CrowdOptic, a startup with technology for identifying where people are pointing their smartphone cameras, has raised another $1 million in funding.

When I’ve spoken to the team in the past, they’ve emphasized the ways this could be used to create new types of social interactions — if people are attending a live event and pointing their cameras at the same thing, they can start chatting and sharing content. However, the company’s website highlights a number of use cases, including “focus-aware” advertising, analytics, news reporting, social TV (live attendees can provide content to people watching at home), and security.

CEO and co-founder Jon Fisher said that customers include Australia- and New Zealand-based ticketing company Ticketek (CrowdOptic built the company’s Friend Spotter app for finding your Facebook friends in a stadium, which you can see in the screenshot above) and Fora.tv (which used CrowdOptic to share authenticated, eyewitness content from the presidential debates).

The new funding comes from CrowdOptic’s existing investors, including Silicon Valley Bank, tech legend Ray Lane, and Fisher himself. Fisher also said that CrowdOptic recently celebrated its second quarter of profitability. The company has now raised a total of $3.5 million.

By the way, Fisher was previously CEO of Bharosa, NetClerk, and AutoReach, but he isn’t the only team member with an impressive résumé — COO Jim Kovach has worked at other startups, he has a medical degree and a law degree, and he was a linebacker for the New Orleans Saints and San Francisco 49ers.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Chute, a startup that offers tools for collecting and displaying photos, has raised $7 million in Series A Funding.

The round was led by Foundry Group, with participation from existing investors Freestyle Capital and US Venture Partners. Chute previously raised a $2.7 million seed round led by Freestyle.

The company allows publishers and other businesses to pull relevant photos from social networks or collect them directly from users, then display those images on their own websites and in real-world locations. It’s also experimenting with other photo collection methods, like allowing NBC News reporters to post photos of the presidential inauguration directly from a Chute mobile reporting app.

The larger vision, said co-founder Ranvir Gujral, is to build “a complete visual platform.” He said that whenever a company publishes visual content, Chute should be involved in some way: “That doesn’t have to mean we publish everything — it just means that we know about it.”

The first step in making that happen, Gujral said, is “growing our marketshare and awareness,” and indeed that’s one of the company’s main goals with the new funding. At the same time, he acknowledged that there’s work to be done on the product side too.

Chute is also making a product announcement today, unveiling Chute Ads, which allow companies to incorporate photos, whether from the brand itself or provided by users, into banner ads. This helps brands tie together their “paid, owned, and earned media,” Gujrat said.

“As a brand, if I’m putting time into creating great content and posting it to my Instagram and Pinterest, I want to put it into my own ad units instead of a static SWF file,” Gujrat said. “We want to kill the static SWF file.”

The first publisher to offer Chute Ads, which are scheduled to go live in June, is Condé Nast Traveler. In a press release, Craig Kostelic, Head of Digital Global Sales for Condé Nast Travel Network, argues that the ads “give advertisers the ability to also be publishers,” and that since they pull content in real-time, “audiences will never see the same ad twice.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I find statistics absolutely delicious. Pew research released fresh stats on what slice of Americans are addicted to all of the various social networks as of December 2012. There are a few big business and cultural implications.

Pinterest has practically caught up with Twitter, with 15 percent and 16 percent of adult U.S. Internet users on each network, respectively. Pinterest, which launched in 2009, has experienced explosive growth, especially with a white, female and affluent user base. Women are five times more likely to use Pinterest (5 percent vs. 25 percent) and almost twice as likely to be white and college-educated. It’s become a magnet for hip urbanites searching for the hottest wedding gowns and apartment decor. Twitter, however, gets a lot more attention, since neither presidential campaigns nor Middle Eastern activists are leveraging style catalogs to rearrange their countries’ political leadership.

There is no longer a minority gap in social media use. The surveyed groups (whites, Hispanics, and African-Americans) hover around 68 percent of total adults. Almost twice as many African-Americans (26 percent) use Twitter as whites (14 percent). The disproportionate African-American use of Twitter has fascinated culture commentators and scholars. One study found that African-Americans in celebrity news strongly predicted their Twitter use. Former web editor of the The Onion, Baratunde Thurston, hypothesized that “there’s a long oral dissing tradition in black communities,” explaining, “Twitter works very naturally with that call-and-response tradition — it’s so short, so economical, and you get an instant signal validating the quality of your contribution.”

Ironically, not using social media may be an elite thing. Those with a college degree are slightly less likely than those with some college to use social networks (69 percent vs. 65 percent). While the difference isn’t statistically significant, at least one study verified the trend among educated users to ditch Facebook for moral, political or cultural reasons. “Many Facebook refusers actually revel in their difference from the mainstream, seeing it as a mark of distinction, superior taste, and identification with an elite social stratum,” said New York University Professor Laura Portwood-Stacer.

Hipsters find it too mainstream and others find their privacy policies troublesome. In other words, not using social media is likely a product of more education, not a lack of access.

The full totals for each social network. Sixty-seven percent of online adults say they use Facebook, 15 percent of online adults say they use Pinterest, 13 percent of online adults say they use Instagram, 6 percent of online adults say they use Tumblr, 16 percent of online adults say they use Twitter (and 20 percent of online adults say they use LinkedIn as of August 2012). Below is a full table summarizing the results of the survey:

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Chute is a Y Combinator-backed startup that helps publishers and brands incorporate photos and other media (sometimes submitted directly by users, sometimes aggregated from social networking sites) onto their own websites. Now it’s offering similar functionality for real-world locations, thanks to a new feature called Chute Live.

For example, according to co-founder Ranvir Gujral, the Cosmopolitan Hotel has launched a “Pop Up Wedding Chapel” along the Las Vegas Strip, and it’s encouraging people to post photos of themselves on Twitter or Instagram using the #PopUpChapel hashtag. (The photos can be of real or fake weddings, but c’mon, it’s Vegas — do it for real.) Chute then pulls in the photos and displays them on screens throughout the chapel, including a “massive” one facing the Strip.

Chute Live customers could also build their own applications to allow event attendees to submit their photos. Gujral said that in addition to the Cosmo, Chute Live is also being used by the House of Blues, the Palms Hotel, and the NBA for this weekend’s All-Star game.

It’s a busy few weeks for the startup. It recently announced a mobile reporting platform too, creating an app for NBC News reporters (for starters) to post photos from the presidential inauguration directly to the NBC site.

I spoke to Ryan Osborn who leads the digital media efforts at NBC, and he said the company’s partnership with Chute (which is broader than just covering the inauguration — in fact, NBC used Chute to project photos on Rockefeller Plaza on election night) is still in the experimentation phase: “I think we’re going to continue to learn from Chute and continue to figure out the solution.” Still, he had high praise for the Chute team, particularly their “drive to succeed” and the speed with which it can take an NBC idea and turn it into a product.

As Chute continues to roll out new functionality, the company is starting to give a broader sense of its ambitions. Back when it raised funding from Salesforce.com and others, we called Chute “Twilio for media content” and when I met with Gujral a few weeks ago, he outlined a similarly broad vision for the future.

“Wherever there’s image content being used I think we will be the conduit for it,” he said. “Wherever visual content exists, we will control it. Our large, audacious founder claim is that if you’re not Google, Facebook or Netflix, one day your media infrastructure will live on Chute.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

A new report from Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association released today finds that U.S. VC firms raised $20.6 billion from 182 funds in 2012, representing a 10 percent increase in dollar commitments when compared with 2011, which saw 18.7 billion raised from 187 funds. This is the most capital that VC firms have raised since 2008, which saw $25.6 billion raised, but from a larger number of funds – 215 in total.

(See chart below for more details on historical trends).

In the fourth quarter of 2012, VC funds raised $3.3 billion, a 35 percent decrease by dollar commitments and a 25 percent decrease by number of funds versus Q3 2011, when 56 funds raised $5.1 billion.

In this most recent quarter, the top five VC funds accounted for 55 percent of the total fundraising, the same as the quarter prior.

According to Mark Heesen, president of NVCA, capital is concentrating on two distinct ends of the VC spectrum, and this is where firms are also raising follow-on funds. “The venture capital fundraising environment has settled into a ‘new normal’ which is characterized by a barbell structure of larger funds which are stage and industry agnostic on one end, and smaller, early-stage, industry or region-specific funds on the other,” he noted in a statement, explaining the current landscape.

There were 127 follow-on funds and 55 new funds raised in 2012, at a ratio of 2.3 to 1 of follow-on to new funds. In Q4, 25 follow-on funds and 17 new funds were raised, a ratio of 1.5 to 1.

The largest new fund this quarter was Raleigh, NC-based Novaquest Pharma Opportunities Fund III, L.P. with $244.1 million raised. Sequoia Capital Global Growth Fund, L.P. raised the most in Q4 with $700 million. Trailing was Portola Valley, Calif.-based Venture Lending & Leasing VII LLC, which raised $373.1 million.

IPO Dollars Also Up 

The year-end analysis also found that venture-backed IPO activity raised $1.4 billion from eight offerings valued at $1.4 billion in Q4 2012, a slight decline in volume from Q3, but a 23 percent increase in dollars. Five of the eight were IT-related companies, and seven of the eight were U.S.-based companies. The only exception was China-based online game community YY, Inc.

The largest IPO for Q4 was Workday, which develops HR enterprise solutions. It raised $733 million and began trading on the NASDAQ on Oct. 11. Five companies listed on the NASDAQ in Q4, and three on NYSE. Seven of the eight are currently trading above their offering price.

For the year, VC-based IPOs raised $21.5 billion from 49 listings, representing the strongest IPO period since 2000 in terms of dollars, according to the NVCA, and this was, in large part, thanks to Facebook. Thirty companies listed on the NASDAQ in 2012, and 18 on NYSE. Thirty are now trading above their offer price.

However, although by dollars, IPOs were up, as Heesen noted earlier in January, the year was a disappointment when it comes to volumes.

“The promise of a more robust IPO market driven by a stronger, JOBs Act fueled pipeline never materialized as the market stalled in the third quarter after the Facebook IPO and again as we approached the Presidential election and fiscal cliff in Q4,” he said at the time. “That same uncertainty kept M&A volumes lower as well, as strategic buyers also stood on the sidelines and awaited decisions in Washington.”

In addition, in Q4, there were 95 VC-backed M&A deals, and the average disclosed deal value was $135.5 million, up 3 percent from Q4 2011. Acquisitions of VC-backed companies also totaled $21.5 billion for 2012, an 11 percent decline from 2011. The largest M&A deal in Q4 was Cisco Systems’ $1.2 billion purchase of Meraki, a San Francisco-based provider of wireless network deployment solutions.

“While the venture capital and startup communities were optimistic about a more robust IPO market in 2012, political, economic, and market conditions served as the backdrop for a series of fits and starts which hurt volume growth throughout the year for public offerings and acquisitions alike,” Heesen said. “Yet, while increased volumes remained elusive, the overall quality of exits this year was quite strong, and certainly sends a message that the market is receptive and open for business in 2013.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Today, the New York City-based don’t-call-me-an-incubator incubator known as betaworks is launching its latest startup following its acquisition of Digg this past summer. Betaworks is primarily focused on media startups, especially those playing at the intersection between social media and publishing. Digg would be one, Branch being another, Rap Genius, which recently raised $15 million being a third.

And now today we have the launch of Swirl, an app that creates photo albums from social networks. Not sure that betaworks got the memo that the group photo-sharing market is a little over-saturated, but then again, they did just buy Digg.

What exactly does Swirl do? It essentially indexes every person (and cat) you follow on Twitter and Instagram, placing their tagged photos into sets, appropriately called Swirls. Users create a photo set on Swirl every time they use the same hashtag on Twitter or Instagram with their friends. The startup’s website is currently showing public photos (here are photos from #Sandy, for example) but obviously once you sign into the app, it takes it to the next level and begins filtering from your friends’ swirls.

Swirl advisor and former Aviary COO Paul Murphy tells us that there are multiple group photo sharing apps out there, each taking a slightly different approach to the problem. One app may require users to create a set and invite friends to join, while others algorithmically guess how photos are related and auto-create sets of photos for you. Swirl, on the other hand, creates a photo set from a shared hashtag among your friends.

Murphy says that Swirl has seen some intriguing photo sets created in beta thanks to Sandy and the presidential election. But beta users are also using it to tag everyday events, with Swirl creating a group album from those events, so that you can see all the hilarities from my daily life as a blogger in #ripsaysthingsontheinternet, for example.

But the reason that social software developer and Swirl founder Summer Bedard thinks the app has potential? Because, as it stands, there’s no frictionless way to view and share a collection of social photos without asking users to change some part of their everyday behavior, like posting the photo in the app instead of using Twitter or Instagram. With Swirl, the idea is that you can just keep doing what you do, using the categories you’ve already established to tag tweets and instagrams that actually mean something.

Right now, Swirl is iPhone-only, but web and Android versions are on the way.

Find Swirl on the App Store here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Last month, we told you about a new service called Circa, which set out to redefine the way that you consume news on your iOS device. The app itself is beautifully designed and was based off of an idea that Ben Huh had and then shared with Matt Galligan. Galligan took the idea and ran with it.

Right now, Circa finds itself uniquely positioned in the news cycle for Hurricane Sandy and the upcoming Presidential election in a way that no other service is. Basically, this is the moment that you’re either going to fall in love with Circa, or figure out that it’s not for you.

I sat down with Galligan in our studio today to discuss how things have been going, where things will head in the future and how his service handles the avalanche of news to parse for its users with a human editorial staff.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Wow. Registered voters in New Jersey displaced by Hurricane Sandy will be permitted to vote by fax or email in the upcoming election. New Jersey, along with about a dozen other states, already permit overseas and military voters to return signed ballots electronically. “To help alleviate pressure on polling places, we encourage voters to either use electronic voting or the extended hours at county offices to cast their vote,” said Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno. Voters can apply to have a ballot sent to them online and when it is returned, election officials will print it out and cross check the information to authenticate the voters identity.

Due to security concerns, there are a few countries in the world that have dared to experiment with electronic voting, including Canada, Latvia, and Sweden. Only Estonia permits universal electronic voting, thanks to a sophisticated national ID system that can match ballots to a verified identity. Even with the most advanced national identification system on the planet, some experts maintain that electronic voting isn’t secure. “Online voting is a very unsafe idea and a very bad idea and something I think no technological breakthrough I can foresee can ever change,” argues Johns Hopkins computer science professor, Avi Rubin.

In New Jersey’s case, voters who opt for electronic voting will have to waive their right to privacy, since election officials will have to check the name printed on the ballot against the voter and registration rolls (to avoid duplicates, among other possible sources of fraud and mistakes).

Fraud is unlikely to be a problem for the presidential race in New Jersey, given that Obama is polling, on average, 10 points higher than Romney. However, with the hurricane chaos, anything is possible, and if the vote ends up being close, it’s unclear how would officials would be able to accurately double-check all of the votes.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

When the world’s gaze focuses on a single televised moment, it’s what’s in the periphery of our vision that unites us. The second screen brings awareness of the millions watching alongside, no matter where they are. It reaffirms our interest and passion, while adding depth and fresh perspective. Now if you watch the game on delay, or check out the debates online later, you’re missing something special.

Even just a year or two ago, people seemed to happy to DVR. There’s a big appeal to watching on your own schedule. And for most TV, it works fine.

But the second screen has since come of age, and it’s turning into the new champion of real-time video. Now, sports championships, political square-offs, and season premieres come with a counterpart if you watch them as they happen. The complementary content has become more valuable than the convenience of on-demand.

This next week will be a grand example. Between the World Series and the presidential election, a lot of people will be tuning in to television. And thanks to the slow but steady growth of speedy smartphones and unfiltered social networks like Twitter and Instagram, more people than ever will turn on their small screen at the same time.

Because these are agents of interconnection, you really feel the critical mass. Everyone at once on the second screen crosses the barriers of who we friend or follow. Retweets flourish, and jokes spread at outbreak pace. And in the next few years, the synchronization is just going to get stronger.

There’ll be more instant meme creation, like live GIF’ing. Expert curators will cobble together real-time content roundups the way Buzzfeed is. I think we’re going to see the second screen experience become so significant, it will spawn a new behavior (and maybe a start up or two to help out). If we can’t watch in real-time, we’ll start setting back the clock on social media and scrolling along as if we were.

[Image Credit: the almighty Onion]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Live streaming startup Ustream has come a long way over the last several years, but one thing holding it back is its homepage, which is a hodgepodge of “featured” and recommended live stream feeds, some of which are active, some of which click through to archived, on-demand videos. It’s not entirely clear what’s going on, what’s new, what’s popular or what’s trending.

It’s looking to change all that with a redesign that goes live Wednesday, just in time for the first of the presidential debates. I got a preview of the site, as members of the Ustream team came all the way downstairs from their offices on the fourth floor of 410 Townsend to TechCrunch’s first floor suite. The new homepage is designed to highlight live videos across a number of different content categories, allowing users to click a thumbnail and have the video instantly appear. That means instant access to live video without having to click through to another page for viewing.

The launch is meant to coincide with the first of the Presidential Debates, during which Ustream will have at least two live feeds from AP and CBS News. But it will also have a ton of other debate-related video feeds available, including commentary from a number of other Ustream partners, like the Debate Drinking Broadcast or RuPaul from Logo TV. It’ll also have featured videos across its major verticals like news, and will even feature eagle, donkey, and elephant cams.

The design that users will see on Wednesday is skinned and built all around the debates, which is something that Ustream will be doing more of, as it plans to highlight major live events and breaking news. It might not have a reskinned homepage every day, but it could program the site two or three times a week, depending on what’s happening, according to SVP of marketing David Thompson.

Partners are a big part of this release, as Ustream herds together a number of live video producers. In addition to RuPaul, Ustream’s got content from PBS NewsHour, Occupy Denver, Occupy the Debates, Breitbart News with Larry O’Connor, League of Young Voters, PopSugar, comedian Scott Rogowsky, Crack.com, Show Interrupted, and comedians Al Del Bene and Rich Aronovitch. And powering the whole new Ustream homepage is a 12-person editorial team that will curate videos based upon topics and what’s popular or trending on the site, bringing more visibility to content that previously might have been difficult to find.

One surprising thing that will be missing at launch is ads. Throughout the demo, I was amazed(!) to find that not a single ad showed during the whole visit. No crappy banners sitting alongside the video thumbnails. No crappy pre-rolls when videos were launched. No mid-rolls jumping into the middle of my streams, slowing my roll. Really dudes? How’re you gonna make the monies?

Thompson says the redesign is rolling out ad-free as part of Ustream’s attempt to bring the best viewing experience possible, which is awesome for now. The lack of ads on the new homepage follows the rollout of Ustream’s Broadcast for Friends (BFF) app, which hooks into Facebook and also streams video ad-free. Ads will eventually return, but Thompson said Ustream is devoted to balancing the optimum viewing experience for users while also monetizing via ads. What does that mean? Fewer ads? I think it sounds like fewer ads.

Ustream has famously raised a buttload of money, but seemed to be struggling for a while, trying to find itself with founder John Ham at the helm. He’s since stepped down and the company, now being run by CEO Brad Hunstable, seems to be more focused on product and introducing new applications for users, which is cool and aligns more with my interests, rather than just pitching me every time a celebrity does a 30-second live stream.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch