Music app maker Smule has been one of the longest Android hold-outs, often citing the way Android devices handle audio as a reason it hasn’t embraced the mobile platform. But the company is finally showing Android some love with the release of Songify. Read more »
Engagio, a social inbox that organizes people’s online conversations, is take a big step toward becoming a social network of its own. The Toronto-based start-up is rolling out a handful of new features including the ability to follow the conversations of other users. Read more »
Social marketing platform operator Buddy Media is rolling out a bunch of updates to its suite of tools including a unified social data API, the ability to track conversions and campaigns across their entire social media efforts, and a new mobile content development platform. Read more »
American Express has been using social channels such as Facebook, Foursquare and Twitter to deliver offers that can be synced to a user’s card account. But up until now, there wasn’t one place to find and get recommendations on all those offers. Read more »
New challenges for Square brought by PayPal Here and VeriFone’s SAIL platform show how competitors are trying to target Square and where the upstart may be vulnerable. What does Square need to do to stay in the game? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
After bootstrapping itself for more than five years, New York City-based Behance, an online destination for creative galleries and portfolios, has finally turned to outside funding, securing a $6.5 million investment from Union Square Ventures and a host of investors including Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Read more »
PayPal’s years of experience in online payments is one of its biggest assets as it chases mobile and in-store transactions. But the by product of all that experience — mounds of data — could be an even bigger weapon. PayPal’s chief scientist Mok Oh explains the possibilities. Read more »
In an attempt to move beyond being a provider of deals, Groupon is launching a loyalty program for U.S. consumers and merchants, part of a bigger effort to become the “operating system for local commerce.” Groupon Rewards gives merchants a way to track and recognize loyalty. Read more »
A team ex-AdMob and Google scientists are launching Drawbridge, which allows advertisers to target consumers across desktop and mobile. The company is coming out of stealth mode with $6.5 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital Read more »
Isis, the mobile payment joint venture of AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, has added American Express cards to its wallet. The news helps build more momentum for the Isis payment platform, which now has a broad array of payment cards that will work inside the mobile wallet. Read more »
Jumio, an online payment and image recognition company from Jajah founder Daniel Mattes, has pulled in a strategic $3.3 million investment from Citi Ventures, just a couple months after raising a $25 million round from Andreessen Horowitz. Read more »
Former Huffington Post CTO Paul Berry is leading a HuffPo reunion at SoHo Tech Labs, an incubator that draw support from half a dozen former fellow execs. The team is trying to apply the best practices of the Huffington Post to help create successful start-ups. Read more »
Saygent is bringing its voice sentiment analysis software to Ingenico’s mobile point of sale devices, giving retailers and merchants a way to solicit almost instant voice feedback. For Saygent, this is the first time it’s moving into retail stores with its technology. Read more »
Foursquare plans to offer personalized coupons through a redesigned app in July, part of a larger effort to start making money through the location-based social network. The Wall Street Journal reported that Foursquare will allow merchants to pay for special placement of personalized local offers. Read more »
PayPal is forming a joint venture with Softbank Corp. to help launch its small business mobile payment product PayPal Here in Japan. The joint venture, called PayPal Japan, will help PayPal target PayPal’s $1.7 trillion dollar retail market, which is made up of mostly small businesses. Read more »
While credit card rival MasterCard announced its own digital wallet platform, Visa has some news of its own. It’s launching the first beta of its wallet service V.me with online retailer Buy.com as it prepares to go public with the its payment product. Read more »
No one has really emerged as a leader in helping local businesses retire their old punch cards. Andreessen Horowitz is laying down a $10 million bet on Chicago-based Belly, which launched last year as a provider of customized loyalty programs for small and medium sized business. Read more »
MasterCard is expanding its mobile payment service PayPass into a larger platform called PayPass Wallet Services that will enable PayPal-like online payments and will include APIs for developers to integrate their payment apps and services with PayPass. Read more »
Payment provider VeriFone is doubling down on the small and medium sized market with a new payment open platform called SAIL that will look to give merchants a more flexible tool for conducting transactions. SAIL also puts more big name pressure on Square. Read more »
Sahil Lavingia, a 19-year-old app designer behind Pinterest and Turntable.fm, has built a simple service called Gumroad that lets anyone monetize a link without having to set up their own store. The company announced it has raised $7 million three months after launching. Read more »
Verizon Wireless is partnering with Color to highlight the power of its 4G network. The carrier will offer its customers the chance to use an enhanced version of Color, which will enable live video streaming with audio and double the existing frame rate. Read more »
Angry Birds maker Rovio generated $106.3 million in revenue last year based on the success of three games and a booming merchandising business. The tenfold improvement over the previous is a strong showing for the company as it looks ahead to an IPO next. Read more »
While the latest business trend is in tapping the power of big data, Personal.com is helping people find the potential in wielding what it calls small data, the private information they have about themselves. The company announced a new iPhone app Monday to further its plans. Read more »
A New York plaintiff has filed a class action lawsuit against Nokia and its CEO and CFO, alleging that they deceived the market by issuing false claims about how well the company’s migration to Windows Phone was going. Read more »
Professional social network LinkedIn is looking to bolster its appeal with its core business audience by buying presentation hosting service SlideShare in a deal worth $118.75 million. The acquisition gives LinkedIn another way to connect its users, who are often communicating through presentations and content. Read more »
Boku, one of the leaders in carrier billing, has finally signed a direct billing deal with Sprint, giving it direct integration with all four major U.S. operators. The broad coverage should make it more appealing to merchants and open up potential sales of non-digital goods. Read more »
EBay is putting down roots in New York and has bought up a 35,000 square foot space. The retailer is announcing that it has purchased an entire floor in the Flat Iron district where it will house 200 people in a new technology center of excellence. Read more »
Dan Martell, who recently sold his social marketing start-up Flowtown in October to Demandforce, is launching his next venture called Clarity that lets people get experts and advisors on the phone. The service is launching with a stable of start-up gurus. Read more »
Shopping app NetPlenish is launching today with the promise of giving users a better deal on the bundle of products they regularly buy. Instead of getting a good price on one product, users can see which retailer has the lowest price on their entire shopping cart. Read more »
Smartphones and tablets are driving both in-store and online commerce, but their roles are distinct in many ways. Nielsen shed some light on how consumers are using both devices to aid their shopping. Overall, 79 percent of respondents have shopped using their smartphone or tablet. Read more »
News and talk radio app Stitcher, is gearing up for the presidential elections with a dedicated election service for users to follow their favorite candidate and get elections news from select sources. The app can even transcribe reports so users can jump to particular topic areas. Read more »
Brands and publishers face quite a challenge in capturing the attention of distracted consumers because it’s hard to pinpoint where to target a marketing message when people are constantly moving across different forms of media. But for New York-based SocialFlow, there’s opportunity in the chaos. Read more »
The Pebble smartwatch, which has become the biggest Kickstarter project ever, is getting its first app partner and it’s a well known name among fitness fans: RunKeeper. RunKeeper users will be able to conduct their activity from the Pebble watch with their smartphone tucked away. Read more »
While Spotify has been churning out news, one question kept popping up: when are we going to get an iPad app? Well, Spotify is finally obliging, giving premium users a polished iPad version that it hopes can rule the living room. Read more »
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said there’s still a gap that needs to be bridged between user awareness and user engagement on the platform. Twitter is working to address that gap with a new Discover Tab that will provide even more personalized content for users. Read more »
A year after eBay bought mobile ad network WHERE, it’s ready to show how it will put the Boston startup to work. WHERE will become PayPal Media Network, as it moves beyond serving location-based mobile ads to offering inventory across eBay’s different online properties. Read more »
Three years in, Kickstarter has raised $200 million for 22,000 projects. But the platform is evolving from just a patronage service for artistic projects to a store front for products. Technology and design products now account for 15 percent of all funds raised. Read more »
SigFig, a product born from portfolio tracker Wikinvest, is finally launching formally Tuesday. The free service allows users to sync all their investments and monitor them in real-time from one dashboard with extensive analysis conducted in the background to help find where users can save money. Read more »
SignPost, a New York start-up, that helps craft online marketing campaigns for local businesses is getting more money to expand its efforts. Spark Capital is leading a $3.75 million Series A round in the three-year-old company. Read more »
V.me, Visa’s digital wallet competitor to PayPal, is scheduled to debut this fall in the UK, France and Spain. It will be an online payment service at first but the bigger plan is to make it an in-store tool for transactions using NFC. Read more »
