It might be a marketing tactic, but it’s certainly a refreshing one: Buffer, the app best known for scheduling your tweets and Facebook status updates, candidly explains how they’ve been profitable so far and why they aren’t necessarily looking for more fundraising right now. Read more »
Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann said at GigaOM RoadMap that creating an experience for users to share what they find appealing and beautiful has been a challenge, but nothing like keeping them engaged in an era of shortened attention spans. Read more »
Is it possible for data storage and backup to be a delightful, enjoyable experience? The founders of Recollect, a new backup and archiving service for social media and photos, are hoping to mix design and function to keep users engaged and paying. Read more »
Airbnb, the darling success story of Paul Graham’s Y Combinator, began with a few design guys in San Francisco renting out an air mattress to customers, but the service has grown immensely since then, and Joe Gebbia, the company’s co-founder, said it was all about design. Read more »
With more than 100 million registered users now signed up for Instagram, the company is taking a big step forward with profiles for users on the web, available to anyone with public profiles to share, view, comment and like their images across the web. Read more »
Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom said Hurricane Sandy was probably the company’s biggest moment, with users tagging 800,000 photos with the “#Sandy” hashtag, compared to about 85,000 photos tagged with the Super Bowl hashtag this year. He said they embraced the participatory nature. Read more »
It might look like just a touch of color, but photo filters could represent a significant move on Twitter’s part into the photo space, previously dominated by Facebook and Instagram and one of the most valuable areas on the web. Read more »
San Francisco residents will be able to vote on Tuesday for or against Prop E, a measure that would change how companies in the city are taxed. The measure is widely supported by fast-growing tech companies in the city, who opposed the city’s unique payroll tax. Read more »
What would happen if you put hackers and scientists together and let them play? That’s what Ariel Waldman is trying to find out with Science Hack Day, a wildly popular event that brings together science, design, and technology. Read more »
Path is finally expanding to the iPad, America’s most popular tablet and a natural place for Path’s family-oriented users to head next. In landscape mode, the iPad app allows users to see popular posts of the day, including posts from friends on music, books and movies. Read more »
Dollar Shave Club, the seemingly too-good-to-be-true promise of razors every month for only $1, has raised almost $10 million in a Series A funding round for international expansion (with Canada to start), and growth into other men’s product verticals, although they wouldn’t say which ones. Read more »
Real estate listing company Zillow announces Wednesday that it’s acquired Buyfolio, a NYC-based company that allows prospective home buyers to organize and communicate with brokers as they go through the home search process. Zillow went public in 2011 and focuses on real estate sales. Read more »
500 Startups releases Wednesday the 32 companies making up its fifth accelerator batch. Selected in October, the group will debut at a demo day in February. Notably, the 32 startups have a large number of international and female founders in the mix. Read more »
For local barbers or tattoo artists, launching an advertising campaign on Facebook or Twitter might not come easily. LocBox, a Bay-area startup that came out of AngelPad’s winter 2011 class, has raised $5.1 million to build large-scale marketing campaigns for small-scale businesses. Read more »
With Threadlife, say goodbye to long video editing and finished movies, and say hello to three minute clips that can be pieced together to create a series of videos around a particular topic or idea. Co-founded by a founder of Zappos, Threadlife launches Wednesday on iPhone. Read more »
Originally just targeted at college kids, Wheelz is expanding its peer-to-peer car sharing to San Francisco. While the city already has a plethora of sharing-centric, eco-based transportation options, the folks at Wheelz think they can make serious inroads with their approach. Read more »
As Quora continues to grow and expand as one of the best sites for finding excellent information on totally random, diverse topics, the company is attempting to recognize its best contributors by naming top writers, a group of the most committed users. Read more »
With 90 percent of cruises still being booked offline, there’s huge room for disruption in the online cruise industry. So Cruisewise wants to let you book your cruise vacations online, aggregating 95 percent of the most popular cruise lines in the U.S. and Canada at once. Read more »
8tracks, the social internet radio platform, is continuing to grow by leaps and bounds as it releases a new iOS app Friday that will make it easier for listeners to discover their favorite new tunes. The company now sees 5 million monthly active users. Read more »
For Facebook, the name of the game is getting more social gaming hits, using word of mouth and the new App Center to recommend games to friends that will turn users to players to payers, as company executives said Thursday to reporters in Menlo Park. Read more »
WalkMe has raised $5.5 million to help guide you through the internet, providing clues and information to users before they end up with customer support or sending emails asking for help. Launched in April, the company sees itself as a simpler solution to customer support. Read more »
Email isn’t exactly the sexiest of technologies, but it takes up the majority of our attention, and is screaming for improvement from entrepreneurs. So what’s the hurdle? Tons of clients, and tons of platforms, but here are a couple startups taking a stab. Read more »
The folks at News.me closed their doors to future iOS downloads on Wednesday, saying they would no longer attempt to compete with Twitter in the curation space as the social network closes down on third-party requirements. In other words, another Twitter app bites the dust. Read more »
Where can you find a place to look for genealogy advice, Lucius Malfoy costume ideas, a recipe for pomegranate sauce, and Navy SEAL training all at once? Rewarder, a social site reminiscent of TaskRabbit or Kickstarter, launches with $7 million to fulfill your dreams. Read more »
Tradesy, a new fashion “recommerce” site from the creator of the highly popular site, Recycled Bride, is launching Wednesday with $1.5 million in funding to disrupt the resale business, which has plenty of competitors but no clear winners yet. Tradesy hopes to upset this balance. Read more »
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus announced Tuesday that the company will be cutting five percent of its workforce and closing studios in Boston, as well as reducing investments in its popular series of game in The Ville franchise. Zynga will hold its earnings call Wednesday. Read more »
Apple rolled out new editions of the iMac, its signature desktop computer, at the company’s hardware announcement event Tuesday in San Jose. The iMac comes in two different sizes, and will ship before the holidays, bringing a skinnier new look to a classic device. Read more »
On Tuesday in San Jose Apple executives announced the arrival of the 13-inch MacBook Pro, joining the 15-inch edition announced in June that comes with the Retina display, technology that makes images and applications appear much sharper on the popular laptop computer. Read more »
Burner, the mobile app that allows users to quickly acquire and “burn” cell numbers to increase digital privacy (as well as potentially nefarious activities), has raised a funding round from prominent angel investors to continue expansion and roll out an Android app. Read more »
With $7.5 billion invested in 835 deals, venture capitalists continued a strong quarter of investing in the third quarter, but wit predicted totals for the year likely to come in behind those for 2011, analysts discounted the popular idea that investing is seeing a funding bubble. Read more »
Uber’s attempt to expand its on-demand town car service in New York to the realm of taxis could have reached a roadblock, with The Verge reporting that the company is scaling back the city’s taxi service and asking drivers to return their electronic devices used to operate the Uber system. Read more »
Russ Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content for Amazon, spoke to magazine publishers and editors Monday in San Francisco, where he talked about the particular challenges facing their industry as they slowly move toward digital platforms for publishing and editing. Read more »
For UrbanSitter, the San Francisco-based startup that handles babysitter booking and payments, America’s parents are ready to take their childcare jobs to the web. The company raised a $6 million series A round to continue existing growth into new markets and expand on mobile platforms. Read more »
Storylane is a blogging platform that looks a little like Quora and Tumblr, using attractive design and a simple userface to attack the problem lots of startups have tried to solve: How do you get users to share their stories? The site’s beta product launches Wednesday. Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo talked with advocates for the city of San Francisco Thursday, talking about how Twitter’s move into office space in the city has helped the company keep options for growing larger and allowed employees to be flexible. Read more »
Square CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey wrote Tuesday that he has indeed taken a more limited role at Twitter this year after spending March to December of 2011 working to guide product at the company. Dorsey confirmed a New York Times profile mentioning his role. Read more »
DoxOut, the Macedonian-based company focusing on bringing document functionality to your smartphone and tablet, will be presenting at Gigaom’s Structure: Europe 2012 LaunchPad as one of five finalists in the cloud computing arena. DoxOut wants to let consumers create and edit documents on the go. Read more »
HelloFax CEO Joseph Walla tried out plenty of adventures before taking on the modern office. HelloFax is quickly becoming a go-to solution for digital natives who are asked to use paper, giving them easy solutions for faxing and digitally signing documents. Read more »
Lyft and Sidecar, two popular rideshare services based in San Francisco, received cease-and-desist orders from the state this summer, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, but continue to operate and battle against attempted regulation against their transportation startups. Read more »
Zynga continues to struggle and lowered expectations for the upcoming year as it has seen underperformance in some games and its OMGPOP acquisition. Read more »
