The second round of funding was led by Battery Ventures. The company previously raised money from the fbFund, a $10 million seed fund and joint venture run by Facebook, Founders Fund and Accel Partners.

Nisan Gabbay, founder and CEO of Sociable Labs, said Sociable is exploring what social commerce means, and from what he’s determined so far, he doesn’t believe it means people shopping on Facebook.

Rather, he thinks the most value lies in connecting to friends on actual retail sites to share recommendations.

For instance, it would be helpful if people could see which of their friends are registered to run in a 5K when signing up for the race, or if anyone they know has stayed in a particular hotel in Miami before using a travel site to book a room.

Sociable’s beta customers include Active.com, Chegg.com, Backcountry.com, Rue La La, HauteLook and Sole Society.

“Facebook is focused around entertainment, but it’s not about discovery or an immersive experience,” Gabbay said. “I find that the right experience is to offer the feature set where they already shop online, and by adding social features and the graph into that experience.”

Currently, most social commerce experiences are tied to the “like” button.

You can like a product and have it show up in your news feed on Facebook. But that information is not useful to your friends until they are shopping for something similar, at which point it may not be easy to find.

“Not everything can happen on Facebook,” Gabbay said. “Your friends don’t want to see what you are buying until they are making a decision.”

Privacy protections will obviously be key with this sort of integration and long-term cataloging of consumer purchases. But after a quick look at how Sociable is integrated on Active.com, a Web site dedicated to sports events, it doesn’t feel invasive. It’s information that friends would normally share on Facebook, but which would instantly get lost in the stream of news.

Sociable Labs will charge its lowest-paying customer $50,000 a year for services and licenses. The company currently has 25 employees, and plans to use the funding to deploy the software more broadly and market it, now that it is coming out of beta today.

The innovative social travel site Gogobot is unveiling its Apple iPhone app today, which will give users of the service the ability to post from a location immediately and also to see where friends have been.

In an interview with me last week, co-founder and CEO Travis Katz said that the move is an important one for the Silicon Valley start-up, since on-the-go trip recommendations using smartphones have become increasingly important to travelers.

“You live away from your laptop most of your time, and especially on trips,” he said. “But you also want to preserve those experiences.”

The new travel app, which is now only available on the Apple iPhone, populates to Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio, a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations. You can also send postcards from the app — a la Instagram — to your collections.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Katz said Gogobot would eventually build on other mobile platforms, such as Google Android.

The social travel start-up, Gogobot, has launched an eye-catching new feature to its site.

Called Trip Portfolio, Gogobot is likening the offering (which you can see in the image above) to a scrapbook experience via collections about different destinations on the fly.

Get it? A travel site and on the fly!

But it seems to be more a way to make sharing pages look a lot like a Web version of Flipboard, the innovative social reading app for the Apple iPad.

“We think this gives people a better way to share the narrative and concept of their trip, rather than just through slideshows,” said Gogobot co-founder and CEO Travis Katz.

Gogobot, which launched late last year, has raised $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google Pooh-Bah Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Here’s the official press release from Gogobot about Trip Portfolio:

Gogobot Launches Scrapbooking for the Digital Age

Unique new feature transforms capturing and sharing your vacation via the social graph

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2011 — Gogobot, the fast-growing social travel site that is revolutionizing the way people plan trips by offering users personalized travel recommendations via their social networks, launched today a new and unique feature, the Trip Portfolio. The first of its kind, the Trip Portfolio allows Gogobot users to create beautiful, stylized digital scrapbooks to capture and share all aspects of their travels with friends and families.

“Our travels are important to us, creating memories that are deeply personal and rich with emotion. Until today, however, people have been limited to sharing these memories through online photo albums where the images are preserved, but the context and narrative that gives them meaning is lost. Today, Gogobot takes the world beyond the photo album, launching a revolutionary digital scrapbook that allows users to curate and share all aspects of their travels, packaged into a super user-friendly interactive, crisp and clean design,” said Travis Katz, Gogobot co-founder and CEO.

Called “Collections,” the new feature allows users to share their adventures in a format rich with color and context; an enhanced scrapbook for the digital age. Users can share their photos, reviews and other details about the places they stayed, dined, and traveled from the Gogobot site. The collections also allow users to seamlessly integrate their activities from other social media sites — including their check-ins on Facebook and Foursquare — and professional photos from Gogobot. All of these elements are pages about each place, allowing friends to learn more about the places you visited, see on a map where you were when you caught that sunset, or even make a reservation at the hotel where you stayed. These elements are presented in a clean and elegant format with an interactive map that allows users to share vacations with their social networks in a streamlined, beautifully packaged layout, while making it easy for friends to use this information to plan their own trips.

“Why waste time uploading dozens of untagged, uncaptioned photos? Now you can share all your favorite places and memorable moments in rich detail in half the time. Gogobot’s Trip Portfolio lets you show off the most memorable moments from your trip and helps friends plan their next trip, too,” said Katz.

For businesses that can afford it, the ideal thing to have is a redundant copy of the company’s IT infrastructure. When disaster strikes, the existing gear can fail over to the extra gear and keep things running. The problem is, this means bearing the cost of acquiring and maintaining roughly twice the infrastructure that you need on a day-to-day basis. The costs are numerous: Added staffing, rented space in a data center, energy, bandwidth, etc.

You’d think that by now someone would have figured out how to tackle this problem using cloud computing, and, as of today, you’d be right. An Israeli start-up called Zerto is coming out of stealth mode with exactly this kind of service in mind.

I talked with Ziv Kedem, Zerto’s CEO. He told me that disaster recovery is a problem that’s crying out for a cloud-based solution. “It’s something you only want when you really need it. When you build a disaster recovery system, you have to buy all the servers and storage and all the other things that go into it, and then you have to pay all the operational overhead. It quickly gets expensive and complex to manage.”

Zerto’s approach takes advantage of a key cloud technology — virtualization — running several virtual computers within the confines of one or more physical computers. It used to be that truly vital applications were too important to entrust to a virtual machine, Ziv told me. Now, everything is being virtualized, so, as part of the disaster-planning process, they need to be replicated. Zerto moves the business of replication to the hypervisor, the software used to manage virtual machines. This, he says, is a key capability missing for enterprises that want to rely more on the cloud.

The company is backed by more than $6 million in investments from Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners. Kedem and his brother Oded are the founders. They were behind a previous disaster recovery company called Kashya that was required by EMC for $150 million in 2006 and is now known by the EMC brand RecoverPoint.

Zerto plans to work with several cloud service providers and is currently in testing with three specific cloud companies, though it won’t say yet who they are. It will also work with private clouds. It is also on trial in five large companies — it wouldn’t name them yet, either. But my guess is we’ll be hearing more from Zerto later this year.

The Boston-based company has just closed a round totaling $165 million from Battery Ventures, Great Hill Partners, HarbourVest Partners and Spark Capital.

The funding will go toward expansion both internationally and in the U.S.; for acquisitions; and to support the launch of its new brand, Wayfair.com.

While you may not have heard of the parent company, it’s likely that you’ve stumbled upon some of its major brands, like Cookware.com, Luggage.com and Strollers.com. Going forward, CSN plans to consolidate its more than 200 sites into the Wayfair.com brand in late summer.

Its two other brands of focus are AllModern.com, which offers modern design, and JossandMain.com, which is CSN’s new flash sale site offering high-end items for the home at up to 70 percent off.

In a release, CSN’s CEO and co-founder, Niraj Shah, said the company has been profitable since 2002 despite aggressive growth. The company said it expects revenues to surpass $500 million, increasing from $383 million in 2010.

With 800 employees now, CSN could reach 1,000 staffers by year’s end.

Shah said with the additional cash, the company will be able to grow even faster. “Looking ahead four or five years, we think with the help of our investors, we are on the path to becoming a much larger, publicly traded company,” he said.

CSN estimates that the U.S. home goods market for furniture, decor, housewares and home improvement industry is more than $500 billion, but only a small percentage has gone online. CSN said it attracts more than 100 million visits to its sites every year and offers more than three million items from 5,000 brands for sale.

The round was led by Bridgescale Partners with participation from Battery Ventures.

The Dallas, Texas-based company believes it can sell the custom shirts at regular retail prices because it doesn’t pay for the shirt to be made until it’s sold.

In addition to the round of funding, J. Hilburn announced it is also launching a new line of custom suits, which will be sewn in Europe using luxury Italian wools.

The collection of suits joins its selection of dress shirts and trousers as well as off-the-rack sweaters, polos and other accessories.

The company said it has hit a number of recent milestones, including selling 60,000 shirts in 2010, and growing revenues by two and a half times year over year. In the past six months, it has added 10,000 customers.

Other new e-commerce companies that are taking an approach to selling men’s clothing online include Bonobos, which recently raised $18 million, Indochino, which raised $4 million, and Gilt Groupe, which launched a full-priced men’s clothing site.

The acquisition for Zynga, which is also aggressively hiring, marks its 14th in the past 12 months. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In this case, Zynga is acquiring the company’s games in addition to its employees. With other recent acquisitions, Zynga was only interested in the talent. For instance, in March, it “acqhired” six employees from Boston-area Floodgate Entertainment.

It’s unclear what will be the fate of DNA’s games, which attract a fairly small audience on Facebook, or roughly 288,431 daily users and 2.4 million monthly users, according to AppData.

DNA games, which is based in San Francisco, was funded by Battery Ventures and Bain Capital Ventures, and raised around $2 million in venture capital. It was founded in 2009 by Jon Lee and Shaun Haase.

Zynga said DNA’s team will be the basis for a studio focused on creating new games. Lee will be a general manager, reporting to Mark Skaggs, Zynga’s SVP of product development.

I wrote about the company last month, noting that a number of travel applications have launched recently to take advantage of booking rooms or flights while on the go.

HotelTonight’s round was led by Battery Ventures with participation from Accel Partners and First Round Capital. Additional investors include travel industry veterans Rich Barton and Erik Blachford, both formerly of Expedia, Brad Gerstner, the founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital, and former Farecast CEO Hugh Crean.

Since launching in January, HotelTonight’s app has been downloaded more than 300,000 times.

The company said it will use the capital to expand the product to new mobile platforms, add new features, support marketing campaigns and expand into new markets.

The HotelTonight app is free and currently available on the iPhone. New customers receive a $25 credit toward their first booking. The app provides last minute hotel rooms at discounted prices in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, D.C., Miami, Seattle, Dallas, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Denver.

After roughly nine months of antitrust scrutiny, the justice department has approved Google’s acquisition of ITA, acting quickly before the government faces a potentially shutdown due to budget disputes. And, not surprisingly, all parties involved are claiming victory.

Google announced an agreement to acquire ITA Software, a Cambridge, Massachusetts flight information software company, for $700 million in July 2010.

The acquisition was immediately identified as a threat to companies, such as Kayak and Orbitz, which rely on ITA’s data. Likewise, the federal regulators took the opportunity to take a close look at the deal’s ability to fuel Google’s continuing search dominance. However, the deal was largely expected to be rubber stamped because it represented a vertical expansion for Google, and not a gain in general market share.

The concessions laid out by the Department of Justice today has calmed the nerves of the deal’s harshest critics.

“This is a clear win from our perspective,” said Tom Barnett, counsel to Expedia, and former head of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Justice Department during a call organized by FairSearch.org, an advocacy group that opposed the acquisition. “We are very happy about that, but we are also aware of the fact that this is one transaction in one section of the Internet. We do think that it’s important that people bare that in mind and remain vigilant.”

The two biggest concerns by ITA’s customers was that the company’s data would remain available to them and that Google would not have access to their proprietary data.

Under the terms of the agreement, the department will require Google to establish internal firewall procedures to ensure competitors’ intellectual property and that ITA’s customers will be able to extend their contracts into 2016. New customers are also ensured that they will be able to license ITA’s software on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” into 2016. What’s more, the proposed settlement provides for a formal reporting mechanism for complainants if Google acts in an unfair manner.

On the same call, Kayak’s Chief Marketing Officer Robert Birge, said that Google’s likely happy with the terms because it got what it ultimately wanted — to acquire ITA. But that doesn’t mean that the terms weren’t vigilant enough to make customers of ITA happy, too.

“Their deal got cleared, so of course they are going to spin it how they like, but the Justice department has taken action to ensure competition. We are still looking at the specific details, but from a cursory look, it’s clear they protected our access and have protected our own proprietary technology that we’ve developed over the past seven years. It’s unambiguous to us that this is pleasing to us.”

We’re sure the deal’s closure after nine months also is pleasing to ITA’s investor list.

As soon as the court accepts the Justice Department’s proposal, you can imagine the $700 millions being distributed to all parties involved. In 2006, ITA closed $100 million in equity investment. Its investor list includes: Sequoia Capital, Battery Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, PAR Investment Partners and Spectrum Equity Investors.

In a short statement by Google, Jeff Huber, Google’s SVP of Commerce and Local, was enthusiastic about the Justice Department’s actions: “We’re moving to close this acquisition as soon as possible, and then we’ll start the important work of bringing our teams and products together. We’re confident that by combining ITA’s expertise with Google’s technology we’ll be able to develop exciting new flight search tools for all our users. Up, up and away!”

This doesn’t mean that Google is entirely in the clear.

As Digital Daily’s John Paczkowski wrote earlier this week, Larry Page has a lot to look forward to as his tenure as CEO, such as a European probe of the company’s search and advertising operations, a Texas investigation into allegations of “manual overriding or altering of” search result rankings, and perhaps that long-in-the-works Federal Trade Commission probe.

But the current market tempts VCs to change the game plan by buying shares of late-stage Web companies wherever they can find them–from start-ups directly or from employees and previous investors.

VCs didn’t start the fire; folks like Yuri Milner from Digital Sky Technologies (Facebook, Zynga, Groupon) and private company marketplaces that help stave off IPOs, like SecondMarket and SharesPost, did.

But these new Web giants’ valuations just keep going up. Think Facebook’s valuation was bloated at $50 billion? After seeing huge demand at that price, a month later, the company is exploring selling employee shares at a $60 billion valuation.

Watching those numbers rise so quickly makes VCs lose their hang-ups about price and just want to get in on the hotness.

Kleiner Perkins is reportedly buying $38 million worth of Facebook shares from existing shareholders at a $52 billion valuation, according to VentureWire. Meanwhile, Andreessen Horowitz bought $80 million worth of Twitter shares on the secondary market, after not participating in the company’s recent $200 million funding round, led by Kleiner Perkins.

Both those firms, along with Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners, also invested in Groupon’s last huge round, after the daily deal site walked away from talks of a $6 billion buyout by Google.

It’s not just the big names doing such deals. Venture capitalists were the buyers in more than 40 percent of transactions on SecondMarket in the fourth quarter of 2011.

VC activity easily outpaced other buyers, which were individuals, hedge funds, mutual funds, secondary funds and asset managers.

According to SecondMarket Head of Public Affairs Mark Murphy, VCs representing the largest percentage of buyers is a recent trend that started in the third quarter of 2010.

This comes at a time when raising money for a VC firm is tougher than ever.

What are VCs buying on SecondMarket? Facebook accounts for the single largest portion of transactions, at 39 percent. After that are LinkedIn, Etsy, Chegg, Epocrates, Silver Spring Networks, CafePress and Reply, and some other companies that declined to be named.

SecondMarket does not share pricing or volume stats or trends, except to say it sold $157.8 million worth of stock in the fourth quarter, up from $75 million in the third quarter.

Some VCs are steering clear of secondary markets and late-stage deals. Redpoint’s Geoff Yang was willing to go on the record about it in a recent interview. “What do venture capitalists know about being a momentum hedge fund?” he said.

It’s not just proven hits big enough for the secondary markets that are attracting funding interest. Everyone is still eager to find the next Groupon or Zynga. The Q&A site Quora, led by former Facebook CTO Adam D’Angelo, raised $11 million at a valuation of $86 million last year before it had even launched to the public. After success with early adopters, the start-up is now fending off offers of much more money than that.

So there’s pressure to either get in very early, or get in late if you can, because the time in between is fleeting.

VCs are also actively trying to get more involved in seed funding deals. For instance, Google Ventures recently set up its Startup Lab to attract early-stage companies where it charges them $5 per month for office space (see our video tour). And just this morning, NetworkEffect covered how VCs are actually more active than angels on the early-stage investment matchmaking service AngelList.

To be sure, the pressure is on for Groupon to become the household name for daily deals.

Awareness of LivingSocial recently spiked after the company leaned on its investor Amazon to stage a one-day deal that offered a $20 gift card for 10 bucks. Likewise, after Groupon spurned Google’s $6 billion takeover offer, the search giant is likely to build a daily deals competitor of its own.

So, when the Pittsburgh Steelers face off against the Green Bay Packers on Sunday, we know who will be paying really close attention to Groupon’s debut TV appearance.

Not just the viewers, who pay notoriously close attention to the interstitials, but Groupon’s investors, like Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, all of which will be curious to see where their nearly $1 billion is going.

The idea of a Super Bowl commercial is smart if the cards are played right.

“The Super Bowl is an incredibly powerful venue for new and emerging companies. It’s a chance to step out on a national stage,” said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, who blogged about some of the companies trying to make a big splash at this year’s game.

Since the company’s business is being replicated by dozens of clones in every major city, to varying degrees of success, it’s all about creating exposure and name recognition. ”Google has all the resources in the world. It’s hard to fight someone like that unless you have something to protect you….All you really have is a strong brand to fall back on,” Calkins said.

But it is not exactly a touchdown. There have been fumbles, and private companies backed by millions of dollars bring up bad memories of the dot-com days, when start-ups and newly minted IPOs failed to deliver on their promises.

Groupon will also have the hard job of creating an effective advertisement that tells its story without being too artsy.

“They’ve got a big creative challenge ahead to explain the product and deliver a benefit in a way that breaks through in the Super Bowl. If they aren’t careful, they will run an ad creative that’s interesting but doesn’t explain the product,” Calkins said.

UPDATE: Groupon posted one of the commercials it rejected today on its blog, which is confessions of a Groupon addict.

Groupon is not providing any of the details–like whether there will be a star or how it will explain what the company is all about–but it has hired CP+B and Publicis Groupe’s Starcom as the lead agencies to do the heavy lifting.

Whatever Groupon does, expect it to have a viral component that extends the momentum after the 30 seconds is up.

Take CP+B’s genius stunt it pulled for Burger King called the “Whopper Sacrifice.”

The campaign gave Facebook users an excuse to dump some of the random childhood buddies or co-workers that had friended you over the years in return for a free Whopper. If users removed 10 friends, they’d get the burger.

Only four days after launch, tens of thousands of people had been sacrificed.

On the flip side, it also runs the risk of selling something so well that it can’t meet the demand.

“If I were Groupon, I would have some pretty big offers coming up over the next week. If the ad is successful at bringing new customers to the site, you then want them to have a good experience,” Calkins said.

Groupon will also have to deal with a surge in traffic, or a spike in first-time orders that could result in a high number of customer service inquires.

When LivingSocial conducted its Amazon gift card offer, it learned this the hard way. The company’s systems were overloaded, leading to delayed confirmation emails, credit-card charges and customer service responses. It also had to weed out people who were trying to game the system by trying to buy more than one gift card. The surge can all be explained by the hundreds of thousands of novices hitting the site all at the same time.

Groupon’s commercial in the Super Bowl almost didn’t happen, managing to nab spare airtime only at the last minute, AdAge reports.

It’s banking on the spot to give it a nice bump. For last week, Groupon.com received about half, or 58.5 percent, of all U.S. visits when looking at a category of “group-buying sites.” LivingSocial received 25 percent, reports Experian Hitwise. Total visits for each of them were 5.45 million and 2.33 million, respectively. The Super Bowl viewership is orders of magnitude more. On Sunday, it’s supposed to beat last year’s record of more than 100 million viewers.

Much of Groupon’s publicity before this came from its high-profile business moves, which the company used to its best abilities to attract a mainstream audience. For example, the drama of Groupon’s rejection of Google resulted in at least two high-profile TV appearances for CEO Andrew Mason–the “Today Show” and “Charlie Rose.”

Next week, at the DLD conference in Munich, Germany, BoomTown will be interviewing one of my favorite start-up CEOs: Andrew Mason of Groupon.

And what’s my very first question for the adorkable toast of the digital town, who has just collected a billion dollars in funding, giving his hot social buying site a $4.75 billion valuation?

No, it’s not about what Mason is going to do with all that moolah.

Not, it’s not about why Groupon spurned the $6 billion acquisition offer from Google (and the Yahoo one before that).

No, it’s not about what hair care products Mason uses to get his hair looking so much like Justin Bieber’s coif.

Most of all, what I want to know is how he’s going to manage his ridiculously large–and, let’s be honest, very opinionated–investor group, which is made up of a big chunk of the digital arena’s most prominent VC firms, institutional investors and angels.

Consider the list, which is much more diverse than Facebook’s at a similar time in its gestation (and, in fact, it feels a lot like the social networking site’s current investor stampede):

Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group (formerly DST Global), Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group, Morgan Stanley, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis and others.

(How in the world is the ubiquitous Ron Conway not shoved in this pig pile? Or is he?)

And, of course, the inevitable Allen & Company acted as financial advisor for this massive funding, which also feels like a bit of a private pre-IPO.

It will be interesting to see exactly whom among this shareholder group that Mason and the other top Groupon execs will listen to and who will have the most influence over the next year.

None of the new moneybags got a board seat, which is probably a good thing. As most entrepreneurs know all too well, investors can be a tricky thing–at once helpful and then not so much.

Mason, a clearly gifted exec, certainly has his hands full now, managing expectations for the fast-growing company, as well as the business itself.

Let’s hope that now that this surreal investor sideshow circus is over, that Groupon’s precious time can be focused on just that.

Groupon has finished raising its nearly $1 billion round of financing, after weeks of noisy speculation.

Coming after its non-marriage-to-Google soap opera, let’s hope it can now go back to running a social-buying business.

The daily-deals site that snubbed Google’s $6 billion takeover offer said it will use the funds to fuel global expansion, invest in technology and provide liquidity for employees and early investors.

With this much cash on the table, there’s a huge consortium of investors participating in what is a second tranche of recent funding.

Those investors include: Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake and Technology Crossover Ventures.

Allen & Company LLC acted as financial adviser.

Groupon’s previous investors included: New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group (formerly DST Global).

For the past few weeks, the news has been dribbling out. First, it was rumored that Groupon was looking for the extraordinary sum of $1 billion.

Then it was confirmed that nearly half the round had been raised–with much of it going to buy out current shareholders (presumably to make them happy after turning away Google’s mega buyout offer).

Those investors included: T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, Capital Group and Morgan Stanley.

And now this financing is all over, making it a very extraordinarily large round of private equity completed in a very short period of time.

Groupon will most likely have enough funds for its most aggressive expansion plans.

But the question now is whether this will keep it happy as an independent company, leading to an IPO, or will spur other offers of acquisition at even higher valuations?

Let’s not forget that Groupon continues to compete head-on with Amazon-backed LivingSocial, which recently garnered a much smaller cash infusion of about $180 million.

Here’s Groupon’s official press release with a hipster goofy headline–let’s hope the company’s future performance isn’t as silly:

Groupon Raises, Like, A Billion Dollars

Investment to Continue Rapid Growth of Global Social Commerce Platform

CHICAGO–Today Groupon announced that it has completed a $950 million round of financing. Groupon will use the funds to fuel global expansion, invest in technology, and provide liquidity for employees and early investors.

The financing consists of several venture capital firms and late-stage investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Battery Ventures, Greylock Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Mail.ru Group, Maverick Capital, Silver Lake, and Technology Crossover Ventures. Allen & Company LLC acted as financial advisor. Previous funding rounds were led by New Enterprise Associates, Accel Partners, and Mail.ru Group (formerly DST.)

In the last year, Groupon has been called “the fastest growing company ever” by Forbes Magazine and “America’s best website” by one of Groupon’s television commercials. In 2010, Groupon:

• Expanded from 1 to 35 countries

• Launched in almost 500 new markets (from 30 markets in 2009)

• Grew subscribers by 2,500% from 2 million to over 50 million

• Saved consumers over $1.5 billion

• Worked with 58,000 local businesses, serving over 100,000 deals worldwide

“We’re thrilled that Groupon has earned the confidence of some of the world’s most respected investment firms,” said Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon. “With their support, we will continue on our mission to change the way people shop locally and serve the world’s local businesses.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110110/groupon-closes-out-nearly-billion-dollar-round/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101228/duh-groupon-will-raise-more-capital-will-it-be-950-million/ http://allthingsd.com/20101228/duh-groupon-will-raise-more-capital-will-it-be-950-million/#comments Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:23:51 +0000 Tricia Duryee http://emoney.allthingsd.com/?p=1019 After snubbing a $6 billion buyout offer from Google, Groupon is raising more money.

Of course. But has it raised nearly $1 billion?

That’s the number being thrown around today by VCExperts, which claims to have seen documents filed by Groupon with the Secretary of State’s office.

And our sources say that’s the right number, with the company’s valuation placed at $4.75 billion, but that the deal hasn’t firmed up yet, and it doesn’t involve any one major new investor. A Groupon representative declined to comment on the report.

In the meantime, Groupon has the gigantic round it raised eight months ago to lean on. BoomTown’s Kara Swisher reported in April that Groupon raised $135 million at a $1 billion valuation.

The big thing that’s likely changed since then is the company’s run-rate, now at $2 billion annually (up from the previously reported $500 million).

The group-buying site, which offers consumers discounts of 50 to 70 percent on things like trips to spas and restaurants, already has a plethora of investors.

It has raised money from the same Russian investors that backed social networking powerhouse Facebook and game phenom Zynga, as well as from Digital Sky Technologies and Battery Ventures. In December, Groupon nabbed $30 million in its second round of funding, led by Accel Partners.

The money in April was being set aside for growing the business and getting ahead of its numerous rivals.

One investment source that has since dried up is Amazon, which decided to back Groupon’s nearest rival, LivingSocial, with $175 million. Kleiner Perkins has been named as a potential candidate, but it would also be nice to see a deep-pocket media company step in.

Newspapers, specifically, have been hard hit by a shift in local advertising and classifieds. A Groupon partnership could make it less appalling that they’ve missed yet another trend.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101228/duh-groupon-will-raise-more-capital-will-it-be-950-million/feed/ 3 http://allthingsd.com/20101129/googles-groupon-offer-5-3-billion-with-700-million-earnout/ http://allthingsd.com/20101129/googles-groupon-offer-5-3-billion-with-700-million-earnout/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 06:58:13 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37775

According to sources close to the situation, Google has offered $5.3 billion for Groupon, in what would be its largest acquisition yet, if completed.

Sources said the deal for the Chicago-based social buying site seems likely to be struck, even as early as tomorrow, although it certainly could fall apart right up to the end.

But, if done, it will move the search giant instantly to the top spot in local commerce online and give it huge troves of data about consumer buying habits and merchant information across the globe.

Combined with its pending $700 million acquisition of ITA Software, the travel data firm, that should freak out regulators worldwide and could be considered Google’s own version of a jobs plan for antitrust lawyers.

That said, it is a killer move for Google–despite the high price–given it has long tried to enter the local advertising space, with decidedly mixed results.

With its more than $33 billion in cash and strong stock, it had previously tried to buy local reviews site Yelp, in a deal that fell apart for reasons that are still unclear.

In contrast, Groupon, founded in 2008, has taken off like a Roman candle and dominates the huge market for social shopping and discounting.

While the $6 billion Google is considering paying seems high, Groupon’s fast-growing revenue and profitability make its multiples less daunting, said those familiar with the matter.

It will certainly be a big payoff for Groupon’s investors, including Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners, as well as Battery Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and Russia’s DST Global.

Groupon has gleaned about $170 million in venture funding from them, most of which it has not needed.

That’s because it has reportedly attracted upward of $50 million in monthly revenue.

It has done this by offering “daily deals”–getting a massive discount from local retailers in return for delivering customers via marketing via email and on social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter.

Typically, local merchants rely on less effective newspaper circulars or paper couponing.

In what will certainly be one of the deal’s ironies, Google could own a start-up that is largely powered by rival Facebook’s massive skein of social networking connections.

Facebook, of course, recently introduced its own Facebook Deals offering.

BoomTown first wrote about the deal discussions between Groupon and Google two weeks ago, noting the price would be well above the $2 billion to $3 billion offered by Yahoo.

That interest from Yahoo, which was first to sniff around the fast-growing social buying site, was first reported here too–mostly because I apparently like to stalk Groupon CEO and Justin Bieber lookalike Andrew Mason.

(And I will personally be fascinated to see how he’ll mesh with Marissa Mayer, the former search experience head who is now leading local for Google.)

The New York Times–which does not ever seem able to give credit, as All Things Digital and other blogs always do happily and without fuss–is also reporting a $6 billion price tag for Groupon.

While we all await the outcome of this potential blockbuster of a deal, here is a video interview I did with Mason this summer in Vancouver, where I asked him specifically about Google’s interest (actually, I suggested he mug Google co-founder Larry Page for dough).

Note the Bieber haircut:

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101129/googles-groupon-offer-5-3-billion-with-700-million-earnout/feed/ 30 http://allthingsd.com/20101129/if-google-buys-groupon-itll-be-a-windfall-for-investors-bankers-and-regulators/ http://allthingsd.com/20101129/if-google-buys-groupon-itll-be-a-windfall-for-investors-bankers-and-regulators/#comments Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:33:39 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37734

If Google does manage to close the deal to buy Groupon–acquisition discussions flagged by BoomTown 10 days ago–it will be at a cost that is likely to be much more than the $2.5 billion price tag being floated in the latest batch of rumors.

It’s not just that the deal will likely come in at a higher number–upwards of $3 billion, according to sources I have spoken to–which will mean a big payoff for Silicon Valley’s Accel Partners, Boston’s Battery Ventures and Russia’s DST Global.

Or that this deal will net New York bankers used on each side–Allen & Co. for Groupon and Morgan Stanley for Google–sizable fees.

It’s because as soon as it purchases the social group buying phenom, the search giant will be buying a whole lot of pricey regulatory scrutiny too.

That cost will be, many think, much deserved and will definitely not come at any discount, given the rising worries in Washington about the swaggering power of Google.

After ever-testier brushes with federal regulators–including over an overreaching attempt to join with Yahoo in search and online access to copyrighted books–Google narrowly missed getting approval for its $750 million purchase of mobile advertising start-up AdMob.

That deal was only saved after Apple made enough noise in the same space to take the focus off the controversy.

And let’s not forget Google suing the feds earlier this month over being excluded from competitive bidding to provide email and collaboration technology to the Interior Department’s 88,000 employees.

More seriously, Google has come under fire recently from numerous critics for its proposed purchase of huge flight data firm ITA Software for $700 million.

Those opposed to the acquisition, on antitrust grounds, contend that Google would control travel search in a way that would inevitably invite abuse.

The government, of course, is looking over the whole deal now.

Having Groupon in its arsenal would garner Google even more powerful pricing information from both customers and merchants across the globe.

That would in the lucrative local commerce arena. Currently, despite a plethora of clones, Groupon dominates socially fueled couponing across cities worldwide.

Owning the hot space around local purchasing and consumer information, combined with the social element, would be a tasty treat for Google.

The Silicon Valley search giant has struggled to deliver social tools to users, even as Facebook has morphed into a potent rival.

Google had looked at social reviews site Yelp for purchase previously, but that deal fell apart.

It has been introducing its own various local advertising and commerce efforts, which would be instantly turbocharged given Groupon’s much quicker progress.

In April, Groupon garnered a valuation of well above $1 billion in a massive venture funding.

It has used that money to buy up companies in the U.S. and internationally, trying to solidify itself as the major player in the marketplace.

If Google were to complete a deal to buy Groupon, it would have echoes of its purchase of YouTube in 2006 for $1.6 billion.

Many felt it a high price at the time, but it looks cheap now given how the site almost completely dominates Web video.

If that deal were to be struck today, of course, it is unlikely regulators would allow such a purchase to sail through the approval process so easily.

Thus, it will be interesting to see how they will react to a possible hook-up with Groupon, which–in many ways–is perhaps the most aggressive of Google’s moves to date to own valuable data up and down the food chain.

And, like I said, this particular move to buy discounting online could be one of its costliest too, in more ways than one.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101129/if-google-buys-groupon-itll-be-a-windfall-for-investors-bankers-and-regulators/feed/ 6 http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:00:12 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37340

Last week, BoomTown sat down with former Myspace exec Travis Katz to talk about the private beta launch of his new start-up, Gogobot.

No, it’s not a robot from Google–it’s a social travel site, which uses friends to enhance the travel-planning experience.

The name means nothing really except that it sounded energetic and adventurous to Katz, with a bit of tech mixed in.

While in a bit of a stealth mode, Gogobot has been a bit of an open secret in Silicon Valley.

Katz and CTO Ori Zaltzman–most recently the chief architect of Yahoo BOSS–started the company earlier this year with a small team.

It garnered $4 million in venture funding from Battery Ventures, Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s Innovation Endeavors and angel investors Chris DeWolfe, Keith Rabois and Oren Ze’ev.

Gogobot rides on top of social networking behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter.

Said Gogogot in its press release:

“Unlike other travel sites, Gogobot connects users with friends and people like them for travel advice and links the advice they give in real-time with maps, pictures, pricing and descriptions.”

Essentially, it feels like Facebook for trips, but with really good images.

Currently, Gogobot links users to hotels and other information, but eventually its business plan is to complete reservations and garner lead generation revenues.

We’ll see how it goes, but the online travel business, despite being huge among consumers, certainly could use some updating and organization–and some innovation.

Here’s the video interview I did last week with Katz–who ran international operations for Myspace–talking about where Gogobot is traveling to:

And here are a pair of screenshots for the service (click on the images to make them larger):

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/gogobot-ceo-travis-katz-talks-about-beta-launch-of-social-travel-site/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20100621/funds-invest-in-privacy-start-ups/ http://allthingsd.com/20100621/funds-invest-in-privacy-start-ups/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 07:00:22 +0000 Pui-Wing Tam and Ben Worthen http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=26241 As privacy snafus mount across companies such as Facebook Inc. and AT&T Inc. (T), venture capitalists have spotted a new market opening and are pumping millions of dollars into privacy-related start-ups.

This month, online privacy start-up ReputationDefender Inc. plans to disclose that it has raised $15 million in new venture funding–even though the company wasn’t actively looking for new cash. SafetyWeb Inc., which helps parents monitor their kids’ online activities, said Thursday it closed $8 million in funding. And Truste, which offers seals of approval to websites that meet certain privacy standards, raised $12 million earlier this month.

Many of the investors include top-tier venture-capital firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Accel Partners. Venture firms such as Jafco Ventures, Atlas Venture and Battery Ventures also have invested in online-privacy start-ups in the past few months.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100621/funds-invest-in-privacy-start-ups/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100528/groupon-deals-for-members-but-what-about-the-investors/ http://allthingsd.com/20100528/groupon-deals-for-members-but-what-about-the-investors/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 12:00:27 +0000 Ty McMahan http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=25524 When asked if it’s truly possible that his portfolio company Groupon Inc. could transform in 17 months from an idea to a business worth more than a billion dollars, New Enterprise Associates Partner Peter Barris chuckled in a way that indicates even he recognizes it may be a dangerous assumption.

But Barris and other investors who accepted a $1.35 billion valuation on the group-buying Web site after a recent round don’t see a return to Internet bubble levels of price inflation. Instead, they think Groupon is one of a new breed of Internet companies worth their weight in gold because of how quickly they can grow.

These days, “you can build a big company, a very, very big [Internet] company,” Barris said. “Business is back to measuring revenue and profits.”

Groupon attracted $135 million in funding, mostly from Russian investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, which has done similar deals with Facebook Inc. and social gaming company Zynga Inc. in the past year. The balance came from new investor Battery Ventures. Early investors NEA and Accel Partners did not reup, but they didn’t take any capital off the table, either.

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]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100528/groupon-deals-for-members-but-what-about-the-investors/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100418/groupon-grabs-135-million-from-dst-and-battery-valuation-above-1-billion-for-social-buying-site/ http://allthingsd.com/20100418/groupon-grabs-135-million-from-dst-and-battery-valuation-above-1-billion-for-social-buying-site/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:07:24 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=26948

Groupon, the social buying site that has become one of the hotter start-ups of late, has gotten a giant round of funding from the same Russian investors that backed social networking powerhouse Facebook and game phenom Zynga.

Digital Sky Technologies is the main funder of the round, but Battery Ventures is also participating.

The money, the company said, will be used to grow the business–and to speed far ahead of numerous rivals–as well as cash out employees and early investors.

Groupon is profitable and has 270 employees.

In December, Groupon nabbed $30 million in its second round of funding, led by Accel Partners.

The innovative Chicago-based service, which launched only a year ago, previously received $4.8 million in funding from New Enterprise Associates, as well as $1 million from an angel investor.

Groupon features a daily deal with a huge discount on a wide range of products and services–from spas to skydiving–in dozens of U.S. cities, including Chicago, Boston, New York and San Francisco, for large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, Groupon–a mashup term for “group” and “coupon”–tries to use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If it reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, Groupon sells coupons to the consumers and collects a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

At the cost of discounting and paying off Groupon, small businesses get a crack at a lot of new customers–think of it as social networking lead-generation or perhaps, the “Social Shopping Network.”

Groupon grew out of a project of The Point, an online community launched in 2007 for organizing group action.

This kind of thing has been tried before, of course, centering on consumers who group together to get discounts on items by purchasing in bulk.

In Web 1.0, there were many group-buying sites, most of which failed badly. One of the more high-profile ones, Mercata, received $90 million in funding from investors, including Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures.

But now the group-buying space has been reinvigorated, with a spate of competitors, some of which are clear copycats of Groupon.

Here’s an interview BoomTown did with Groupon CEO and founder Andrew Mason, one of the more affable and level-headed entrepreneurs around–at least until this megafunding. (Don’t go changing, Andrew!)

I have been quite interested in the innovative Groupon, as I said in that post in March:

“The last time I really was truly bullish on a start-up and its founder–BoomTown’s motto is wait-and-see rather than hype-it-up–was AdMob’s Omar Hamoui. That turned out pretty well, with the sale of the mobile advertising site to Google (GOOG) for $750 million last fall. My 2010 start-up that passes the slightly-less-raised-eyebrow test is Groupon.”

Here’s the video interview with Mason:

Here’s the official press release:

GROUPON RECEIVES $135 MILLION FROM DST AND BATTERY VENTURES

Investment to Support Rapid Growth of Social Commerce Globally

Chicago/Moscow, April. 19, 2010–Groupon, the leading social commerce site, today announced that DST, a leading global internet investment group, will lead an investment round of $135 million in the Company. A portion of the investment will be used to fuel Groupon’s global expansion, and the rest will be used to facilitate liquidity for employees and early investors.

DST comprises the majority of the investment, with participation from Battery Ventures, which is also a new investor in Groupon.

Groupon leverages group buying and social media to provide its millions of customers big discounts on the best local businesses in more than 50 cities across the United States and in Canada. To date, customers have purchased over four million Groupons on deals ranging from spa treatments and golf outings to fine dining and skydiving and have collectively saved over $150 million on these deals.

“Our growth is a reflection of the positive impact Groupon is having on consumers and businesses at a very early stage of the market development,” said Andrew Mason, founder and CEO of Groupon. “We are very pleased and excited to welcome DST and Battery as shareholders and we look forward to benefiting from their vast knowledge and experience of the social media sector as we continue executing on our growth plans in North America and globally.”

“This investment underscores our view that social networking and community based activity will drive, shape and define the web’s evolution in the years ahead,” said Yuri Milner, Chief Executive of DST. “Groupon, with its strong management team, offering and vision, is pioneering social commerce and is redefining the local advertising space. We look forward to being long-term partners of a company that is on a path to becoming a global Internet leader.”

“We’ve followed the social commerce phenomenon for many years, and are thrilled to have the chance to back such a visionary management team,” said Roger Lee, General Partner, Battery Ventures. “They saw a massive opportunity very early, and have executed flawlessly to define it and take the leadership position. We think there is a lot of runway ahead, and are energized to support the team in their quest.”

Founded in November 2008, Groupon has been aggressively expanding to cities throughout the United States, with plans to be in 100 cities by the end of 2010. Earlier today Groupon announced that it has launched its service in Orlando, Fort Worth, Tucson and Toronto, its Canadian city.

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