Another funding raise for a collaborative consumption startup: Spain-based private sales club Privalia, which sells branded clothes and accessories at discounted prices to members in the five markets it currently plays in, has closed a new €25 million round ($32.3 million). The company did not specify which round this latest raise falls under but has previously raised a total of $218 million in two rounds, taking place in 2010 and 2011, according to Crunchbase.

The new financing brings Privalia’s total funding to date to $251 million. It also adds a new investor, with Belgian-based fund Sofina – also an investor in European online shoe retailer Spartoo – becoming a shareholder. Other prior investors include La Caixa Capital Risc, Nauta Capital, Highland Capital Partners, General Atlantic, Insight Venture Partners, Index Ventures, the founders of dress-for-less Mirco Schultis and Holger Hengstler, and José Manuel Villanueva and Lucas Carné, the two co-founders of Privalia.

Privalia currently operates in Spain, Italy, Germany, Mexico and Brazil. It said it plans to use the new funding to expand its growth in the Latam region, as well as to strengthen its financial structure and extend its leadership, noting in a press release that sales in Mexico grew by more than three digits in 2012, and that Brazil is its main operating company by sales volume.

Overall, Privalia said its business grew 32% in 2012, with total revenues of €422 million ($543.5 million), adding that it ended the first quarter of this year with positive EBITDA on a consolidated basis. It points to early investment in mobile as a key engine for growth, with €1 in every €3 spent via its mobile apps in Spain, while in Mexico the figure rises to more than 40% of sales — and up to 60% during holiday dates.

Commenting on the raise in a statement, co-founder Lucas Carné, said: “In the last three years we have invested heavily to consolidate as one of the first groups of e-commerce in Europe and Latin America. The current size of operations this year allows us to focus on operational efficiency and profitability growth. Only those electronic stores that are profitable or have strong support from investors, will able to survive in the next three years.We are fortunate to meet both conditions.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A startup called Webflakes aims to bring some of the best international content on fashion, food, travel, and more to English-speaking readers with the help of volunteer translators. The site is officially launching today, and the company is also announcing that it has raised $3 million in Series A funding.

CEO Nathan Shuchami told me that people searching the web can sometimes struggle to find “genuine, authentic content” on a given topic due to language issues. For example, for wine connoisseurs, there are certainly plenty of sites about wine, but the commentary of many French experts is inaccessible unless you speak French.

To address that issue, Webflakes has selected 60 established bloggers in Japan, France, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Switzerland and Peru and has licensed the rights to their content in every language except the original. Then a team of volunteers translates their work into English and posts it on the Webflakes site.

For now, neither the blogger nor the translator is paid. Shuchami said the blogger gets exposure to a new audience. Meanwhile, many of the translators also do professional translation work, so this is an opportunity to do something more fun and build their portfolio. Plus, Webflakes will donate $1 for every 500 words translated to the charity of the translator’s choice. And in the future, Shuchami suggested that Webflakes might be able to offer revenue-sharing deals to both groups.

But is the global nature of the content enough to attract readers? One advantage, Shuchami said, is that Webflakes is currently focusing on lifestyle topics where the blogger’s nationality should be a particular draw — not just French writing about wine, but also Italian writing about Italian food, Japanese writing about Japanese architecture, and so on.

I poked around the site this morning — I don’t read a lot of lifestyle content, but I thought the range of topics was pretty interesting. The top trending article right now is a French writer on “How To Wear A Bow Tie.” Also on the front page is a Peruvian writer telling readers to “Invite Your Mother To Peru For Mothers Day!” And the translations are usually quite readable, if not always graceful. (To be fair, that may have as much to do with the original post as the translation. And yes, the writing on English-language blogs can be pretty rough, too.)

Eventually, Shuchami said he hopes to add more writers and translators and to expand to other kinds of content.

As for the funding, it was led by Oren Zeev’s Orens Capital, with participation from Genesis Capital, Audible CEO Donald R. Katz, eBay CTO Mark Carges, Chegg co-founder Aayush Phumbhra, former GoDaddy CEO Warren Adelman, former Apax partner Stephen Grabiner, and others.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Italian company and TechCrunch Startup Alley participant at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013 Save The Mom has created an iPhone app that’s designed to bring families closer together, with social networking tools designed specifically for private use. It’s not only about being social, however, as it includes shared productivity and task management tools to make managing a family easier, too.

The Save The Mom app is a little sexist in its naming, but the tools it offers are pretty useful. It provides tools like grocery and to-do list collaboration within the family, private photo sharing, post appointments and commitments that you have in your own calendar and more. You can even poll family members, maybe to make a meal choice, and record audio notes, which co-founder Davide Dattoli says is especially useful for children that are too young to be able to communicate with written language.

Save The Mom is a free app for iPhone owners, and will be coming to Android within the next few weeks. There’s also an iPad version in the works for late on, too. The free app is supported by in-app advertisement, which has already enabled Save The Mom to make some key partnerships.

“The business model is based on advertising,” Dattoli explained. “We’re partnered with Condé Nast in Italy, and we’re integrated with Style.it and we’re developing other partnerships around awards. We know what people buy, and we know what they do and where they do it. Advertisers are very interested in that.”

Asked about privacy concerns, Dattoli said that the company is very careful with client privacy, and doesn’t pass on any kind of identifying information about its users to its advertising partners. That doesn’t mean that customers won’t still be made nervous by the idea of an app designed around private sharing transmitting any kind of information to third parties, but it’s possible the benefits of targeted, relevant deals will outweigh those concerns.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google’s mobile OS Android continues to power ahead as the world’s most popular smartphone platform, according to figures out today from Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, the WPP-owned market research company that tracks sales of handsets across key markets on a 12-week rolling cycle. In the nine markets surveyed by Kantar — Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, UK and the U.S., all detailed in the table below — Android on average accounted for 64.2% of all handset sales in the 12 weeks that ended March 31.

The only market where Android did not dominate was Japan, where Apple’s iOS just about eked out a lead against it (49.2% versus 45.8% of sales) for the three months ending March 31. Elsewhere, the figures indicate that regardless of whether the market is developed (U.S., UK, Germany) or emerging (China) or struggling financially (Spain), collectively, Android handset makers are winning them all, with sales figures for the platform reaching their high point in Spain, at 93.5% of all smartphone sales.

Kantar — which bases its figures on (as samples) 240,000 interviews annually in the U.S. and some 1 million across Europe — believes that Android’s lead will only grow more in the months ahead, with the ongoing roll out of two new Android handsets, the Galaxy S4 from Samsung and the HTC One, driving sales of the platform.

“We expect to see a further spike in [Android's] share in the coming months, as sales from the HTC One start coming through and the Samsung Galaxy S4 is launched,” writes Dominic Sunnebo, global consumer insight director at Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “This will pile pressure on Apple, BlackBerry and Nokia to keep their products front of consumers’ minds in the midst of a Samsung and HTC marketing blitz.”

Indeed, in the U.S., without a strong handset launch in the last twelve weeks, and little sign of a new one on the horizon after the launch of the iPhone 5 last autumn, iOS declined by almost one percentage point to 43.7% of sales compared to Android’s 49.3%, which was up by 1.4 pp, a strong contrast to the period that included the iPhone 5 launch in the U.S. Symbian is now nearly totally out of the market, with only 0.2% of sales. BlackBerry’s BB10 launch has so far had very little impact on the company, which gained only 0.2 percentage points, to 0.9% of sales, compared to last month’s figures of 0.7%.

Kantar’s figures show that the only other platform besides Android in the U.S. market to see any gains was Windows Phone — a repeat of the trends that emerged last month. Microsoft’s platform was up by 1.9 percentage points to a still-modest 5.6% of sales, with Nokia accounting for the vast majority of those.

Elsewhere, the pattern of Android domination and modest Windows Phone gains was repeated. Across the 5 European countries covered, Windows Phone accounted for 6.5% of sales, up 2.5 percentage points; with Android at 68.8% of sales, up over 10 percentage points. Similarly, in Australia, Android was nearly 63% of sales, up 8.8 pp, while Windows Phone was up 0.8 pp to just over 4% of sales.

So why is Windows Phone gaining? Part of the reason, according to analyst Mary-Ann Parlato, is that WP handset makers (namely Nokia) have made a lot of effort to create and promote devices aimed at first-time smartphone buyers.

Although we have now just reached a global tipping point for smartphones shipped, and while smartphone sales are now exceeding those of feature phones, when it comes to active ownership there are still more feature phones than smartphones in the market. And Kantar’s theory is that the accessible, colourful, and cheap Lumias that Nokia is pumping out are appealing to those buyers, with feature phone owners representing 52% of Windows Phone buyers in the U.S..

In contrast, the majority of Android (51%) and iOS (55%) buyers previously owned other smartphones. If this purchase pattern continues, as smartphone penetration grows, Windows Phone could find itself with a growing advantage. And the UK is one case in point. There, smartphone penetration is now 63%, Kantar notes, and it’s also one of Windows Phone strongest (if modest in relative terms) markets: accounting for 7% of all smartphone sales in the 12 weeks.

Kantar only breaks out specific handset model popularity for the UK market, where, although iOS is not the most popular platform, the iPhone 5 is the most popular phone, at 15% of all sales. Interestingly, when you break it down by handsets, it’s clear just how much iPhones and Samsung devices dominate the space, and how Samsung’s strategy to launch often and widely, across a spectrum of prices and models, has worked out for it (but perhaps with more sacrifice to margin than Apple).

“Kantar Worldpanel ComTech data clearly shows that different Samsung models are appealing to a very different type of consumer. The Galaxy Note II is popular with affluent 25-34 year old males, the Galaxy SIII Mini appeals to younger females, the Galaxy Ace to older females while the Galaxy SIII has broad appeal,” writes Sunnebo. “The fact that Samsung has so many models available in the market is not indicative of a scatter gun approach, simply a realisation that different consumers demand very different handsets, both in functionality, design and price.”

Kantar only breaks out how individual carriers perform in the U.S. market, but the figures provide a telling picture for what may be happening elsewhere, too. Kantar notes that Verizon has solidified its lead against AT&T with 37.2% of smartphones sold, with AT&T holding steady at 27.9% and Sprint in third with 12.3% of sales and T-Mobile drooping down more than 3 percentage points to 9.5%.

It looks like at least part of the story for Verizon’s gains is because it seems to have a healthier mix of Android and iPhone devices, which are roughly equal in terms of how well they sell at the carrier. AT&T’s mix is still heavily weighted to the iPhone, meaning if that device does less well, so does the carrier. All the same, the iPhone (and Metro PCS) could not come soon enough for the number-four carrier to boost figures.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon doesn’t share details on how well its Amazon Appstore apps sell, but according to mobile app analytics firm App Annie, the app marketplace is seeing growing traction among developers. The company surveyed over 1,500 developers, and found that 22.5 percent of them were now publishing to the Amazon Appstore, and half of that group (50 percent) cited the game category on the Amazon Appstore as their leading revenue driver.

Previous reports have confirm roughly the same thing: that Android developers are turning to Amazon’s Appstore in greater numbers, and are seeing the benefits. Amazon Appstore’s revenue per user tops that of Google Play, or even iOS, in some cases. Last summer, for example, mobile gaming startup TinyCo, was saying that its revenue per user was higher on Amazon than on iTunes or Google Play. However, another report from Flurry said that iTunes was number one, and Amazon was in second place in terms of its revenue generation capabilities. Flurry had found that for every $1 spent on the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89, and Google Play $0.23.

But this was over a year ago; App Annie itself said this month that Apple’s was still the store to beat, in terms of revenue.

Today’s report also found that top paid iOS and Google Play applications have higher average price points than those on Amazon. Comparing the average price of the top 400 paid apps, the company noted that Amazon’s average was $1.73 compared with $2.21 on iPhone, $3.39 on iPad, and $3.55 on Google Play.

However, it might be a little early to paint such a rosy picture, depending on whose data you believe more. For instance, App Annie competitor Distimo also released a report this month, examining similar trends among the two leading Android app marketplaces. Its findings were a bit different.

Although it too saw Amazon’s influence growing, it found that overall, Google Play was still beating on revenue. Distimo said that the number of paid downloads in Google Play is twice the size of paid downloads on Amazon, but the revenue gap was smaller. According to its analysis, the top 200 paid applications in Google Play in the U.S. made $5.2 million in March 2013, making Google Play 1.7 times bigger than the Amazon Appstore by revenue.

However, that report noted that there were some examples of applications that did better on Amazon, which essentially backs up the broad strokes of what App Annie is saying here. Simply put, for some developers, Amazon is proving more successful than Google Play, and its potential is growing as Amazon’s store scales.

Also in the new report, 56 percent of the developers App Annie surveyed were said to focus on gaming, and over half (51 percent) said they decided to publish on Amazon because of how easy it was to port apps. Other top reasons included a belief that Amazon’s Appstore marketshare would grow, and that the Kindle Fire would become a leading device.

That second reason – marketshare growth – is already happening, of course. Amazon announced on the 17th that it was expanding its Appstore to cover nearly 200 countries, including notable additions like Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, South Africa and South Korea. Before, the store was only available in the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

But Amazon’s potential isn’t only tied to its growing reach, but also to its deep experience with e-commerce and related infrastructure. Amazon customers have their account information on file, and can use 1-click purchasing to buy apps. The store lets users test drive apps, and promotes free apps daily, which drives traffic. Amazon also curates apps, so unlike Google Play, those that fill its charts have been scanned for malware and for other bad behavior.

For developers looking to have their app found, and more importantly, purchased, these strengths can add up to drive sales.

Correction: an earlier version of this cited Amazon’s Appstore as a leading revenue driver. This should have said the games category on Amazon was. This has been updated.  

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Amazon today took a big step forward in its strategy to take its app distribution business — and its Kindle Fire hardware business — global: it announced that its Android-based Appstore will expand to cover “nearly 200″ countries, including adding Australia, Latin American countries like Brazil and Mexico, Canada, South Africa and South Korea. Up to now, the only countries where the Appstore was available were the U.S., UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

Developers interested in distributing their apps to these new international users can start submitting their apps today, Amazon said. The storefronts themselves will be coming “in the coming months” when Amazon officially launches its Amazon Appstore for Android internationally.

Last quarter, Amazon missed on almost all analyst estimates but its stock soared anyway, partly because, as the WSJ points out, it was showing improvements in its operating income — a sign that its business of selling online on a grand scale continues to progress.

Amazon is due to announce its next quarterly results on April 25. Putting the news out today that it’s growing the scale of its digital content business even further helps them continue to sell that message in the lead-up to that.

It’s also an important message to lure more developers to its platform.

“Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, VP of Apps and Games at Amazon, in a statement. “Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

Amazon, as we have all come to expect by now, doesn’t give out specific numbers on how well apps (or its devices) are selling. (However, Flurry a year ago estimated that the Appstore generated nearly as much as Apple’s App Store, at 89% of Apple’s app revenues, with Google Play significantly behind them, making only 23% as much as Apple.

Since first launching the store in 2011, Amazon has gradually been offering different features in the Appstore to give developers more flexibility for how they charge users.

These include single-click purchasing, in-app purchasing, A/B testing capability, and GameCircle, launched last year, specifically to promote and use gaming apps. Amazon says that a study of 500 games that utilize in-app purchasing on Amazon found that those enabled to work via GameCircle earned 83% more average revenue per user than non-GameCircle games.

Amazon started as an online bookseller but has since expanded into electronics, home goods, fashion, digital content and much more. With that, it has built a business model around being aggressive on prices for consumers, making up for it with economies of scale. In that sense, taking its Appstore (and probably its hardware) to as wide an audience as possible is an essential move for the company.

But there could be another reason for ramping up Appstore distribution: Because a more powerful app storefront has become a prerequisite for many consumers when considering what mobile hardware to buy, the move is also a sign that Amazon could be gearing up to get more aggressive with its hardware strategy. Amazon currently sells Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets built on a forked version of Android. Many believe that it will add a smartphone to the lineup soon.

While Amazon has yet to announce a phone, there have been various signals that it does plan to do more with smartphones soon. Included in this is a carrier billing deal it has signed with Bango, which has yet to come into effect but looks like it might finally this year. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablets largely work on WiFi connections (there is one model, the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD with LTE access, but so far this is only sold in the U.S.). But a smartphone would be more closely linked with mobile operators, making it more logical for Amazon to look for a way of making it easier for users to pay for content on its Appstore, especially in countries where credit card penetration is low.

Release below.

Amazon Expands Global App Distribution to Nearly 200 Countries – Developers Should Submit Their Apps Soon to Reach Millions More Active Amazon Customers

Developers around the world reporting high monetization rates with Kindle Fire and Amazon Appstore

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apr. 17, 2013– (NASDAQ: AMZN) – Amazon.com, Inc. continued the global expansion of its Appstore today by announcing that developers can now submit their apps for distribution in nearly 200 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City. These apps will be made available in the coming months when the Amazon Appstore for Android launches internationally for consumers. Registered developers who want international distribution will have their apps automatically made available for download, unless they designate otherwise. This international expansion is the latest in a series of Amazon Appstore for Android launches, which have included the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Signing up is easy and developers can get started today by visiting the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal.

Developers throughout the world are experiencing strong monetization and user engagement through Kindle Fire and the Amazon Appstore. The success is being driven by Amazon’s large customer base and industry-leading e-commerce features like 1-Click purchasing, Amazon’s APIs for In-App Purchasing (IAP) and A/B Testing, and GameCircle, Amazon’s gaming experience for Kindle Fire. A recent study of more than 500 games that utilize in-app purchasing on Amazon found that GameCircle-enabled mobile games earned 83 percent more average revenue per user (ARPU) than non-GameCircle games.

“Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. “Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

Monetization Success
P2 Games is a UK based publisher of interactive games. “We launched our Kindle Fire version of Peppa Pig in January 2013 and within a couple of weeks we saw the sales on Kindle Fire overtake Google Play to a factor of four or five times,” said Peter Sleeman, Director, P2 Games Limited. “Kindle Fire is now a legitimate contender and although our apps have been out much longer on the iOS formats our current rate of sale is close to parity with iOS most days.”

Mobile Deluxe is the creator of popular games like Big Win Slots and Jewel Factory. “We see superior engagement, retention, and monetization from players who download our games from Amazon,” said Sean Thompson, Vice President of Mobile Deluxe. “The GameCircle integration is helping us achieve 40 percent better per-user monetization rates compared to non-Amazon players. We’re excited to continue this momentum as the Amazon Appstore grows into more and more international countries.”

Playmous is a UK mobile games publisher. “We were excited to see how fast the Kindle Fire install base was growing in the UK and other European countries,” said Anton Volnykh, Playmous. “Our initial launch on the Amazon Appstore in October was targeted to Europe only and we saw 4x growth in paid downloads when we launched the second campaign in just 6 weeks after the initial release. Moreover, our conversion rate from the free version to the paid version of the game has been 30% higher than on other app stores on average with the same product.”

Anuman Interactive is a French multimedia publishing company. “With 30 apps released since April 2012, more than 80 percent of the Anuman’s Android sales were realized on the Amazon Appstore,” said Stephane Longeard, CEO Anuman Interactive. “This store is extraordinarily easy to use with its recommendations system and secure 1-Click payment technology. We are really glad to reach people all over the world, thanks to Amazon Appstore.”

Developer Support
Big Duck Games is the developer of the popular puzzler Flow Free. “We’ve been distributing our games on Amazon since May 2012. Today, we have many hundreds of thousands of daily sessions on Amazon,” said Sharon Newman, Vice President, Big Duck Games. “It’s a great audience that deeply engages with our games, and we’re excited to reach an even larger audience with the added international launches of the Amazon Appstore.”

Imangi Studios is the creator of the popular game Temple Run. “We’ve integrated with Amazon’s In-App Purchasing and GameCircle APIs, which was a breeze,” says Keith Shephard, CEO of Imangi Studios. “We’ve seen significantly higher customer engagement with Temple Run since the integration, making the few, short steps worth it. We’re looking forward to following the Amazon Appstore as it expands into more international countries.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Not to be out-done by Payleven, iZettle and all the other Square clones out there, Italian mobile POS startup Jusp has now secured a $6 million equity round with two Italian VCs, making it one of the biggest rounds in Italy this year. The round was led by Principia Sgr together with Vertis Sgr with the participation of some Angel Investors: Stefano Calderano (previously BNP Paribas and Intesa), Paolo Guida (Lehman), Giulio Valiante (Saldi Privati and Jobrapido), Simone Ranucci Brandimarte (Glamoo) and Bruno Spadoni (Setefi) who also led the first $700,000 seed investment into Jusp made in 2012. Jusp now hopes to launch in other European countries.

Jusp’s proprietary Point Of Sale device uses Chip&Pin rather than the usual signing of some competitors, though iZettle beat them to it with a Chip & Pin reader back in February.

Jusp also connects to the audio jack, avoiding those pesky Apple licensing fees, as Square pioneered. The pricing comes in at €39 per unit (it works with iOS and Android smartphones and tablets) and levies a 2.7% merchant fee for any transaction, therefore coming in under the competition (Square has yet to launch in Europe).

iZettle’s Chip & PIN costs €49 and Payleven is also €49. With iZettle, merchants pay 2.75% of each transaction amount.

The founders of Jusp are Jacopo Vanetti (CTO) and Giuseppe Saponaro (COO) and are joined by Stefano Calderano, CEO, while Roberto Mazzei, Chairman of Principia sgr, takes the Chairman role.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google is facing enforcement action — and possibly fines — in six European Union member states after it failed to make changes to its privacy policy following requests by European data protection regulators. The six countries that have today launched data protection investigations into Google’s unified privacy policy are France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and the U.K.

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office gave the Verge the following statement confirming it has launched an investigation into whether the policy infringes national law:

The ICO has launched an investigation into whether Google’s revised March 2012 privacy policy is compliant with the Data Protection Act. The action follows an initial investigation by the French data protection authority CNIL, on behalf of the Article 29 group of which the ICO is a member. Several data protection authorities across Europe are now considering whether the policy is compliant with their own national legislation. As this is an ongoing investigation it would not be appropriate to comment further.

Back in February, the French data protection regulator, CNIL, called out Google for failing “to come into compliance” within the four month period set out by the original October report into the policy, conducted by the Article 29 Working Party – and said Mountain View would therefore face additional action. Representatives of Google met with the CNIL-led taskforce last month but, according to CNIL, “following this meeting, no change has been seen” — thereby triggering today’s national actions.

The CNIL’s release states:

It is now up to each national data protection authority to carry out further investigations according to the provisions of its national law transposing European legislation. Consequently, all the authorities composing the taskforce have launched actions on 2 April 2013 on the basis of the provisions laid down in their respective national legislation (investigations, inspections, etc.)

In particular, the CNIL notified Google of the initiation of an inspection procedure and that it had set up an international administrative cooperation procedure with its counterparts in the taskforce.

This latest brush with Europe’s data protection watchdogs was triggered by Google’s action last year to consolidate more than 60 separate product privacy notices into one unified policy. After an investigation, European privacy regulators published a list of privacy recommendations for Google, including suggesting the company should make it clearer to users how their personal information may be used, and how it is collected and collated from different services. They also wanted Google to offer users an opt-out. It is these recommendations that Google has apparently failed to comply with, resulting in today’s actions.

Google provided TechCrunch with the following statement regarding the latest stage of the CNIL-led action: “Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the DPAs involved throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward.”

It’s unclear whether the European action contributed to the departure of Google’s director of privacy Alma Whitten, announced yesterday.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A new kind of tech accelerator has launched in one of the more unlikely places: the Italian Alps. TechPeaks (see what they did there?) calls itself a “People Accelerator” because individuals and teams will be able to join it without an idea but a desire to build something. It will launch with €13 million in funding. It’s also taking more of a partnership rather than competitive approach, working with seven Technology Universities (via the European Institute of Innovation and Technology ICT Labs) and seven other international tech accelerators, listed here. The idea is to help unite the many fragmented European tech initiatives. And oh my are they are fragmented.

TechPeaks says it will have connections to the local tech university in Trento and its research centre, as well as up to €200,000 equity matching funds post-programme. We covered the region’s amazing initiatives here.

Individuals or teams with “deep technical or design” expertise can apply before April 5th and – if selected – get six months free housing, free food and a free office in the Italian Alps, plus support to get visas there if needed. Doesn’t sound bad, huh?

In terms of funding, it’s low, but comes in the form of a €25,000 grant, not equity, which might be attractive to some given that none of it needs to go for costs like office space. The €25,000 non-equity grant is made possible because Techpeaks is backed by the Trentino region of Northern Italy which wants to grow the technology ecosystem in the area.

The programme also boasts that it will have access to 40+ mentors from all over the world — the UK, US, and Russia, as well as companies like Jawbone, Eventbrite, UberVu, Zemanta, Barkbox in NYC.

Drew Nagda, Director of Corporate Partnerships for Lean Startup Machine – a partner – says the programme will use using lean methodologies.

The idea is reminiscent of the Startup Chile initiative, which offered various incentives to attract technology entrepreneurs and made a lot of noise while it did it.

Key organiser Evan Neilsson tells me: “We decided there was a void in the industry between universities and accelerators. We’ll accept Individuals and Teams. Hackers, designers and product people are applying from Russia, E. Europe, Balkans, Italy, and some from the United States. If you come with a business already, you focus on that business, but some people might love your product and would like to join you. Or you can come alone and after a month form a team with the others there and start building something new.”

Carlos Eduardo, partner of Seedcamp thinks TechPeaks is an “ambitious idea” and thinks the main challenge for it will be how to achieve the best results and convert “bright talented individuals into great founders of startups.” However he feels it has the “potential to really boost the European startup ecosystem and
motivate people, so we are very supportive.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Dutch startup SoSocio has raised $600,000 in second round funding from a European consortium of private investors to expand the reach of its Facebook Photobook application. The app lets users create digital and paper-based photo books and cards out of their social snaps. The consortium of investors is led by VC Brooklyn Ventures from The Netherlands, which also funded SoSocio’s first round.

SoSocio, which was founded in 2011, has raised $765,000 to-date. It said it will be using this latest funding round to fuel international expansion. Currently its products can be ordered around the world but parts of its site are in Dutch, limiting its reach. International expansion will “primarily focus” on Germany, France, the U.K., Italy and Spain to start with, followed by the US “later on” — where it said its app is already gaining “some traction” (but would not break out specific user numbers).

Discussing general usage, CEO Wouter van den Berg said SoSocio is seeing “about a thousand books a day” being created — although he would not disclose the percentage of those that are its paid-for print product vs free digital photobooks. In future, as user numbers grow, he said the startup plans to add more advertising in the app as another way to monetize the service.

It also has a third business model: SoSocio offers its tools as a white label service to traditional print companies. van den Berg said the proportion of printed photobooks via these third parties is ”much higher” than via its own label offering — which he put down to “Facebook visitors liking to play around with the apps”. He argued that the white label service differentiates SoSocio from other similar startups that are seeking to sell products based on social networkers’ photo content, name-checking the likes of Blurb and Pastbook.

“Some of the larger photo services in The Netherlands and Germany… already use or are going to use over the coming weeks our app in their own design and connected to their own payment and print facilities,” he told TechCrunch. “We also offer our app to brands (mainly in travel) that like to offer the functionality to their clients (greeting cards during holiday, photo books right after) via Facebook, site and/or mail. Also some famous DJs use it to engage with their fans via Facebook.”

SoSocio will be releasing a new version of its app early next month, with an updated look and feel, and support for printing both photo books and cards. The app is fully HTML5 so it works across desktops, smartphones and tablets.

SoSocio currently offers either a softcover or hardcover photo book for €12,95 ($16,60) or €16,95 ($21,70) respectively.