In June, Snapchat raised $60 million from investors including Institutional Venture Partners; that round valued the company at $800 million.
Three months later, Snapchat said its usage had nearly doubled, to 350 million messages or “snaps” per day, up from 200 million in June.
via Snapchat Spurned $3 Billion Acquisition Offer from Facebook – Digits – WSJ.
The deal for Braintree would give PayPal access to data and lucrative transaction fees from Braintree’s expanding network, which currently processes more than $10 billion annually for companies like OpenTable, Uber Technologies and Airbnb. Braintree charges merchants a 2.9% commission and 30-cent transaction fee.
via PayPal Nears Deal for Braintree Payments – Digits – WSJ.
Everyone’s Facebook feed is pretty much the same as everyone else’s of the same age. Twenty-year-olds pose in the club, 30-year-olds share wedding photos, by age 40 you’re looking at a lot of cute pictures of your friends’ kids. But with Tumblr, you never know what you’re going to get — even with people you know personally. That, in a nutshell, is the difference between a social graph and an interest graph.
via Why Tumblr Was a Massive Steal for Yahoo – Adam Rifkin – Voices – AllThingsD.
Here’s an interesting tidbit from TechCrunch written Feb 2013. From Tumblr Is Not What You Think
Pop quiz: what is the favorite social networking site of Americans under age 25? If you guessed Facebook you are way behind the eight-ball, because Tumblr now enjoys more regular visits from the youth of America. That figure struck me while reading Garry Tan’s January 2013 survey and I wondered why? So I delved deeper; this article describes what I discovered while exploring the Tumblr network.
This should be a relatively smooth transition that won’t affect current customers: Belkin says it will honor all valid warranties for current and future Linksys products. After the transaction closes, Belkin will account for approximately 30 percent of the US retail home and small business networking market.
via Cisco Exits The Consumer Market As It Sells Linksys To Belkin.
These cheap home routers have become commodities. As far as I know Belkin makes a decent product. Cisco tried to require its home router users to be managed by its cloud platform and after that debacle it seemed all downhill from there for them. If possible I prefer to use a real Linux box running real iptables as a gateway using these wifi home routers as access points.
Alcatel-Lucent has acquired Wavelength Selective Switch (WSS) specialist Capella Photonics Inc. for an undisclosed sum.
Meraki boasts a number of cloud-related offerings, from Ethernet switches and security appliances to a mobile device management platform and wireless LAN. Founded in 2006 and subsequently funded by a number of prominent firms, including Sequoia Capital and Google, Meraki touts itself as a shop for “easy-to-manage wireless, switching, and security solutions.” Business segments include supporting Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) shops, retail analytics, and massive networks managed from a central point.
via Cisco Acquires Meraki to Strengthen Cloud Networking.
Service Provider Information Technology (SPIT) player Cloupia calls itself a “a leading data center orchestration and cloud management software provider” and has worked with Cisco and NetApp Inc. (Nasdaq: NTAP), providing management for Cisco switches and NetApp storage appliances. The company’s speciality is providing provisioning, monitoring and management for physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
He also thinks “nobody has a better platform than Netflix” to take advantage of a trend that is seeing consumers view more and more video via Internet-connected TVs, tablets and smartphones. Icahn believes Netflix should place less emphasis on older library content and spend a lot more developing original programming to help it compete with premium subscription services such as HBO.
That’s just an on-paper theory, but a compelling one. The acquisition of Nicira brings VMware uncomfortably close to being a networking competitor to Cisco. In fact, rumors persist that Cisco wanted Nicira as well, which helped drive the startup’s price beyond $1 billion.
via Light Reading – Ethernet – Cisco Gets Some SDN Help – Telecom News Analysis.
Helsinki, Finland and Santa Clara, US – August 9th 2012, Digia, the software powerhouse listed on the NASDAQ OMX Helsinki exchange (DIG1V), today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Following the acquisition Digia becomes responsible for all the Qt activities formerly carried out by Nokia. These include product development, as well as the commercial and open source licensing and service business. Following the acquisition, Digia plans to quickly enable Qt on Android, iOS and Windows 8 platforms.
US firm Motorola Solutions is to buy UK tech icon Psion, the inventor of the personal digital assistant (PDA) and source of the one-time leading mobile operating system Symbian.
via Motorola Buys Psion For $200m | | TechWeekEurope UKTechWeekEurope UK.
However, the Psion brand remains best known for its mobile organisers, which developed from its role writing software for Sinclair ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers. These consumer devices are seen as the world’s first hand-held computers and prefigured later handheld devices from Palm Computing, RIM and Apple.