AOL Ventures

Scoutmob Attracts Investors and Partners by Saying It’s Not a Daily Deals Company

Tricia Duryee in Commerce on May 24 at 5:30 am PT

Scoutmob was able to attract $3.25 million in new funding and a major new payments partner by pitching itself as a mobile company and not as a fledgling competitor in the daily deals space.

Video Ads + App Ads = Vungle, a Freshly Minted Start-Up With a Big Pile of Cash

Peter Kafka in Media on May 2 at 8:00 am PT

A start-up that didn’t exist last fall now has a $2 million seed round.

Start-Up SalesCrunch Makes Unsolicited Bid for Cisco Unit WebEx

Arik Hesseldahl in News on March 13 at 4:04 am PT

WIth rumors persisting that its WebEx unit is on the block, Cisco receives a bold offer from start-up SalesCrunch.

NewsCred Raises $4 Million for Its Web-Based Newswire

Peter Kafka in Media on November 30, 2011 at 6:00 am PT

Expensive content on the cheap: A start-up that licenses stuff from the likes of Reuters, Bloomberg and Forbes.

Exclusive: AOL’s Tim Armstrong Says He Doesn’t Want a Yahoo Deal (Video)

Peter Kafka in Media on November 2, 2011 at 8:11 am PT

Meanwhile, his AOL turnaround is still a turnaround.

News Byte

Shopobot Tracks Down Seed Money

John Murrell in Commerce on June 16, 2011 at 11:00 am PT

Shopobot, a service that aims to help consumers time their purchases judiciously by tracking price changes and trends, announced today it had received an undisclosed amount of seed funding from Google Ventures, AOL Ventures, Lucas Nealan, Jump Ventures and several other investors. The company also opened the beta version of its site to the public.

SoundTracking Gives Music Its Own Check-In App (Video)

Liz Gannes in Social on March 16, 2011 at 12:31 pm PT

SoundTracking, the recently launched iPhone app, is a social version of the ambient song recognition technology many are familiar with from apps like Shazam and SoundHound.