Custom online game developer Bunchball has secured $6.5 million in new funding from investors led by Triangle Peak and including Northport Investments, Correlation Ventures as well as prior investor Granite Ventures. The company said the additional capital would go toward product development and marketing and sales as well as expanding into the B2B and loyalty market segments. Using Bunchball’s Nitro platform, clients can “gamify,” or add game play mechanics, to their Web sites, Facebook presence or non-game applications to boost engagement. Joining Bunchball as chief revenue officer last month was Steve Patrizi, who formerly led U.S. sales for …

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and other advocacy groups are asking the Federal Trade Commission to order Facebook to suspend a feature that automatically recognizes users' faces and suggests their names when they appear in photos uploaded by their friends. “The secretive collection compilation and subsequent use of facial images for automated online identification adversely impacts consumers in the United States and around the world,” the groups allege in a complaint filed Friday with the FTC. “Facebook’s 'Tag Suggestions' techniques converts the photos uploaded by Facebook users into an image identification system under the sole control of Facebook. This …

UM, the division of IPG's Mediabrands unit, has been named the digital media shop for Clorox Co. in the U.S. The account, which had been handled by Omnicom's OMD unit, covers Clorox brands, including its namesake bleach and cleaning products, Green Works, Pine-Sol, Fresh Step, Kingsford, Hidden Valley, K C Masterpiece, Brita, and Glad. The account will based in UM's San Francisco office and led by Greg Pomaro, UM senior vice president-client business partner.

For the most part, marketers who talked about how to leverage social media avoided delving into privacy issues at OMMA Social on Thursday. But one notable exception occurred the end of a panel about crowdsourcing, when Kailei Richardson, director of marketing at Pointroll, suggested that marketers could more aggressively mine Facebook data. She appeared to suggest that marketers could one day send birthday greetings and suggested product recommendations to the friends of users who had liked the brand. Matt Roche, co-CEO of Bo.It, was unenthusiastic about that idea. He said that some forms of behavioral targeting -- such as …

It’s publishers’ lucky day! Apple has reportedly backed down on a major component of its new in-app subscription rules, which Web watchers say should provide a big boost to content companies. Under Apple’s just revised guidelines, “Content providers may offer In-App subscriptions at whatever price they wish and they are not required to offer an in-app subscription simply because they sell a subscription outside the App Store as well,” MacRumors reports. As such, there are no longer any requirements that a subscription be the "same price or less than it is offered outside the app," nor are …

As consumers around the world grow more savvy--and more cynical--about what companies are doing to protect the planet, the demand for products from companies they see as environmental good guys is up significantly. In the U.S., concerns about the environment have rebounded to pre-recession levels, with 50% saying they believe the environment is on the wrong track--a three-year low, according to the annual ImagePower Global Green Brands Study, which surveyed 9,000 adults in eight countries. The brands Americans find most credible are Seventh Generation, Whole Foods, Tom's of Maine, Burt's Bees, and Trader Joe's. (For the first time in …

Apps developed by LinkedIn, Netflix, Foursquare and payment platform Square are all guilty of potentially exposing sensitive consumer information to computer criminals, security firm viaForensics finds. According to viaForensics, "The Android applications of LinkedIn, Netflix and Foursquare stored user names and passwords in unencrypted form on their Google-powered devices," The Wall Street Journal reports. "Storing that data in plain text violates a commonly accepted best practice in computer security." Criticized by some as overzealous and even naïve, The Journal has been on a crusade to expose -- some say inflate -- digital privacy issues. "You'd think the spate of …

While it won't guarantee mass adoption, developing apps and Web services around the latest tablet technology is sure to turn a few heads. Take the latest idea from note-taking platform Evernote, which is trying to position itself as a tool for storage, as well as enhancing memory. "That couldn't be clearer with a newly release app ... Evernote Peek," writes ReadWriteWeb. "The app makes rather ingenious use of the new iPad Smart Cover, creating a new way to make and study flash cards." Evernote Peek lets users create quasi flashcards, which they can then scan through by physically lifting …

What are the cool kids -- at least in tech-world terms -- buzzing about right now? Writing in TechCrunch, former TechCrunch writer Steve Poland says it's a social music service named Turntable.fm. "The early adopting tech elites are eating this site up, just as they did Twitter, Foursquare, Instagram, and others," Poland insists. "Barring some awful interference, this app is going to break big and change things." Essentially, Turntable.fm lets users listen to tracks in online groups, and share their thoughts in real time via an accompanying chat board. "The only issue I thought Turntable had was needing to …

Fanhattan just hit the jackpot with a thousand-word review by All Things D's Walt Mossberg. Not only is the content navigation app being graced with the tech guru's attention, but also his adoration. The "beautiful, versatile new iPad app," as Mossberg calls it, aims to be a navigator of premium content. Beyond just finding TV shows and movies, and telling users which apps offer them, Fanhattan actually launches the apps where desired content resides -- and takes them right to the page inside that app from which they can stream, rent or buy the particular video they want. The …