Remember MySpace? Contrary to what you might think, it’s not dead. In fact, the music-oriented social network launched a redesigned site and a new mobile app today that could put pressure on Pandora. The iOS app’s coolest feature is an...
Read more »After Apple Unveils iTunes Radio, Pandora Buys a Radio Station in South Dakota
All ears were on Pandora Media yesterday after Apple showed its competing streaming-music service, iTunes Radio. Pandora answered with an acquisition today — of an FM radio station. In South Dakota. Pandora said it entered into a pact to acquire...
Read more »Apple Buys More Than Airtime With Latest Ad
When Apple’s “Think Different” campaign came out in 1997, the ads didn’t sell a specific product, but an idea: The company wanted to change the world, just like Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr. and the other “crazy ones.” It...
Read more »Startup Aims to Beat Verizon and AT&T With Free Mobile Phone Service
The U.S. wireless industry is dominated by a few big players. A startup is looking to break through with a proposition that should be tough for many Americans to pass up: Free service. After testing the waters with free mobile...
Read more »Amazon Is Quietly Building an Ad Empire
Google and Facebook tend to make the most noise in digital advertising. Amazon.com is a bit of a silent giant, and the online retailer is starting to stir. Last year, Amazon’s advertising revenue increased 46 percent from 2011, reaching $610...
Read more »Andreessen Backs Lyft Ride Sharing With $60M Investment
Lyft Inc., a service for connecting drivers to ride-seekers via smartphone software, has raised $60 million from venture firms led by Andreessen Horowitz LLC as it seeks to almost double its staff and take on rivals. Lyft, which competes with Side.Cr LLC and...
Read more »Chart This: NEA’s Investment Return on Tableau — 3,000%
For New Enterprise Associates, its investment return on Tableau Software was — fittingly — off the charts. NEA’s $29.2 million stake in the digital chart provider, which made its stock market debut today, was valued at more than $925 million...
Read more »Campaign to Buy Los Angeles Times Hopes to Crowdfund $660 Million
Want to buy the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and six other daily newspapers? No, I don’t mean at the newsstand. The Other 98%, a nonprofit organization, has setup a crowdfunding campaign to buy Tribune Co.’s newspaper business....
Read more »Elon Musk on Tesla Merger Prospects: Apple Has ‘a Lot of Cash’
(Updates Tesla’s year-to-date stock price change in lead and Musk’s estimated net worth in 10th paragraph.) Tesla Motors is on a pretty good run this year with the stock up 105 percent and a first-ever quarterly profit posted yesterday. That’s...
Read more »Former Square COO Rabois Targets Health Care in First Venture Bet
Keith Rabois successfully took on the finance and recruiting industries as an early executive at PayPal, LinkedIn and Square. A newly minted venture capitalist, Rabois’s next target is the similarly entrenched world of health care. After an alleged improper relationship,...
Read more »Silicon Prairie’s Dwolla Strikes Out West to Find $16.5 Million
In 2010, Ben Milne made a journey across the Silicon Prairie for his first taste from the big tech trough. Then a twenty-something founder of a two-person startup in Iowa, Milne arrived in San Francisco with no business connections but a burning...
Read more »