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Sparrow, The Beautiful Mac Email Client Flies Into The Mac App Store — And Into Funding

Back in October of last year, we wrote about Sparrow, a beautiful new mail client for the Mac. But whereas most mail clients are now web-based, Sparrow decided it was time to focus on making a great native email experience once again. And today that gamble appears to be paying off. Sparrow 1.0 has just launched in the Mac App Store and it has immediately shot to the number one paid app in many countries around the world, including the U.S.

And that feat says a lot for Sparrow, considering the app is $9.99. But it’s absolutely worth it. As we wrote in our initial review, Sparrow is a Gmail-centric client that brings a Tweetie for Mac (now Twitter for Mac) look and feel to email. At the time, it was still in beta, and we noted that there were some performance issues. But most of those have now been smoothed out and a whole range of new features have been added, including full support for Gmail labels.

And you might also notice that they’ve dropped the “for Gmail” line from their logo. That’s because while the product remains Gmail-only for now, version 1.1 (due soon) will offer IMAP support for the other major mail services as well. So it will be able to be a full-featured mail client.

And there’s more good news for Sparrow today — they’ve raised funding. The service has raised a seed round of funding from Kima Ventures, the French venture capital firm that has backed Paper.li, Rapportive, and others. Sparrow co-founder Dom Leca declined to disclose the amount of the raise, but is very excited about the possibilities the money will allow for.

He should also be excited about the possibilities that the money they pull in from the Mac App Store should allow for. While there have already been some Mac App Store successes (Evernote jumps to mind), if a small indie app maker selling a $10 mail client can be a breakout hit, it will give a lot of other developers hope for the potential of the store.

You can find Sparrow in the Mac App Store here.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Convore Wants To Be The Easiest Group Communication App Yet

Many startups and companies have tackled realtime communications in a group setting, including Yammer, Google, Yahoo, and even Facebook. And now there’s one more jumping into the mix. Today, Y Combinator-backed Convore, the brainchild of Pownce founder Leah Culver, and Mochi Media developers Eric Florenzano and Eric Maguire, is launching a dead-simple group communication platform that is definitely worth a look.

Convore allows anyone to create a group (both public or private) and invite members to join via email. Invited users can click on the sent link (here’s a special TechCrunch group), and create a profile and join. You can also connect via Facebook and Twitter.

The interface is similar to a FriendFeed group, complete with realtime functionality. It’s part chat, part email thread, and part forum. Within a particular group you can create a topic, and start a conversation around that subject. The conversation is persistent so you can leave the site, then come back later and catch up on messages you missed.

For example, the current Y Combinator founders are using Convore within a private group. Usage of the platform surged during the night of the recent Yuri Milner and Ron Conway announcement regarding the Start Fund.

The incubator’s founders were first chatting on Convore and guessing what the announcement would be about. The conversation evolved to asking each other who had taken the deal and whether anyone wasn’t going to and why. The advantage of using Convore in these situations is that this type of chat-like communication and conversation is more suited for the startup’s interface as opposed to a mailing list or even a Yammer-like application.

Culver tells us that Convore is also designed to be a group discovery platform, where users can search for and find other topic groups that interest them. She adds that the founders took inspiration from FriendFeed groups and 37 Signals’ Campfire but wanted the application to be a mix between real-time chat and a forum that is easy to use.

If you take the time to use Convore, you’ll notice that updates are posted really, really fast. The platform is essentially updating in realtime. And what’s impressive is that the founders built all of this technology in-house.

Oh and in case you were wondering, Convore did accept the $150,000 from Milner and SV Angel.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Gevo, A Branson-Backed Biofuels Maker, Goes Public And Nets $95.7 Million

A Richard Branson- and Khosla Ventures-backed biofuels and biochemicals maker, Gevo, raised $170 million, netting an estimated $95.7 million after expenses and underwriting discounts, in an initial public offering yesterday.

The company’s technology and chemical processes use yeast biocatalysts to make isobutanol from sugar. Gevo’s biofuels and biochemicals will offer an alternative to petroleum-derived butanol, and in some cases, other biofuels like ethanol.

Gevo’s isobutanol, according to the company website, could be used: as fuel that’s compatible with gas tanks, in jet biofuels for military and commercial use, blended fuels, and to manufacture industrial coatings, solvents, textiles, fibers and plastics.

In September 2010, Gevo acquired a Luverne, Minnesota ethanol production facility, and expects to begin commercial production of isobutanol there in the first half of 2012.

The company is now trading on NASDAQ as GEVO. Shares were up 11% at mid-day trading following the IPO.


Mitch Kapor Leads $600,000 Angel Round In Video Transcription Startup SpeakerText

SpeakerText, a scrappy startup that automates video transcriptions through a combination of clever algorithms and crowdsourcing, raised $600,000 from a group of angel investors led by Mitch Kapor. The other investors include Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Crowdflower CEO Lukas Biewald, Roy Rodenstein, Chris Yeh, and ex-Googler Georges Harik

The challenge most publishers face with video is that it is still hard to find. SpeakerText addresses this issue by automatically transcribing every video in a SEO-friendly format so that videos turn into searchable transcripts. The videos are put through a speech-to-text engine to start, and then broken up into chunks which are sent to remote online transcribers who fix any errors.

The transcription is synced to the video so that if you click on any word or sentence, you get taken to that exact spot in the video. Viewers can also share quotes with links to those spots via email, Twitter, or Facebook. It works pretty well. We tried it for the videos at our last Disrupt conference. I’ve embedded one below with an interview of Kevin Rose.

Thank you.


Thank you, Mike.


All right.
I am super stoked to have Kevin Rose will join us for his first ever tell all about the real secret of Digg and where it’s going.
Kevin.
It’s cool that you came.
That’s it.
Have a seat.
Last time I talked to you was over a year ago.
Your first told me about a new Digg that you were starting to create and think about, that time Jay was still your CEO, so lots have changed since the last time I talked to you, so.
A lot of people said, that you guys unfairly.
I’m sorry, just gonna jump right in if that’s right.
A lot of guys have you in fairly kick Jay to the curve, blamed everything on him when you fired him.
And I just wanna know like, do you have a reaction to that?
Like you know, just to publicly talk about that a little bit?
I mean Jay.
Can you hear me, all right?


Maybe your mic’s not turned on.
There we go.
So I think that is kind of a mutual thing.
I mean Jay was ready for something new and so are we me and Jay is now going off and doing new things and I never really wanted the role of CEO and so we knew we want to hire someone else and we went after the new CEO.


You were the CEO for what?
Four months or five months?


Something like that, four months.


Did you think at that time, was it a trial to see if you wanted the job or if you just knew —

No, never a trial.
You needed to bring in somebody.


I think that my day today is more a role of like a PM/Creative Director.


Yeah.


So, I work directly with designers on features and layout and usability and, you know, the idea of being the cheerleader and having to go and constantly keep every single org up-to-date with what’s going on and when you get to a size of a company that is Digg which is, you know, 67 employees, it’s just — It’s a lot of work that I really never wanted to take on.
So, I’m really good at teams of 10 to 15 and that’s kinda why I maxed out.


Are you at Digg everyday?
I mean, for the most part, you’re full time with it?


Except when I’m doing stuff like this or Podcaster, things like that.


What about a year were you at Digg everyday?
It seems like there was a period of time where you sort of weren’t anymore.
Yeah, I think that, you know.
you’re right.
It’s been six years at Digg and, you know, you kinda get burnt out and for me, it was a little bit of ups and downs over the years and you know, emotionally, it’s tough when you go through, you know, this crazy growth and then a bunch of acquisition offers and, you know, then you run in to problems with scaling, I like to shipwright.
I like to row new features and when you can’t do that, it’s really frustrating.


Yeah.


It’s a long — Seeing there at the office when we have, you know, five features backed up and we can’t role them out — Are you talking about now or —

No, I’m talking about — I mean, we still have backup now, but we’re getting better.
That’s extremely frustrating.
You’re kind of sitting there on your hands, rocking back and forth and saying like, “When we’re gonna ship this?
It’s killing me,” you know and there was a lot of focus when the economy went sideways.
There was a lot of focus on revenue.


So, we built features like Digg ads and we took a lot of our engineering talent and put them on revenue and away from user facing features.


Yeah.


And I think that kinda hurt us.
We didn’t launch anything new for for a year and a half and so, you know.


So, with the benefit of Hinesite, you think it was incorrect to buckle down, focus on the revenue and maybe it was the time to do something else.


Absolutely.
I think that when I look back on things, I would have rather hired more engineers than put them on revenue than take our existing engineers and put them all on revenue.
And I think that, you know, we were in a mode launching new features and getting things out for the first couple years and that worked well for us.


We were able to launch something and see if it worked, modify it, you know, iterate on it, we release it.
But then there was a point in time where we didn’t do that, and then all of a sudden you know, as it is with these sites we have to keep launching new features and keep these site fresh otherwise your traffic kinda starts to get antsy and go other places.
That started to happen early this year.


So, you know, I’m kinda taking over the CEO.
The board and everyone else, you know, sits down and we have a really hard, frank conversation saying, you know, traffic is dipping down.
It’s kinda of flat.
You know, we need to do something big and bold and new and I think I agree with that and that was kinda part of what we did before, is that we tried a bunch of new things

Some of it was kind of playing catchup on stuff that we hadn’t launched that we should have a while ago.
Some of it was some kind of —

Let me just stop —

Oh, go ahead.
Some of it was some kind of —

Let me just stop —

Oh, go ahead.
Let’s actually talk with this more structured.
So, the old day, the way I would have described it is, I’m using your words, but democratizing news and, you know, if you describe it to me like my dad, say well, you know, if anyone could have a link and the viewers vote on the links and that becomes the homepage.
What’s the Carol Bartz one-liner on the new Digg?
Like what is it?


Yeah.
I never liked the democratizing news thing that was something — You know, that comes from PR people.
I think that, you know, we were Combination of politics during the election that was crazy.
Cats doing back flips on diving boards, stuff like that, and tech news.
And so it was kind of Geek Centric news.
I think more last with a little bit of of political slant as well and that’s what we are today and that’s we were.
So, What was your question on this?


What was your minor

Looks like a one minor.
Oh, yeah.
That’s a good question.
It’s not gonna change over the next few months.
I think what we were, it was just this unified homepage of kinda like the Zite guys that was the dig community.
For better or worse, that’s what we were, what that homepage represented.
Going forward we really need to figure out how curve about and inched for ourselves.
I think that, you know Tweeter and Facebook have definitely taking the chunks of out traffic And if we’re really gonna stand apart we need to you know, try something new and I think it’s gonna be a round of interest Okay so but the new version of Digg is a try at something new right?
It’s a lot of stuff that we should have done a long time ago.
I think ’cause

But you see it more as a collection of small changes then there’s a whole new focus because.


Yes and no.
There’s a little bit, I think that we.
There is definitely some mistakes there, so do you want me to take on the mistakes or do you want.


Yeah.


About the mistake real quick.
I definitely learned a lot when it comes to chronic stuff here.
I do think that the mistakes that I made is that I thought I had a better solution for people that consume news then, what was our upcoming section of the site which was our new embedded stories.


Yeah.
So, we came up with thing called MyNEWS which is essentially follow people and then you get the news pushed right directly into your feed.
Very Twitter asked without all the other talking with all the other chatter.
It’s basically just links right?


Yeah.
The mistake that I made is that we had a very passionate dedicated community that you can’t just say, “We’re gonna retire this features and here, this is your new home.”
You have to prove it to them, right?


Well, you can do it.


You can and then they’ll revolt on you and you have your home page stories of, you know, “We hate Digg.
Digg sucks.”
So, if I had to go back and I could change things, I would have kept a lot those features around and, launched these new features and said, “Hey, give this a try.
Don’t make them the defaults.”


Yeah.


Let’s slowly push people into them.
Make changes based on their feedback, iterate on top of that and, if they’re good enough, eventually retire the features that you have in the early days.


Okay.


Because it is a more efficient way to digg things today.
Diggs do happen faster.
Something can go from zero to several hundred diggs, a lot quicker than it could and just like this random clutch… Also, it’s not all or none.
It’s not, like, either you’re on the homepage or not because you…

Righ t.

Because you prefer in sharing things more like in a Tweeter environment.
Just having 10-15 diggs is better than nothing, well as before, it wasn’t better than nothing.


And that’s kind of what we’re trying to get to.
I mean if perfect world like 6 months now where we’ll be as a company.
You’ll be able to come into Digg and define your interest.
You’d be to say I’m in to Audi cars, I’m in to tee.
Whatever that is that you’re passionte about.


Yeah.


And then we’ll give you stories that we think are starting to be vended by other like minded people on those verticals.
You’ll be able to Digg them and then they eventually get extremely popular, they’ll get promoted to the front page.
Now, that would be that kind of the global’s [xx] of all things cool.
So if we can really tackle that long tail of content, that’s the Digg that’s 4 or 5, you know 10 times a size we actually we stays for traffic standpoint.


And where are you today, you are about 20 million [xx] around that.


A little over that.
We get about 1.2 million a day, something like that .


And what happened when you launch Digg 4, it dipped or.


It definitely took, we’ve had a spike up a dip down and now we’re kinda flat in billing on top of that.
But yeah we lost some people that we’re not very happy about some of the proposition that we had made.
You’re talking about changes in 6 months, I’m just curious, I don’t mean to imply anything but, what are the chances you’ll be with Digg in 6 months?


As in 100%

Yes as in 100% percent.
You seem a little tired so.


Like you, I’m you get a little burnt out over time and I think that not to say that I’m gonna sell to AOL but I think that… congrats by the way.
Congrats Erin 15 million dollars is insane.
So that’s a huge number.
So those of you who have seen Kevin and I interact on stage before know that unlike most interviewees he will, if I give him a jab, even a very small one that most people would notice, he comes right back with like you know, just like a hammer stroke.
So, it was unfair.
It was unfair I think.
Yeah, for what you just did.


I thought Kelly Kansas was gonna interview me so I didn’t… Cause backstage you said look, I’m gonna be leaving at the end of the year.
I’d love to sort of quietly start that rumor so it’s not a big surprise.


Nice try.
You know.


All right.


But I will say this this guy you hire, I mean when you hire the CEO, before you hire him, I thought there was like, who’s gonna be the perfect CEO and I thought — You know, somebody has been like doing payments for the last ten years, like that’s exactly who would be perfect to run Digg.


And then, you hire this guy, Matt Williams who was general manager of consumer payments in Amazon.
He did a lot of stuff at Amazon.
He was all over the place in Amazon, got a bunch of different groups there.


Why was he the perfect guy?
I think that, you know, when we are looking at different people for the CEO position, there were folks that — Consumer payments, web store, tech alliances, cross merchandising auctions and then before that, he was at LiveBid.


I think that when I was looking at Matt, one of the things that I was really attracted to is the fact that he had taken teams and products within the Amazon that we’re kind of not dead but just definitely needed some help, he was able to energize those teams and actually launch successful products.


So, that was cool.
He’s very well rounded, so he knows how to run large orgs of, you know, 200 plus people and he’s very passionate about Digg and social news.
He had like he came to me and said I didn’t messing around with this personally at home for a long time he’s been, like, created this easy developer as well, and he wrote this crawler that went out and crawled all this news stories.
He was highlighting the best ones based on this logarithm he wrote.
I mean, his mind is in the game.
And so that got me pretty excited about having him as a CEO.


I want to spend the rest of our time looking back a little bit and also looking forward a little bit if, you’re okay and then, if there are people who have questions, go ahead and line up at the microphones.


And then then Kevin will be signing autographs as well immediately afterwards backstage.
You talked before about the, you know, that you looked at acquisitions a number of times over the years.
What’s the biggest acquisition you ever turned down in terms of dollar size?
That, sort of, got to an actual formal offer stage?
That we actually turned down?
That would have been 60 million.
That’s not what you just said.
I mean, you said..


No, that we actually turned down?


Yeah.


That we want to wait from?


What was the 80 million dollar, what, was that something else?


Oh, there was an earn out on top of that.
So it would have been 80.


Oh, I’m sorry, okay.
With the benefit of Heinsite, do you wish you’d taken that now?
It’s tricky because, you know, when you’re kind of that the peak of your game and you’re breaking traffic numbers every single month.


Yeah.


You know, me personally, after I got past a certain point and the offers are coming in at, you know, 20, 30, 40 million dollars and you have friends that you’re buddies with from, you know, Joshua Schachter from Delicious that sold his company to Yahoo, to Garrett Camp from StumbleUpon.


And you’re watching all your kind of peers sell their companies.
And these guys make a lot of money and you know I come from a background that my family was very lower middle class growing up and so we didn’t have a whole lot of money, and it’s very tempting.


You’re sitting there and you’re like, holy shit.
Like I could personally put like, $20,000,000.00 in the bank.
That’s nuts.


So, it was really hard and I would talk to the board and talk to Jay, the CEO at the time, and I’d say you know this is difficult like You know, I kinda wanna do this, you know , it’s a big exit for me.
You know.


Yeah.


And I think that part of it is that you look at your traffic and you look at your product pipeline and you say I think we can continue to grow and keep doing this and then the part of is that you know, this come into table and say …They kind of also push you on that you know we wanna see a 10 and 20X you know return on our investment.


Yes

And and when is your first time at the rodeo like it is mine, like you just kinda go with that.


You know, you don’t know any better and you you just say, oh that’s what the boards saying and I think I’m on board with that as well.
But to be fair, they do, you know, those really cool things that happen as, you know, you’ll get to sell a little chunks of your ownership overtime…

Yeah.
It allows me to do things like that.
Because they want you to keep going and stay motivated, not freak out when this kinda deals come along, you know, and so that happens in further in rounds of funding and I think that that is very fair for the entrepreneur that has something that is taking off.


So, your Angel investing is Interesting because you are a fairly prominent angel investor and you’ve invested in, I don’t have a list here but, Twitter.


Both Foursquare and Groupon which is sort of awesome.


Not Groupon.


I’m sorry.
Gowalla

Wow.
I’d forgotten Guala’s [sp?]
name.
Both Four Square and Gowalla and they don’t mind?
I started off with Four Square.
That was my first investment.


Yeah And then I got to know Josh from Gowalla and I called Dennis Sapp on the phone and I was like hey I’m think about doing this investment .
Well, would you see it as a conflict of interest.


And we worked it out and at that time, Gowalla was going in a very different direction.
They were doing, they are all about the virtual items being dropped off and they’re gonna pick it up at different locations and they gaming around that.
Who else?
There’s Pownce, there’s Ross.
Zynga, SimpleGeo, 3Crowd…

What was the evaluation…

What’s that?
What was the evaluation of Zynga when you invested in it?
Uh, it, it was awhile a, it wasn’t too long ago, but it was like the last big round last year.
Yeah, so it was already fairly established, it was I can’t give away the evaluation but it was already pretty
Yeah pretty high.


You can’t give away?
You sure?
I actually think you could give it away.
NGMOCO CHAMP.


Is that right or is that yeah?


Yeah, it’s all in and the adviser yes.


So, are you planning on doing a lot I mean is this a hobby for you?
or is this ruptured?
It’s quite a portfolio now.


It’s, the form of the string is about a great one, I think that, I love trying to help entrepreneurs of what avoid a lot of mistakes that I’ve made because I’ve made a lot of them and so if I can get in there and sit down with them and help them from a marketing stand point or product stand point and from you know, raising capital, terms, you know where are the value I can add, hopefully they sit down with me and then I mean they say what we like, often times I’ll sit down with an entrepreneur.
Of course go out and, take like coffee with you and you say here are 10 ideas I think you guys should focus on.
you and you say here are 10 ideas I think you guys should focus on.
If they agree with it we aid then and like wow.
Okay.
We get to this could be a good relationship and yeah, we’d like to have you as an investor.


So I’m passionate about it.
I think it’s fun.
It’s amazing.
It’s cool to give people money and let them do of the hard work.
Oh Kevin.
I’ll say it’s just gonna wrapped up, but I know that it must be tough because a lot of your community right now is still angry with Digg and you care so much about that community, I know you do.


Absolutely.


I appreciate you coming on.
You’re always… There never any bullshit with you or [xx].
You just are what you are and and I really appreciate that.
You look a little down and I just want to say like I know this community, you know, looks up to you.
I look up to you.
You are a mentor of mine.
You just stated Digg 6 months before, and I just wanna say that you know you’re a very very important part of this community.
Thank you very much for coming

Thank you sir, I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for coming

Thank you sir, I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Also just an audible here.
We have a full panel for the last session.
The finals for the battle field of the committee.
I’d love to add you and your perspective to as a judge, would you be willing to stay for a few hours and Sweet.


Gonna live with that?


Yeah.


That’s awesome.


That sounds great.


Thank you very much.


Amen.


All right.
Cool.


Cool.
Thanks so much.


Thanks.


Live From The HP Palm webOS Event

It’s time. It’s been nearly 9 months since HP acquired Palm back in April of last year, and they’re finally ready to show what they’ve been working on behind the scenes ever since.

We’re live in San Francisco, bringing back all the up-to-the-second details as they happen. Join us for our liveblog after the jump.
Read the liveblog at MobileCrunch >>


Say Hello To The Palm Touchpad

It’s official: HP/Palm is releasing a new tablet called the Touchpad. Precentral has some hot news about this new 10-inch Palm slate. It is a touchscreen device running WebOS. It weighs 1.5 pounds and 13mm thick and has a front webcam as well as up to 64GB of storage.

Robert Scoble, of all people, also leaked something about the “littlest phone” he’s ever seen, a new Palm Phone that is as big as a pebble.

Read more…


My6sense Injects A Relevance-Based Tweet Stream Into Twitter.com

Twitter’s greatest strength is also often its greatest weakness: it’s a simple, constantly-updating stream. This keeps information fresh and flowing, but it also means that if you step away for a few hours (or even a few days — crazy, I know), you’re likely to miss a lot. And it means that scanning your Twitter stream can sometimes be tedious. A new product launching from my6sense today aims to alleviate both those issues.

The my6sense Chrome browser extension takes your tweet stream and completely rearranges it. If that thought scares you, fear not, this is done in a new tab area that the extension creates on Twitter.com. This area holds a stream sorted by tweets that are likely to be most relevant to you. These tweets can be hours (or even days) old, or they may be brand new. It all depends on the relevancy.

So how does my6sense determine this relevancy? A number of ways. The links you click on, the tweets your favorite, the tweets you retweet, the author of the tweets, the keywords in those tweets, etc. It all is monitored by this extension and then used to serve tweets back to you. And it works well. Once the extension got a sense for what I was interested in, pretty much my entire stream became Apple news. Perfect.

The concept is an extension of the mobile applications that my6sense makes for the iOS and Android platforms. Those take into account a few different social signals (Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, etc), and gives you a stream of information you’re likely to care about. And that works because when you’re on the go, you may not have time to read through all of your social streams. Again, it’s the same sort of idea here, but parsing only the ever-flowing Twitter data.

The idea is a good one. A lot of users would value a way to surface tweets based on relevancy rather than simply time. There have been whispers of Twitter themselves working on similar concept as well, but they would likely focus on user relevancy, rather than tweet relevancy. And the truth is that my6sense hopes that Twitter.com is just another stop for their technology.

The Israel-based startup hopes to spread their attention graph across the web to all kinds of different sites. VP of Marketing, Louis Gray, cites Quora as on particular treasure trove of data they’d love to get their hands on.

You can find the Chrome extension here, and the plan is to release a Firefox extension shortly as well to bring the same functionality to a larger segment of the web.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Jibe’s Social Job Board Attracting More Than One Million Monthly Job Views

We’ve covered TechCrunch 50 company Jibe (formerly LocalBacon), which is a next-generation job board that leverages Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter to help job seekers find the best positions in the job market.

Jibe has signed up 25 percent of the Fortune 50 as clients and is announcing that the site has grown 454 percent since the start of 2011, surpassing more than one million monthly job views. In January alone, more than 540,000 job seekers visited JIBE to apply for jobs at Amazon, Bank of America, Intel, AT&T and Merck.

On Jibe, job seekers sign in with Facebook Connect. The platform will then pull in their work and education history from their Facebook profile and from LinkedIn to pre-populate their Jibe profile. Then for every job posting, they can see if they are connected to anyone at that company. Jibe allows members to message those people directly to ask for a recommendation or job advice. Jibe uses a credit system that allows applicants to apply for jobs. Applicants can earn credits by linking their Jibe account to their various social networks, broadcasting their job search, sending private messages through the system, or updating their work history profile.

On the enterprise side, Jibe allows companies to add a social layer to the evaluation and vetting process. And Jibe, which has raised $875,000 in seed funding, says that large companies like Amazon, MTV and HP are adopting Jibe because it can be easily integrated into existing recruiting software.

Job boards are dying as social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook (i.e. BranchOut) take over professional networking and job search. But Jibe actually combines a job seeker’s LinkedIn and Facebook social graphs, which helps the site stand out from competitors.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Hands-On With The Iomega Superhero iPhone Back-up And Charger

I’m a big fan of backing up. Do it all the time. That’s why I’m intrigued by this Iomega Superhero iPhone Back-up solution. It’s basically a charger with an SD card built in. To use it, you have to download a free iPhone app, plug in the included 4GB memory card, and drop in your phone. The app allows you to back up your contacts and other personal info to the card and it charges the iPhone. It also backs up your photos.

Once you’ve installed the app, the entire process is automatic. It produces incremental back-ups after the first, longer initial back-up. A back-up of my own iPhone took about five minutes.

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Gartner: Android OS Sales Trump iOS And RIM, Grew 888 Percent In 2010


Gartner has just released a report on mobile device sales for 2010, and unsurprisingly smartphone sales to end users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010. In terms of the fourth quarter, smartphones accounted for 22.2 percent of the quarter’s 452 million sales in mobile devices. Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009.

The increase in smartphone sales helped push Apple and Research In Motion up in the ranking of global mobile device manufacturers to the No. 5 and No. 4 positions, respectively, displacing Sony Ericsson and Motorola. In Western Europe and North America accounted for 52.3 percent of global smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2010, with smartphones accounting for close to half of all handsets sold in these regions.

Apple sold 46.6 million units in 2010, which marks an 87.2 percent growth from 2009. Gartner attributes this increase to international expansion and the end of exclusivity deals. RIM’s overall mobile phone sales to end users in 2010 reached a total of 47.5 million units, an increase of 38.2 percent year-on-year, buoyed by strong sales in Southeast Asia, the U.K. and the Netherlands. Additionally RIM saw its market share decline from 19.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 13.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Nokia also didn’t fare well in 2010 according to Gartner’s report. In 2010, Nokia’s annual mobile phone sales to end users reached 461.3 million units, a 7.5 percent drop in market share from 2009. And Nokia’s share of the smartphone market dropped 6.7 percentage points from 2009.

In terms of sales by smartphone operating system (as opposed to manufacturer), Android grew 888.8 percent in 2010 and moved to the No. 2 position behind Symbian, whose market share dropped further in the fourth quarter of 2010 to 32.6 percent or 32.6 million units. Apple’s iOS took the No. 4 position in 2010, selling 46.5 million units in the year.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Socialware Lands $3 Million To “Put Social Networks To Work”

Socialware, which bills itself as a social middleware company, has raised $3 million in additional funding from its current roster of investors, which includes FLOODGATE, G-51 Capital and Silverton Partners, bringing its total to $4.8 million.

Socialware provides the technology and social networking compliance tools to enable the highly regulated financial services industry, specifically, to engage with clients and partners via social networks within a solid framework.

The company says it currently services nearly 100 customers, which include five of the top insurance companies in the United States, as well as other major financial brands.

At the helm of Socialware we find Chad Bockius, previously at Bazaarvoice and BetweenMarkets, who started out leading the startup’s marketing and product strategy before transitioning to the CEO role.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Visa Buys Virtual Goods Monetization Platform PlaySpan For $190 Million In Cash

PlaySpan, a virtual goods monetization platform, has been acquired by Visa. According to the release, Visa will pay $190 million in cash for the company, plus additional payouts for performance milestones. The deal comes nearly a year after Visa spent a whopping $2 billion on e-payment company CyberSource. Visa says that the acquisition of PlaySpan complements the CyberSource deal and will extend the company’s presence in digital and mobile commerce.

This is a big exit for PlaySpan, which has raised a total of $46 million in funding since its launch four years ago. PlaySpan has been growing like a weed, striking partnerships with a number of social network, gaming and media companies, including Viacom, Disney, Facebook, Ubisoft, and Sanrio.

PlaySpan’s flagship product UltimatePay is a ‘Monetization as a Service’ platform for apps, games, videos and digital goods. Based on the user’s location, the payments platform draws from over 85 different payment options. Because of its vast variety of payment options (which include PayPal, pre-paid cards, and a number of credit cards), UltimatePay is designed for a global audience. Currently, PlaySpan powers virtual goods marketplaces across 1,000 video games, virtual world publishers and social networks.

The company also recently launched a mobile version of UltimatePay, which gives smartphone developers a way to deliver a one-click payment experience to mobile gamers, and provide a comprehensive payments offering. The mobile focused platform allows players to view their balance and transaction history, while allowing them to purchase items in-app without ever having to leave the game.

As virtual goods becomes a booming business, PlaySpan has reaped the benefits of technology and media companies looking to incorporate virtual goods into their platforms.

Visa says that ecommerce sales, which reached an estimated $948 billion, are a big growth area for the company. Approximately 45 percent of U.S. online spending takes place on Visa’s network today and for Visa’s fiscal first quarter 2011, the company reported 25 percent year-over-year growth in ecommerce payment volumes globally. Visa is going to use PlaySpan to capitalize on the growing digital goods market, which generated an estimated $25 billion in consumer spending globally in 2010 and is expected to reach $280 billion by 20143.

The acquisition is even more impressive when you conside that the company was founded by 12-year-old, Arjun Mehta, in 2006. PlaySpan is actually run by the teenager’s father, CEO and co-founder Karl Mehta.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Square Goes High Fashion With Vivienne Tam Branded ‘Double Happiness’ Device

It’s not often that I get to write about the intersection of art, design, fashion and technology, but Square has just made my day. Today, in conjunction with New York Fashion Week, Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments startup is teaming up with designer Vivienne Tam to launch a limited edition, branded Square credit card reader.

The brainchild of Dorsey and Jim McKelvey, Square was unveiled last December as a small credit card reader that could turn any iPhone into a mobile cash register. The startup, which just raised $27.5 million in new funding, unveiled apps for the iPad, Android and iPhone. Square has steadily gained traction as a simple payments option for small businesses and is processing millions of dollars a week in transactions.

The branded Square reader is black lacquer-like and features the Chinese symbol for double happiness in red. The design is inspired by Tam’s ‘China Chic’ style and representative of her personal mantra— two characters for happiness (xi) are joined to express the joy of wedded union. As stated in the release, Chinese culture favors equilibrium; yin is balanced by yang. Symmetry is an underlying principle not only in art and architecture, but also in all realms of design, terrestrial or celestial. For Tam, the ‘Double Happiness’ Square represents the two worlds of technology and fashion going hand in hand.

The ‘Double Happiness’ Square will be available on the designer’s website and in her retail stores for $10 (the unbranded Square is available on its website for free). But proceeds of each purchase will be donated to the Happy Hearts Fund, an organization which aims to improve children’s lives through educational and sustainable programs in natural disaster areas.

For Square, this is the first branded partnership, but it’s unsurprising that Dorsey chose to introduce the device into the fashion world. Dorsey is no doubt fashion forward, and is admittedly personally fascinated by the interesection of art and technology. He tells us that Tam’s focus on fitting form factor in day-to-day life parallels his mission with Square.

The technology-forward Tam isn’t new to the gadget scene. She has previously designed branded laptop and netbook computers for HP, as well as headphones.

As for other branded partnerships, Dorsey says it is definitely something the company is looking at when it makes sense. “The Square is something that can be personalzied easily and can be a form of expression,” he explains.

For now, Tam will not actually be using the device to process transactions, but Dorsey says that expanding Square beyond small businesses into larger-scale retail stores could be in the company’s future. “We want to explore larger retail partnerships,” he says, “but that requires more definition in our API.” Dorsey says that as the platform becomes more solid, we will see more retail partnerships later this year integrate with the device as a payments platform.

Information provided by CrunchBase


Video From The Vaults: One Of Steve Jobs’ First TV Appearances

Isn’t this just the cutest thing? It’s Steve Jobs, age 23, getting hair and make-up done for a TV appearance, possibly with KGO-TV in San Francisco. Watch him gape in amazement at the live national feed that is carrying him into homes in California and New York. This is probably the most “aw shucks” you’ll ever find Jobs and it’s a charming portrait of a kid who is definitely on the way up.

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