Street Fight Daily: Eventbrite Hits $1 Billion, Clinkle’s Clunking Continues
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology
Eventbrite Tops Billion-Dollar Valuation With New Funding (Wall Street Journal)
Eventbrite, the site for event planning and ticketing, joined the growing club of startups worth more than $1 billion with its latest round of funding. T. Rowe Price and Tiger Global, which first backed Eventbrite a year ago, invested another $60 million into the San Francisco-based startup, a spokeswoman for the company said in an e-mail.
Openings and New Hires at PayPal, Leaf, SIM Partners and Angie’s List (Street Fight (Street Fight)
Every two weeks, Search Influence’s Kelly Benish — who knows practically everyone in hyperlocal — covers some of the latest job changes taking place in this dynamic industry. In this week’s edition, jobs at hibu, Mediative, Facebook, LiveIntent and more.
Clinkle’s Still a Hot Mess as Its Big Shot COO Departs (Recode)
Barry McCarthy was supposed to bring stability to the tumultuous environment at Clinkle, the stealth payments startup he joined in the fall as its first chief operating officer. Instead, the former longtime Netflix CFO is heading for the exit less than five months after joining.
Israel’s Wix.com Buys Mobile Commerce Firm Appixia (Reuters)
Israel-based Wix.com, whose technology helps small businesses build and operate websites, has acquired Appixia, a platform for building mobile commerce applications, as part of its mobile expansion strategy. Appixia’s platform allows retailers to capitalize on features such as push notifications, barcode scanning, location-based services and credit card scanning.
Starbucks Plans to Test Mobile Ordering This Year (Bloomberg)
Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee-shop operator, will test a smartphone service this year that lets customers order items ahead of time at some U.S. cafes, part of a push to promote its mobile application. The move would let customers select coffee or food while in line or before coming into a cafe, potentially speeding up service and saving time.
Banjo Raises $16M To Grow Its Experiential Real-Time News And Events Platform (TechCrunch)
Startup Banjo has raised a new $16 million Series B round of funding, bringing its total raised to date to $21 million. The startup has evolved from a mostly consumer-focused product to a cross-platform services that allows both consumers and media companies to experience and share real-time events and headline-making news as they unfold across the social web.
To Turn The World Into a Web Page, Mobile Browsers Need to Get Better at Figuring Out Where They Are (Quartz)
Augmented reality browsers use a mobile phone’s camera to digest a scene and annotate it with web-connected flair: live directions, geotagged tweets, reviews that hover over restaurants. But the current generation of AR browsers is lagging on geolocation, are content-poor, and have limited interactivity, according to a recent paper in the Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Forecast: Google To Lose $1.4B In PC Revs As Search Shifts To Mobile (SearchEngineLand)
A forecast just released by eMarketer argues that Google will lose $1.4 billion in PC search revenue in 2014 as paid clicks partly migrate to mobile devices, where revenue per click has been lower. Some marketers to date have actively discounted their paid mobile clicks on Google enhanced campaigns.
Uber Expands Insurance Program for Community Drivers (New York Times)
Uber, the maker of a smartphone app for summoning cars for rides, has been under intense scrutiny since an Uber driver struck and killed a 6-year-old girl late last year, when he was between fares — raising questions about when Uber should be held responsible for an accident. Now the company has bought an insurance policy that it says will cover instances when an accident might otherwise not be covered.
LBMA Podcast: OfficeDepot, Apple’s CarPlay, ‘Apponomics’ (Street Fight)
Top stories of the week include Revealr, Lechal, Six to Start, Thirdshelf, ShipEarly, Apple’s CarPlay, PizzaHut and Chaotic Moon, and Volvo’s delivery system. Our Mobile Minute with Chuck Martin examines the in-store difference between the mobile web and mobile apps.
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