THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY
With their new smart-enabled scooters and sleek vehicle designs, Japanese company Terra Motors delivers Jetson’s-level transit tech that’s as elegant as it is efficient. And as high fuel costs and environmental concerns plague Asia’s drivers, Terra’s making clean energy the smart choice––and the cool one. “We need...beautiful design to change … [Read more...]
Microsoft leaders announced its biggest overhaul in five years to improve its innovation and streamline its product line as it plays catch up with competitors in mobile and cloud computing efforts. The company will reorganize itself into four engineering groups, reorganize executive positions, and realign its product teams as it struggles to unify … [Read more...]
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...]
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...]
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...]
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...]
Yahoo has acquired Tumblr, the popular blogging service, for $1.1 billion cash in one of the largest deals for a social networking company in years, even surpassing Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition for Instagram. Yahoo gets the six year old social blogging platform’s access to a younger audience, as Tumblr is most popular among the 18 to 24 age … [Read more...]