Urturn Raises $13.4M Series A, Led By Balderton, For Its Social Expressions Platform That Lets Teens Create Memes & Movements
Urturn, the social expressions platform that soft-launched as stealthily as possible last year by intentionally hiding under a really boring name, is getting ready to turn the volume up to 11 to start seriously recruiting teens and trend-setters to its meme-stuffed, fashion-friendly, music-loving platform. Today it has announced a $13.4 million Series A funding round, led by Balderton Capital with a $10.7 million investment. The private equity arm of Debiopharm Group invested the remaining $2.7 million. As part of the investment, Balderton founding partner Barry Maloney will join the Urturn board. The London-based startup, which also has an office in the Valley, is also launching an iOS app today, funded by its Series A, to extend its web-based platform to mobile. An Android app is also in the works, due later this year. Prior to the Series A, Urturn had raised around $500,000 in friends/family funding. So what exactly is a social expression platform? Urturn — pronounced ‘your ...
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Tumblr Updates iOS App With New Path-Like Interface
Tumblr is still shipping. Despite all the noise surrounding the Yahoo-Tumblr acquisition, the company has just pushed out an update to its iOS application introducing a new user interface that now includes the almost Path-like post chooser, previously introduced in the Android version. This interface design is becoming more common today, but it’s most reminiscent of things like Mac’s Fan Stack feature, for example, or social network Path, which popularized the concept on mobile devices. For those unfamiliar, the post chooser is the button you tap to add content to your Tumblr blog, including text, photos, video, quotes, links and more. Now, instead of having a compose button at the bottom right of the screen that launches a page of these options as a starting point for your post, in the updated version of Tumblr’s iOS app, the compose button will fan out the choices overlaid on your current window as small, round tappable buttons. The revamped interface is the most notable change ...
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Google Unites Gmail And G+ Chat Into “Hangouts” Cross-Platform Text And Group Video Messaging App
Today at I/O, Google rebranded "Hangouts" as a new unified, cross-platform messaging system. It lets people text, photo, and group video message across Hangouts' Android and iOS apps, plus its Gmail and Google+ site integrations. Hangouts rolls out today, replacing Google Talk [GChat] and G+ Messenger. While it doesn't support SMS yet, it could challenge Facebook Messaging and Apple's iMessage.
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Cydia, The Alternative App Store For Jailbroken Apple Devices, Now Runs On Android
Cydia, a platform commonly thought of as the alternative app store for jailbroken iPhones and iPads, has just today arrived on Android, of all places. Though Android is by its nature more open and customizable than Apple’s locked-down iOS, it now has a growing collection of apps designed for power users who root their devices – a process that’s similar in spirit to the iOS jailbreak. Cydia for Android could soon become home to some of those same tweaks in time – or at least allow developers to port them to the Android ecosystem, whether or not they’re housed in Cydia directly. Jailbreaking an iPhone makes a lot of sense because customizing Apple’s software, including its lockscreen and homescreen, is all but impossible. However, on Android, the perception is that many of the quirks and customizations you may desire can be managed through the installation of third-party apps, ranging from Android launchers that can change everything about the device (like Facebook’s Home application, ...
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Loop Makes It Easy To Conduct Real-Time Surveys Via iPad
Loop co-founder and CEO Rajit Marwah argued that "surveys and reviews are everywhere" — but they're often ignored or delayed. With his new startup, on the other hand, Marwah said he's giving businesses a way to create and conduct those surveys instantly. When a business downloads the Loop iOS app, they can use one of the app's survey templates (the templates are based on business type, such as restaurant or hotel) or create a survey from scratch, then share the it via email, Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else where you can post a link.
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