Articles from Leena Rao

1. Google Voice Founder Sets His Sights On VoIP Once Again Explore TechCrunch (Mar 7 2012) IP Telephony Is Google Voice (previously GrandCentral) cofounder Craig Walker getting back into the VoIP game? According to a recent Tweet he sent out, it looks like Walker and his team at incubator Firespotter Labs is cooking up something in the VoIP space. As Walker writes, "Starting to play around with a bunch of VoIP ideas...time to take this incubator thing into hyperdrive:)."For background, Walker co-founded GrandCentral, a phone management service that first launched in ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   GrandCentral   Google   Craig Walker

2. Zynga Mobile Grew Five-Fold To More Than 15 Million Daily Users In 2011 Explore TechCrunch (Feb 14 2012) Mobility As we mentioned in our coverage of Zynga's fourth quarter earnings, mobile has been one of the fast-growing parts of Zynga's business. On the company's earnings call, CEO and founder Marc Pincus revealed that mobile users have grown five-fold to 15 million daily active users in 2011. That's up from 13 million in December. That's an addition of 2 million users in the past month, and an addition of over ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Leena Rao   Zynga

3. Social Marketing Platform Extole Raises $10 Million Explore TechCrunch (Feb 8 2012) Marketing Extole, a startup which offers a suite of social media marketing has raised $10 million in Series C round funding, led by Shasta Ventures with participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Trident Capital. This brings the company’s total financing to $22 million. Extole’s technology makes it easy for brands to power social referral programs, social promotions, social testimonials, and social analytics. Products such as Refer-A-Friend and SocialBuilder are designed ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Leena Rao   Shasta Ventures

4. Klout Acquires Local And Mobile Neighborhood App Blockboard Explore TechCrunch (Feb 7 2012) Flush with new capital, Klout, the startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and other social apps, is making its first acquisition. Klout is purchasing mobile and local neighborhood app Blockboard. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Blockboard develops a neighborhood app through which neighbors can interact with one another. They can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Google   Facebook

5. Kleiner Perkins Debuts First Engineering Fellows Class Explore TechCrunch (Feb 7 2012) Last year, venture firm Kleiner Perkins debuted its plans for a summer internship program to place top engineering talent from colleges at the firm's portfolio companies. The benefit is two-fold: students get to work at the startup level, are mentored (and have the prestige of Kleiner Perkins on their resume) and startups get access to young engineering talent. Today, Kleiner is debuting the first inaugural class of the fellow program. As Kleiner explains, the ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Microsoft   Google   Columbia University

6. MeetingBurner Debuts Sleek, Webinar Platform To Rival WebEx Explore TechCrunch (Feb 7 2012) Because I live in Chicago, I tend to conduct a lot of demos and meetings with startups and companies over webinar products like GoToMeeting or WebEx. While they get the job done for the most part, the UI is clunky and slow. Today, MeetingBurner is releasing its sleek, fast, and easy-to-use remote meeting product to the public. And the first 200 signups here will receive a free MeetingBurner Pro account. MeetingBurner, which is exiting beta ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Leena Rao   Medill School of Journalism

7. AT&T Tripled Wi-Fi Connections In Q4; Mobile Data Uploads Up 550 Percent In 2011 Explore TechCrunch (Jan 27 2012) On the heels of the news that AT&T delivered its best quarter ever in terms of smartphone sales, the communications company and carrier is releasing its quarterly data on the number of AT&T wi-fi connections made in Q4 and in 2011 as a whole. AT&T sais that it tripled Wi-Fi network traffic in 2011 versus network traffic for 2010. And the network saw a 550 percent increase in monthly Wi-Fi data uploads ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   AT&T   Columbia University   Leena Rao

8. As Millions Of Consumers Unwrapped Kindle Fires Over Christmas, Mobile Ad Impressions Spiked 261 Percent Explore TechCrunch (Dec 30 2011) In November, Mobile ad network Millennial Media reported that Amazon’s new tablet devices Kindle Fire, was seeing ad impressions grow at an average daily rate of 19% since its launch to the public in the middle of the month. Millennial says it’s not just seeing millions of impressions and the device is on a monthly run rate of hundreds of millions of impressions. But that data was gathered from a few weeks of ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Millennial Media   Amazon.com

9. The Threat And Opportunity Of Mobile: How Physical Retailers Can Fight Back Against Amazon Explore TechCrunch (Dec 26 2011) As online retail sales continue to soar, brick and mortar stores are seeing margins dissipate. Online holiday sales are expected to grow 15 percent to $37.6 billion this season while retail sales in physical stores are only expected to increase by 3.8 percent to $469.1 billion. Best Buy recently reported a 29 percent drop in profits because of discounts and sales of top grossing electronics. The fact is that the electronics retailer ... (Read Full Article)

   Comment Mentions:   Apple   Columbia University   Amazon.com

10. Thanksgiving Day Online Holiday Sales Up 39 Percent; Mobile Shopping On The Rise Explore TechCrunch (Nov 25 2011) Mobility As we heard a few weeks ago, retailers were expecting Thanksgiving Day to be a major online shopping day as more and more consumers are hitting their laptops, tablets and more to get a head start on sales in between Turkey time. It looks like early results point to the day being a profitable one for retailers. According to IBM's Coremetrics retail data, online Thanksgiving 2011 sales were up 39 percent over Thanksgiving 2010 ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   IBM   Columbia University   Leena Rao

11. Worldwide Enterprise IT Spending To Total $2.7 Trillion In 2012 But Growth Is Slowing Explore TechCrunch (Oct 17 2011) Gartner just released its worldwide enterprise IT spending estimates, which are projected to total $2.7 trillion in 2012. That's a 3.9 percent increase from 2011 expected spending of $2.6 trillion, but down from a 5.9 percent expected increase in 2011. Gartner says this year alone, 350 companies will each invest more than $1 billion in IT. And at the forefront of IT spending are applications in the cloud, social, data ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Gartner   Columbia University   Leena Rao

12. PayPal On Barriers To Google Wallet: Mass Adoption Of NFC Is Years Away Explore TechCrunch (Oct 2 2011) As you may have read, Google officially launched its mobile payments platform Google Wallet recently, which allows you to pay for products in the real world by tapping your NFC-enabled Android phone against a compatible card reader. Shortly following the initial announcement of the technology in May, payments giant PayPal went on the offensive, filing a lawsuit against Google and two former PayPal executives who now are in charge of mobile payments at Google. Allegations ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Google   Samsung   Motorola

13. IAB: Internet Advertising Reaches A Record $15B In First Half Of 2011; Up 23 Percent Explore TechCrunch (Sep 28 2011) Business Models , Marketing The Internet Advertising Bureau just released its numbers of the first half of 2011, and it looks like internet ad revenue reached record highs during the time period. Internet ad revenues rose 23.2 percent — to a record $14.9 billion — in the first half of 2011. The rate of growth more than doubled year-over-year, as last year’s first-half ad revenues were $12.1 billion (and represented an 11.3 percent increase over 2009 ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Leena Rao   IAB

14. AT&T Buys Hospitality Internet Provider Superclick For $15 Million Explore TechCrunch (Sep 26 2011) AT&T is buying Superclick, an internet provider for the hospitality industry, in a cash transaction valued at approximately $15 million. Superclick provides network design, deployment and infrastructure management for the hospitality, healthcare and MDU markets. The company serves a number of major hospitality brands such as Fairmont & Raffles Hotels, Four Seasons Hotels, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Jumeirah, Kimpton Hotels, Mandarin Oriental Hotels, Marriott Hotels International, Shangri-La Hotels and Starwood in Canada, North America, the Middle ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   AT&T   Columbia University   Leena Rao

15. BillToMobile Lands Deal With T-Mobile, Now Has Direct Relationships With The Top 4 U.S. Carriers Explore TechCrunch (Sep 9 2011) Marketing Mobile payments company BilltoMobile now has direct carrier relationships with all four of the major carriers in the U.S., including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile (the deal with T-Mobile is the newest relationship to be announced). This makes BillToMobile the first and only mobile payments platform to have direct carrier connections with all of the top four major U.S. mobile carriers. Similar to Zong and Boku, BilltoMobile provides a payments platform ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   AT&T   Sprint Nextel   Columbia University

16. Eric Schmidt: Steve Jobs Was The Best CEO In The Past 50 Years Explore TechCrunch (Sep 1 2011) In a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said that Steve Jobs is probably the best CEO in the past 50 years, maybe 100 years. He said of Jobs: Steve Jobs gave the best performance by a CEO in 50 years, maybe 100 years. He not only built Apple once, but twice. As you probably know, Jobs resigned from his position as Apple's CEO last week. Of course, Schmidt was ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Steve Ballmer   Microsoft   Google

17. Google’s New HTML5 Chrome Apps For Gmail, Calendar And Docs Give Users Offline Access Explore TechCrunch (Aug 31 2011) As we reported at Google I/O in May, Google has been working on offline versions of their three most popular apps: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. Google previously offered offline access for Gmail, Calendar, and Docs but leveraged Gears. But Gears is no longer being supported by Google as Chrome gains many of the same features via HTML5. And offline-acces functionality was limited. Today, Google is announcing that it has rebuilt offline access ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Microsoft   Google   Columbia University

18. Millennial: Android Tops iOS For The Eighth Month With 61 Percent Of Mobile Ad Impressions In July Explore TechCrunch (Aug 24 2011) Marketing It's no secret that Android is growing at a fast clip, especially over the past year. As Millennial Media, one of the largest mobile ad networks in the U.S., reported recently Android's mobile ad impression share went up from 6 percent in March to 2010 to 54 percent of ad impression share in June 2011, eclipsing iOS. July's report shows similar growth patterns, with In July, Android showed particularly strong growth ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Samsung   Apple   Columbia University

19. The Newest Version Of Yahoo Mail Now Has 100 Million Monthly Active Users Explore TechCrunch (Aug 23 2011) The latest version of Yahoo Mail opened up to users a few months ago and the company is announcing a new milestone today—100 million monthly active users. Additional features in the new version of Yahoo Mail include integrated notifications and messages from Facebook, Twitter, Zynga and other email providers within the interface. Yahoo has also made the client more customizable with 50 themes, improved search and made the client is speedier. Within Yahoo Mail ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Facebook   Leena Rao

20. Facebook, Twitter Saw Record Numbers Of U.S. Visitors In July Explore TechCrunch (Aug 21 2011) comScore's July traffic numbers are out and similar to June's findings, Facebook and Twitter both saw record traffic in terms of U.S. unique visitors in the month. In July, Facebook saw a whopping 162 million unique visitors, compared to 160.8 million unique vistors in June, and 157.2 million uniques in May. Twitter also posted record traffic in its five year history; with 32.8 million unique U.S. visitors in ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Facebook   Leena Rao

21. After Foursquare, Klout Adds Blogger, Tumblr, Instagram, Flickr And Last.fm To Measure Social Influence Explore TechCrunch (Aug 10 2011) Klout, a startup that measures influence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and most recently Foursquare, is adding more services today, totaling 10 different ways to measure your social influence on the web. Klout is adding five new networks—Blogger, Tumblr, Flickr, Instagram and Last.fm, allowing Klout users to add their influence on these networks to their Klout score. For background, Klout evaluates users' behavior with complex ranking algorithms and semantic analysis of content to ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Google   Columbia University   Facebook

22. LinkedIn Now Adding Two New Members Every Second Explore TechCrunch (Aug 4 2011) Marketing In LinkedIn's first earnings call as a public company, CEO Jeff Weiner revealed that LinkedIn is adding two new members every second, which is up from one member per second in November 2010. In Q2 alone, LinkedIn added 14 million members, after passing the 100 million mark earlier this year. Weiner also said that the network is now north of 120 million members, so LinkedIn has added 5 million members in the past month ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   IPO   Columbia University   Leena Rao

23. Report: More Gamers Are Using Real Money On Virtual Goods; Women More Likely To Use Facebook Credits Explore TechCrunch (Aug 4 2011) A new study is being released by Visa-owned PlaySpan with research firm VGMarket on how and what gamers are spending on virtual goods. According to the study, nearly one-third of the general gamer population has used real world money (as opposed to virtual currency) to purchase virtual goods. Console games with online play account for the majority (51%) of virtual purchases using real world money, with social networking games (30%) coming in at second. The ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Columbia University   Leena Rao   Medill School of Journalism

24. Skype Averaging 300M Minutes Of Video Calling Per Month; Represents 50 Percent Of Traffic Explore TechCrunch (Jul 6 2011) IP Telephony Skype CEO Tony Bates just took the stage at today's Facebook event announcing integrated video calling, group chat and new design today and revealed a number of new stats regarding video calling on the VoIP platform. Bates said that Skype users are averaging 300 million minutes per month of video calling. Bates says that 50 percent of Skype's traffic is video calling . Back in December, Skype told us that video calling represented 40 ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Leena Rao   Tony Bates

25. Google NFC Partner ViVOtech Raises $24M From Motorola, DFJ, Citigroup And Others Explore TechCrunch (Jun 27 2011) ViVOtech, the near field communication (NFC) software and systems company, has raised $24 million in Series C funding from Singapore’s EDBI, SingTel Innov8, Motorola Solutions Venture Capital, Alloy Ventures, Citi Ventures (the venture arm of Citigroup), Draper Fisher Jurveston, DFJ Gotham, First Data Corporation, Miven Ventures, Motorola Mobility, Nokia Growth Partners and NCR. This brings ViVOtech's total funding to $80 million. Founded in 2001, ViVOtech develops payment software, NFC smart posters, contactless readers ... (Read Full Article)

    Comment Mentions:   Google   Motorola   McDonalds

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