GameSpasm

Facebook announced today that the company now has one million active advertisers — companies or organizations that have advertised on the social network at least once in the last 28 days.

The company attributed that feat to small businesses, saying that this milestone is due in large part “to the small businesses growing their businesses online and in their local communities via Facebook.”

Apparently, small business does get social.

Facebook’s director of small business, Dan Levy, thanked those businesses:

I know business owners like these invest their hard earned money and time into running their companies. So today, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I want to say thank you to them and to the over one million businesses like them who are active advertisers. You have chosen Facebook as a partner to grow your business. We appreciate the chance to work with you, and we celebrate your success.

Two months ago Facebook announced that there were two billion connections between local businesses and people in the site’s social graph, and in an average week local business pages get more than 645 million views and 13 million comments. The company did not release new data on those points, but the up-to-date numbers are doubtless higher today.

With Facebook building ever-stronger connections between local businesses and their customers online — and an ever-growing wallet share of local advertising budgets — local search and recommendation engines such as Yelp and OpenTable and the tradition iYPs are potentially getting cut out of their traditional stomping grounds.

Facebook’s local ambitions are also challenging Google Local and Google Places, both of which collect data on local businesses and drive local advertising on Google, Google, Maps, and more for the search and advertising giant.

photo credit: Andrea Costa Creative via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Entrepreneur, Media, Social

Tags: business, entrepreneur, facebook, Google, Google Local, Google Places, Local, local business, Media, online advertising, small business, Social, social media, social media marketing

Facebook announced today that the company now has one million active advertisers — companies or organizations that have advertised on the social network at least once in the last 28 days.

The company attributed that feat to small businesses, saying that this milestone is due in large part “to the small businesses growing their businesses online and in their local communities via Facebook.”

Apparently, small business does get social.

Facebook’s director of small business, Dan Levy, thanked those businesses:

I know business owners like these invest their hard earned money and time into running their companies. So today, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I want to say thank you to them and to the over one million businesses like them who are active advertisers. You have chosen Facebook as a partner to grow your business. We appreciate the chance to work with you, and we celebrate your success.

Two months ago Facebook announced that there were two billion connections between local businesses and people in the site’s social graph, and in an average week, local business pages get more than 645 million views and 13 million comments. The company did not release new data on those points, but the up-to-date numbers are doubtless higher today.

With Facebook building ever-stronger connections between local businesses and their customers online — and an ever-growing wallet share of local advertising budgets — local search and recommendation engines such as Yelp and OpenTable and the tradition Internet Yellow Pages are potentially getting cut out of their traditional stomping grounds.

Facebook’s local ambitions are also challenging Google Local and Google Places, both of which collect data on local businesses and drive local advertising on Google, Google, Maps, and more for the search and advertising giant.

Photo credit: Andrea Costa Creative via photopin cc

Filed under: Business, Entrepreneur, Media, Social Tags: business, entrepreneur, facebook, featured, Google, Google Local, Google Places, Local, local business, Media, online advertising, small business, Social, social media, social media marketing

Social-TV check-in startup GetGlue has lured away Evan Krauss from his post as executive vice president of sales at Shazam so he can become GetGlue’s new president, the company announced today.

GetGlue allows users to check in to whatever TV show or movie they’re currently watching, providing stickers (aka badges) for those who watch during a premiere or opening weekend. It’s still got a decently large following of over 4 million registered users, according to the company. (I have no idea how many of those are active monthly users, though, but considering the number of competitors in the social TV space, GetGlue is definitely one of the largest players.)

Normally, we don’t cover hiring announcements, but in this case, it’s newsworthy. GetGlue is coming off a failed merger with social-TV startup Viggle, which fell apart back in January. The deal between those two companies made sense because GetGlue had a great relationship with many entertainment companies and really didn’t have a clear game plan for how to monetize its popularity. Also, lots of other social-TV services had also started consolidating or pivoting, such as Dijit’s purchase of Miso and more recently Fanhattan’s dip into hardware with its Fan TV set-top box.

That said, GetGlue’s hiring of Krauss was a smart move because it should help the company figure out how to increase monetization through promotions and second-screen advertising sales. Krauss has a long history of working in digital media that spans two decades. He’s held positions at Yahoo, AOL, Excite, JumpTap, and Looksmart. His most recent position at Shazam was focused on helping the company grab a piece of the TV industry’s advertising budget, as VentureBeat previously reported.

“Evan is a very experienced leader, thinker, and a passionate contributor to the second-screen and social-TV revolution,” said GetGlue founder and chief executive officer Alex Iskold in a statement. “Evan pioneered innovative products [and] native advertising models and created companies we admire. We are fortunate to have him on board, defining and scaling GetGlue’s business.”

Filed under: Media Tags: Media, social TV, TV

Social-TV check-in startup GetGlue has lured away Evan Krauss from his post as executive vice president of sales at Shazam so he can become GetGlue’s new president, the company announced today.

GetGlue allows users to check in to whatever TV show or movie they’re currently watching, providing stickers (aka badges) for those who watch during a premiere or opening weekend. It’s still got a decently large following of over 4 million registered users, according to the company. (I have no idea how many of those are active monthly users, though, but considering the number of competitors in the social TV space, GetGlue is definitely one of the largest players.)

Normally, we don’t cover hiring announcements, but in this case, it’s newsworthy. GetGlue is coming off a failed merger with social-TV startup Viggle, which fell apart back in January. The deal between those two companies made sense because GetGlue had a great relationship with many entertainment companies and really didn’t have a clear game plan for how to monetize its popularity. Also, lots of other social-TV services had also started consolidating or pivoting, such as Dijit’s purchase of Miso and more recently Fanhattan’s dip into hardware with its Fan TV set-top box.

That said, GetGlue’s hiring of Krauss was a smart move because it should help the company figure out how to increase monetization through promotions and second-screen advertising sales. Krauss has a long history of working in digital media that spans two decades. He’s held positions at Yahoo, AOL, Excite, JumpTap, and Looksmart. His most recent position at Shazam was focused on helping the company grab a piece of the TV industry’s advertising budget, as VentureBeat previously reported.

“Evan is a very experienced leader, thinker, and a passionate contributor to the second-screen and social-TV revolution,” said GetGlue founder and chief executive officer Alex Iskold in a statement. “Evan pioneered innovative products [and] native advertising models and created companies we admire. We are fortunate to have him on board, defining and scaling GetGlue’s business.”

Filed under: Media Tags: Media, social TV, TV

Social-TV check-in startup GetGlue has lured away Evan Krauss from his post as executive vice president of sales at Shazam so he can become GetGlue’s new president, the company announced today.

GetGlue allows users to check in to whatever TV show or movie they’re currently watching, providing stickers (aka badges) for those who watch during a premiere or opening weekend. It’s still got a decently large following of over 4 million registered users, according to the company. (I have no idea how many of those are active monthly users, though, but considering the number of competitors in the social TV space, GetGlue is definitely one of the largest players.)

Normally, we don’t cover hiring announcements, but in this case, it’s newsworthy. GetGlue is coming off a failed merger with social-TV startup Viggle, which fell apart back in January. The deal between those two companies made sense because GetGlue had a great relationship with many entertainment companies and really didn’t have a clear game plan for how to monetize its popularity. Also, lots of other social-TV services had also started consolidating or pivoting, such as Dijit’s purchase of Miso and more recently Fanhattan’s dip into hardware with its Fan TV set-top box.

That said, GetGlue’s hiring of Krauss was a smart move because it should help the company figure out how to increase monetization through promotions and second-screen advertising sales. Krauss has a long history of working in digital media that spans two decades. He’s held positions at Yahoo, AOL, Excite, JumpTap, and Looksmart. His most recent position at Shazam was focused on helping the company grab a piece of the TV industry’s advertising budget, as VentureBeat previously reported.

“Evan is a very experienced leader, thinker, and a passionate contributor to the second-screen and social-TV revolution,” said GetGlue founder and chief executive officer Alex Iskold in a statement. “Evan pioneered innovative products [and] native advertising models and created companies we admire. We are fortunate to have him on board, defining and scaling GetGlue’s business.”

Filed under: Media Tags: Media, social TV, TV

FiftyThree is going on fifteen. Fifteen million dollars that is.

FiftyThree is the company behind Paper, an iPad app that Apple named 2012 iPad App of the Year. Today it announced closing a $15 million deal led by Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angel, and Jack Dorsey.

Paper takes the tools that traditionally stimulate creativity — like pencils, pens, markers, and paints — and turned them into digital versions that allow artists to reach the heights of their creativity, on the iPad. Paper also provides more advanced, technological features like zoom and 3D graphics, as well as editing and organization tools, and (of course) the ability to share.

“Over the years, we noticed that somehow, along the way, software designed to help us be creative actually made us less creative,” the company said on its site. “That’s because we believe our best ideas emerge when we use pencils and paper. So we set out to build tools that work the way we do.”

Its “mobile creation done right” and can be used by anyone, whether they are professional artists, executives giving a presentation, or fathers making something for their daughters.

Paper has been downloaded over 8 million times and is one of the highest grossing iPad productivity apps ever. According to Dixon, the team didn’t need to raise money but “decided that the opportunity was so large that it made sense to accelerate their efforts with additional capital and resources.” The founders said in a blog post that they will focus on enhancing the collaboration possibilities, as well as physical creation. They will expand the software, service, and hardware teams.

FiftyThree is based in New York.

Photo Credit: Nico Paix/Flickr

Filed under: Deals, Entrepreneur, Lifestyle, Media, Mobile, New York

Tags: artist, Creative, creator, deals, entrepreneur, ipad, lifestyle, Media, Mobile, New York

FiftyThree is going on fifteen. Fifteen million dollars, that is.

FiftyThree is the company behind Paper, an iPad app that Apple named 2012 iPad App of the Year. Today FiftyThree closed a $15 million deal led by Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angel, and Jack Dorsey.

Paper takes the tools that traditionally stimulate creativity — like pencils, pens, markers, and paints — and turns them into digital versions that allow artists to reach the heights of their creativity on the iPad. Paper also provides more advanced technological features like zoom and 3D graphics as well as editing and organization tools and (of course) the ability to share.

“Over the years, we noticed that somehow, along the way, software designed to help us be creative actually made us less creative,” the company said on its site. “That’s because we believe our best ideas emerge when we use pencils and paper. So we set out to build tools that work the way we do.”

It’s “mobile creation done right” and can be used by anyone whether they are professional artists, executives giving a presentation, or fathers making something for their daughters.

Paper has been downloaded over 8 million times and is one of the highest-grossing iPad productivity apps ever. According to Dixon, the team didn’t need to raise money but “decided that the opportunity was so large that it made sense to accelerate their efforts with additional capital and resources.” The founders said in a blog post that they will focus on enhancing the collaboration possibilities as well as physical creation. They will expand the software, service, and hardware teams.

FiftyThree is based in New York.

Photo Credit: Nico Paix/Flickr

Filed under: Deals, Entrepreneur, Lifestyle, Media, Mobile, New York Tags: artist, Creative, creator, deals, entrepreneur, ipad, lifestyle, Media, Mobile, New York

FiftyThree is going on fifteen. Fifteen million dollars that is.

FiftyThree is the company behind Paper, an iPad app that Apple named 2012 iPad App of the Year. Today it announced closing a $15 million deal led by Chris Dixon at Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Highline Ventures, Thrive Capital, SV Angel, and Jack Dorsey.

Paper takes the tools that traditionally stimulate creativity — like pencils, pens, markers, and paints — and turned them into digital versions that allow artists to reach the heights of their creativity, on the iPad. Paper also provides more advanced, technological features like zoom and 3D graphics, as well as editing and organization tools, and (of course) the ability to share.

“Over the years, we noticed that somehow, along the way, software designed to help us be creative actually made us less creative,” the company said on its site. “That’s because we believe our best ideas emerge when we use pencils and paper. So we set out to build tools that work the way we do.”

Its “mobile creation done right” and can be used by anyone, whether they are professional artists, executives giving a presentation, or fathers making something for their daughters.

Paper has been downloaded over 8 million times and is one of the highest grossing iPad productivity apps ever. According to Dixon, the team didn’t need to raise money but “decided that the opportunity was so large that it made sense to accelerate their efforts with additional capital and resources.” The founders said in a blog post that they will focus on enhancing the collaboration possibilities, as well as physical creation. They will expand the software, service, and hardware teams.

FiftyThree is based in New York.

Photo Credit: Nico Paix/Flickr

Filed under: Deals, Entrepreneur, Lifestyle, Media, Mobile, New York

Tags: artist, Creative, creator, deals, entrepreneur, ipad, lifestyle, Media, Mobile, New York

While Apple may not quite know what to do with the Apple TV, at least the company isn’t skimping out on adding new features.

Apple released a new Apple TV 5.4 beta software update today that included the ability to stream music from Apple’s new iTunes Radio service, meaning users can access the service from their television sets. The move was initially announced last week at the Worldwide Developers Conference. However, that’s about all the attention Apple TV got, and it seemed like a pretty minor addition considering that rival set-top boxes already provide access to a handful of streaming music services (Pandora, Spotify, Google Play Music All Access).

But there was one other thing included in the update that is actually pretty cool: a new conference-room display mode. This is actually something I noticed lots of companies already doing whenever I’d swing by their offices for a demo of their product, service, or presentation. Apple smartly caught on to this and is now making it a bit easier to connect. The Airplay screen-sharing functionality on Apple TV is criminally underused, so it’s nice to see Apple trying to do something about that.

There’s also a new ability for Apple TV users to customize the style of subtitles, which makes sense considering the new conference-room display feature. If you’re showing a demo video to an entire room of people, you’d want to make sure the text is visible enough to everyone.

Via AppleInsider; Photo by Tom Cheredar

Filed under: Gadgets, Media

Tags: airplay, Apple TV, Gadgets, iTunes Radio, Media, set-top boxes

While Apple may not quite know what to do with the Apple TV, at least the company isn’t skimping out on adding new features.

Apple released a new Apple TV 5.4 beta software update today that included the ability to stream music from Apple’s new iTunes Radio service, meaning users can access the service from their television sets. The move was initially announced last week at the Worldwide Developers Conference. However, that’s about all the attention Apple TV got, and it seemed like a pretty minor addition considering that rival set-top boxes already provide access to a handful of streaming music services (Pandora, Spotify, Google Play Music All Access).

But there was one other thing included in the update that is actually pretty cool: a new conference-room display mode. This is actually something I noticed lots of companies already doing whenever I’d swing by their offices for a demo of their product, service, or presentation. Apple smartly caught on to this and is now making it a bit easier to connect. The Airplay screen-sharing functionality on Apple TV is criminally underused, so it’s nice to see Apple trying to do something about that.

There’s also a new ability for Apple TV users to customize the style of subtitles, which makes sense considering the new conference-room display feature. If you’re showing a demo video to an entire room of people, you’d want to make sure the text is visible enough to everyone.

Via AppleInsider; Photo by Tom Cheredar

Filed under: Gadgets, Media

Tags: airplay, Apple TV, Gadgets, iTunes Radio, Media, set-top boxes