Accel Partners has been pretty busy handing over giant wads of dough to start-ups this week–and today is focusing its largess on San Francisco-based Lookout, a smartphone security provider.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based venture firm will be the lead investor in an $11 million Series B funding round for Lookout, which offers solutions to protect phones from malware and viruses, back up and restore valuable data and help users find their phones in the event they are lost or stolen.

Accel Partner Ping Li will join the start-up’s board.

Lookout currently works only on phones using Google (GOOG) Android, Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Mobile operating systems.

Previous venture investors Khosla Ventures and Trilogy Partnership are also participating. The pair, along with angel investors such as Chris Sacca, had already put $5.5 million into Lookout late last year. The company was founded as Flexilis in 2007.

Lookout said the former CEO of Vontu and executive at Symantec (SYMC), Joseph Ansanelli, would become chairman of Lookout and that it had brought in other execs, including a former Yahoo (YHOO) staffer. Ansanelli has been an angel investor in Lookout.

Here’s the official press release:

Lookout Closes $11 Million in Series B Funding Led by Accel Partners

Explosive Growth in Smartphone Market Underscores Need for Mobile Security

SAN FRANCISCO–May 18, 2010–Lookout, the leader in smartphone security, today announced an $11 Million Series B round of funding led by Accel Partners with Khosla Ventures and Trilogy Partnership also participating. The company also announced that it has added several new executives to its leadership team, including former CEO of Vontu and executive at Symantec, Joseph Ansanelli, as Chairman of the Board.

“The smartphone market is exploding, and consumers are downloading third-party apps by the hundreds, making security an increasingly vital component of the mobile market,” said Ping Li, Partner at Accel Partners, who will join the board. “Consumers need to know that their applications, their data, and their phone itself are protected. We are excited to work with Lookout as they continue to extend their lead in this dynamic market.”

The global smartphone market grew more than 50% during the past year and as a result, consumers have been introduced to thousands of third-party applications across leading mobile platforms through app stores and downloaded sites. The Android Marketplace alone gives consumers access to more than 50,000 applications. While they enjoy the benefits of these applications, consumers are often unaware of the risks that accompany their increased data and application usage. Similar to the PC market, as consumers do more with their phones, they need protection from threats such as mobile viruses and malware, data loss and theft of the phone itself.

Lookout has developed cross-platform, cloud-connected applications that immediately identify and block threats before they compromise a consumer’s mobile phone, backup and restore mobile content, find a lost or stolen phone and wipe data from a phone if necessary. Available now on more than 400 mobile networks in 170 countries, Lookout prevents thousands of malicious applications, finds countless lost phones and restores important information for users every month.

“We are thrilled to receive such enthusiastic support from Accel Partners,” said John Hering, CEO and founder of Lookout. “Their backing is recognition of Lookout’s accomplishments to date and a testament to the importance of this market. With this additional financing, we’ll continue to invest in new technology and infrastructure so that we can provide the most comprehensive smartphone protection available to millions of consumers worldwide.”

Lookout Executive Additions

Joseph Ansanelli brings his extensive knowledge of security to Lookout as Chairman of the Board. Prior to Lookout, he served as CEO and co-founder of Vontu, turning the company into the leading provider of data loss prevention solutions before being acquired by Symantec in 2007.

In addition to Ansanelli, Lookout has also added several key members to the company’s executive team including Eric Bothwell as vice president of engineering, who formerly held engineering leadership positions at Vontu and Symantec; Chris Jones as vice president of product management, formerly senior director of portfolio product management at Symantec; and Julie Herendeen as vice president of marketing, formerly vice president of network products and advertising solutions for Yahoo! Inc.

Could the social group-buying space get any frothier?

Well, yes, it could.

After the recent $135 million funding of Groupon that valued the Chicago start-up at upwards of an eye-popping $1 billion, rival LivingSocial announced to today that it had raised a more modest $14 million in a Series C round.

The Washington, D.C. start-up had raised $25 million in a Series B venture financing only a month ago. And it raised $10 million on top of that since 2008.

Sources estimated the valuation for LivingSocial is several hundred million dollars now.

The newest round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners; Earlier investors U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution are also participating.

Ironically, Case’s former No. 2 at AOL (AOL), Ted Leonsis has been an early investor in Groupon.

LivingSocial said it will use the new pile of cash to expand to dozens of new markets, adding it was launching four new cities now: Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia.

It now operates in 18 cities across the country.

For those in Silicon Valley who do not consider these prices for all these social e-commerce sites high at all, BoomTown is here to tell you that in the real world the figure is not actually modest, except in comparison.

But LivingSocial will need every penny if it is to compete with Groupon and a growing spate of competitors in the local space, much as is also happening in the social status update arena.

The local outcome for most will inevitably be a sale to a big Internet company like Amazon (AMZN).

Or oblivion, especially since so many similar offerings makes the whole market confusing for both local businesses and customers

In general, most offer a daily deal with a huge discount on a wide range of products and services–from spas to skydiving–in dozens of U.S. cities, for large groups of potential buyers on the Web, through email or via social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Using social tools, the idea is use collective buying power to get low prices and push customers to local businesses.

If a deal reaches the number of buyers it needs, which can be in the thousands, these services sell vouchers to the consumers and collect a hefty fee for the sale from the businesses it sends customers to.

The plus for many small businesses is to get a crack at a lot of new consumers–think of it as social networking lead-generation.

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

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

No matter in 2010!

That’s due to the VC frenzy going on, spurred by winner-take-all theories–Groupon, for example, got most of its recent mountain of cash from champion Russian overspenders, Digital Sky Technologies.

However it turns out, here is LivingSocial’s official press release:

LivingSocial Raises $14 Million Series C Round Led by Lightspeed Venture Partners; Launches in Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia

Company Also Begins Offering Hyperlocal Deals in Seattle Area–Users Can Now Get Deals Even Closer to their Homes

$14 Million Round Comes on Heels of $25 Million Series B Announcement Last Month

Washington D.C., April 29, 2010–LivingSocial, the social commerce leader behind LivingSocial Deals and top Facebook applications Visual Bookshelf and Pick Your Five, today announced that it has completed a $14 million Series C round of venture funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with U.S. Venture Partners, Grotech Ventures and Steve Case’s Revolution, LLC participating. Because of the rapid growth, and high user demand, LivingSocial will use the capital infusion to expand into additional markets–bringing Deals to dozens more cities throughout the U.S. in 2010. This additional funding comes on the heels of the company’s recent $25 million Series B round announced last month.

“We’ve known and admired the LivingSocial team for a long time, and I have bought many of their terrific local offers. They’ve done an excellent job of growing their user base through smart media buying and excellent knowledge of social channels and virality,” said Jeremy Liew, managing director of Lightspeed Venture Partners. “With this financing round, LivingSocial is very well positioned to bring their great offers to even more people.”

LivingSocial is also launching its Deals program in four new markets: Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia. This brings LivingSocial live in 18 cities across the country with major plans to expand to dozens of markets throughout the year.

“We’re constantly receiving requests from our users to expand and launch in their markets, and this recent funding round will allow us to do just that,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder of LivingSocial. “We’re really excited to introduce LivingSocial to Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia to continue generating huge savings for our users and even bigger returns for our merchants.”

LivingSocial users throughout the country saved an average of more than $32 each in March, and have saved tens of millions of dollars since the launch of Deals in 2009. By signing up for LivingSocial’s free daily online service, people are saving an average of 50-70% at their favorite places, such as the hottest local restaurants, spas, sporting events, hotels, and other local attractions.

Because LivingSocial wants to give consumers more availability to the program, the company is launching hyperlocal deals for the Seattle area. Now consumers in areas like Tacoma and Bellevue will start getting deals targeted to their location, in addition to Seattle proper. Hyperlocal deals not only help more consumers explore new things in their city, but these deals also provide merchants with a greater opportunity to reach local audiences on the LivingSocial Deals platform.

LivingSocial is now live in 18 markets including: Washington, D.C., New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Austin, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Twin Cities, Chicago, Raleigh Durham, Denver, San Diego, the San Fernando Valley, Portland, Orange County, Charlotte and Philadelphia. Dozens of additional cities are expected to roll out in the coming months. For more information or to sign up your city, go to http://livingsocial.com.

Online talk radio aggregator Stitcher nabbed $6 million from Benchmark Capital and will use the money to give radio blabbermouth Rush Limbaugh, as well as the endlessly talking heads of National Public Radio, even more digital distribution.

The San Francisco-based start-up often describes itself as the the Pandora of online talk radio. And like the digital music site, Stitcher lets its users create and customize their own free personalized talk/information/news radio stations.

The site focuses mostly on its apps for a variety of mobile devices, especially increasingly popular smartphones. It offers programs from about a thousand different sources, such as NPR, E! and The Onion.

Stitcher also recommends new programs to users based on their selections.

The infusion of funding in a Series B round led by Benchmark–whose partner, Bob Kagle, will have a seat Stitcher’s board–will allow it to expand its advertising sales force and improve its offerings, said CEO Noah Shanok in an interview with BoomTown last night.

“The hope for everyone in terrestrial radio is to find new audiences, so as we grow, they will too,” said Shanok, who co-founded Stitcher in 2008. “We want to be a part of everyone’s everyday life.”

Shanok said fast-growing usage and engagement–which he declined to give specifics about–was the reason Benchmark was attracted to the company.

The new funding adds to $3 million Stitcher already raised from New Atlantic Ventures and investors Ed Scott and Ron Conway, who also participated in the new round.

While the mobile app on the Apple (AAPL) iPhone is the most popular, Stitcher also offers software for Research in Motion (RIMM) BlackBerry, Palm (PALM) Pre and Google (GOOG) Android devices.

Stitcher is also pushing into other areas, such as being part of Ford’s (F) initiative to make its SYNC-enabled vehicles into Wi-Fi hotspots, allowing people to connect to the Internet everywhere much more seamlessly in a moving car. They will be available later this year.

Here’s the press release on the funding:

Stitcher Secures $6 Million in Series B Venture Funding

Benchmark Capital Leads New Round to Help Transform the Way We Listen to Talk Radio

SAN FRANCISCO, CA. (April 6, 2010)–Today, Stitcher, a service that allows users to customize talk radio programming on their mobile devices, announced that it has completed its Series B round of financing. Led by Benchmark Capital, with participation from previous investor New Atlantic Ventures and tech veterans including Ed Scott and Ron Conway, the funding will be used to further Stitcher’s product and platform development. Bob Kagle of Benchmark will join Stitcher’s board of directors.

“We know that people prefer listening to news, talk and information programming when they’re on-the-go. The rise of smartphones has finally created an opportunity to give people exactly what they want to hear–on their commute, at the gym, on a road-trip–wherever and whenever they want it and that’s exactly what Stitcher does,” said Noah Shanok, CEO of Stitcher. “Benchmark’s funding, combined with Bob’s guidance, will help us continue to take advantage of the growing market for mobile content distribution.”

Stitcher’s free service allows users to create a personalized audio programming experience. With Stitcher, users can listen to the news and talk radio shows they enjoy whenever and wherever they like, using their mobile devices. Users choose their favorite programs from more than a thousand different sources, and Stitcher then delivers the audio feeds to their phone as a single, regularly updating radio station. Stitcher also helps users discover new content on a variety of topics–including business, sports, politics, entertainment, and current events–by recommending additional programs based on the shows users have in their feeds. A single radio station can include programming as diverse as Fox Headline News, NPR’s Fresh Air, TechCrunch Headlines, Onion Radio News, and E!’s Hollywood Rap Up.

“Stitcher is transforming the way we all consume news, talk radio, pod casts,” said Bob Kagle, general partner at Benchmark Capital. “Noah and his team are building a platform that will deliver the personalized experience consumers currently enjoy for music to the broader world of audio programming. We’re thrilled to join the Stitcher revolution.”

Yammer, the enterprise equivalent of Twitter, said it had grabbed another $10 million in financing.

But the question for the San Francisco-based microblogging service for businesses and closed groups is: “What are you working on?”

Yammer has both free and a paid–the gold level is $5 per user, per month–versions and is essentially a useful productivity tool.

Emergence Capital took the lead in the Series B round for Yammer, along with ubiquitous Silicon Valley investor Ron Conway and previous investors.

Yammer previously raised $5 million from Charles River Ventures and The Founders Fund.

Here’s the release:

Yammer Secures $10 Million in Series B Funding from Emergence Capital and Previous Investors

Investment To Fuel Product Innovation and Sales Coverage

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., February 3, 2010–Yammer, Inc., the leader in Enterprise Microblogging and Real-time Communications, today announced that it has received $10 million in its Series B round of funding. Emergence Capital leads the round; with general partner Jason Green joining Yammer’s Board of Directors. SV Angel, led by seasoned Silicon Valley investor, Ron Conway, is also participating as are previous investors, including Charles River Ventures and Goldcrest Investments from Dallas.

Yammer launched its solution in September 2008 and has experienced rapid user adoption with over 60,000 organizations globally having adopted the solution. Drawing on this momentum, Yammer will use the proceeds to accelerate product innovation and increase sales coverage.

“Yammer is revolutionizing the way employees communicate and collaborate, filling a need that email has failed to deliver,” said Jason Green, general partner at Emergence Capital. “Yammer has a passionate and proven executive team, a compelling freemium business model, a loyal customer base and a huge market opportunity. We are thrilled to be joining them in the next phase of their rapid growth.”

Companies and organizations of all sizes across a wide range of industries benefit from Yammer. They use Yammer for a multitude of reasons, including improving workforce productivity, connecting a geographically dispersed team, getting new employees up to speed, and increasing the flow of content and knowledge.

“Yammer is focused on improving the way employees communicate and stay connected to critical information about their company and job,” said David Sacks, founder and CEO at Yammer. “We’re pleased with the rapid growth and market adoption we’ve achieved and are poised to accelerate it with exciting enhancements to our product and with broadened sales coverage. We’re eager to work with Emergence Capital and leverage their expertise in building world-class Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies and are gratified that proven technology investors such as SV Angel and Charles River Ventures are also participating in the funding.”

Perhaps plow it into more start-ups like Aviary, a Long Island-based design software company.

Bezos, via his Bezos Expeditions fund, has followed up an investment in the company earlier this year with another slug of cash. It’s part of a $7 million Series B round led by Spark Capital, best known in these parts as the guys who made a very big bet on Twitter, which Bezos also invested in.

If you’re sick of hearing about Web start-ups with just the vaguest sense of a business plan, Aviary may be a refreshing change. It is trying to make money by selling cheap, Web-based alternatives to popular, expensive design software, primarily the stuff that Adobe (ADBE) sells, like Photoshop and Illustrator. Granted, it doesn’t make much money yet: The company only began selling $24.95 subscriptions to its software suite earlier this year.

Down the line, Aviary also imagines it will be able to create an online marketplace where the creative types who use its software can bid on work assignments. Sort of like eBay (EBAY) meets Craigslist meets Etsy meets Amazon’s (AMZN) own Mechanical Turk.

Here’s the full press release:

Aviary Secures $7 Million in Series B Financing Led by Spark Capital

Provider of Creative Application Suite in the Cloud Makes Creation Accessible to All and Advances the Growing Digital Economy

LONG ISLAND, New York (October 26, 2009) – Aviary, Inc., a pioneer of a creative application suite in the cloud, today announced that it has received $7 million in Series B financing led by Spark Capital, with participation from existing investors, including Bezos Expeditions, a personal investment company of Jeff Bezos. With a suite of digital creation and editing software available as an online service, Aviary offers a simple and cost-effective solution for creators of all genres–from graphic design to audio editing – to express their creative talents and participate in the burgeoning market for digital goods. In conjunction with the investment, Mo Koyfman of Spark Capital will be joining Aviary’s board of directors.

“Aviary’s robust suite of online creative tools is fundamentally democratizing digital creation. Whereas the market for digital goods was once reserved exclusively for creators using proprietary desktop software, Aviary is delivering creative applications that allow anyone with a browser to participate,” said Koyfman. “And by doing so in the cloud, Aviary allows for seamless online creation, collaboration, distribution and ultimately monetization previously not possible. The Aviary model has the potential to exponentially increase the number of creators and collaborators contributing to the digital economy.”

Until now, the digital creation market has been largely dominated by desktop software solutions which are often cost prohibitive and involve complicated interfaces. By contrast, Aviary offers a powerful creative toolset in the cloud that enables professional and amateur creators alike to easily create their own digital works. The basic Aviary suite is available for free to users and includes an image editor, vector editor, audio editor and more. Users can also upgrade to the pro suite to gain commercial features such as unlimited private storage, as well as collaboration and community enhancements. For more information, visit http://aviary.com/.

“We are disrupting the status quo by eliminating the long-held barriers to digital creation and giving creators the tools they need to create, market and monetize their vision,” said Avi Muchnick, founder & CEO of Aviary, Inc. “We are extremely excited to have Spark Capital on board. Their broad-ranging internet, software and consumer experience will be a tremendous asset to us in furthering our mission to make creation accessible to creators of all genres.”

Instead, the New York-based company has just raised a $4.5 million Series B round that its CEO, 22-year-old David Karp, says will fund it for two and a half years. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, which led the company’s first $750,000 round a year ago, also led this financing. My educated guess is that its investors now value Tumblr at around $15 million.

Tumblr is a “microblog” platform that is supposed to let its users quickly create nice-looking posts with a minimum of effort; it sits somewhere between Twitter and full-fledged blogs like Blogger and TypePad. It is popular with a relatively small but prolific user base: Its 500,000 users have created pages that draw 15 million unique visitors and 61 million page views a month, Karp says.

Money? Nope. Tumblr is free–and has no ads cluttering up its hipster vibe.

Way back in 2007, those kinds of numbers would have been catnip for the likes of Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO). Now, though, even deep-pocketed buyers aren’t racing to snap up revenue-free start-ups. But Karp says raising money from his previous investors was easy: “These guys came to us with a deal that made us incredibly comfortable.”

Karp says he’s going to start generating money in early 2009. Not by selling ads on his members pages–Karp thinks the site will eventually incorporate ads in some way, but not yet–but by selling users “premium” services, most of which he’s not ready to describe. He does promise they will be “really sexy.”

More practically, Karp points out that other Web services, like the WordPress blogging platform and Yahoo’s Flickr photo service, have been able to upsell many of their users with goodies like extra storage. He figures many of his users will pay up, too.

The new money means he’ll have time to prove his thesis. Karp has just doubled his staff–which means there are now all of six people on payroll. One of them, hired in September, is John Maloney, Karp’s former boss at Urban Baby, where he started his Web career. Maloney is now in charge of business operations.

The money also means there are heightened expectations. Karp has done much more than people twice his age (and has the press clips to prove it). But the newest funding round means his investors think the company will be worth as much as $50 million by the time he sells it or raises more cash. In order to prove them right, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him.

[Image Credit: David's Log]