On HBO Go, about 75 percent of all viewership is focused on the premium cable network’s original series, as users catch up on current series like Boardwalk Empire or watch older shows like The Sopranos, according to HBO Co-President Eric Kessler. Read more »
A new app from the founders of Tapjoy is emerging to combine mobile and social commerce on iOS and Android devices. The app, called Karma, makes gifting to friends a breeze, by integrating with a user’s social graph on Facebook and suggesting gifts for them. Read more »
Contact management startup Xobni has raised a $10 million round of funding, according to an SEC filing. The company verified the funding and said it was coming from a commercial partner that is investing in Xobni as part of its agreement. Read more »
Online-payments processor WePay has added a new feature to enable its users to quickly and easily create invoices to bill clients. With its “commerce-in-a-box” platform, WePay claims it can help businesses start creating and sending invoices in under a minute. Read more »
Viddy has apparently been pulled from the Apple App Store, not long after quickly rising up the ranks of free video and camera applications available for the iPhone. The removal was due to concerns over adult material that was being posted on the app. Read more »
By the end of 2010, about 50 percent of all Facebook monthly active users were gamers. But that fell to about 25 percent in 2011, as Facebook aggressively added new users. The result is that game makers need to work harder to find and retain users. Read more »
Austin at SXSW is a prime example of the kind of flexibility that Airbnb can provide to both residents and visitors during a major event. With three weeks left before the conference starts, the San Francisco-based startup has already surpassed last year’s bookings. Read more »
News agencies that want to cover events happening in restricted parts of the world have had few options for licensing high-quality content. Cont3nt.com is trying to solve that problem, with a platform to discover and license videos shot by local professionals. Read more »
Google has filed applications for a satellite farm and a video franchise license, suggesting it’s serious about rolling out pay TV services in its fiber-to-the-home markets. But what’s that mean for the future of TV, as Google attacks that market? Read more »
Contacts startup Rapportive has officially been acquired by LinkedIn, the company announced on its blog Wednesday. The deal follows weeks of speculation after rumors surfaced earlier this month. Rapportive will continue to support its popular Gmail plugin, but its acquisition could lead to greater integration with LinkedIn. Read more »
Tiny Review is a photo-sharing app with a twist: instead of adding filters and sharing with your social network a la Instagram, Tiny Review makes it easy for users to add up to three short lines of text to their photos. Read more »
Comcast is rolling out a new streaming on-demand offering called Xfinity Streampix, which will bring more library content to subscribers that pay for its high-end double- and triple-play packages. That could give subscribers less of a reason to also pay for Netflix or Hulu Plus. Read more »
Yelp announced pricing of its planned IPO, with plans to sell 7.15 million shares at $12 to $14 a share. But the important thing is that Yelp has shown there is a real business to be made out of building and growing a community of users. Read more »
Caterina Fake has launched a new startup called Pinwheel, a sort of “Flickr for places.” The startup has raised a $7.5 million Series A Round from Redpoint Ventures, in addition to funding from True Ventures, Betaworks, Founder Collective, SV Angel, Obvious Corp and other angels. Read more »
Social TV startup Loyalize has been acquired by Function(x), the company behind Viggle. According to former Loyalize CEO Todd Greene, the product will remain a white-label platform for networks and content providers to build their own apps to increase engagement with TV programming. Read more »
The latest social-local-mobile app to enter the market is Glassmap, which is like a cross-platform Find My Friends, but with more features and better battery management. The app, created by a YCombinator-backed startup, also provides better privacy, messaging and notifications than the competition. Read more »
A new platform has emerged to create converged applications between the TV, PCs and mobile devices. Clik, which released a mobile app that can connect to any screen with a browser, is also releasing smart TV platform for developers. Read more »
Barney Pell has a new startup. The serial entrepreneur, who sold Powerset to Microsoft, has founded a new company called QuickPay, which aims to revolutionize the way that people find and pay for parking. QuickPay has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Fontinalis Partners. Read more »
Facebook released some metrics around early partners for its app platform, showing how the apps affect their traffic. The results? Partners like Pinterest, Fab.com, Artfinder, Foodspotting and Foodily are seeing large increases in the number of users connecting to their sites. Read more »
A number of companies are emerging to build businesses with recurring revenue streams based on serving up monthly packages of food, beauty, clothing and other products. The so-called subscription commerce market is expanding rapidly — but what’s behind the trend, and why are consumers signing up? Read more »
JTS.tv is launching a subscription video service for independent web series. That will bring ad-free versions of a number popular web series online for the first time ever, with plans to make them available on multiple mobile and other connected device platforms. Read more »
TV Everywhere is giving people access to content they are not actually paying for. I know, because I’m one of them. The question is whether that is stealing — and if it is, is there anything that cable companies can actually do about it? Read more »
Have a DVD that you want to watch while traveling or otherwise away from home? The latest version of the TV Anytime app will let its users rip and transfer DVDs from their desktops to mobile devices for on-the-go viewing. Read more »
Add Amazon Studios to the list of online video providers that could soon release some new original programming. The company is looking to hire creative executives to develop and produce original comedies and kids shows for online and traditional distribution. Read more »
Mobile usage is the fastest-growing part of LinkedIn’s business, but it’s not a big revenue driver — yet. That could soon change, as LinkedIn plans to test out advertising across mobile devices, now that it has gotten the product and user experience right on those platforms. Read more »
Google’s mystery device has been unveiled by The Wall Street Journal as a Sonos-like platform for wirelessly streaming music around the home. But the most important thing is that Google is moving beyond software to making a branded hardware device of its own. Read more »
As Amazon adds more content to Prime Instant Video, some expect the company could create a standalone service to compete with Netflix. But Digital Content Acquisition Head Brad Beale said Amazon will stay focused on the Prime bundle, at least in the near future. Read more »
The Nowbox iPad app takes a unique approach to discovering new videos on the iPad. It lets viewers surf through channels of web video on the iPad in the same way they would click through channels on their TVs. Read more »
Amazon continues to add content to its Amazon Prime Instant Videos service. It announced a deal with Viacom that will bring the number of titles available to more that 15,000, or three times the amount of content it launched the service with. Read more »
Apple is reportedly looking to partner with TV operators for the launch of its upcoming iTV product. Why would it? Because doing so would give it more content, enable it to offer a better user interface, and give it wider distribution. Read more »
Flingo has raised $7 million in a Series A funding round led by August Capital. The San Francisco-based startup, which integrates streaming video and interactive advertising into smart TVs, has also added two new board members: August Capital’s David Marquart and Howard Hartenbaum. Read more »
A survey conducted by BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield shows that Hollywood studios would likely make more revenue with the collapse of movie windows. More importantly, those sales would come with better margins since they wouldn’t be sharing with exhibitors. Read more »
Video discovery startup Taboola has been growing fast, adding top publishing partners like The Washington Post, as well as expanding into the live streaming video vertical. Those new partners have helped drive growth for Taboola, which now reaches more than 100 million uniques a month. Read more »
The latest version of Showyou includes new ways to navigate content by category or by the social network that they’re pulled in from, as well as a way for users to search and see all content curated by hashtag on Showyou and via Twitter. Read more »
YouTube is making a massive investment in original programming. But as it increases the value of the content being produced and uploaded, it needs to get better about helping viewers find it. To do that, YouTube will need to step beyond search tackle the discovery challenge. Read more »
Mobile video startup Klip will now let its users share their videos with just a select group of friends and family. The app maker has enabled this with the rollout of “Circles,” which is what it calls the private groups that users can set up. Read more »
While much of YouTube’s monetization efforts have been based on advertising, CEO Salar Kamangar said the company could potentially create a service that could enable content providers to create their own subscription-based video offerings on the YouTube platform. Read more »
Warner Music Group Chairman Edgar Bronfman, Jr. is a big fan of Spotify. In fact, at the D:Dive Into Media conference, the music mogul touted the music streaming service as a complementary service on top of other sales channels. Read more »
While Hulu was formed primarily as a way for content owners to distribute and monetize content online that would otherwise be pirated, CEO Jason Kilar said Tuesday that there’s more reason for the company to exist now than there was four-and-a-half years ago. Read more »
Elance recently introduced video chat to its users as a new feature embedded directly into the site. That will allow employers and contractors to have face-to-face communication without having to open a different application or video chat client. Read more »
