Updates over Media, Marketing en Publishing
SocialSafe, the social media back-up tool co-founded by Julian Ranger’s iBundle and 1minus1, has announced that it’s raised £250,000 (~$400k) in what’s being called a Series A round. That’s because Ranger, who is a prominent angel investor in the UK, has already funded the startup to the tune of £300k, bringing the total raised by SocialSafe to £550k (~$885k).
There are a whole host of second screen apps catering to sports fans (the UK’s Fanatix springs to mind), so it’s curious that Bantr, which sees its full global launch today, is billing itself as primarily a first screen experience for soccer fans. That’s because, along with powering real-time discussions and opinion before, after and during games, the web-based app pipes in live in-game data, such as text commentary and stats, meaning that it’s possible to use Bantr even if the match isn’t on television or you aren’t at the game. It’s also been designed to let fans follow multiple teams, games and leagues at the same time, which is of course how the more hardcore footy fans follow the beautiful game anyway.
Chalk this one up as crazy-stupid or the future: SoPost, a new UK startup launching today, is on a mission to reinvent the postal address by mapping things like Twitter handles, Facebook names, email addresses and other social IDs to a physical location to make it easier and more convenient for customers to receive deliveries or for users to send stuff to friends.
The problem that it’s setting out to solve — if it is a problem – is that a postal address should no longer be a fixed place, but something much more dynamic, because it frequently changes depending on where you are, at different times. In contrast, a social ID has the potential to remain fixed forever.
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SeedCamp alumni, SocialBro, which offers a web app for the management and analysis of Twitter communities, has scored €500k (approx. $638k) from a syndicate of angel investors from the UK and Spain. The round was led by “serial tech angel investor”, Stephen Bullock, and Chris Underhill, who has a background in digital marketing. Both Bullock and Underhill will join the SocialBro’s Board.
Flatshare finder, SmoovUp, has expanded beyond its native France to launch the service in 6 new countries: UK, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Australia — and says that the U.S. and Canada should follow soon.
Self-funded, and two years in operation, SmoovUp differentiates itself from other room-for-rent or flatshare marketplaces by putting an emphasis on matching people to each other rather than simply matching people to accommodation.
Lees meerFlatshare finder, SmoovUp, has expanded beyond its native France to launch the service in 6 new countries: UK, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Luxemburg, and Australia — and says that the U.S. and Canada should follow soon.
Self-funded, and two years in operation, SmoovUp differentiates itself from other room-for-rent or flatshare marketplaces by putting an emphasis on matching people to each other rather than simply matching people to accommodation.
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Many countries are facing a demographic ’time bomb’, or so we’re told, as people are living longer than ever before. As a result, ‘seniors’ make up a significant (and growing) proportion of the market, and it’s no wonder that startups are beginning to take note notice with products and services designed specifically for them.
Enter: Tapestry (not to be confused with a number of companies/products of the same name), whose Android app, web service, and Tapestry tablet, aims to make it easier for seniors stay to connected to family members online. Today, the company has announced that it’s raised a $600k seed round led by the Sydney Angels group of investors.
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Arguably, the boat has already sailed for photo sharing and discovery apps, but that isn’t stopping EyeEm from pushing on regardless. The Berlin-based startup, which has apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, has reached somewhat of a milestone, claiming 1 million app downloads. Meanwhile, TechCrunch has learned that the company has signed on two big brand partners for its “photo missions” feature — a sign, perhaps, that the burgeoning startup may have found that elusive revenue stream.
In response to the unworldliness of uber-marketplaces like eBay, Shpock (“shop in your pocket”) is a new iOS and Android app from Austrian startup, Finderly, which wants to return the local classified ads model used for selling goods peer-to-peer, to something resembling its original simplicity. It does this by taking advantage of the proliferation of camera-enabled and GPS-powered smartphones to make placing an ad a snap, literally.
In a move that coincidentally sees two App Store rebels join forces, music streaming service, Grooveshark, has added support for Flattr, the social micro-payments offering. The new integration means that users of both Grooveshark and Flattr (which we’ve previously likened to a ‘Like button but with cash‘) can easily reward their favourite artists, tip jar-style, providing another way for those artists to get paid for their music uploaded to Grooveshark. Both services have at one time or another fallen foul of Apple’s App Store policies (see below).
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