It took just five days into the 2013 baseball season for MLB.com’s At Bat application to hit four million downloads. It wasn’t until May 18—45 days after Opening Day—the app reached that level last year, according to MLB Advanced Media. It also puts the 2013 edition, released on Feb. 21, on pace to break the 7 million downloads last season. At Bat 13 includes new features such as additional news video and historical baseball footage going back to the 1952 World Series. All MLB video highlights are now also searchable. The app requires a one-time $19.99 subscription fee for the …

LinkedIn saw solid user growth in March, with unique visitors up 24% from a year ago, and from 17% in February. That’s the biggest spike for the professional network since February 2012, according a research note Monday from Macquarie Securities. Page views increased 16% in March after a slowdwon in February (up 10%), but were still below January’s 22% increase. For the first quarter, page view growth slowed to 16% from 28% in the fourth quarter of 2012, when the company introduced several new products including redesigned profile pages and the Influencers blog network. LinkedIn rolled out an upgraded search …

eBay-owned E-commerce system Magento has partnered with AdRoll to integrate access to its ad-targeting platform into the Magento software used by 150,000 merchants worldwide. After installing an AdRoll software through Magento Connect, AdRoll creates a free account, placing a retargeting pixel on the user’s site, and importing necessary product information. Participating merchants can then use the company’s retargeting offerings, including LiquidAds and retargeting on Facebook Exchange, to run campaigns. Magento is part of e-Bay’s X.Commerce initiative, providing merchants and developers a range of tools for doing business online.

With the rollout of Facebook Home for Android devices last week, one of the assumptions is that it will at least attract the social network’s most avid users. But what if they don’t want Android phones to begin with? According to a Yankee Group survey of 15,000 consumers in March, only 37% of Facebook fans—people who rank its brand an eight or higher on a one-to-10 scale—intended to buy an Android phone. That compares with 43% of non-fans. Facebook fans prefer iOS devices, with almost half planning to buy an iPhone compared to 41% of non-fans. “Given that Apple isn’t …

It was probably only a matter of time, but someone -- the Hallmark Channel -- has unveiled plans for "The Kitten Bowl" It was inevitable for several reasons, not the least of course is the fact that people can't get enough of kittens. (Ever watch YouTube, check out BuzzFeed?) Another reason has been the success of Animal Planet's "Puppy Bowl" Super Bowl counterprogramming stunt. That said, I'm pretty sure Animal Planet already airs a kitten segment, so get ready for a cat fight. Meow!

In 2012, the most viral video -- "Kony 2012" -- was all about saving lives. This year, it's about shaking booties. Not sure what that says about our meme-based culture, but the folks at Visible Measures have just released an analysis showing that The Harlem Shake meme has "joined an elite group of viral videos, those that have surpassed 1 billion views! That's right, the meme that everyone loves to hate has generated a True Reach of more than 1.2 billion views. And it has done it faster than any other viral to date." Great. Specifically, VM says it took …

Mobile ad network Jumptap said Thursday that its U.S. monthly reach had grown 28% to 171 million since quietly launching a real-time bidding (RTB) platform last fall.Globally, it reaches 269 million mobile users a month The company noted that the RTB system already handles more than half of Jumptap’s total ad requests and has increased its total ad requests to more than two billion per day. The platform ties directly into partner exchanges from Burstly, Mobclix, MoPub, Nexage and Smaato, among others, to source inventory in real-time. Jumptap CEO George Bell said last fall the company is considering an initial …

App advertising and analytics firm Flurry on Wednesday said it will extend its analytics solution to mobile Web sites. "Flurry is focused on helping its customers measure consumer behavior across different platforms to provide a more 360 degree view,” said Brad Jones, head of product management for Flurry Analytics, in a statement. “By extending its native app solution to mobile web, Flurry is helping companies better manage their entire mobile portfolio.” The company for now is holding off extending its ad services to mobile sites until publishers have a better understanding of the differences in user behavior …

Tealium said Wednesday it has secured an additional $15.6 million in Series C funding for a total of $27 million to date. The company also said it increased sales and bookings by 185% in Q1 2013, compared with the year-ago quarter, and a 245% increase in non-GAAP revenue during that same period. The latest round led by Silicon Valley-based Tenaya Capital will fund expansion of product development, customer operations and go-to-market resources. Battery Ventures, which lead Tealium's $10.5 million Series B round, and Presidio Ventures, the venture capital arm of Sumitomo, also participated..

Nielsen continues its campaign to make its online campaign ratings the currency of online media buys, unveiling a push this morning to take the service global, with initial expansions from the U.S. and the U.K. into four new major international markets: Australia, Canada, Germany and Italy. Nielsen asserts that NOCR is "quickly emerging as the standard for online campaign measurement," though rival comScore has a comparable product that is also broadly used. One of Nielsen's aces in the hole is the fact that its panel includes a humongous source of online user behavior: Facebook. "These six markets represent the majority …