Russian

Twitter to Wait Until After IPO to Name Woman — Likely With International Cred — to Board

Kara Swisher in News on October 27, 2013 at 6:43 pm PT

The number of women with international experience is long, but if I were to bet whom Twitter is considering for its top picks, I would name only two: Condoleezza Rice and Madeleine Albright.

Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe on One Million-DNA March and More (Video)

Kara Swisher in Commerce on January 14, 2013 at 3:00 am PT

Can the personal genome company get people to keep spitting for their health?

News Byte

23andMe Raises $50 Million in New Funding, Adding Yuri Milner as Investor

Kara Swisher in News on December 11, 2012 at 8:21 am PT

Personal genomics company 23andMe said it has raised more than $50 million in a new funding round, a near doubling of its investments so far. 23andMe has already raised over about $68 million since it was founded in 2006. The new financing includes Russian investor Yuri Milner, as well as existing investors Sergey Brin of Google, 23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki, New Enterprise Associates, Google Ventures and MPM Capital. The money will be used by the Mountain View, Calif., company to grow to one million customers and also to cut the price of its Personal Genome service to $99, which offers 244 reports on health and personal traits, as well as genealogy and ancestry information. That price was originally $999 and provided only 14 reports.

DST, Silver Lake and Yunfeng Lead $1.6B Tender Offer Aimed at Alibaba Employees at $32B Valuation

Kara Swisher in News on September 22, 2011 at 5:45 am PT

Big play in China, as big investors pour a fortune into Alibaba Group shares to give its employees some walking-around money.

Twitter Poised to Close a Two-Stage $800M Funding, With Half Used to Cash Out Investors and Employees

Kara Swisher in Social on July 20, 2011 at 12:42 pm PT

In a move reminiscent of one done by Facebook in 2009, Twitter is zeroing in on a complex $800 million funding deal, which includes a tasty $400 million payout for its current investors and also employees.

Exclusive: Zynga About to File for IPO

Kara Swisher in News on May 24, 2011 at 3:32 pm PT

Zynga is poised to file for its initial public offering, according to sources close to the situation, as early as this week, or next week at the latest. The San Francisco-based online gaming company’s valuation in its last round of funding was $10 billion, but it is likely to price itself higher in an offering, given the recent series of strong IPOs for Internet companies.

Will Secretary of State Clinton's "Internet Freedom Agenda" Finally Get Traction?

Kara Swisher in News on February 16, 2011 at 7:09 am PT

Yesterday, in a major policy speech in Washington, D.C., Secretary of State Hillary Clinton jumped on the Internet bandwagon again, unveiling a $25 million government investment for entrepreneurs to allow dissidents to thwart “thugs, hackers and censors.” Since that’s about the amount a third-string social photo-sharing site gets while walking down University Avenue in Palo Alto, Calif., from venture capitalists with bags of money to spend, let me just say the money is, well, underwhelming. Clinton’s speech, thankfully, was much better.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo Says Company Needs to Unify Its Experience Across Devices

Ina Fried in Mobile on February 14, 2011 at 8:28 am PT

In addition, Costolo announced the company will offer crowdsourced translations of the service into Russian, Turkish and Indonesian. Also doing own translation to Portuguese later this year.

Cisco Security Survey Finds Windows Vulnerabilities And Spam Decreasing

Arik Hesseldahl in Enterprise on January 20, 2011 at 6:40 am PT

Still no rest for the weary computer security professional. Smartphones and tablets are coming to the office and creating new opportunities for trouble.

Groupon Poised to Strike Partnership With China's Tencent, in Key Global Expansion Move

Kara Swisher in News on January 16, 2011 at 3:00 pm PT

Groupon is in talks with Chinese Internet giant Tencent to form a partnership to accelerate its effort in the critical Asian arena, said several sources with knowledge of the situation. Terms of the deal are unclear, but sources said that it is likely to involve some sort of co-branded joint venture effort between the two–a key strategic move for Groupon, given the hard-to-penetrate-if-you’re-not-Chinese Chinese market.