AllThingsD » Foundry Group

Personal Data Connector Singly Raises $7M

Liz Gannes — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:30:13 +0000

Singly, which aims to smooth the process of respectfully including personal data in new applications, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Foundry Group.

Transmitting personal data between applications doesn’t have to be for nefarious purposes. In fact, it’s often something that we users like and encourage — when we sign up for new services, we often volunteer our credentials from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and elsewhere.

Connecting these accounts means we don’t have to type in our personal information yet again in order to try some new thing; we can see which of our friends already use it, and we can cross-post our activities so we’re not constantly manually updating all these different networks.

You don’t have to try very hard to imagine why companies like this.

Singly offers this whole account-connection process as a service to developers, so they can get “merged, normalized and de-duplicated social data” aggregated together from at least 10 different APIs. This is similar to how developers might connect to Factual to get access to public datasets about places.

Singly is still in its very early stages; CEO Jason Cavnar told me that today just three applications are being built using Singly, and they are too young to name. But examples of apps that he thinks would benefit from Singly include any service that is built as an interface on top of existing information about users — like Mint, Flipboard, Showyou, Highlight, Sonar, Greplin, CloudMagic, Tungle, Nimble and Timehop.

Beyond social data, Singly is entertaining visions of connecting to credit card companies, utilities and other sources, all in the name of helping users dole out access to their personal data.

Singly started life as “The Locker Project” and attracted particular interest because co-founder Jeremie Miller founded the open source instant-messaging protocol Jabber. The company continues to open source its data-connection work, while offering it as a service to customers.

Early on, Singly had focused on hosting applications as well, but now it plans to be primarily an API provider, Cavnar said.

New Singly angel investors, along with Foundry Group, include Robert Stephens, the former CTO of Best Buy; Federated Media’s John Battelle; Esther Dyson; and Roger McNamee. Previous seed investors included Venrock, True Ventures, PivotNorth Capital (Tim Connors) and Freestyle Capital.

Amid Increasing Competition, Fitbit Scores $12 Million in Funding

Lauren Goode — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:16 +0000

Fitbit Inc., maker of a popular fitness device that clips to clothing and tracks users’ activity levels, has raised $12 million in Series C funding.

The new round comes entirely from existing investors Foundry Group, True Ventures, SoftTech VC and Felicis Ventures.

The company said it plans to use the funding mainly for hiring and for aggressive product development. Fitbit declined to elaborate further on what type of new product or products it has up its sleeve, except to say that it is now looking ahead to other connected and affordable health-and-fitness devices for the year, and is hiring top engineers to get the company there.

But Fitbit’s next steps — no pun intended — probably need to be very strategic ones.

The funding round comes amid increasing competition from other makers of wear-’em-and-forget-’em data-tracking devices. While Fitbit has been a leader in this area of health-and-fitness tracking, Jawbone, a maker of audio products, launched the $99 UP wristband tracker late last year, which was initially received with enthusiasm. And Nike just introduced its version of a polymer-encased wristband, the FuelBand.

The Jawbone UP has since suffered technical difficulties, forcing the company to refund unhappy customers and temporarily pause production.

But with the $149 FuelBand, Nike has brought big-brand cachet to activity tracking. And Nike isn’t just targeting the serious athlete or runner anymore — it’s going after the casual athlete and the desk jockey, too.

While some fitness devices involve the use of pedometers, accelerometers or galvanic skin-response sensors, Nike’s band promises to combine oxygen uptake with the activity tracked through the device’s tri-axis accelerometer for a high-tech reading. To be fair, it’s not entirely clear yet how that differentiates the FuelBand, and we won’t be able to gauge how well it works until we can get our hands on one and test it.

The Fitbit also uses a three-dimensional accelerometer to measure users’ steps and activity levels. When the $100 Fitbit device launched in 2008, it punched up the idea of the average pedometer, and offered hassle-free, wireless uploading of 24-7 personal analytics and activity data. Fitbit also created a Web dashboard through which users can monitor their activity levels; for $50 a year, Fitbit users can view even more detailed analytics.

In October 2011, the company introduced the Fitbit Ultra, which added a digital clock, a stopwatch and an altimeter that measures elevation gain; a Fitbit iPhone app was launched, too.

San Francisco-based Fitbit, which recently started selling Fitbits in Canada and the U.K., declined to say how many units have been sold to date. In the U.S., the Fitbit recently became available in Target stores through a retail partnership.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month, Fitbit also unveiled the Fitbit Aria, a Wi-Fi-enabled “smart” scale, as Forbes reported here. The company plans to ship the scale starting in April.

(Fitbit photo courtesy of Redefinery/Flickr)

More Money for Mobile Ads: Medialets Raises Another $8.4 Million

Peter Kafka — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 13:15:40 +0000

Mobile ads are a smallish business with very big growth projections, which is why investors are happy to pour money into the industry. Today’s example: Mobile ad start-up Medialets has raised another $8.4 million, bringing the New York-based company’s total funding to $18 million over the last couple of years.

An SEC filing indicates that previous backers Foundry Group and DFJ Gotham have reinvested in the company. And CEO Eric Litman says he brought in new investors as well, but he won’t identify them.

He would offer up some basic metrics on his firm’s growth, though: Medialets now has 70 employees, who are working on mobile ad campaigns that average around $150,000 per buy. Most of that comes from “in-app” ads that run on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platforms, but there is increasing interest in mobile Web advertising as well, Litman says.

Speaking of that: What’s his take on Adobe’s move away from its Flash standard for mobile devices? “I think it’s an awesome opportunity for Adobe to make lots of money getting lots of people to upgrade their tools,” Litman says.

Is he being flip? Nope, he says — he figures that developers who have been building for Flash will simply move to Adobe’s upcoming Edge standard. “When Adobe comes out with new tools, and it’s a reasonable facsimile of what Flash used to do, all those same developers are going to go out and buy it.”

Here’s an example of what Medialets is selling — a Dunkin’ Donuts ad that ran on an EA Scrabble app for the iPhone:

Federated Media Buys Lijit Networks

Kara Swisher — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:00:16 +0000

San Francisco-based Federated Media Publishing said it has bought Lijit Networks, a smaller online advertising analytics and tools firm.

The price for the Boulder, Colo., start-up — which was founded in 2006 — was undisclosed, but it has received just under $29 million in venture funding from firms such as Foundry Group. Federated said Lijit would continue to operate independently, “but in conjunction.”

In an interview yesterday, Federated CEO Deanna Brown said the buy was to round out offerings for its clients and to better compete in a world where most of the online ads go to the top five players.

“I am excited we can give both publishers and advertisers more tools for engagement and monetization,” she said.

Federated, which lost big social-media news site Mashable earlier this year, also benefits from increased scale and inventory of sites.

Lijit CEO Todd Vernon, who will become EVP of technology at Federated, said that it was ever more important for ad-focused firms on the Web to “deliver the entire stack.”

“Lijit has a core competency in the media business, and combined with FM’s best-in-class sales force, we can offer everything needed to do effective online campaigns,” he said.

Here’s the official press release:

Federated Media Publishing To Acquire Lijit Networks

Combined Entity Will Power More than 77,000 Independent Publishers Across the Web Via Comprehensive Advertising, Analytics and Reader Engagement Tools

SAN FRANCISCO, October 4, 2011 – Federated Media Publishing, which powers the best of the Independent Web, today announced the acquisition of Lijit Networks, Inc. Lijit is a leading provider of advertising services, audience analytics and reader engagement tools for online publishers of all sizes. The combined entity will reach nearly 300 million global unique visitors according to Quantcast.

Lijit, headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, will continue to operate independently but in conjunction with the rest of Federated Media Publishing. Lijit CEO Todd Vernon and COO Walter Knapp will take on corresponding EVP of Technology and SVP of Platform Revenue responsibilities at Federated Media Publishing and will report directly to Federated Media Publishing’s CEO, Deanna Brown. Additionally, Lijit board member Seth Levine from Foundry Group will join the Federated Media Publishing board of directors, effective immediately.

With the addition of Lijit Networks’ existing publisher relationships, Federated Media Publishing will now reach more than 77,000 online publishers and nearly 15,000 expert communities, making it one of the largest companies to power publishing on the Independent Web. The acquisition vastly expands the combined company’s inventory of sites, offering premium advertisers improved scale and reach.

Publishers Will Profit and Flourish

Lijit helps publishers more thoughtfully interact with and better understand their audience by providing analytics and engagement tools that build deeper relationships, lengthen time on site and increase page views. These robust and actionable audience analytics and reader engagement tools leverage intent, behavior and demographics to help publishers of all sizes increase revenue and better engage their readers.

Additionally, the combined advertising services provided by FM and Lijit will give publishers of all sizes a revenue stream that complements existing sales efforts and helps grow and monetize their website businesses, no matter what the size.

Advertisers Can More Easily Analyze and Engage

The combination of Federated Media Publishing’s premium online advertising and conversational marketing programs and Lijit’s proprietary data collection tools will empower advertisers to better understand user intent, contextual relevance and demographic information. And by leveraging the combined entity’s extensive publisher relationships, advertisers will have unprecedented scale on the Independent Web.

Introducing Programmatic Buying to the Independent Web

Programmatic buying is one of the fastest growing trends in digital media and the introduction of Lijit’s robust RTB exchange will equip media buyers with one of the largest platforms available. Over the next few months, Federated Media Publishing and Lijit will develop a series of private exchanges that will highlight leading independent publishers. These exchanges will allow brands to engage active, passionate consumers found in highly conversational online communities and publications, while delivering premium CPM rates via FM’s conversational marketing programs.

Quote

“The Lijit Networks team is just as passionate and committed to powering publishers as we are at Federated Media Publishing and that was a crucial element to this decision,” said Deanna Brown, chief executive officer, Federated Media Publishing. “Our combined relationships, proprietary tools and conversational marketing services will be invaluable to publishers and advertisers alike.”

“Federated Media invented how to leverage authentic voices and engaged conversations that exist in the Independent Web,” said Todd Vernon, founder and CEO of Lijit Networks. “The combination of the two companies is a game changer in the industry that unlocks new opportunities for both companies and our combined publisher network.”

MakerBot Raises $10 Million for 3-D Printers

Peter Kafka — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 21:05:43 +0000

MakerBot, a start-up that makes (relatively) affordable 3-D printers, has raised a $10 million round led by Foundry Group. Other investors include RRE, True Ventures, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s personal investment group Bezos Expeditions.

BigDoor Seeks to be the AdSense of Gamification

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 13:00:06 +0000

Correction: A description of the nature of the company’s relationship with UGO Entertainment by a BigDoor executive was inaccurate. UGO came up with an idea of Quests and hired SpectrumDNA to be the primary vendor on the project. It is through SpectrumDNA that BigDoor has a relationship with UGO. UGO is not participating in BigDoor’s beta program and BigDoor is not getting a share of any advertising revenues from Quests. UGO’s advertising team is solely responsible for the program.

BigDoor, which is vying for a leadership position in the so-called gamification space, is announcing a new platform today that acts as an intermediary between publishers and advertisers.

Co-Founder and CEO Keith Smith calls it the equivalent of Google’s AdSense for gamification.

Gamification operates under the premise that people are often motivated by rewards, so integrating game-like tasks into everyday things–like reading the news or watching videos online–will ultimately increase engagement and monetization.

Smith refers to it as turning “lurkers” into “regulars.”

Seattle-based BigDoor builds tools for publishers to make rolling out game play within their online properties easier. Some of its customers include AccuScore.com, DevHub.com and MySportsIQ.

But creating a new AdSense platform is clearly a lofty ambition.

To put it in words the company can understand, the achievement is still far off, and in the near-term it will have to work hard at leveling-up to get there. But in this world, where Zynga has introduced millions of consumers to playing simple games like FarmVille on Facebook–and paying nominal amounts of money for virtual goods–it doesn’t sound too far-fetched.

Along with the platform being announced today, the company is revealing the first of its 20 private beta partners.

Its first publishing partner is UGO.com, a Hearst-owned property aimed at the 18 to 34 year old male audience. The site, which provides daily coverage of videogames, has dedicated a good chunk of its homepage to integrating advertising-based “quests.”

A quest over the weekend gave visitors a chance to interact with the new Universal Pictures comedy, “Your Highness,” starring Natalie Portman.

In the quests, visitors must interact with the advertiser’s content in order to earn points. A quest is competed after 11 clicks. Points can be typically redeemed for virtual badges (i.e. bragging rights), but in UGO’s case, it is sending out real patches that they hope will become collector’s items.

With the new platform, Smith is hoping to create a new ad unit called Cost Per Quest. So far, he thinks the ad unit will range between $1 and $2.50 based on the fact that consumers are readily engaging in the quests as if they are content. Early response rates are revealing that 20 to 45 percent of people who begin a quest finish one, he said.

BigDoor plans to provide the platform for free and will take a percentage of the revenue. “We want gamification to be a profit center, not a cost center,” Smith said. “We don’t charge UGO anything. We get paid when they get paid.”

Now that Universal’s promotion of “Your Highness” has run its course, UGO has moved on to offering different quests, including one from AXE, the men’s deodorant body spray.

Founded in June 2009, BigDoor was started by Smith and Jeff Malek, who both previously founded Zango. Also known as 180solutions, the company was associated with spyware and adware, but grew to $50 million from $1 million in revenues over two-and-a-half years.

BigDoor, which is still in its infancy, has raised more than $5 million in two rounds from Founder’s Co-op and Foundry Group, and has 20 employees.

One of BigDoor’s competitors is BadgeVille, which recently partnered with Bluefly, a small publicly held online retailer. Through the relationship, Bluefly is rewarding shoppers who watch videos, create wishlists, write reviews or read blog posts.

Zynga Appoints DreamWorks CEO to Board, But No ShrekVille in the Works

Tricia Duryee — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:30:32 +0000

Zynga is beefing up its board of directors by announcing today that it has added Jeffrey Katzenberg, the CEO and co-founder of DreamWorks Animation.

Katzenberg, who created the animation studio along with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, marks the sixth board member of the privately held social games company, which earned a jaw-dropping profit of $400 million on $850 million in revenues last year.

Zynga’s CEO and Founder Mark Pincus made the announcement in a blog post today on the company’s Web site: “I knew he’d be a great fit for the board after he suggested that the blockbuster of 2011 could be ShrekVille.”

Pincus continued to joke that Katzenberg will help recruit a seventh member to the board (maybe Jack Black or Mike Myers?).

But more seriously, Katzenberg’s appointment signals Zynga’s desire to evolve from a well-recognized–and successful–Silicon Valley start-up to a large consumer brand name and entertainment company.

Social gaming on Facebook so far is in its infancy.

Zynga has been able to profit handsomely off no-name games, like FarmVille, CityVille and Mafia Wars. Critics argue that it will have to turn those franchises into brands as the market matures and gets inundated by well-recognized brands. That progression has already started to take shape with Electronic Arts’ acquisition of Playfish and what Disney has planned with its purchase of Playdom.

Having an answer to this question will be key as Zynga considers raising up to $250 million in capital, and positions itself for a potential IPO.

“DreamWorks Animation is a revolutionary technology company, a recognized consumer brand, and at its core, a media company. It’s easy to see the value that Jeffrey will add to Zynga as we grow and look for more ways to delight our players,” Pincus wrote.

In a statement, he added: “Jeffrey redefined storytelling when he launched DreamWorks Animation. He turned an independent studio into a brand name and his vision will be an asset as we work to define the future of play.”

Katzenberg can offer that outside perspective as the board’s only member not in Silicon Valley. He joins Pincus; Owen Van Natta, Zynga’s EVP of Business; Bing Gordon, partner at Kleiner Perkins; Brad Feld, managing director of Foundry Group; and Reid Hoffman, founder and chairman of LinkedIn.

Here’s the full video from Katzenberg’s appearance at last year’s D conference:

[ See post to watch video ]

RIM Buys Contact Manager Gist

Liz Gannes — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 17:57:29 +0000

RIM has bought the contact management start-up Gist in a deal that was first reported by GigaOM late last year. The Seattle-based company raised approximately $11 million from investors including Foundry Group and Vulcan Capital. Through various Web plug-ins and mobile apps, Gist helps users generate a united living contact list from email, social networks and mobile phones. It’s one of those things that’s hard to describe but much loved by avid users.

I Can Has $30M: LOLcats Become Funny Business

Liz Gannes — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 05:00:58 +0000

Would the thought of investing $30 million in a set of WordPress blogs and tools for captioning pictures of cats make you laugh out loud? That’s what Foundry Group, Madrona Venture Group, Avalon Ventures and SoftBank Capital have done, putting together the first institutional funding for Cheezburger, the LOLcat and Fail Blog publisher.

Cheezburger was founded in 2007 by Ben Huh, who raised $2.25 million from angel investors at the time to buy the blog “I Can Has Cheezburger.” Huh has run the company as a lean, profitable operation since then, with 50 employees based in Seattle.

“This is a company that’s borne of no one’s expectations, and we’re totally fine with that,” Huh said in an interview Monday, admitting that, yes, “it’s a cat-picture Web site.”

Huh said Cheezburger had fended off multiple funding offers throughout the years, but finally decided to call back some VCs this fall. “If you’re going to do something, you might as well do it well,” he explained.

Today the ad-supported Cheezburger network of humor sites has 375 million page views and 110 million video views per month, with its 16.5 million visitors uploading 500,000 pictures and videos.

“We’re not here to flip,” said Huh, explaining that the company will use its $30 million to ensure it creates a long-term viable business. He said Cheezburger would open up 18 new job listings Tuesday alongside the funding announcement. Huh said his goal is to build “the Disney of the 21st century.”

Image via I Can Has Cheezburger user jasmine.

Phone-Controlled Robot Ball Set to Roll Around CES

Ina Fried — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:39:48 +0000

There will be a lot of quirky gadgets rolling through Las Vegas as the Consumer Electronics Show this week in addition to all the big-time announcements such as new phones, TVs and tablets.

Among those to keep an eye out for is a little robotic ball from Orbotix, a seven-person start-up from Boulder, Colo.

The company’s lone product, Sphero, is still in the prototype stage but could be indicative of the types of products the world is likely to see more of. Sphero is like a remote-control car, except it’s a baseball-sized sphere. Also, it is controlled from either an iPhone or an Android device.

Although the mechanics of a remote-controlled ball are fairly simple, Orbotix CEO Paul Berberian told Mobilized, it takes some sophisticated controls to operate a ball, which, unlike a car has no real up or down.

“It would have been impossible three years ago to make this work for under thousands of dollars,” Berberian said.

Luckily, sensors have gotten tiny and cheap and today’s smartphones have all the processing power one needs. Sphero communicates with the phone using Bluetooth. Berberian said that Bluetooth has a number of advantages, including the ability to use the cell phone’s Internet connection should developers want to write games that tap into the Web.

Berberian said he can also imagine all manner of augmented reality games that take the rolling ball and turn it into everything from a pony to a race car, depending on the age and interests of the ball’s owner.

First, though, Orbotix must get the product to market. Although prototypes are being shown off at CES, it’s not slated to hit the market until late in 2011. The goal is for it to sell for under $100.

Orbotix has some backing to get there. After getting its start last year in a regional tech incubator, the company landed venture funding from the Foundry Group.

Sphero is not the first phone-controlled object out there. An iPhone-controlled helicopter made the rounds at a past CES and a model is now on the market.

However, the ball is designed as a little rolling robotic platform, with an open programming interface so that developers out there can write their own games using Sphero.

Berberian said that the company already has a few variants of the game, beyond just trying to steer around a little ball. Among the options is a sumo wrestling notion in which two players, each with their own Sphero, try to knock the opposing ball outside of a certain ring. There’s also a tug-of-war concept in which players answer questions to vie for control of the ball to move it toward opposite goals.

That, Berberian said, is only the beginning of the company’s ambition. It hopes others will write programs for Sphero as well, with the company aiming to have a number of such programs available when Sphero hits the market later this year.

At this point, there are far fewer than 100 of the balls, all prototypes rolling around the company’s offices. Berberian said the company plans to bring about a dozen of them to Las Vegas for people to play around with at the company’s booth.

In case you are thinking, as I was, “Wow, what a great cat toy,” Berberian insists it’s not designed for pets.

“What people choose to do in their own home is up to them,” Berberian said. However, he cautioned that Sphero is “not designed for a Great Dane to pick up and start chomping on and survive that kind of pressure.”

Here’s an Orboitx-produced video that shows one of the prototypes in action.

Sphero Sneak Peek from Paul Berberian on Vimeo.

The Men and No Women of Web 2.0 Boards (BoomTown's Talking to You: Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare)

Kara Swisher — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 22:44:05 +0000

In one memorable episode of the famous old short films “The Little Rascals,” after not getting invited to a party, the Our Gang little dudes decided to form their own group, comically called “The He-Man Woman-Haters Club.”

In other words: No girls allowed!

While it was wink-wink cute when Spanky, Alfalfa and Buckwheat huffed and puffed about keeping out Darla–which they never ever could do–back in the last century, it’s not quite as adorkable when it comes to the boards of all the major Web 2.0 hotshots these days.

That would be Twitter, Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and Foursquare, none of which have any women as directors.

As in zero.

What’s most remarkable is that most of these start-ups are run by what I consider enlightened and open-minded entrepreneurs, mostly young enough to be part of a generation more inclined to value equality and diversity in the workplace.

In addition, each of these companies has a massive base of women consumers, in some cases well over 50 percent of its audience.

Thus, it would seem logical that in casting about for those to help guide these companies, one or two women leaders might slip in.

To be fair, it’s not for lack of trying, but of completion, as was the case with Twitter’s recent addition of three new board members.

They were longtime Silicon Valley exec Peter Currie, Flipboard CEO and co-founder Mike McCue and former DoubleClick leader David Rosenblatt.

All are deeply qualified for the Twitter board, which is obviously prepping for its next stage of growth and maturity.

But in its search, the San Francisco microblogging site did not manage to cast the net quite wide enough.

While sources said at least one prominent online woman exec was considered, there were some legitimate issues with her appointment, and it was not completed.

Still, one might imagine Twitter could have tried harder to find other workable choices.

Currently, the Twitter board is made up of the new trio, as well as Benchmark Capital’s Peter Fenton, Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital, CEO Dick Costolo and co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey.

Things are not any better over at Facebook, which has several prominent women execs running the show, most especially its high-profile COO Sheryl Sandberg.

But, inexplicably, though she does attend board meetings, she is not yet a director of Facebook, nor is any other woman.

In fact, here is Sandberg on topic at a recent TED event for women, in an eloquent speech titled “Why We Have So Few Women Leaders”:

Instead, the Facebook board is all men, all the time, composed of CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, prominent techie and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, investor Peter Thiel, Accel Partners’ Jim Breyer and Washington Post head Don Graham.

It is no better at three of the most prominent recent Web 2.0 start-ups, which one source attributes to the lack of woman VCs, who are often the first board members after major investment rounds.

At Zynga, the hot social gaming company in San Francisco, it continues, with an all-male board, despite a very heavily female audience for its casual social games.

That would be co-founder and CEO Mark Pincus, COO Owen Van Natta, investor Bing Gordon of Kleiner Perkins, investor Reid Hoffman and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group.

The same is true at woman-targeted–spas, spas and more spas–social buying site Groupon, which has an unusually large board for a start-up and made up of–as per usual–all men.

The list: Co-founder and CEO Andrew Mason, Accel Partners’ Kevin Efrusy, former AT&T President and COO John Walter, New Enterprise Associates’ Harry Weller and Peter Barris, former AOL exec Ted Leonsis, 37Signals co-founder Jason Fried and early investors Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell.

And, much smaller, is Foursquare’s board, which is the trio of co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, co-founder Naveen Selvadurai and Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger.

New investors–Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures’ Bryce Roberts–have observer status and both are, needless to say, dudes.

There is no question it is tough to make sure there is a good balance of qualified women leaders to men in tech–it is an issue we wrestle with every single year for the program of speakers at our own All Things Digital conference, although we are most excellent on this issue on our Web site and conference staff.

But it can be done, especially at public tech companies. Google has two women on its board of nine directors; Yahoo has three of 10; even Oracle has two of a dozen.

But a grand total of zero at the leading companies of Web 2.0 is not just a coincidence.

It’s a shame.

Tomorrow, BoomTown will post a list of great women who would be superb directors for any of these companies, but until then, let’s not follow in Spanky’s steps:

Twitter Partner Gnip Raises $2M for Social Media Monitoring Data

Liz Gannes — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:32:52 +0000

Gnip, which helps social media monitoring companies collect data, and yesterday became the first company authorized to resell Twitter data, has raised $2 million in funding.

In a bit of coincidental timing, said Gnip CEO Jud Valeski, the filing for the round was posted yesterday on the SEC site (which is where I found it). He confirmed the round amount as $2 million, coming mostly from previous investor Foundry Group and including First Round Capital again. This brings the company to $6.6 million raised so far.

Gnip’s deal with Twitter finally brings pricing clarity to usage of Twitter’s data streams, at least for analytics and monitoring companies. The company has permission to collect significant revenue on the streams. Previously, Twitter’s only paid data option was the Firehose full stream of all user status messages, for which it charged different amounts depending on the size of the customer and what it was doing with the data. While Microsoft paid $10 million to incorporate the Firehose into its real-time search, some start-ups that create Twitter clients were getting the Firehose for free.

As I reported yesterday, Gnip will offer social media monitoring companies the Halfhose (50 percent of Tweets at a cost of $30,000 per month), the Decahose (10 percent of Tweets for $5,000 per month) and the Mentionhose (all mentions of a user including @replies and re-Tweets for $20,000 per month), with the caveat that they can’t publicly display the data.

Boulder, Colo.-based Gnip has gone through a big turnaround in the last year. In September ’09, it laid off seven of its 12-person staff, saying the huge increase in creation of social media data had overwhelmed the company’s self-built database and it needed to start over. In May of this year CEO Eric Marcoullier left the company, leaving it in the hands of his co-founder Valeski. Marcoullier, who had previously founded IGN and MyBlogLog, is now working on another start-up, the “Foursquare for Web sites” OneTrueFan.

But a deal with Twitter–a company that has historically expanded into its developers’ territory much to their dismay, rather than blessing third-party companies with partnerships–is a firm indication that Gnip is back on track.

Gnip Becomes Twitter's First Authorized Data Reseller

Liz Gannes — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 18:47:30 +0000

Twitter has given the start-up Gnip permission to sell its data feeds to developers, the two companies announced today. The arrangement fills in the gaps left by Twitter’s Streaming API pricing model, which doesn’t formally address the difference between emerging applications and giants like Microsoft, which is paying $10 million to get full real-time access to the status updates posted by Twitter users (what’s known as the Firehose). In practice, Twitter had been setting pricing in a way that seemed arbitrary, as I recently reported.

Boulder-based Gnip (the name is “ping” spelled backward) is a middleman between social media sites and social media monitoring companies. The company has raised about $5 million from Foundry Group, SoftTech VC and First Round Capital. Customers include Alterian, Next Big Sound and Attensity.

“The various levels from Twitter have always been confusing and scattered and unofficial, and it’s always been real shaky ground when you work with them,” said Gnip CEO Jud Valeski in a phone interview today. “Nothing against Twitter, it’s just the realities of growing a service that strong and that fast.”

To date, Twitter has offered a paid level (Firehose), a 10 percent sample level to approved developers (Gardenhose) and a 1 percent level to everybody (Spritzer). It doesn’t publicly disclose pricing for the Firehose, but charges different amounts based on how big a company is and what it’s doing with the data.

The new Gnip feeds are only for a certain type of data usage: Analytics and monitoring. Customers must not display the data publicly, but rather use it internally for their own customers–for example, to measure how social media users respond to a Coca-Cola advertising campaign.

Gnip will offer the Halfhose (50 percent of Tweets at a cost of $30,000 per month), the Decahose (10 percent of Tweets for $5,000 per month) and the Mentionhose (all mentions of a user including @replies and re-Tweets for $20,000 per month). All feeds are available in original JSON and Activity Streams JSON formats.

Analytics providers who were previously using Twitter’s Gardenhose for free will now have to start paying Gnip for the Decahose. Twitter has also said it’s planning its own free lightweight analytics product, but that’s not out yet.

Some more background from my previous story:

What does it cost to drink from the Firehose? That depends. Twitter’s pricing plans appear to vary wildly, from the big search companies on down to folks prototyping a brainstorm. Multiple Twitter developers told me they felt Twitter’s pricing seemed to be totally arbitrary, and based on whatever Twitter thought they’d be able to pay.

Twitter business development guy Doug Williams said it’s true that Twitter has no structured way to price access between the 10 percent of the Gardenhose and the 100 percent of the Firehose, though the company is likely to develop more levels of pricing.

“Twitter is focused on creating consumer products and we’re not built to license data,” Williams said, adding, “Twitter has always invested in the ecosystem and startups and we believe that a lot of innovation can happen on top of the data. Pricing and terms definitely vary by where you are from a corporate perspective.”

It’s not only how big you are, but what you do with the data. According to a developer, analytics players are asked to pay the most, because they take Twitter content but don’t contribute it or drive content to Twitter. Those who display and process content in a way that drives traffic pay less, and those who help generate content pay the least. As I understand it, some developers who make Twitter clients don’t pay anything at all for streaming API access.

Image courtesy Minnesota National Guard on Picasa.

Venture Firms Ride The Winds Of Social Gaming Co. Zynga

Laura Kreutzer and Sabrina Willmer — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 20:09:52 +0000

Raising a venture capital fund these days is no easy feat. But a small number of firms appear to have the wind at their backs, and that wind may have a name: Zynga Game Network Inc.

Foundry Group and Avalon Ventures, both of which invested in one of Zynga’s first rounds of financing back in early 2008, each have plenty of interest in their latest fund offerings, in part because of the performance boost they’ve gotten from that deal – even if much of it is on paper.

Avalon, for example, is expected to wrap up its ninth fund, ahead of a $150 million target sometime later this year. Meanwhile, Foundry Group has already collected at least $225 million in commitments for its second venture fund, according to investors.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

More Money for iPhone Ads: Medialets Raises $6 Million

Peter Kafka — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 13:00:25 +0000

We don’t know how the mobile ad business will look or how big it will be, but it’s a pretty safe bet to assume it’s going to be a lot bigger than it is now. Which makes investors quite happy to throw money at it.

Latest example: A $6 million B round for Medialets, a two-year-old New York company best known for making “in-app” ads for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone platform, as well as for Google’s (GOOG) Android, etc.

Existing investor Foundry Group, which led a $4 million A round a year ago, leads this one as well. DFJ Gotham is also in again, and new money includes Dave McClure’s 500 Startups incubator and Chris Saridakis, who until recently was Gannett’s (GCI) chief digital officer.

A good chunk of this deal already closed months ago and leaked out via a Series D filing; I assume that new investors have joined the round since then, but I don’t have details.

August 10, 2010: NEW YORK, NY – Medialets, the most widely deployed cross-platform rich media advertising provider for mobile, today announced the closing of a $6 million Series B financing round led by investor Foundry Group, with participation from DFJ Gotham, 500 Startups and Chris Saridakis. Medialets will use the funds to expand the capabilities of its mobile rich media ad platform and supporting tools in order to bring rich media ads to the broadest range of advertisers possible.

“Medialets was founded in 2008 on the understanding that mobile would unleash a powerful engagement opportunity for advertisers,” said Medialets CEO Eric Litman. “Since then, not only has Medialets enabled the industry’s most compelling mobile rich media for premier publishers, agencies and brands, we’ve also built out a one-of-a-kind cross-platform infrastructure that brings greater efficiency and scale to mobile rich media campaigns. This Series B funding allows us to continue to evolve the Medialets’ platform to meet the phenomenal demand for high-value mobile rich media.”

Since its inception in June 2008, Medialets has pioneered the creation, delivery and measurement of the most highly engaging rich media ad formats for mobile. In 2009, Medialets created and served the world’s first rich media ad for mobile apps. Earlier this year Medialets followed up on the release of its Universal SDK for iPhone and iPad with the launch of Android advertising support, making Medialets the first provider of cross-platform rich media ads for mobile apps. More recently, Medialets introduced Medialets Enrichä, a partner program that significantly reduces the complexity of mobile advertising for buyers by enabling them to deliver and measure the same creative campaign on different mobile platforms and across Medialets’ partner ad networks, mediators and ad servers.

“Medialets has set the standard for creative and technological innovation in mobile rich media,” said Seth Levine, Managing Director of Foundry Group, Medialets lead investor. “By providing a scalable platform that uniquely addresses the challenges of mobile for both publishers and brands, Medialets has staked out its position as market leader early in the game and will continue to be a driving force in the rapidly growing mobile advertising market.”

A world-class executive team, assembled within the past year, has spearheaded Medialets’ tremendous growth. Keith Gelles, co-founder of PointRoll, joined Medialets as Chief Technology Officer joined the team in July and Aaron Mittman, a former executive at Panther Express and DoubleClick, joined the team in September as Vice President, Global Sales. More recently, Andrew Eisele, formerly of TargetSpot, joined Medialets as the company’s first Chief Financial Officer. The executive team is supported by an advisory board that includes Greg Tagaris, former CIO DoubleClick, Andy Ellenthal, CEO Peer39, Ari Paparo, VP Digital at Nielsen and former Group Director of Advertiser Products at Google, Shervin Pishevar, Chairman SGN, and Colin Crawford, former CEO MacWorld/PC World.

Go With What You Know: Google Ventures Invests in Search Marketing Start-up Trada

Peter Kafka — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:30:26 +0000

Google’s (GOOG) venture capital arm isn’t charged with investing in Google-like companies. But it doesn’t hurt a start-up’s chances, either.

See Trada, a two-year-old company dedicated to helping small businesses buy advertising…on Google. Google Ventures is leading a $5.75 million C round in the Boulder, Co.-based company, along with existing investor Foundry Group. It had previously raised $2.2 million.

Trada isn’t Google-exclusive–it will also help you buy search ads on Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Bing, of course–but if you’re buying search ads, there’s no mystery about where you’re most likely to spend that money.

There is no shortage of companies, consultancies and one-man shops dedicated to search engine marketing. Trada’s pitch is that it specializes in small customers who spend between $5,000 and $50,000 a month on search, and that it “crowdsources” its help by getting a team of search marketing experts to work on individual accounts. The search experts get a slice of the client’s budget, and Trada takes 25 percent of that for itself.

Just like its new backer, Trada has bigger ambitions than search–it hopes to expand into display ads, for instance, including Facebook’s platform.

A Summer Romance Between Founder and Venture Capitalist

Ty McMahan — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 22:00:53 +0000

Here’s a summer blockbuster for you: In a world where many entrepreneurs see venture capital as a necessary evil, three men look past term-sheet tussles to build a new company, and make friendships along the way.

“Venture Capital: A Love Story.” Starring: Keith Smith as The CEO, Jeff Malek as The CTO and Brad Feld as The Investor.

In a 1,700-word blog post Tuesday, Smith, CEO of BigDoor Media, nearly wrote the screenplay behind a recent funding round. He crafted the tale of meeting Foundry Group’s Feld and how the VC’s unorthodox approach to learning about the company ultimately cemented Smith’s desire to have him as an investor.

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Zynga's Mark Pincus Talks About Big Funding, "Offer Ad" Controversies and More!

Kara Swisher — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:32:42 +0000

Just days after selling $180 million in private stock to a group of investors, including Facebook funder Digital Sky Technologies of Russia, Zynga’s Mark Pincus came to visit the BoomTown Worldwide HQ for a video interview.

The San Franisco-based Zynga creates and distributes online games, including Mafia Wars and FarmVille, which are played on social networking sites like Facebook. It claims 60 million active daily users.

While playing, users can also buy virtual goods with real dollars.

Zynga took the pile of money, Pincus explained to me, so it would not have to do what everyone thought it was set to do soon: Go public.

But with 700 employees and a reported annual revenue “run rate” of $300 million, the fast-growing start-up needed more options, he added.

Thus, rather than selling out or going public, Pincus went for megafunding, a path similar to the one Facebook took.

Along with DST, which accounted for the majority of the funding, investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global and Institutional Ventures Partners.

Previous investors in Zynga are Union Square Ventures, Clarium Capital, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, Kleiner Perkins, along with personal investments from Silicon Valley players such as Reid Hoffman.

Pincus will need all that cash given that the arena is heating up and consolidating fast.

Playfish, a competitor, was recently snapped up by Electronic Arts (ERTS) for $275 million in cash and $125 million more in stock and earn-outs, for example.

This is not a fate Pincus says he wants for Zynga, instead insisting he would rather create a powerful and innovative standalone gaming company of the future.

Obviously, Zynga is the big shot at that prize for the longtime entrepreneur, whom I met way back when I was a reporter in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, when Pincus co-founded another start-up, called Freeloader.

In our interview, Pincus talks about the new infusion of cash, controversies around questionable “offer” advertisements that appeared on Zynga’s site and more.

Here’s the longish video:

[ See post to watch video ]

And here is a video interview I did with Pincus, back in May of last year:

[ See post to watch video ]

Another Ad Network? Yes, and This One's for iPhone Apps: Medialets Raises $4 Million.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 12 May 2009 09:00:35 +0000

Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded one billion apps for their devices in nine months. Someone other than Steve Jobs and co. ought to be able to make money from that, right?

That’s more or less the logic behind Medialets, a start-up that serves up ads on Apple’s (AAPL) mobile applications, and to a lesser degree, programs designed for Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile platform. The New York-based company, founded last June, is announcing a $4 million Series A round led by Foundry Group. DFJ Gotham and angel investor Bobby Yazdani also participated.

Medialets also provides free analytics services for mobile applications. But its revenue comes from its mobile ad platform, which specializes in serving up iPhone and Android app users.

Given that mobile ads in general are in their infancy, this is a nascent market at best. Medialets CEO Eric Litman figures that the market for mobile display ads tops out at perhaps $300 million, and that ads for iPhone and Android apps can’t be more than $100 million.

But he figures that number will shoot up rapidly, of course, and perhaps hit $400 million within four years. He’s also betting that the majority of apps, and the majority of apps downloaded, will be free, advertising-supported ones.

In order for that to happen, both apps and the ads that run on them will have to move past the novelty stage. This Medialets-produced ad for Dockers, shown here running on SGN’s iBowl game, is sort of interesting. But it seems more like a proof of concept than anything else.

Still, it’s a start:

Games People Play: Zynga's Mark Pincus Speaks!

Kara Swisher — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:15:39 +0000

Since I posted an interview with Social Gaming Network’s Shervin Pishevar today on the announcement of his $15 million funding, it seems only sporting to post this lively video interview I also did with his main competitor, Mark Pincus of Zynga, recently too.

Zynga, named after Pincus’s dog, is one of the two main social-gaming networks that are competing for audience by offering highly interactive games of all kinds. Its aim is to be more engaging and create a series of addictive games that users will return to again and again.

Pincus, who also founded the Tribe social-networking site, is a longtime entrepreneur. I met him way back when as a reporter at the Washington Post when he and Sunil Paul launched one of the few start-ups–Freeloader–in the D.C. area.

And I can report that Pincus is as jumpy and energetic today as he was 15 years ago.

He has certainly been busy lining up a spate of fancy investors, garnering $10 million in funding in January, including from: Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Pilot Group, along with personal investments from Silicon Valley players Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel.

Zynga, which is larger than rival SGN, claims 2.3 million total daily active users across Facebook, with its Texas Hold’em game being the largest it offers. Other games include Sea Wars, Blackjack, Attack! and Scramble.

As I said in my SGN post, while BoomTown often makes fun of viral apps, most of which are faddish and juvenile, the better-made gaming apps actually are likely to be a real business over time, as long they remain engaging and fun to play as the classic real-life games are.

Zynga plans on making money through ads, including creating its own ad network for other gamers, as well as via the sale of virtual goods and premium offerings.

Here’s a chat with Pincus at Zynga’s offices (Pincus owns the building, by the way, which also houses a bunch of other Web 2.0 start-ups) in San Francisco:

[ See post to watch video ]