THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY
KakaoTalk, a 3-year-and-change-old Korean messaging app, has eclipsed Facebook’s popularity in South Korea and Japan. The company leverages its simple, all-under-one-roof social media infrastructure and immersive, visual communication strategy––enhanced by digital content like custom themes and emoticons––to hook users. KakaoTalk has made great … [Read more...]
Following rival video ad platform Tremor’s IPO last week, YuMe filed its S-I paperwork for a $65 million IPO. The company provides a digital video advertising platform that targets online video to the most relevant audiences based on individual user demographics. Every ad campaign is analyzed for data to develop strategies to perfect that … [Read more...]
By Matt Gallagher, Red Herring Though many in the online food delivery space find themselves stuck in the rush hour of tech, Delivery Hero landed a decent funding round recently from the investor of an online food ordering rival. The $30 million Series D was led by Phenomen Ventures, a new Russian VC firm that also invested in Delivery Hero’s … [Read more...]
India has surpassed Japan in the smartphone market, becoming for the first time the third largest in the world behind the US and China, a new report from Strategy Analytics points out. The first quarter of 2013 alone saw India’s smartphone adoption grow an impressive 163 percent, four times faster than the global average of 39 percent. India also … [Read more...]
by Matt Gallagher, Red Herring Journalist Though their messages may self-destruct in 10 seconds, Snapchat’s potential at monetizing its massive user base that has eclipsed the likes of Instagram and Vine is far from a mission impossible. At least that’s what Institutional Venture Partners are betting after leading a $60 million Series B round that … [Read more...]
Instagram announced video sharing capabilities this week at a special event in Facebook’s headquarters, giving Twitter’s Vine a run for its money. Instagram will enable 15-second clips of video (with a three second minimum), a bet on slightly larger content over Vine’s six seconds, and comes backed with 13 different filtering capabilities that work … [Read more...]
Fab has come a long way since its original debut back in 2010 as Fabulis.com, a gay social network. The company evolved from a social meet up place into a flash-sales pipeline, and has since morphed into an entity offering its own products with plans to soon open a physical design store of its own. Based in New York City, the company has … [Read more...]
Big data just attracted more dollar signs. The latest is a $100 million fund from Accel Partners, dubbed Big Data Fund 2, which follows up on its first fund focused on big data that raised $100 million back in November of 2011. Though the second fund’s name sounds like a movie sequel to the first, Accel’s latest fund will have a markedly different … [Read more...]
In an effort to improve hospital efficiency, GE has tagged $2 billion for software investments in the healthcare space. The company will invest in software and app development “ to advance current and future offerings in order to address new and pressing operational and productivity challenges faced by healthcare organizations around the world,” … [Read more...]
by MATT GALLAGHER, Red Herring journalist Google officially announced closing its acquisition of Waze, the Israeli crowdsourcing mapping app, following a hotly contested bidding war with other tech giants, including Facebook, Apple and Microsoft. Though the official price was not disclosed, sources close to the deal told the New York Times the … [Read more...]