BlackBerry may get a boost from its rebranding and the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 handsets, but the company continued to lose ground against its smartphone rivals through the end of 2012. BlackBerry’s share among top smartphone platforms in the U.S. fell two percentage points to 6.4% for the three months ending in December, according to the latest comScore data. At the same time, Google’s Android expanded its leading share to 53.4%, up 0.9% in the last three months, while Apple’s iOS picked up two points to reach 36.3%. Rounding out the top five were Micrososft’s Windows Phone …

Social media software provider LiveFyre on Wednesday announced closing $15 million in new funding in a third round financing led by U.S. Venture Partners and including prior investors GreyCroft Partners, Cue Ball, HillisVen Group, and ff Venture Capital. Launched in 2009, the company has expanded from a system for social commenting to a platform powering llve chat, live blogs, instant messaging, content curation and other social features through its StreamHub product. Clients such as Fox Entertainment, The New York Times, CBS, The Daily Beast, AOL and NBC Universal use the software-as-a-service platform to enhance social interaction on their Web …

NBC's "Smash" didn't "open" -- to use industry parlance --  for its second season premiere. The ambitious show about the backstage goings on at a Broadway show, landed with a thud on Tuesday-- a oh-no Nielsen 1.1 rating/3 share among 18-49ers, down mightily from its strong 3.8 rating a year ago, and almost a full rating point less than its 1.8 rating season finale a year ago. "Smash" did get the benefit of "The Voice" lead-in viewers for the better part of last season. Not this time around. Overall viewers came in at 4.5 …

Andy Gibson heading to Bacardi Limited as CMO (not Diageo)

Following the controversy erupting over adult-oriented clips appearing on Vine, the Twitter-owned video-sharing app has added an age rating of 17 and older. Launched last month, Vine lets iOS users create, edit and share videos lasting no longer than six seconds. When it became clear the app was being used by early adopters to post pornographic material, Twitter responded by trying to make it more difficult for people to find the adult videos by adjusting its hashtag search feature. The company had previously taken the step of adding a warning message at the start of sexually explicit videos to address …

Mobile messaging provider Urban Airship has raised $25 million in a fourth-round funding led by August Capital and including Foundry Group, Intel Capital, True Ventures and Verizon. That brings the company’s total raised to date to $46.6 million. It plans to use the new financing to enhance its push messaging platforms, capitalize on opportunities around digital wallets and Apple’s Passbook, and driving international expansion. The company’s revenue grew more than 400% in 2012 while the size of its staff doubled to 118. Urban Airship, which powers alerts and other in-app features for brands including CBS Interactive, ESPN, Groupon, shopkick, and …

Channel Intelligence, a provider of technology to ecommerce-enabled companies,confirms Google acquired the company. Reports put the price tag at $125 million in an all-cash deal. The news announced on CI's homepage explains the relationship of the two companies.

Twitter confirmed Tuesday it acquired Bluefin Labs, a social TV analytics company that provides data products to brand advertisers, agencies, and TV networks. The acquisition reflects a commitment to social TV measurement based on Nielsen's SocialGuide platform.

  Like that of the Super Bowl, another big event, ABC's "85th Annual Academy Awards", has been a quick sell out.

Facebook has added a new feature to its custom audience ad service that allows marketers to target an audience segment with a similar customer profile to one previously uploaded they. Launched in September, Custom Audiences lets marketers retarget their existing customers and prospects on Facebook by uploading a list of their email addresses and/or phone numbers. During the company’s fourth-quarter conference call last week, Facebook executives spoke of promising early results for the ad offering. Through the new Lookalike Audiences feature, “advertisers can expand their reach to specific geographic areas or audiences who are not already fans of the …