THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY
Amazon has thrown LivingSocial a lifeline. The daily deals company has raised another $110 million, bringing the company’s investment funding to a staggering $910 million since its founding in 2007. Investors in this latest round include Steve Case, Grotech Ventures, Revolution, US Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, JP Morgan, T. Rowe … [Read more...]
Pinterest has raised a $200 million round that values the company at $2.5 billion. The cash essentially buys the social sharing site more time to figure out how to actually make money to justify that valuation. The round included participation from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital, along … [Read more...]
A German court ruled in favor of Facebook’s real names policy, stating that because the social network is headquartered in Ireland, it does not need to comply with an earlier German agency demand for the company to allow pseudonyms, the AP reported. Last December, the Unabhaengiges Landeszentrum fuer Datenschutz maintained that as German law … [Read more...]
ComScore released its Digital Future in Focus report for 2013, revealing that nearly 6 trillion ad impressions were served up the US. What’s more, social media is steadily taking the lead, accounting for 16.6 and will soon surpass portals as the most engaging online activity. Facebook naturally leads this surge, contributing to the largest share … [Read more...]
A US District court dismissed four shareholder lawsuits related to Facebook’s botched IPO, on the grounds that the individual investors behind the cases purchased the company’s stock after the company had already amended IPO filings, including warnings about an unproven ability to monetize its mobile efforts, Reuters reported. The lawsuit, … [Read more...]
Oracle, the world's third largest software maker and top producer of high end business computers, will pay $1.7 billion to acquire Acme packet, a company that sells telecommunications VoIP hardware. “The addition of Acme Packet to Oracle’s leading communications portfolio will enable service providers and enterprises to deliver innovative … [Read more...]
by MATT GALLAGHER, Red Herring Though plenty of Q&A service sites sleep contentedly in the graveyard, ChaCha is thriving alive and strong. The company recently raised a new round of $14 million. The company will use the new funding to expand its mobile and online experience as well as enhance its advertising potential. The round was led … [Read more...]
Google broke another record, earning its first $50 billion in annual revenue in 2012, thanks in a large part to strong fourth quarter earnings that generated $14.62 billion, an increase of 26 percent over the same period the year before. Outpacing analyst estimates of $12.36 billion for the December quarter, Google's fourth quarter was about three … [Read more...]
Facebook rolled out its Graph Search, a functional search tool that provides results based on social connections. It's a big step for Facebook that evolves its social function to provide relevant knowledge based on relationships. Search for “friends of friends who are single women,” and you completely revamp the nature of dating. Search for … [Read more...]
Acquisitions for gaming companies broke a new record last year, raking in $4 billion, an 18 percent increase from the $3.4 billion earned in 2011, according to recent research from Digi-Capital, the global investment bank. Gaming investments, however, had a difficult year, tumbling 57 percent to $853 million. Transactional volume dropped 27 … [Read more...]