Accel Partners, the top outside stakeholder in Facebook (FB) Inc., is investing $75 million with partners including Baring Vostok Capital Partners in Avito.ru, a Russian classified advertising website.
Palo Alto, California-based Accel is providing the funding along with the Baring Vostok Private Equity Fund IV and existing Avito investors Investment AB Kinnevik and Northzone Ventures, both based in Stockholm, according to a statement from Avito today. more…
LinkedIn just announced plans to buy SlideShare for $119 million.
It will be 45% cash and 55% stock. SlideShare allows users to upload documents to the web and have them embedded all over the place. more…
Gmail‘s automated message translation is no longer an experiment. Now Google’s popular email platform can automatically translate emails from one language to another. So, for example, you can get an email in Japanese and have it translated instantly into English, or communicate with a friend in French without ever knowing the language. more…
Twitter has released updates for its iPhone and Android app, providing improved search and notification functions. The new versions of Twitter are now available on both the iPhone’s App Store and Android’s Google Play.
“This update was a great collaboration between many teams at Twitter including Android, iOS, Discover, Search and others,” more…
Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Cleveland, and Hartford Among Cities with Losses
CARLSBAD, CA/RICHARDSON, TX (April 26, 2012) – Managerial recruitment activity dropped by 15.6 points in April, following a steady rise over the past two months, according to the new CareerCast.com/JobSerf Employment Index. more…
The super-speed growth in smartphone usage and the cultural shift therein is old news at this point, but this past holiday season marked an enormous turning point in mobile technology adoption. U.S. tablet ownership doubled over the holiday season which means about 10 percent of the population was gifted a tablet. more…
Microsoft ruled the PC market for decades with utter dominance. But today, as the future shifts toward mobile devices, things are not looking good for Microsoft. It’s not that it’s not trying: Microsoft is spending a lot of money and effort on cracking the mobile market, now in lockstep with Nokia, its top partner. But there’s no indication yet that it’s having any real success.
more…
A couple of weeks ago, early participants in the new AdWords for Video program gathered at the YouTube offices. The ostensible justification for the meeting was a fancy photo shoot, but YouTube executives also gave a little pep talk, laying out their vision to make video advertising available to small businesses. They even let themselves get a little dreamy, imagining a day when video might become as lucrative for Google as search. more…