Feed: VatorNews - AggScore: 50.1

Google to acquire Meebo

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Google finds an ideal fit for Meebo with Google+

It’s official: Google is acquiring Meebo.  The news comes after rumors began churning two weeks ago that Google had its eye on Meebo and was looking to buy the seven-year-old company for $100 million.  While Meebo has not officially confirmed the $100 million price tag, that’s where reports are pegging it. Google isn’t commenting on the financial terms of the ... [Read more]

Eventup raises $1.8M for venue marketplace

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The LA-based startup gets support from Lightbank, NEA, and New World Ventures

What do you do if you have a really nice place with a high mortgage that you would like to rent out, but you don’t really like the idea of random strangers taking over your home?  There’s always AirBnB or HomeAway, which sound good in theory as short-term rentals, but you’re still stuck with the possibility of your guests putting ... [Read more]

Boxee dives into personal video sharing with Cloudee

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Cloudee enters the competitive arena of personal video sharing with Socialcam, Viddy, Dropbox

  Boxee, best known for viewing online video content on TV, is launching a new service called Cloudee. Currently in invite-only beta, Cloudee will let its users share personal videos with their friends and family also using the Boxee service. Initially available as an iPhone app and a Boxee app, Cloudee allows users to capture or upload videos and connects via ... [Read more]

Today's Entrepreneur: Jedidiah Yueh

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No. 1 mistake: Unable to define or build a powerful product in a large, healthy market

Today's Entrepreneur is Jedidiah Yueh, CEO of Delphix. According to his VEQ Jedidiah is a thought leader and is good at team motivation and product management. Vator’s community is the home to entrepreneurs who embrace their passion and follow their dreams. Our profiles allow members to express themselves by sharing their interests, lessons learned, as well as bits and pieces ... [Read more]

Square card readers now available in more big box spots

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Square credit card readers now being sold at Walgreens, FedEx Office, Staples

  Squares, squares everywhere. This morning, Square announced that it is making picking up its mobile dongle even easier to snap up now that Walgreens, Staples, and FedEx Office stores will have them in stock. That is more than 20,000 retail locations nationwide. You really have no excuses now. The San Francisco mobile payment start-up has already done a lot ... [Read more]

MBA Mondays: Optimal headcount at various stages

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Time and again, the entrepreneur who hires quickly fails, the the one who is a bit slow succeeds

(Fred Wilson is a VC at Union Square Ventures, based in NY. In this opinion piece, he writes about the value of being resource constrained in the early stages of building a company.) This is the third post in the MBA Mondays series on People. The number of people you have in your company at any time is a very ... [Read more]

Disney adapts popular mobile game Temple Run for Brave

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Mobile gamers can now run avoid the perils of ancient Scotland in Temple Run Brave

  Brave, the story of a Scottish princess that wishes to break tradition and win her own hand in an archery contest is hitting not just the big screen, but the small screens as well.  One of the most highly anticipated animated movies from Disney in years is about to hit theaters this summer, and in order to make the ... [Read more]

Salesforce buys Buddy Media for $689M

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Salesforce now has ownership of two big listening companies: Radian6 & Buddy Media

Enterprise cloud computing titan Salesforce confirmed Monday morning that it has agreed to purchase New York City-based Buddy Media for $689 million. Word slipped out on Tuesday last week that such a grab was very likely. Buddy Media creates social media analytics for brands. This new purchase, in combination with Salesforce’s Radian6, could help companies keep very detailed records of ... [Read more]

Google attempts to alert Chinese users about censorship

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New tool will prompt users to try different terms to avoid shut downs

Google and China have had a particularly contentious relationship over the past few years. China has cracked down so severely on the Internet, and Google searches in particular, that Google has not even operated in the country since 2010, instead moving operations to Hong Kong. Now Google has gone a step further to help Chinese citizens avoid censorship problems that ... [Read more]

Photo sharing app PicPlz is shutting down in July

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Early Instagram competitor could never catch up in users or funding

After Facebook purchased Instagram, it became clear that Instagram was going to become the king of photo sharing apps and it was only a matter of time before others started falling. We now have the first casualty. One of Instagram’s early competitors, PicPlz, is shutting down, the start-up announced on its blog Friday. The service will officially shut down on July 3. ... [Read more]

Twitter projects $1 Billion in ad revenue by 2014

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Forecast doubles after push for self-service platform overseas

With Facebook looking considerably weaker after its disastrous IPO, could there possibly be an opening for another social network to swoop in and take its crown? While that possibility doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon, new projections by Twitter could make it a bigger competitor to Facebook than it had ever been previously. Twitter is expected to hit $1 ... [Read more]

Groupon stock sinks nearly 9% after lock-up period ends

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Stock hits all time low, crashing 52% from the IPO price

Poor Groupon. The day that its lock-up ended, and over 90% of its shares became available for trading, the market had its worst day of the year. After being continuously embarrassed after being forced to constantly revise its number, Groupon is beginning to look like the Charlie Brown of the stock market, always landing on its face while trying to ... [Read more]

LA-based DogVacay.com is the AirBnB for dogs

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DogVacay.com shows that LA is a breeding ground for new ideas

When I bought my house a year ago, I found out from all of my new neighbors that the previous owners had two loud, territorial, ill-trained Queensland Heelers that they were SO relieved to finally be rid of.  Imagine my chagrin when I moved in with my two loud, territorial, ill-trained Queensland Heelers… I’m sure my neighbors will throw a ... [Read more]

E-commerce sites see jump in visits from Mobile Safari

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Data reveals rising popularity of Mobile Safari while IE loses market share

Data from e-commerce technology platform Monetate paints a sunny picture of the future of Apple’s Safari browser.  The company released data Friday morning that shows that Apple’s Safari is the fastest growing browser among e-commerce sites.  Monetate gathered the info from among the 100+ e-commerce sites on its platform, which includes customers like Best Buy, Comcast, Freshpair.com, Godiva, Jockey, and ... [Read more]

Facebook IPO post mortem - Killer!

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But not for the reasons you think; Valuation bubble in Silicon Valley is bursting

1. Say goodbye to the individual investor on Wall Street. Whatever positive impression they had of the IPO market and the stock market in general was just torched to the ground. When everyone you know associated with the stock market is telling you and the media is confirming that this could be a huge IPO that will make money for ... [Read more]