BetaWorks

News Byte

Quote-Saving App Banters to Shut Down; Founders Jump to Betaworks

Mike Isaac in Social on May 15 at 4:42 pm PT

After struggling to attract a significant user base over the past year, conversation-saving app Banters is closing up shop, co-founder Lauren Leto announced via company blog on Tuesday. Leto and partner Patrick Moberg had raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from the likes of Chris Dixon, Khosla Ventures and SV Angel. The two will join Betaworks — Leto as general manager of the firm’s Findings product and Moberg as a “hacker-in-residence.”

Chartbeat Raises $9 Million for More Real-Time Web Publishing Analytics

Peter Kafka in Media on April 16 at 7:00 am PT

Index Ventures re-ups, and DFJ joins in.

Caterina Fake: Fast Growth for a New Social App Is a Very Bad Thing

Liz Gannes in Social on February 24 at 11:00 am PT

If you get her started, Caterina Fake sounds almost like a professor of social networking philosophy.

Ifttt Raises Funding for Its Digital Duct Tape Service

Liz Gannes in Social on January 4 at 9:01 am PT

Ifttt, a start-up that helps even nontechnical users manipulate and connect Web services to do their bidding, has closed its first funding round.

Saul Hansell Departs AOL to Be EIR at Betaworks

Kara Swisher in News on November 8, 2011 at 1:57 pm PT

The prominent former New York Times writer is aiming to be an entrepreneur, just like the ones he used to write about.

Qwhisper Is Looking to Solve Social Search With a Dose of Uber-Geek

Drake Martinet in News on September 16, 2011 at 11:01 am PT

Ever tried to search Twitter for something relatively simple? Not good? The high-octane brains behind start-up Qwhisper agree.

Exclusive: Backupify Closes $5 Million in Round Led by Avalon Ventures

Arik Hesseldahl in News on September 8, 2011 at 5:20 am PT

Even in the cloud, data gets deleted by mistake. Backupify aims to have your back.

News Byte

Skype Pays Around $85 Million for GroupMe

Tricia Duryee in Mobile on August 21, 2011 at 3:21 pm PT

Skype has agreed to acquire GroupMe, a company that has developed a way for groups of people to send messages to each across various smartphone platforms. People familiar with the transaction say Skype will pay around $85 million for GroupMe, which was founded at a TechCrunch event in April 2010. Early investors include First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures and Betaworks; last fall, Khosla Ventures won a bidding war for a $10 million funding round that valued the company at around $35 million. Skype is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft.

Burp! Bitly Swallows Twitterfeed.

Peter Kafka in Social on August 9, 2011 at 7:00 am PT

This is the opposite of a megadeal, but still worth noting.

Crowdsourcing Platform ChallengePost Raises $4 Million

Peter Kafka in Social on August 8, 2011 at 9:00 pm PT

Start-ups that rely on the Internet as a source of free labor are nothing new. But the idea keeps coming back, in different forms, because it seems to work.