Smartdate announced a €2 million round in February of this year so that you could stop poking and start actually dating the friends of your Facebook friends. But now the company is kicking it up a notch and announcing that it’s raised an additional €3.5 million with the fonders of PriceMinster, Pierre Kosciuscko-Morizet and Pierre Krings. Oh, and just in case you forgot, French Ebay competitor PriceMinister went to Rakuten in June for €200 million (about $250 million) so maybe that’s why the founders have a bit of cash to spare. As with a number of French dating sites, like the likes of Adoptaguy and Meetic, Smartdate is rapidly developing and already has a 25 person team in place.

Smartdate Takes Another €3.5 Million So You Can Stop Poking and Start Dating

IPS Company Blog – IP.Downloads 2.3 Dev Update: Interface Changes

I’ve had an interesting few days trying to track down exactly what is and isn’t going on with Yahoo and Groupon.

One source earlier this week said that a $1.7 billion acquisition was all but done, but Groupon’s management team balked and killed the deal. That’s certainly juicy and consistent with Yahoo’s failure to acquire Yelp and Foursquare.

Another source close to Yahoo said much the same thing, but suggested the price was higher, north of $2 billion.

None of it adds up though. Groupon was valued at $1.35 billion earlier this year. A sale in the $2 billion range would mean that Groupon sees a major problem in their business model. Otherwise, they’d be in it for the long haul.

And in fact the information from these two separate sources is probably incorrect. A source close to Groupon tells me that there haven’t been any serious acquisition discussions with Yahoo at all, and for Groupon to even consider an acquisition would require $3.5 billion or more. Clearly, Yahoo would have a lot of trouble completing an acquisition of that size.

Also, we’ve checked with some of the other usual suspects who’d likely be bidding against Yahoo in a Groupon acquisition. They’ve not heard a thing.

We have confirmed that Groupon and Yahoo are working on a large distribution deal of some kind. A smaller deal is already in place, but something much bigger is coming in the next few weeks. Deals with eBay and Citysearch are probably also being signed.

But for now, no acquisition. Either because discussions never happened (most likely) or because Groupon management balked at being part of Yahoo.

Getting To The Bottom Of The Crazy Yahoo-Groupon Rumors

What happens when that $145 tandem skydiving coupon you bought doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore? Or what if you can’t use it because you’re just bogged down with work? Fear not! Now you don’t have to let it go to waste… New site Lifesta.com has launched a daily deal exchange where Groupon-like coupons can be bought and sold.

Self-describing itself as ‘StubHub for daily deals,’ Lifesta helps folks buy deals they missed or sell vouchers they won’t use. Lifesta manages the entire transaction, from payment to voucher handover. No communication is required between buyers and sellers and if for some reason a buyer bought an invalid voucher, Lifesta will refund them their money. This by the way, has only happened a couple of times. In both instances due to the business having closed down. (Groupon had refunded the original sellers).

It’s not that people aren’t buying and selling daily deal coupons today, it’s that they do it through bulletin boards, which only fulfill the posting aspect, leaving voids for the actual transaction facilitation and the voucher handover. Plus, you also have to deal with back-and-forth emails and phone calls until the handover is complete.

With Lifesta, everything is much more seamless: Sellers upload their vouchers (usually PDF or image) and set their price. Buyers then browse for their desired voucher, pay online and download the voucher.

Eran Davidov, Lifesta’s CEO would not disclose specific numbers, but did say that since its launch in July, the site has been growing 50% month-over-month, both in the number of uploaded vouchers for sale, and in total sales.

Buy and Sell Your Unused Groupon-like Coupons on Lifesta [Disrupt Startup Alley]

The hits just keep on coming for Elevation Partners, the one-time digital media, private equity dream team that has reconfigured itself as an investor in late stage Web 2.0 treasures. Earlier this summer, Elevation requested an extension on investing its $1.9 billion fund, and TechCrunch has learned that that request was denied—a move that came as surprise to us and to Elevation, we hear.

So what does that mean? Clearly, LPs are sending a strong message that has to do with Elevation, but also has a lot to do with the broader market: They want to see some returns before they pony up more money. But the news isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

For one thing, we’re only talking about $100 million or so of the $1.9 billion fund. At most, this would have represented one more deal in the portfolio. What’s more Elevation can still call up that $100 million to invest in a follow-on round in existing portfolio companies, so it’s not like the fund size has necessarily been reduced to $1.8 billion. There is just a new restriction on how they can spend that last $100 million.

What does this mean for that Pandora deal? It doesn’t kill it, because Elevation signed an agreement to invest before the original five-year investment period elapsed. But that deal isn’t done and it’s unclear if there’s a snag or the deal is just taking some time. In our earlier story, Pandora confirmed that Elevation had expressed interest and sources close to Elevation say an agreement to invest was already signed.

Either way, the fund will hinge on Elevation’s investments in Yelp and Facebook. As we reported before, if you average together Elevation’s investment in Facebook it holds its shares at a valuation of $29 per share and Facebook has been trading as high as $70 a share on the secondary market. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Elevation loses money on this, but the concern is when and how do they cash out?

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly telegraphed that he’s in no hurry to do an IPO, and his use of late stage and secondary deals has alleviated the pressure to do one. Typically companies go public because early employees want liquidity, the company wants a hoard of cash to grow or the company wants a stock currency to do acquisitions. Facebook has checked most of those off. Early shareholders can (and many have already) exit on the secondary market or through one-time deals like the one with DST. The company has raised a whopping $836 million in capital according to CrunchBase and is reported by some to be doing revenues in the $2 billion range. And, again, thanks to the secondary market, Facebook has an externally validated price, making it easier to do any stock transactions than it would have been for a private company ten years ago. On paper, Elevation’s investment in Facebook is soaring. But LPs are going to want to see more than paper if they’re going to invest in a second fund.

That brings us to Yelp. Yelp’s ascendancy is far less of a sure thing than Facebook’s, but Elevation owns a much bigger chunk of the company. It bought shares at a price that valued Yelp at $475 million, just shy of the price it reportedly turned down from Google. Few (rational) people think Yelp will be worth nothing. The question is: Does it wind up somewhere around the price of Slide or does it become one of the few $1 billion winners of the Web 2.0 era? For Elevation to make the kind of return it’s hoping for, Yelp needs to make sure upstarts like Groupon and FourSquare don’t steal its opportunities for micro-local monetization. Personally, I’m still bullish on Yelp’s odds, and the early results of its first San Francisco deal look promising. But a sure thing it is not.

Pandora could be the last deal Elevation does in this fund, or if Yelp goes south, it could be the last deal Elevation does ever. Even though the firm can call that last $100 million for a follow-on, odds are Elevation won’t. Facebook valuations are soaring out of control on the secondary market and the company already owns one of the largest stakes in Yelp. The Palm-batross is gone, and Forbes is what it is. It’s a near-certainty no more money is going towards saving Forbes, especially given Elevation’s re-tooled team and investment approach. The firm has learned the lesson about putting too much into one company the Palm-way.

The bets have been made and Elevation’s partners will have to wait for the roulette wheel to stop spinning, doing what they can in the mean time to help make their companies stronger. I talked to one small limited partner this week who said he personally wouldn’t invest in a second fund, and another who said he loved the new team, but worried the change in strategy just came too late.

Like Yelp, I think Elevation has a decent chance of pulling the second fund off. There is clearly a market for these mega, late-stage transactions, and there aren’t a ton of Valley teams who have experience doing them and few Wall Street teams that have the contacts here. But don’t expect them to hit the fundraising trail until Yelp and Facebook exits look more certain.

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Yelp

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Pandora

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Elevation’s LPs Refuse Extension for New Deals, Fund Riding on Facebook and Yelp

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/elevation%e2%80%99s-lps-refuse-extension-for-new-deals-fund-riding-on-facebook-and-yelp/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/aol-scoops-up-rally-up-to-boost-their-mobile-team/ http://www.invisionskins.net/aol-scoops-up-rally-up-to-boost-their-mobile-team/#comments Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:35:47 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/aol-scoops-up-rally-up-to-boost-their-mobile-team/

AOL has just acquired Rally Up, the Santa Cruz-based mobile application company, we’ve learned. The 9-person team will become a part of AOL’s mobile group reporting to David Temkin, the head of mobile. No word on the price, but we hear it was less than $10 million.

The company made both a mobile location app (also called Rally Up) and a very nice app meant to be used with FaceTime called FacePlant. Sadly, Apple never approved that app.

More to come.

AOL Scoops Up Rally Up To Boost Their Mobile Team

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/aol-scoops-up-rally-up-to-boost-their-mobile-team/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/flurry-brings-recommendation-engine-to-android-apps/ http://www.invisionskins.net/flurry-brings-recommendation-engine-to-android-apps/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 15:35:46 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/flurry-brings-recommendation-engine-to-android-apps/

After the controversy with Apple and Steve Jobs over its analytics offerings, Flurry is making further moves towards the Android platform, launching its app recommendation engine AppCircle for Android phones. Flurry launched AppCircle for the iPhone last month and has attracted over 600 participating applications with a combined publisher reach of 22 million iOS device owners.

Flurry’s AppCircle attempts to match up app developers who want to gain more users with those who want to make money from promoting other apps. The service leverages Flurry’s recommendation engine in combination with Flurry Analytics to recommend the appropriate app to the right user at the right time from within participating Flurry network of applications.

AppCircle is built on top of Flurry Analytics, a service used by 45,000 applications on iPhone, Android,
BlackBerry and J2ME platforms. It’s unclear how many of the applications in Flurry’s network are Android apps, so the reach of the app circle is questionable.

For App publishers who want to earn money, they can integrate Flurry into their applications, which allows Flurry to serve targeted application recommendations to their consumers. Publishers earn 60% of the price for each app download. For promoters, application developers create campaigns and set bids on how much they are willing to pay for a new user. Flurry’s recommendation engine will match relevant promoter apps to display within publisher apps, and then use bidding to rank the order in which impressions are shown. Publishers can also use their own virtual currency to encourage downloads.

After the crackdown on Flurry from Apple for violating privacy policies, it is not surprising that the startup is broadening its horizons to other smartphone platforms. But Android may not be a save haven for long. In theory, it seems like a good idea to help developers who want more users be able to connect with publishers who want to make money; but I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before Google starts doing this with AdMob.

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Flurry Brings Recommendation Engine To Android Apps

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/flurry-brings-recommendation-engine-to-android-apps/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/m4ss4s-skin-blog-new-iphone-skin-3-1-1-new/ http://www.invisionskins.net/m4ss4s-skin-blog-new-iphone-skin-3-1-1-new/#comments Thu, 08 Jul 2010 10:10:00 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/m4ss4s-skin-blog-new-iphone-skin-3-1-1-new/

Poll: iPhone Skin Poll

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iPhone Skin

Professional iPhone Skin with extras!

Board, Calendar, Portal, IPShoutbox ready.

This skin is working with: Ip.Board 3.1.1

Price: $25

- Change the logo (psd included)
- Scroll up to the top, or down to the bottom of the page in the topic (Mouse and hand saver)
- Navigate easily in the forum by pushing the forum table (It’s important if you use mobile)
- Custom forum & topic icons
- Nice profile icons in user navigation

If you want this skin, just pm me!

m4ss4’s Skin Blog – NEW! iPhone Skin (3.1.1) NEW!

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/m4ss4s-skin-blog-new-iphone-skin-3-1-1-new/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/jeff-bezos-on-the-ipad-%e2%80%9cit%e2%80%99s-really-a-different-product-category%e2%80%9d/ http://www.invisionskins.net/jeff-bezos-on-the-ipad-%e2%80%9cit%e2%80%99s-really-a-different-product-category%e2%80%9d/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 09:20:04 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/jeff-bezos-on-the-ipad-%e2%80%9cit%e2%80%99s-really-a-different-product-category%e2%80%9d/

A day after Amazon made it abundantly clear it’s gunning for world domination in the e-reading space by lowering the price of the Kindle from $259 to $189 – following competitor Barnes & Noble’s decision to slash the price of its Nook e-reader down to $199 – chief executive Jeff Bezos sat down with Fortune’s JP Mangalindan for a fairly interesting interview.

One of the things Bezos talked about was the iPad, Apple’s tablet computer that is selling like hotcakes and unequivocally poses a genuine threat to Amazon’s burgeoning ebooks and ereader business (and, as some claim, to reading in general).

According to Apple, it’s already taken about 22% of the U.S. ebooks market, with iPad owners having downloaded some 5 million books in the first 65 days of the iBooks store alone.

But Bezos does not seem terribly impressed.

Here’s the key part of the interview (which you should read in its entirety):

Fortune: Obviously, the Kindle’s price drop was in response to Barnes & Noble’s price cut on the Nook. Did the iPad and its overnight success play a role, too?

Bezos: No. The iPad… I think there are going to be a bunch of tablet-like devices. It’s really a different product category. The Kindle is for readers.

Fortune: So far you’ve been capturing consumers. Amazon accounted for about 80% of all electronic book sales last year. How has it grown so fast, and can you keep it up?

Bezos: It’s hard even for us to remember internally that we only launched Kindle a little over 30 months ago.

Our strategy with the ebookstore is ‘buy once, read everywhere.’ If you want to read on your iPhone, if you want to read on your BlackBerry. We want people to be able to read their books anywhere they want to read them. That’s the PC, that’s the Macintosh. It’s the iPad, it’s the iPhone. It’s the Kindle.

His words ring true, because this strategy is visible in the field too.

We now have a Kindle reader app for Android phones, a Kindle app that includes fresh support for video and audio for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and versions for BlackBerry devices, PC and Mac computers via a desktop client and of course the company’s own Kindle, which Bezos says has been purchased by “millions”.

Furthermore, Amazon boasts more than 620,000 ebooks in its catalog, significantly more than Apple, despite the latter’s agreements with 5 of the 6 top publishers in the United States.

Finally, I think Bezos is right about the fact that there will be many tablet devices making their way to the market in the coming months and years (according to Forrester Research, there will be 59 million tablets in use by 2015) and that Amazon should be focusing on being able to shift ebooks on as many platforms as possible.

But does all that mean Bezos should be dismissing the iPad for being a different product?

Cross-platform ebook selling strategy aside, with the Kindle Amazon has stepped into the hardware arena, and the reality is price doesn’t always make the difference. The iPad can simply do a lot more than the most recent model of the Kindle can, and the next-gen iPad is undoubtedly already in the works.

ZDnet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes put it best when he wrote:

The problem with the Kindle (and Nook) is that it’s a one-trick pony. One-trick ponies are cool in an ecosystem where there are no other ponies doing tricks. Add more ponies doing more tricks, and the one-trick pony gets long in the tooth real fast.

Maybe Amazon’s problem is that the iPad really is a different product category?

(Image via TechCN)

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Jeff Bezos

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Jeff Bezos On The iPad: “It’s Really A Different Product Category”

]]> http://www.invisionskins.net/jeff-bezos-on-the-ipad-%e2%80%9cit%e2%80%99s-really-a-different-product-category%e2%80%9d/feed/ 0 http://www.invisionskins.net/e-readers-race-to-the-bottom-as-tablet-market-solidifies/ http://www.invisionskins.net/e-readers-race-to-the-bottom-as-tablet-market-solidifies/#comments Mon, 21 Jun 2010 23:31:45 +0000 admin http://invisionskins.net/e-readers-race-to-the-bottom-as-tablet-market-solidifies/

You must have heard that the Nook and the Kindle, two of the world’s best-selling e-readers, have dropped their prices to below $200 — down to $149 for the Wi-Fi Nook and $189 for the Kindle. It’s bad news for e-readers that recently placed themselves at low price points to compensate for fewer features (like the Kobo I just reviewed), but of course good news for everyone planning on buying an e-reader soon. When I considered secondary features and the possibility of “bulk” e-readers, I concluded that these devices would survive but find themselves marginalized both in price and market share. That seems to be just what’s happening, though of course the tablet market is still emerging, and Google may have a few cards up its sleeve. The brief age of “premium” e-readers is ending.

What can you expect from the e-readers? Well, first of all they can and must cut the hell out of the price, and that’s what we’re seeing now.

Continue reading…

E-Readers Race To The Bottom As Tablet Market Solidifies

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