• Just-Eat Plans E-Takeout World Domination
    Stateside, online food ordering services are experiencing varying degrees of success. Soon, however, they could all face a new threat from Just-Eat -- a fast growing UK-based startup, which just raised $64 million in funding from European private equity firm Vitruvian. Just the latest funding round for Just-Eat, the company’s top priority remains continued expansion into new markets. “Commenting on the deal, Klaus Nyengaard, CEO of Just-Eat, explained that the investment will push the business forward into new countries and help diversify its services,” The Next Web writes. Said Nyengaard: “This new investment will help our continued expansion. Takeaway e-commerce has …
  • Wrapp Debut Highlights Social Gifting Growth
    Sweden-startup Wrapp is bringing its social gifting expertise to U.S. consumers, and, in turn, drawing attention to the ecommerce trend. “Last year, the buzzword in e-commerce was Groupon Inc and its myriad of competitors that offered daily online coupons to entice shoppers in a down economy,” Reuters reminds us. “Now, the latest fashion in retail is social gifting, where people get together on Facebook to buy each other gifts.”  According to Wrapp’s CEO Hjalmar Winbladh: "Brick-and-mortar retailers are all looking for new, more efficient ways to drive sales into stores without diluting their brands ... we wanted to really see …
  • TheFind Tries To Best Pinterest With "Likes"
    Shopping search site TheFind is gunning for Pinterest with the launch of Glimpse -- a new Facebook shopping discovery app that is built on top of Facebook “like” data. In the absolute simplest terms, the app curates shopping pages for users based on their likes, as well the things their friends like. With Pinterest’s sudden success, some see TheFind’s minor shift is inevitable. “Pinterest’s rise has helped highlight the value of social discovery over traditional search for shopping and the lesson hasn’t been lost on competitors,” GigaOm writes. “While Pinterest has taught people to pin the stuff they like from …
  • Amazon Posts Modest Q1 Performance
    Proving a clear market demand for its services, Amazon reported net sales of $13 billion for the first quarter of the year -- up 34% year-over-year. Yet, the ecommerce giant also revealed $130 million in net income, or $0.28 per diluted share, for the quarter, which is down 35% year-over-year. “Altogether, [first quarter] earnings were a plus for Amazon following a disappointing fourth quarter, and they ultimately beat Wall Street’s expectations of a first-quarter profit of seven cents a share on revenue of $12.9 billion,” Reuters reports. All told, Amazon finished the first quarter with $192 million in operating income …
  • Viddy Vies For $30M In Fresh Funding
    Mobile video-sharing service Viddy -- which recently ranked as the top free iPhone app on Apple’s App Store -- is reportedly raising a $30 million Series B round at a $370 million valuation. “I have no idea whether that is post or pre-money, but whatever it is, it is really ambitious,” writes TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis. “It also means investors are hoping it’ll be a $10 billion company, or an $800 million company at the least.” Just this past February, Viddy closed a $6 million Series A round, with participation from Battery Ventures, Greycroft Ventures, Qualcomm, and Bessemer Ventures. According to …
  • Evernote Nears 30 Mil Members
    Note-taking and digital archiving Evernote is fast approaching 30 million registered users, according to its CEO Phil Libin. “Last number we heard was 20 million in December 2011, so things are obviously moving fast for Evernote,” notes The Next Web. As Libin tells NTW, however, racking up users isn’t the startup’s end goal. To be truly successful, Evernote has to convince users to actually spend time with the app. (Currently, Libin says 40% of long-term members -- i.e. people that signed up for Evernote when it launched four years ago -- still use the service today.) Evernote will also have to …
  • Walmart.com Lets Shoppers Pay Cash
    Seeking the biggest consumer base possible, Walmart.com is launching a “Pay with Cash” feature, which will let users place orders online and then pay for them (with cash) at a nearby store. Joel Anderson, president and CEO of Walmart.com, says the new feature is simply targeting people who don’t have access to debit or credit cards. “The fact that only 15% of our transactions are done in the form of credit at our stores means there’s a large percentage of Wal-Mart customers who are dependent on cash to transact online,” Anderson tells AllThingsD. “We definitely think it is a big opportunity.” …
  • Spotify Planning Ad-Supported "Radio" Service
    Spotify is already enjoying success with its current online music service, which functions like a music collection, allowing users to create playlists from specific albums and tracks. Not content to stop there, the London-based company is reportedly working on another format, which, like rival music service Pandora, would operate like radio.  “The new service would start by year-end and be supported by advertising, said the people, who weren’t authorized to talk publicly,” Bloomberg reports. The new, would-be service would already be cheaper to operate than Spotify’s existing service, because royalty rates are lower and set by Congress, Bloomberg notes. What’s more, “An …
  • Early Android Financials Revealed
    While always trumpeted as a great success, Google has never disclosed Android’s financial performance -- until now. Back in 2010, with about 20 million Android-operated phones on the market (and a projected 40 million by the end of the year), Google expected to make some $278.1 million in revenue from Android -- made up of $158.9 million in mobile advertising and $3.8 million in app sales. The numbers were included in a quarterly review presentation given on July 12, 2010 by Android chief Andy Rubin, but only just revealed during the ongoing patent trial between Oracle and Google. Regarding the …
  • Google Tries To Clear Up +1 Confusion
    Blink and you’ll miss this latest social development from Google. The search giant this week announced a new Google+ share button that helps users differentiate between Google’s +1 functionality and the Google+ network. “Google originally launched +1 as a tool similar to Facebook’s like functionality,” Marketing Land explains. “A +1 is the equivalent to a user vouching for a Web site by liking it.  Buttons were released around the +1 functionality that allowed users to +1 content directly from a Web site.” To draw a clearer line in the sand, the new Google+ share button doesn’t include any of the +1 functionality. Instead of …
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