Indeed, people do seem to be separating their online professional identities from their personal identities more than they used to, now that the tools are available. Web users increasingly use LinkedIn to sign in to business-oriented sites, according to the social toolmaker Gigya.

LinkedIn started offering its credentials as a Web sign-on system early last year, and many business-oriented sites now offer users the option of authenticating using their LinkedIn account in addition to other options like their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Gigya has seen a major increase in LinkedIn log-ins to sites it identifies as business-to-business. Twenty percent of social logins on such sites used LinkedIn credentials in January 2011, up from three percent in July 2010.

LinkedIn accounted for 26.6 percent of social sign-ons in January on the stock market news site Seeking Alpha, 20 percent on the Harvard Business Review and 14 percent on the Internet Advertising Bureau site. (The rest of social sign-ons were through Facebook and Twitter, mostly.)

To be sure, LinkedIn is still a minority share of social sign-ons on such sites, and these numbers don’t include users who register for a site without the help of a social network, or users who visit without registering.

Plus, the trend may be headed in the other direction. Many people propose that our personal and professional identities will increasingly merge, especially for younger generations. That’s the theory behind the legion of LinkedIn 2.0 start-ups like BranchOut and Assetmap.

LinkedIn is the first major U.S. social networking site to file for an IPO. It hopes to raise $175 million.

LinkedIn, the online business networking site, is likely to file regulatory documents for an initial public offering as early as today, according to sources close to the situation.

Sources said LinkedIn is ready to submit an S-1 filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, its first step in the IPO process, and that could happen after the markets close this afternoon.

The offering is likely to be led by Morgan Stanley, although Goldman Sachs is an investor in LinkedIn and could also be part of the underwriting team.

The Mountain View, Calif., company currently has what it describes as “the world’s largest professional network on the Internet with more than 90 million members in over 200 countries and territories.” It has 1,000 full-time employees.

LinkedIn’s entry into the public market is one that many expect will be followed by other Internet firms in the coming year, including Zynga, Chegg, Groupon, and, most anticipated of all, Facebook.

Demand Media, a Santa Monica, Calif., online publisher, went public yesterday, with an offering that valued the content company at $1.5 billion.

How much is LinkedIn worth? According to a NetworkEffect post, “recent purchases of its stock have valued the company at more than $2 billion. Pushing the company toward the public markets would help set a price range up higher.”

LinkedIn was founded in the living room of co-founder and Chairman Reid Hoffman–who is also a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and investor–in 2002 and launched in 2003. Its current CEO is former Yahoo exec Jeff Weiner.

Its investors include Sequoia Capital, Greylock Partners and several others, with a total venture funding of $103 million.

A LinkedIn spokeswoman declined to comment (but, in a very lovely manner).

SnagFilms, the online video distribution site for professional documentaries, has nabbed $10 million in funding from Comcast’s investment arm and New Enterprise Associates, and will also now be distributing fictional independent film releases.

That and the new investment giving SnagFilms a valuation of $50 million should be big news at the 11th Sundance Film Festival, the famous independent film gathering opening in Park City, Utah, on Thursday.

And SnagFilms also announced that well-known industry exec Bingham Ray is joining the start-up to spearhead its distribution of fictional narrative and foreign-produced independent films.

The service, unlike the subscription-based video giant Netflix, currently distributes free non-fiction documentary films with advertising, as well as offers rental streaming and purchase options.

And it is profitable, said Ted Leonsis, the former AOL exec who is the founder and has been the driving investor in SnagFilms.

“It was always my personal frustration as a backer of documentaries that you could not get distribution far and wide,” he said in an interview earlier today.

He noted that while Netflix is really now focused on big studio fare, “what we’ve discovered is a big supply of independent video that has never seen light of day, but that has a big audience.”

SnagFilms’ strategy is to give broader reach to these films, which often don’t even have a theatrical opening–or, if they do, are very small.

Along with its site, which digitizes the films and adds advertising to them, SnagFilms also encourages Web sites and others to grab films and create a “virtual movie theater.” (You can see my effort below.)

It also has video-on-demand deals with Comcast, Verizon and more, as well as purchase options with Apple’s iTunes and others.

Earlier this month, SnagFilms also launched an impressive and free iPad full-movie-watching app.

SnagFilms also owns a popular news site called indieWIRE, which covers the independent film market, and the new funding will also be used to expand it.

That market has been in need of a boost of some kind, since it has been struggling as financing has dried up for the production of quality documentaries and outside-the-Hollywood-machine movies.

It has long been hoped that the Internet would perhaps save and strengthen the genre, with its supposed long-tail magic.

But the going has been slow. Currently, SnagFilms has 2,000 films in its online library, although Leonsis said the aim is to use the new funds to get 10,000 films on the service as soon as possible.

“We’re trying to build a beachhead in the independent film world,” he said of SnagFilms, which currently has about 40 employees in Washington, D.C., and New York. “We think we have a niche and video is the killer app on Web now.”

Leonsis, who has backed such notable documentaries as “The Rape of Nanking,” said NEA’s Peter Barris will join the board, along with existing investor Steve Case.

Case and Leonsis, of course, were the dynamic duo of AOL’s glory days.

So, I am rooting for another win in an arena that needs it.

Thus, here’s my own movie palace online and also the official press release from SnagFilms:

Watch more free documentaries

Industry Powerhouses NEA and Comcast Invest in SnagFilms

$10 million in new funding to distribute documentaries and fictional independent films on all digital platforms and devices, globally

Washington D.C.–January 17, 2011 – SnagFilms announced today it has received $10 million in growth capital from new investors New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Comcast Interactive Capital (CIC). Existing investors, including Ted Leonsis (SnagFilms’ Founder) and Steve Case, also participated. The financing will be used to expand its distribution of independent films–including, for the first time, fictional independent releases–across all digital platforms and devices, and on a global basis.

SnagFilms is a leader in distributing free, ad-supported titles from a library of over 2,000 non-fiction films. Last year, SnagFilms entered the transactional world with launches of video on demand channels on Comcast and Verizon FiOS, as well as titles for sale through the Apple’s iTunes store. Earlier this month, SnagFilms debuted its iPad application with the largest collection of award-winning U.S. films offered free to iPad users.

“As a profitable company with substantial private investors, SnagFilms didn’t need to raise outside capital,” said company founder Ted Leonsis. “However, we saw overwhelming strategic value in involving NEA, a pioneer and leading venture capital firm, and CIC, the investment arm of Comcast. SnagFilms is very well-financed and uniquely positioned now to bring the full array of independent films–fiction and non-fiction, U.S. and foreign–to global audiences on all platforms and devices. We’ve amassed a library of 2,000 documentaries since our launch, and we’re now building distribution opportunities for tens of thousands of independent films in both categories. That’s great news for film fans and for filmmakers.”

“SnagFilms is perfectly positioned to fuse technology and content in a manner that has marked many of the transformational industry leaders we have helped build in the past,” said NEA Managing General Partner Peter Barris, who joins the Company’s Board of Directors. “New devices and digital platforms will allow consumers unprecedented access to quality content, and SnagFilms will be there to delight them. We are pleased to be able to invest in SnagFilms at this time, and to help them add fictional indie films to their expertise with documentaries–and to take both genres to the full swath of digital platforms and devices.” Among many other investments, Barris serves on the board of Groupon as its first VC investor.

“We are excited about the new opportunities SnagFilms creates, especially for independent filmmakers who historically could not get distribution,” said David Horowitz, Managing Director of Comcast Interactive Capital. “This investment reflects our view that consumers are demanding a diverse selection of high-quality content that can be watched on any platform or device.”

SnagFilms also announced that industry veteran Bingham Ray will join the Company to help guide its entry into distribution of fictional narrative and foreign-produced independent films. Ray, former President of United Artists, October Films and Kimmel Entertainment, and honored for Lifetime Achievement by the Gotham Awards, has deep experience in the acquisition, marketing and distribution of motion pictures, including “Hotel Rwanda,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Secrets & Lies,” “War Room,” “High Art,” “Last Days” and “Breaking the Waves.”

“Bingham has been an advocate for filmmakers throughout his career,” noted Rick Allen, SnagFilms CEO. “His record of successful distribution on traditional platforms provides a strategic sense and depth of relationships that will be invaluable as we extend our model into a broader array of films. Bingham will be a key member of our large presence at the Sundance Film Festival this week and beyond.”

“I’ve been a big fan of SnagFilms from their earliest days, and am truly thrilled to be part of the team as they expand the service, bringing more filmmakers to bigger audiences on a wider array of platforms,” said Ray. “This is the future of our business.”

“SnagFilms plus Bingham Ray is a great combination,” said Tom Bernard, co-president and co-founder of Sony Pictures Classics. “Bingham knows the indie world as well as anyone alive and is admired for his experience and for always delivering for filmmakers. He’ll be a big asset to SnagFilms’ expansion.”

In addition, SnagFilms intends to use its new growth capital to expand its indieWIRE unit, now in its 15th year as the leading web source of news, reviews and analysis of independent film.

“indieWIRE’s traffic is now ten times what it was when we purchased it two and a half years ago,” Allen said. “Before the Academy Awards are announced later this month, you’ll see new editor-in-chief Dana Harris add ongoing features to our coverage of the indie world, and exciting new blogs to our Network, like the recently-added blog The Playlist.”

About SnagFilms

SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of more than 2,000 award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film. All films are shareable across the web. Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms’ library has been featured on over 2 billion web pageviews, with more than 325 million minutes of SnagFilms titles streamed across over more than 100,000 affiliated sites and webpages, including through partners such as Aol, Comcast, Hulu, the Starbucks Digital Network, IMDb, the Miami Herald, hundreds of non-profits, special interest sites and blogs. SnagFilms also offers selected titles via VOD (with Comcast and FiOS), on iTunes and through a new free application for the iPad.

OVGuide has twice named SnagFilms a Top Site and MovieMaker Magazine named SnagFilms to its annual list of “50 Best Websites for Moviemakers.”

Beyond the directory-style LinkedIn, that could mean facilitating professional profiles on social sites, pushing job postings through networks, introducing contacts, soliciting referrals and sharing resources.

Part of the reason this idea has been so resonant with Web entrepreneurs–and investors too–is the trouble they’re having with hiring qualified people to work at their own companies.

(Unlike in other parts of the world right now, unemployment rates are not as much of a problem among techies.)

Assetmap, a pre-launch San Francisco-based start-up, for example, wants to help companies and nonprofits understand what assets they may have at their disposal through their networks.

These connections already exist, but they’re often unexploited, according to Assetmap co-founder Nathaniel Whittemore, who let me in on a bit of what he’s doing.

Whittemore told NetworkEffect the failings of sites like LinkedIn include “forcing a distinction between personal and professional that is becoming less and less obvious and failing to recognize that the one-to-one friend-based social graph isn’t the only graph that has value for business.”

Whittemore and co-founder Danny Moldovan hail from the world of social entrepreneurship. Former Northwestern classmates, they had both been at the fast-growing activism platform Change.org.

They have teamed with Jayson Vantuyl, co-founder of Engine Yard, the Ruby on Rails hosting service. At the moment, they are funded by friends and family while looking for outside capital, and plan to launch this spring.

There are many early companies in this space with fancier pedigrees.

Top Prospect, a social recruiting site that rewards users with $10,000 or more for helping friends find jobs, was funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Spark Capital, Ron Conway, David Goldberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Rick Thompson, Chamath Palihapitiya and other angels.

Also based in San Francisco, Top Prospect was founded by Rotem Perelmuter, who formerly sold an online radio service to MTV Networks during the dot-com boom (and more recently ran a hedge fund). The site is currently in open beta.

Delicious founder Joshua Schachter’s Tasty Labs, which has gotten money from Union Square Ventures, hasn’t said much about what it is doing, but is also working on something similar to the idea of an asset map.

Elsewhere, BranchOut, which bills itself as offering “your professional profile on Facebook,” raised $6 million from Accel Partners, Floodgate, Norwest Venture Partners and many angels.

And Hashable, a network for introductions, raised $4 million, also from Union Square Ventures.

And Namesake, from Ad.ly and Newroo co-founders Brian Norgard and Daniel Gould, offers a pretty site for “opportunity routing,” with features such as a real-time stream and chat.

It goes on–other young start-ups in the space include Sumazi, Pursuit, Identified and Gild. (You knew this would happen: Gild turns the social recruiting concept into an online game.)

It wouldn’t really make sense to combine social and professional networks by starting from scratch, so these sites are built on top of existing networks like LinkedIn and particularly Facebook. If you want to try them out, be prepared to cough up those Facebook Connect credentials a whole bunch of times.

(Cute explainer graphics above from Assetmap, Top Prospect and Identified, respectively.)

ThePlatform, a subsidiary of the cable giant, plans this week to launch a program that will allow workers whose job it is to post video content to use their iPhone to manage certain functions.

Workers will still have to use a PC or Mac to do the main work, but the iPhone app will allow basic tasks such as publishing a previously hidden piece of content (or taking down a piece that got published inadvertently).

“With the iPhone being a fairly ubiquitous device for media consumption, we felt it was also the perfect platform for media management,” said Ian Blaine, the CEO of thePlatform, which Comcast acquired in 2006. “It’s usually along with people wherever they are.”

Though clearly a niche product, it is the kind of application that many expect to see more of as businesses find ways of incorporating mobile devices into their office worfklow.

“I think what we are doing is a harbinger for others if they are not doing it already,” Blaine said.

Mpx, the main program developed by thePlatform, is used by Comcast itself and also sold to other cable providers such as Time Warner Cable, Cablevision and Cox, as well as by individual content producers such as NBC, PBS and Canada’s CBC. Mpx is used to edit and prepare video for sending to various devices, including phones, computers and set-top boxes.

“We’ve always been in the game of publishing to mobile devices, but being able to take advantage of the platform for actually publishing is pretty great and we are excited about it,” Blaine said.

The company has been testing the product with a few of its customers. Among those excited about the new mobile version of mpx are the folks at Time Warner Cable who use thePlatform to publish their content.

“We have been working with thePlatform to create a solution that supports our producers or editors responsible for ensuring that shows or clips are ready for publication, 24 hours a day,” said Eric Manchester, a member of Time Warner Cable’s technical staff. “Having a solution we can carry on us at all times allows us to solve many time sensitive issues without being tied to our desks.”

For now, those using the iPhone app will see only thumbnails of the videos in question, but Blaine said adding full-video previews is tops on the company’s list of features to add. It will also see if there is a way to achieve similar capabilities on the BlackBerry, given that many companies also use those devices.

With Android, Blaine said the company may not even need to do a separate app because the desktop version of mpx runs using Flash, which Android supports.

Han and his company, Perceptive Pixel, are best known for creating the giant touch wall that John King and others at CNN use to break down elections.

While Apple, Microsoft and others have targeted consumers, Perceptive Pixel has focused on niche professional markets, especially the defense and government sector.

But, after years of watching the small touchscreen device market from the sidelines, Han said he thinks he is pretty close to creating his first products that will run on those devices.

“Mobile is interesting,” he said in an interview last month at his New York offices (in the Manhattan building that Google is buying, with the amazing roof view seen below). “How can you ignore a billion devices being sold every year?”

Han said there is a reason he has stayed focused on the high end of the market.

“I have a personal bias,” he told Mobilized. “I want computers to be functional, not just playful.”

The modern tablet, he said, is the first consumer device that has enough pixels and the precision sensors to potentially be of interest to Perceptive Pixel. In particular, Han said he is intrigued by the idea of using tablets to allow meeting participants to interact with a nearby larger touchscreen that might be in use by someone leading a meeting.

“We’re looking at mobile and slate devices as a way to tie into this family of collaboration [products],” he said, noting that’s where Perceptive Pixel is spending its energy when it comes to mobile, as opposed to coming up with some killer app that works only on smaller screens. “There are a lot of smart people creating mobile apps.”

Han said his first mobile efforts should come out early next year–in the first quarter or early in the second quarter, though he wouldn’t give more specifics.

Whatever Perceptive Pixel ends up doing in the tablet space, Han said his plan is to eventually have it support multiple operating systems, though Han said the company will probably only qualify certain devices. So far, he said, Apple’s iOS and the iPad seem best suited to the applications he has in mind, while the real-time touch performance on Android has certain issues.

“We’re not going to just let it run on anything out there,” he said. “Some of them just can’t guarantee a good user interface.”

Here is the video interview Mobilized did with Han:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101213/multitouch-pioneer-jeff-han-starts-to-think-small-devices/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101130/8-million-or-10-million-either-way-thats-a-lot-of-playbooks/ http://allthingsd.com/20101130/8-million-or-10-million-either-way-thats-a-lot-of-playbooks/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:40:20 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=53345 Investors betting Research in Motion will sell about 10 million BlackBerry PlayBooks in the next fiscal year best temper their expectations a bit. With the iPad juggernaut rolling inexorably forward and a groaning board of rival tablets headed to market in the months ahead, some analysts are suggesting that RIM may not sell quite as many PlayBooks as it hopes (an interesting exercise, considering few outside of RIM have even used the device).

“Given the competitive environment heading into CY11 with the influx of more than 80 new competitive tablet offerings, we believe [selling 10 million units] may be challenging for RIM to achieve, particularly as the PlayBook is positioned as a ‘professional’ device and initially as a companion linked to a BlackBerry,” Susquehanna analyst Jeffrey Fidacaro said in a note to clients today, suggesting that sales of eight million is likely a better estimate. Which seems reasonable, particularly since the PlayBook will only support 3G data connectivity through a tethered BlackBerry.

That said, Apple did sell 4.19 million iPads last quarter. So it’s not entirely inconceivable that RIM could sell 10 million PlayBooks in four quarters, assuming the buzz around the device–which has driven the company’s shares upward since its announcement–continues.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101130/8-million-or-10-million-either-way-thats-a-lot-of-playbooks/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101124/bleacher-reports-brian-grey-talks-about-new-content-biz-as-patrick-keane-joins-board/ http://allthingsd.com/20101124/bleacher-reports-brian-grey-talks-about-new-content-biz-as-patrick-keane-joins-board/#comments Wed, 24 Nov 2010 19:30:35 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=37654

Earlier this week, BoomTown went downtown to the San Francisco HQ of Bleacher Report, one of the many interesting efforts trying to change the way content is made and distributed.

Bleacher Report, no surprise, is focused on sports, and competes with sites such as Yardbarker and SB Nation.

All take different approaches, with Bleacher Report delivering a grassroots platform for both professional and hobbyist writers who want give their take on any topic about college and professional sports, from the latest draft to explaining what’s the deal with “Fear the Beard.”

Bleacher Report vets these writers and does not pay most of them. There are 3,000 contributors, with 750 designated as featured, delivering 500 pieces of content a day.

Bleacher Report also has one million newsletter subscribers across 150 teams.

The writers are presumably attracted to the larger audience–8.8 million unique monthly visitors–they can reach via the site, as well as via newspaper syndication deals.

Think Huffington Post–Bleacher Report’s main business model is advertising too–and you have the right idea.

So far, Bleacher Report has raised $8 million from venture firms, such as Hillsven Capital, and angel investors like Gordon Crawford and Jakob Lodwick, founder of College Humor and Vimeo.

And it recently went out and drafted a pro for a CEO–former Yahoo and News Corp. exec Brian Grey, who focused on online sports content at both those companies.

In addition, it also just added Patrick Keane–former Googler and also former CEO of Associated Content, the social content site recently bought by Yahoo–to its board.

Here’s a video interview I did with Grey–who, full disclosure, was my elder son’s Little League coach for one season (so he does know about baseball, for sure!)–about how the media is morphing, as amateur and professional content is mixed and distributed in new ways:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101124/bleacher-reports-brian-grey-talks-about-new-content-biz-as-patrick-keane-joins-board/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20101116/what-facebook-messages-means-and-why-you-should-care/ http://allthingsd.com/20101116/what-facebook-messages-means-and-why-you-should-care/#comments Tue, 16 Nov 2010 20:18:57 +0000 Liz Gannes http://networkeffect.allthingsd.com/?p=380 Facebook yesterday launched an interesting product that tries to get at the heart of how highly connected people communicate casually. CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others from the company reiterated over and over again (see my live notes; the repetition is excessive) that the product is “not email.”

In large part, that’s because if Facebook Messages were evaluated as an email system, it would look terrible. There’s no incorporation of IMAP so you can access your mail from other clients, there’s no way to save drafts, there’s no way to cc people, there are no folders.

Even more jarring, there are no subject lines or time stamps, and you only ever have one continuous conversation with a contact. Instead, like instant messaging, when you type a message and press enter, it gets set loose to your contact.

But maybe Facebook has a point, and we don’t need all that cc, bcc gobbledygook for personal communications. Maybe we just want to more casually correspond with each other. And some of these email conventions have probably outlived their usefulness. Facebook says prior to the change its top three subject lines were blank, “Hi!” and “Yo.”–if that tells you anything.

The problem is, the way Facebook Messages works is a bit complicated and unfamiliar. You can see why the company is rolling it out very, very slowly–it’s the kind of new experience that aggravates people and makes them whiny.

Facebook Messages treats the correspondence between you and another person as a single conversation, whether it’s by IM, within the Facebook Messages interface, received as an email or as a Facebook-delivered SMS. Often those channels overlap. Messages that are not from Facebook members, and those from entities other than individuals, get shunted to a second-tier inbox.

Yesterday I was playing with the new Messages, first within the Messages interface on the Facebook Web site, then on IM on the Web site, and then via text message when I closed my computer. A few things confused me–for instance, chat is disabled and disappears when you go into Messages. I guess it’s redundant to have the same conversation in two places. But as someone who felt like I was in an IM chat, it was super weird.

Another thing that’s odd is that those life-time conversation threads only really work for one-to-one relationships. Group messages seem like a little bit of an afterthought; for instance, group threads show a split-screen image of two of the participants’ profile pics, no matter how many people participate. The system is prejudiced against people who email you from outside Facebook (say, your mother emails your @Facebook.com address from an @Yahoo.com address), until you explicitly say you want to see them in your main Facebook inbox. If a person sends you messages from two email addresses, Facebook doesn’t allow you to help it understand that they are the same person.

While I will probably acclimate to the Messages experience over the next few weeks, one thing that’s going to continue to be very annoying, and accentuated by Messages, is redundant Facebook notifications. Already a problem for those of us who use Facebook on multiple platforms like the Web and a phone app, redundant notifications run rampant in Facebook Messages. Say someone sends you a message from the Web site and checks the box to send it to your phone. Without changing any defaults, you could get a text message from Facebook, an email message from Facebook, a new IM on the Web site and a flag that you have a new message in the Facebook nav bar.

I spoke to Messages product manager Dan Hsiao yesterday, and he said the team had thought carefully about trimming down notifications but decided it would be worse if users weren’t alerted to the fact that they had a message.

Hsiao said that his mantra in building the product was to make it “email compatible but not email complete.”

I think there will be two main outcomes from the new Facebook Messages:

• Other Web mail outfits will (and should) better integrate their email and instant messaging conversations, based on Facebook’s example. Folks like Gmail can go one better, and incorporate additional forms of communication like voice messages. Facebook is right–there’s no reason this shouldn’t all be condensed and scannable.
• Provided the Facebook Messages product doesn’t have major usability issues, it will continue to supplant email, especially for young people. There will be a bigger distinction between formal, especially corporate, correspondence via email and personal messages. If you think about it, we all already make a distinction between messages from people and messages from mailing lists, and Facebook is right to say the ones from people are more important.

The thing is, Facebook Messages splits out a part of the communication experience that is, for most, a part of other tools and services.

Facebook Messages won’t replace email for people who use email for professional purposes, people who prefer desktop mail clients or people who firmly associate themselves and their archive of emails with an existing address.

Rather than killing Gmail (and its much larger competitors Hotmail and Yahoo), Facebook Messages will probably have the biggest impact on usage of IM services like AIM and GChat. The only thing the new product will fully replace is the previous version of Facebook Messages–which, by the way, has 350 million active users, and four billion messages sent per day.

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101116/what-facebook-messages-means-and-why-you-should-care/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20101108/sb-nation-raises-10-5-million-in-khosla-ventures-led-series-c-round/ http://allthingsd.com/20101108/sb-nation-raises-10-5-million-in-khosla-ventures-led-series-c-round/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 08:02:36 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=36898

SB Nation, the Washington, D.C.-based sports blog and news start-up, has just completed a $10.5 million Series C round, which is being led by Khosla Ventures, according to sources.

SB Nation has already raised about $13 million in total venture funding from Accel Partners, Allen & Company and Comcast Interactive Capital, as well as from angel investors such as Ted Leonsis and others in Silicon Valley.

Accel and Comcast will also be participating in the new funding, sources said.

People familiar with the situation said SB Nation’s post-investment valuation, after its most recent round last summer, was about $30 million, making the new one at least double–if not triple–that.

The big new investment is predicated on the boom in traffic to sports blogs, such as SB Nation, which recently launched 21 regional sports sites.

With a mix of professional and user-generated content aimed at engaging passionate fans, SB Nation now has 290 topical sites and real-time content–all with a big dollop of social tools to spur online conversations and engagement.

While it has been around since 2003, founded by Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas and others, the start-up has been aiming more recently, under the leadership of former AOL exec Jim Bankoff, at the sweet spot of local sports coverage in newspapers.

The new funds will be used to fuel growth, enabling more investment in SB Nation’s technology platform, its bloggers, mobile, local, advertising sales and a few relevant acquisitions.

Here is a video interview BoomTown did in May with Bankoff about where SB Nation was headed:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101108/sb-nation-raises-10-5-million-in-khosla-ventures-led-series-c-round/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20101103/hp-sees-collapsing-distance-between-personal-and-professional-fastech/ http://allthingsd.com/20101103/hp-sees-collapsing-distance-between-personal-and-professional-fastech/#comments Wed, 03 Nov 2010 19:40:13 +0000 Zoran Basich http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=32003 We’re here at the VentureWire FASTech conference in beautiful Redwood City, Calif., where technology executives and investors foregoing the San Francisco Giants World Series parade a few miles to the north are gathering to discuss the latest tech trends and developments.

A morning slate of panels centered on “The Ever-Changing Tech Sector,” and one of the participants illustrated a huge technology trend with a hum-drum example – lost cell phones.

“In the average month, 10,000 cell phones are left in taxicabs in Chicago,” said Phil McKinney, vice president and CTO, personal systems group, Hewlett-Packard. “[People] aren’t using four-digit passwords either.”

The reason it’s more than just an inconvenience is that the space between the personal and the work-related is quickly collapsing when it comes to device use.

McKinney says employees – particularly younger ones – no longer differentiate between personal use and work use for their mobile phones and other devices. But that brings with it a set of challenges in the area of data security, as employees increasingly want their work information on their personal cell phones.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101103/hp-sees-collapsing-distance-between-personal-and-professional-fastech/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101019/presto-chango-kaching-becomes-wealthfront/ http://allthingsd.com/20101019/presto-chango-kaching-becomes-wealthfront/#comments Tue, 19 Oct 2010 20:00:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=35771

Today, the execs at kaChing, a social investing site, are ringing the closing bell at the Nasdaq–actually, it is more of a button-pushing–to herald in a complete shift for the Palo Alto, Calif., start-up.

That includes a new name for the year-old company–it is now officially called Wealthfront–which signals a focus on linking professional money managers to customers and a move away from the “American Idol” investor talent discovery approach that kaChing had been founded on.

Now, Wealthfront is trying to solve the thorny problem of delivering good investment advice and actionable tools online.

Using a “methodology of the Ivy League endowments, to identify which money managers will outperform”–sounds fancy!–Wealthfront has vetted 25 investor options to be offered on its platform for anyone with a minimum of $10,000 to sink into equities (no bonds for now).

It’s certainly an interesting, if risky, move, for kaChing/Wealthfront, which has garnered $10.5 million in funding from a range of big Silicon Valley names, such as Marc Andreessen and OpenTable CEO Jeff Jordan.

Thus, here is a video interview I did yesterday with CEO Andy Rachleff and founder Dan Carroll explaining it all:

And here is the official press release on the switcheroo:

KACHING BECOMES WEALTHFRONT, APPEAL OF PERFORMANCE ATTRACTS MORE THAN $100M TO INVESTING SITE IN FIRST YEAR

Wealthfront Introduces Manager Recommendations, Makes it Even Easier for
33 Million American Households to Invest Well

Palo Alto, Calif., October 20, 2010–One-year after launching its investing platform, the company known as kaChing formally announced today that it has changed its name to Wealthfront and unveiled a host of new product features as the company continues to deliver on its promise to make it easy to invest well. An SEC Registered Investment Advisor, Wealthfront also announced more than 25 registered money managers have qualified and joined Wealthfront, and that it has attracted more than $100 million in assets to its investing platform.

Average American investors, made up of 33 million American households with a net worth of between $100,000 and $1.5 million, have collectively invested $7 trillion in the stock market. Yet the average American with a net worth of less than $1.5 million has long been conditioned to believe it is impossible to outperform the market. A recent study, commissioned by Wealthfront and conducted by telephone by Harris Interactive confirmed this attitude, finding that only 6% of all U.S. adults, and only 3% of those with a financial advisor, “strongly agree” that financial advisors know how to consistently outperform the market. This finding is unsurprising since access to quality money managers has been traditionally limited to wealthy individuals with a net worth of at least $1.5 million who can afford the high minimum investment requirements.

“People have been conditioned to believe outstanding performance is impossible, but we think it IS possible,” said Andy Rachleff, CEO of Wealthfront. “Everyone deserves a better way to invest, and with our ability to vet, select and recommend outstanding money managers for investors, we believe Wealthfront can meet this need.”

Wealthfront Managers Outperformed the Market in Last Twelve Months

Wealthfront has built its business on the fundamental belief that it is not only possible to consistently outperform the market, but that it is also possible, using the methodology of the Ivy League endowments, to identify which money managers will outperform.

Since launching as an SEC registered investment advisor one year ago, Wealthfront has applied its rigorous vetting process, for which an average of only one in ten managers qualify, to add 25 top professional money managers to its investing platform and make them accessible to anyone with a minimum of $10,000 to invest. Together over the past year, Wealthfront’s managers have collectively outperformed the S&P 500 by more than 6% net of fees.

Today’s announcement, that Wealthfront has attracted more than $100 million in assets to its platform, further demonstrates the company’s appeal to both average investors looking for a better way to invest and to top professional money managers looking to scale their business through cost-effective distribution.

“With Wealthfront, we can easily and cost-effectively access a new segment of investors by taking on accounts well below our historic minimums,” said Colin Higgins, president of The Golub Group, an investment management firm with more than $600 million under management. “There’s no reason average investors with a net worth of less than $1 million shouldn’t have more options to invest their money. Now with Wealthfront–they do.”

Recommendations Make Finding the Best Money Managers for You Easy

According to the Harris Interactive survey, about one in two U.S. adults believe they know how to evaluate financial advisors. Responding to the need to make it easier for the average investor to invest well, Wealthfront also unveiled today its new recommendation engine to match investors with the most appropriate money managers for them. Taking an algorithmic approach, Wealthfront first vets managers to qualify for its platform. Investors then answer a few short questions about their investing goals, and Wealthfront recommends the best money managers to suit their goals.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101019/presto-chango-kaching-becomes-wealthfront/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20101015/index-union-square-like-soundclouds-web-based-tune/ http://allthingsd.com/20101015/index-union-square-like-soundclouds-web-based-tune/#comments Fri, 15 Oct 2010 16:25:17 +0000 Peter Kafka http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=24601 Here’s another bet on Web-based music: SoundCloud, a start-up that makes it easy to share streaming music, is about to land a funding round from high-profile investors.

Sources tell me that Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures are leading a “significant” new round for the Berlin-based company. I don’t have a dollar amount, but I’m told that VCs were competing fiercely to get into the three-year-old company, which raised a $3.3 million round from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures in 2009. The round hasn’t closed yet.

Online music has been a black hole for investors for a very long time. So what’s the attraction here?

In large part, it’s because SoundCloud isn’t dependent on deals with the major music labels. It’s designed to let professional and amateur musicians share their own music with each other and the public, via cloud-based files that the company hosts.

Once the tunes are on SoundCloud’s servers, the service makes it easy to move the stuff around the Web, via its own widget and an API that’s showing up on lots of interesting sites, apps, services and devices, including Facebook and Apple’s iPad. You can load SoundCloud files into Spotify, the streaming music company that Index has also invested in.

The service uses the freemium model, offering most of its capabilities for free, and charging up to $700 a year for more storage and extra features.

You can also use SoundCloud to share music you didn’t create and don’t own–and a “private sharing” option makes it easy to do so discretely. That could leave the service open, theoretically, to copyright claims, a la YouTube.

But so far the company has signed up a million users without attracting the ire of the big labels. And recent court decisions in the Veoh/Universal Music and Google/Viacom cases seem to give user-uploaded services like SoundCloud a lot of legal leeway, at least in the U.S.

I’m told that the company also plans on using Audible Magic’s “fingerprinting” technology, which will make it easier for copyright owners to pull content off the service.

SoundCloud, Index and Union Square all declined to comment.

Here’s an example of SoundCloud at work–a 43-minute (!) mix that Beck has posted to his Web site, which we can also embed here:

Melted Lemons by planned_obsolescence

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20101015/index-union-square-like-soundclouds-web-based-tune/feed/ 4 http://allthingsd.com/20100923/linkedin-buys-choicevendor/ http://allthingsd.com/20100923/linkedin-buys-choicevendor/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 10:56:00 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=34102 Silicon Valley-based professional social networking site LinkedIn said in a press release that it has acquired ChoiceVendor, a San Francisco start-up that “provides real-world ratings and reviews of business-to-business service providers in more than 70 categories across the United States.”

Financial terms of the acquisition are not being released.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100923/linkedin-buys-choicevendor/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100720/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-about-growth-business-intelligence-ipo-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20100720/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-about-growth-business-intelligence-ipo-and-more/#comments Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:15:38 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=30893

Last week, BoomTown paid a long overdue visit on Jeff Weiner, the former Yahoo exec who took over the helm of LinkedIn from founder Reid Hoffman just over a year ago.

Among the topics of discussion: The strong growth over the last year of the social networking site focused on business professionals; its latest goal to surface “business intelligence” for users; LinkedIn’s competitors; and, of course, the likely initial public offering in its future.

Running the show has turned out well so far for Weiner, who was a digital exec among many previous jobs.

Before coming to the Mountain View, Calif.-based LinkedIn, Weiner ran the Network division of Yahoo (YHOO), putting him in charge of most of its consumer offerings.

He left the Internet giant in 2008 and did a brief stint as an executive-in-residence at two Silicon Valley venture firms–Accel Partners and Greylock Partners–before joining LinkedIn later that year as its president.

When he took over as CEO in June of 2009, Weiner listed a number of priorities moving forward, including scaling the network, increasing the user base and engagement, improving user experience and product ease, juicing up search, further expanding internationally and strengthening the platform and third-party developer relationships.

That’s a lot, although most simply focus on LinkedIn’s growth from 42 million members worldwide then to more than 70 million today.

While profitable–via three lines of revenue, including premium subscriptions, corporate solutions and advertising–LinkedIn will need that rocket growth to shoulder its $1 billion valuation and perhaps even more if it has its anticipated IPO.

There are challenges, of course, such as the daily appearance of other professional networking sites and apps, but none has yet gained as much traction or offered such rich streams of data yet as LinkedIn.

Here’s Weiner talking about all that and more in the video of this interview:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100720/linkedin-ceo-jeff-weiner-talks-about-growth-business-intelligence-ipo-and-more/feed/ 5 http://allthingsd.com/20100520/whiskey-medias-and-former-cnet-ceo-shelby-bonnie-talks-content-and-more/ http://allthingsd.com/20100520/whiskey-medias-and-former-cnet-ceo-shelby-bonnie-talks-content-and-more/#comments Thu, 20 May 2010 07:39:53 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=28595

Yesterday, BoomTown caught up with Shelby Bonnie, the former CEO of CNET who is now running Whiskey Media, the social publishing start-up.

Sausalito, Calif.-based Whiskey is debuting its latest site today, called Screened, focused on video entertainment, which will combine both professional and user-generated content, much as its other four sites–Anime, Vice, Giant Bomb, Comic Vine and Tested–do.

Heaped on top of the niche content, aimed at passionate fans, is social networking, as well as gaming and wikis.

It’s yet another twist on the creation and distribution of content and another example of how quickly the publishing industry is changing and innovating sometimes too.

From pay walls at News Corp. (NWS) to the run on low-cost content outfits to the decline of traditional media outlets and the growth of others, it’s definitely a dynamic time.

Here’s the video of my interview with Bonnie, who has been through a lot of these shifts:

And here is the press release from Whiskey on Screened:

Whiskey Media Debuts Screened for Passionate Fans of Film, TV and Online Video

Media company’s fifth web property delivers measureable brand engagement by combining original editorial content with social gaming mechanics

San Francisco CA, May 20, 2010–Social publisher Whiskey Media today announced the debut of its fifth property, Screened–a new online destination dedicated to video entertainment across all screened devices. Screened, created by former CNET executives, joins Whiskey’s four other category-leading properties–Anime Vice, Giant Bomb, Comic Vine and Tested–in combining original editorial content with social networking, game mechanics and wikis to create one of the most relevant and engaging film, TV and video destinations.

“We see our model as a new breed of media company, native to the Internet and not just an assimilation of content that many sites have done before. The Internet generation expects their media to be socialized and relevant to their lives,” says founder and CEO Shelby Bonnie. “Social publishing attracts highly loyal, knowledgeable and motivated audiences and provides brands the opportunity for even deeper integrated engagement than currently available elsewhere online.”

Screened is created by fans, for fans

Screened will simultaneously spark and settle debates, create and squash rumors, and stimulate engaging conversations. The site will also feature a comprehensive movie and TV database with detailed information about films, actors, directors and writers, as well as other content such as locations, characters, objects, clichés and more.

Screened is built for the savvy entertainment fan who will watch video content across multiple devices and different screens. For a generation who will consume video entertainment across phones, iPads and computers in addition to movie screens and TV screens, Screened will help people find the best in Hollywood blockbusters, independent and classic films, TV shows and online video entertainment that can be watched or streamed to screens both large and small.

“The beauty of Screened is that its content is governed by real people who are passionate about movies, TV and video, and want to share their enthusiasm and opinions with like-minded people,” said Alex Navarro, general editor, Screened. “We’re entertainment enthusiasts too, which is why we’re so excited to create a dynamic community that we believe will be worthy of a discriminating audience’s time.”

Screened entertains and rewards with Quests

Like Whiskey’s other properties, Screened will feature game mechanics, called Quests, incentivizing viewers to become active contributors and motivating communities to participate at the editorial-level of content creation. Quests incorporate features typical of online social games–badges, points and scavenger hunts–rewarding site users for creating new pages, starting a forum topic, cleaning up existing content or engaging with brand advertisers.

During a one-week preview of Screened for members of other Whiskey Media properties, the community completed more than 24,844 Quests that produced 20,000 movie entries, 200,000 actor and movie images and 1,500 genres. The average person who contributes content contributes 43 items to the community and spends more than 11 minutes on the Screened site.

Beyond Screened, the community across the other four Whiskey Media sites has started more than one million Quests that have produced more than 7,500 new product reviews and product description pages since launch. Quests have been shown to increase page views and time spent on the site by more than 53 percent, providing increased opportunities for brand marketers to interact with Whiskey’s loyal communities.

Quests work because they are a part of the community experience in each Whiskey Media brand. The ability to share and consume information about the topics people love creates a different type of online community where each member is rewarded more for their knowledge and contribution versus whom they know. Quests create a way to show their knowledge and passion to a like-minded community.

Because Quests are an integral part of the community experience and enjoyment, they also provide ways for brand marketers to reach an audience without disrupting the audience experience.

“Whiskey Media is in a unique position to deliver engagement for brands given its community-based approach and ability to integrate campaigns into its sites, enhancing the user experience, not disrupting it,” said Brian Monahan, SVP, global lead social media, Universal McCann.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100520/whiskey-medias-and-former-cnet-ceo-shelby-bonnie-talks-content-and-more/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20100504/lets-go-to-the-videotape-sb-nations-jim-bankoff-speaks/ http://allthingsd.com/20100504/lets-go-to-the-videotape-sb-nations-jim-bankoff-speaks/#comments Tue, 04 May 2010 15:30:55 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/?p=27973 While in Washington, D.C., recently, I paid a visit to Jim Bankoff, who is now helming a fascinating start-up called SB Nation, a fast-growing sports blog and news platform.

With over 200 individual communities, it’s a mix of professional and user-generated content aimed at engaging passionate fans.

A former AOL (AOL) exec, Bankoff (pictured here) has worked on such products as TMZ.com, Moviefone, MapQuest and Netscape, as well as its AIM and ICQ messaging offerings.

After that, he became a senior adviser to Providence Equity Partners.

SB Nation has raised about $13 million in total venture funding from Accel Partners, Allen & Company, Comcast Interactive Capital, as well as angel investors such as Ted Leonsis and others in Silicon Valley.

People familiar with the situation said SB Nation’s post-investment valuation, after its most recent round last summer, is about $30 million.

SB Nation has used its funding to grow like gangbusters, especially since Bankoff arrived in late 2008 as chairman and CEO.

While it has been around since 2003, founded by DailyKos’s Markos Moulitsas and others, the start-up has been aiming more at the sweet spot of local sports pages, especially as newspapers have become weaker.

Here’s the video of my interview with Bankoff, as well as a tour of its D.C. HQ:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100504/lets-go-to-the-videotape-sb-nations-jim-bankoff-speaks/feed/ 2 http://allthingsd.com/20100317/yahoo-acquires-citizen-sports/ http://allthingsd.com/20100317/yahoo-acquires-citizen-sports/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:39:00 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=36617 BoomTown was right: Yahoo is indeed buying online sports site Citizen Sports, a developer of sports-related apps and games for Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone and for social networking sites like Facebook. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but as BoomTown noted on Monday, estimates put Citizen’s selling price at about $40 to $50 million.

The acquisition is a savvy one for Yahoo (YHOO), which already has a strong sports content business and stands to benefit from the additional social networking and mobile integration that Citizen Sports offers.

Below, the official announcement:

Yahoo! to Acquire Citizen Sports

Strengthens Social Strategy by Combining the Power of the No. 1 Online Sports Destination with the Web’s Most Popular Social Sports Company

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Mar 17, 2010 –As part of its ongoing commitment to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Citizen Sports (http://www.citizensports.com), a company that brings the world of sports to fans’ favorite social networking sites and mobile devices through innovative applications. This acquisition will strengthen Yahoo!‘s social strategy of enriching, aggregating and distributing social content from across the entire Web, and offering a highly customizable social experience.

“Yahoo! is in a unique position to combine our deep expertise in content and aggregation technology to offer a highly personalized social experience,” said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, Consumer Products Group, Yahoo!. “Sports has been among the earliest online categories to experience rapid social proliferation, and the combination of Citizen Sports leading products with our world-class sports experience on Yahoo! Sports is a win-win for sports fans globally.”

Millions of people across the globe use Citizen Sports’ array of social and mobile products to play fantasy sports, fill out brackets, check live scores and read up-to-the minute news on sports including football, hockey, soccer, baseball, racing, rugby, hockey and cricket. Yahoo! Sports’ content will be integrated into these products, creating a seamless experience for sports fans wherever they are. On Yahoo! Sports, users will be able to broadcast their allegiances, create or join a conversation with friends and fans and cheer for their teams through Citizen Sports’ applications. This integration will further transform Yahoo! into a more personally relevant experience, drive deeper user engagement and create opportunities for advertisers to interact with audiences in new environments.

As the #1 destination for online Sports with more than 39 million monthly unique users in the U.S.*, Yahoo! Sports provides people with the most timely, relevant and comprehensive sports news, information and programming. Citizen Sports’ network of popular applications for Facebook, MySpace (NYSE: NWS), hi5, iPhone and Android span professional, college and high school sports.

“Citizen Sports was founded with the intent to enable fans to access news, scores and fantasy games on the platform of their choice,” said Mike Kerns, founder and CEO of Citizen Sports. “We look forward to becoming a part of Yahoo! and bringing our social experiences to their 600 million users around the globe.”

Citizen Sports was founded by Mike Kerns and Jeff Ma in 2004. Since then the company has brought together millions of sports fans from around the world to enjoy sports and connect with their friends. Citizen Sports is based in San Francisco.

Yahoo! expects to complete this acquisition in the second quarter of 2010. Financial terms were not disclosed.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20100317/yahoo-acquires-citizen-sports/feed/ 0