If there’s one thing likely to cause fear amongst European startup entrepreneurs, it’s when Rocket Internet — the Samwer brothers’ incredibly well-funded German startup factory — enters a burgeoning market. That’s just happened for the on-demand laundry space with the launch of Rocket Internet-incubated ZipJet, which now competes with a number of young… Read More
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Microsoft’s research department has been building some incredible things of late, and one of them comes from the Skype team and was demoed on stage at Re/code’s Code conference back in May: Skype Translator lets users talk via voice and video in real-time even if they don’t speak the same language, and now it’s ready for a limited public roll-out. Read More
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Consumer home security devices usually consist simply of an Internet-connected camera of sorts, combined with motion detection and a supporting cloud service and smartphone app to ping you when a potential intruder is detected. Debuting on IndieGoGo today, however, is Cocoon, which adds ‘infrasound’ into the mix. Read More
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Bharti SoftBank, a joint venture between business group Bharti Enterprises and SoftBank Corp., announced today that it has acquired a 36.5 percent stake in ScoopWhoop, an Indian-focused media startup. Though financial terms were undisclosed, the deal is interesting because it’s the latest in a series of investments by SoftBank in Indian startups. The Japanese telecom giant recently said… Read More
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As part of the founding team at Adly, Derek Rey helped build one of the first businesses focused on social media advertising. Now he’s doing something pretty different — his company Thoughtful.org recently relaunched as a crowdfunding platform for medical, memorial, and emergency costs. We wrote about the site two years ago, when it was a platform to connect brands and… Read More
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Uber surprised a 26-year-old Baltimore woman with a spooky Halloween bill that hit $326 on a routine ride, resulting in her inability to pay her rent and general Internet outrage. Gabrielle Wathen posted to the site GoFund.me, saying that she went out for her 26th birthday on the night of Halloween and, after taking an Uber an approximately 22-minute ride home around 3am, was charged $326.… Read More
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Google has a new service in the works that could allow users of Android devices to share media with others nearby, even if those users are rocking iOS devices like iPhone and iPads instead of gadgets running Google’s mobile OS. The so-called Copresence feature, revealed by an Android Police source digging around in the latest Google Play Services APK, would allow devices to use… Read More
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With the latest expansion of its content recommendation tools, startup Contextly isn’t just pointing visitors to relevant articles, but videos and products, too.
Co-founder and CEO Ryan Singel (a former editor at Wired) told me that this is “doubling down” on the company’s current strategy. Read More
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ThriveTracker, a new app developed by Adrian Cunanan, who has bipolar disorder, wants to encourage people to keep tracking their mood with a points system that can earn them real world rewards like gift cards and MP3 downloads. 
Why, on a philosophical level, has Facebook been so staggeringly successful? A startup that swelled into a multi billion dollar revenue generating business in a relatively short span of years, one which continues to attract billions of users every month?