Auteur: Steve O'Hear

Two App Store Rebels Join Forces — Grooveshark Adds Tip Jar-Style Payments Via Flattr

Europe, flattr, Grooveshark, social, Startups, TC

FlattrIn 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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Another Place To Talk Smack — Fanatix Raises $1M To Bring Its Second Screen Sports App To The U.S.

Europe, fanatix, mobile, social, Startups, TC

159191v2In the UK, the summer of 2012 is already being looked back on as the British summer of sport. It kicked off with a traditionally poor performance by the English football team in the Euros, followed by a much more successful Olympics and Paralympics held on home soil. All three events were a national and televisual spectacle, but it would seem that the second screen saw plenty of action too. And so did fanatix, the mobile-first social network for sports fans, which is touting some encouraging growth and, carried by that momentum, is today launching in the U.S.

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Dust Off That Science: Marblar Wants To Bring The Crowd To Tech Transfer (And Change The World)

Europe, IP Group, Marblar, social, Startups, TC

marblarA few months back, I was pitched over Skype by the CEO and co-founder of a startup building a platform that was going to realise the “true potential” of science.

“Okay,” I said, “but have you got anything you can actually show me?”

“Not yet but I still think TechCrunch readers will want to hear about us,” he replied, before proceeding to tell me how to do my job.

“Look, it’s late here,” I countered, “but I’m happy to meet when you have something to show. I have a feeling you’ll be slightly less annoying in person.”

“Don’t count on it,” said the overly confident CEO.

That startup was Marblar, which today sees its public launch with a platform that — with the help of the crowd — aims to find commercial uses for the thousands of scientific discoveries otherwise laying dormant in universities around the globe. And in doing so, may actually have the potential to not just change science but (indirectly) change the world.

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GrabCAD Raises $8.15M From Charles River Ventures, Yammer Co-Founder & Others For Its ‘GitHub For Mechanical Engineers’

Atlas Venture, Charles River Ventures, Europe, GrabCAD, Matrix Partners, NextView Venture, social, Startups, TC

grabcadGrabCAD, which offers an online community and cloud-based collaboration tools for those involved in designing and building physical products, has raised an $8.15 million series B round led by Charles River Ventures, with participation from new investor David Sacks (co-founder of Yammer and former chief operating officer of PayPal), and existing investors Atlas Venture, NextView Ventures, and Matrix Partners.

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Deezer Pulls Back Curtain On Growth Strategy: Adds 76 More Countries, Free Version, Social Features

Deezer, Europe, social, TC

deezerArmed with a fresh $130 million in funding from Warner Music owner Access Industries and Idinvest, music streaming company Deezer has this morning revealed more details on what it plans to do with that cash. The short version is as follows: Push on with Rest Of The World (ROW) domination — launching in 76 additional countries throughout Africa, the Middle East and Asia — as the company continues scaling up its strategy of everywhere but the U.S., along with adding a marketing-driven free version of the service and ramping up its social features significantly.

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Anything Qype Can Do, We Can Do Four Years Later: Yelp Enters Poland

Europe, mobile, Qype, social, TC, yelp

yelp logoLocal reviews site Yelp — which is up against big competition in Europe in competitor Qype — has launched Yelp Poland, giving it a stronger base in Central Europe.

The U.S.-based publicly listed company already has a Central European presence in Germany (launched in July 2010), Austria (launched in October 2012), and Switzerland (launched in September 2011) — though Qype itself is also present in those countries and launched in Poland as far back as December 2008.

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Anything Qype Can Do, We Can Do Four Years Later: Yelp Enters Poland

Europe, mobile, Qype, social, TC, yelp

yelp logoLocal reviews site Yelp — which is up against big competition in Europe in competitor Qype — has launched Yelp Poland, giving it a stronger base in Central Europe.

The U.S. publicly listed company already has a Central European presence in Germany (launched in July 2010), Austria (launched in October 2012), and Switzerland (launched in September 2011) — though Qype itself is also present in those countries and launched in Poland as far back as December 2008.

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Blooie Launches Its Chat Platform For Online Publishers, Powered By The Interest-Graph

Blooie, Europe, ignite100, social, Startups, TC

Screen Shot 2012-10-02 at 22.42.11Promising to help online publishers increase engagement, ensuring that visitors stick around for longer and return more often, Blooie’s chat and analytics platform gets its official push today. In its initial offering, it provides a way for publishers to embed a chat facility onto their site which connects visitors one-to-one based on shared interests, garnered from semantic analysis of the Blooie-powered sites they visit, their Blooie chat logs and, going forward, their wider interest graph. Off the back of this data, the startup is offering to sell publishers additional analytics, giving an insight into what content drives engagement and the interests their visitors share.

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Zao Rolls Out Branded Pages For Companies That Want In On The Social Recruitment Action

Europe, social, Startups, TC, Zao

ZaoSocial recruitment startup, Zao, which offers a platform to enable employers who are hiring to leverage the social web and gamification in their referral programs, is rolling out quite a neat iteration today: Companies can now create a free “career site” — a branded page with custom text, logo, images and videos uploaded from YouTube and Vimeo — to promote current and future job openings, with built-in support for Zao’s flagship rewards feature, of course.

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Taggstar Launches To Help Publishers Make Their Images Interactive, Shareable And Shoppable

Europe, social, Startups, Taggstar, TC

Screen Shot 2012-09-24 at 17.41.35Another startup offering to help publishers unlock the full potential of the images they publish, by making them interactive, shareable and, potentially, ‘shoppable’, gets its full public launch today: Taggstar lets publishers add layers of additional content to images — video, audio, photos, text, and maps — in a bid to increase engagement, and optionally, generate additional revenue via its “create a shop” feature, which takes the heavy-lifting out of turning those images into a fully-fledged online store.

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