart acquires social media startup Kosmix

Adaptly, a platform for social media site advertisements, raised $2.7 million in seed and Series A funding from First Round Capital, Charles River Ventures, Kirschenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners and Lerer Ventures, along with several angels.

Decide.com, a pre-launch consumer electronics shopping service, raised a $6 million Series B round led by Maveron, with Madrona Venture Group and angels participating.

CPC for advertisements on Facebook either went up by 40 percent or down by 40 percent, over the most recent quarter, depending on who you ask.

 

After raising $2.35 million from notable firms and names, HealthTap went live Tuesday and is now open to anyone who wants personalized health advice online.

Kohort raised a $3 million seed round led by IA Ventures with participation from RRE Ventures, Countour, FF Venture Capital, and both David Cohen and David Tisch of TechStars.

Wal-Mart agreed to acquire social media startup Kosmix to aid the retailer in honing its mobile and social e-commerce experience. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition is expected to close during the first half of this year.

Listia raised $1.75 million in funding led by Andreessen-Horowitz with participation from SV Angel, Founder Collective, High Line Venture Partners, Max Levchin, Naval Ravikant, Alex Zubillaga, James Hong and others.

 

Localytics closed a $2.5 million Series A funding round led by existing investors Launchpad Venture Group and New York Angels.

Lymbix, developer of real-time sentiment analytics technology, raised $1.35 million from the GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund.

 

Nutanix, developer of a converged compute and storage appliance for virtualized data centers, received $13.2 million in Series A funding.

Apple is suing Samsung, claiming the Galaxy smartphones and tablet too closely copied design of the iPhone and iPad.

 

  • U.S.-based ticket seller Ticketfly, raised $12 million in Series B funding, bringing Ticketfly's total capital raised to $15 million.

Ticket seller Ticketmaster is introducing dynamic pricing technology to let artists and sports teams raise or lower ticket prices to reflect demand.

Twitter is in advanced talks to purchase Twitter client TweetDeck for around $50 million, even though reports two months ago said UberMedia had already bought TweetDeck for as much as $30 million.

Vokle, a Web-based video communication platform, closed a $767,000 round of seed funding led by Tech Coast Angels, Sierra Angels, Grammy-nominated singer Imogen Heap, Rafe Furst, and various private investors.

Groupon acquired Pelago, the team behind location-based application Whrrl.

 

Yotpo raised $800,000 in seed funding led by 2B Angels and PLUS Ventures.

 

 

 

The Royal Household announced that footage of the much-anticipated wedding of Britain's Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton will be live streamed on their official YouTube channel.

Real estate search site Zillow filed its Form S-1 with the SEC, indicating that the company will be pursuing a $51.75 million IPO.

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@WalmartLabs (Kosmix)

Startup/Business

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Kosmix was acquired by Walmart in May of 2011 to create @WalmartLabs.

Through the innovative fusion of retail, social and mobile, @WalmartLabs is redefining Commerce for the largest retailer worldwide. We are a group comprised of the brightest technologists and businesspeople in the industry, excited about the limitless opportunities that this next generation of Commerce will bring to billions of people around the globe, all in an effort to help them save money and live better.

Kosmix was funded by Time Warner Investments, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Dag Ventures, private investor Ed Zander and Jeff Bezos' personal investment company, Bezos Expeditions.

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WalmartLabs is hiring.

http://www.walmartlabs.com/open-positions/