Techmeme: The Midas List — 2012's Top Tech Investors (Forbes)

May 3, 2012, 1:40 PM

Top News

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Evernote Raises $70M At A $1B Valuation To Prep For An IPO, And The Next 100 Years — It's official. To transition from a startup into a late-stage company that aims to be around for 100 years, Evernote today confirms it's raised a $70 million Series D round of funding at a $1 billion valuation.

More: VatorNews, VentureBeat, Business Insider, Evernote Blogcast, Pulse2 Technology …, Appolicious Advisor, Mobile Entertainment and PhoneArena

Tweets: @ryanlawler, @om, @alexia and @mathewi

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Phil Libin and the Refusal to Pivot: Evernote Now Valued at $1 Billion — Today 30-million-user strong Evernote announced it had received $70 million in Series D funding from Meritech Capital, CBC Capital, T. Rowe Price Associates, Harbor Pacific Capital, Allen & Company at a valuation of Dr. Evil proportions: One billion dollars.

More: CNET and Market Wire

Tricia Duryee / AllThingsD:

Boku Signs Up Final U.S. Wireless Operator for Carrier Billing — It has taken three-and-a-half years, but Boku has finally signed up all four major U.S. carriers for its mobile payments service. — Today, the San Francisco company says that Sprint is coming on board to join the three …

More: Internet2Go, VentureBeat, TechCrunch, IntoMobile and The Next Web

Forbes:

The Midas List — 2012's Top Tech Investors — 1 Jim Breyer Accel Partners Facebook — 2 Marc Andreessen Andreessen Horowitz Skype — 3 Reid Hoffman Greylock Partners LinkedIn — 4 David Sze Greylock Partners Facebook — 5 Peter Fenton Benchmark Capital Twitter — 6 Josh Kopelman …

More: GeekWire, Pulse2 Technology …, The Next Web, Forbes, Forbes and Social Markets

Tweets: @om, @danprimack, @danprimack, @joshelman, @peterpham, @cdixon, @birsic, @fredwilson, @danprimack, @joelmoxley, @martinvars and @cdixon

Liz Gannes / AllThingsD:

Microsoft Hires 14 Yahoo Researchers to Kick-Start New NYC Research Lab — Over the weekend, I reported that Duncan Watts, the well-known social network researcher, had left Yahoo to join Microsoft. Turns out he's not the only one. — Microsoft snatched up not only Watts …

More: TechFlash, TechNet Blogs, Microsoft Research, CNET, The Verge, Technology Review, Microsoft Corporation, Pulse2 Technology …, Betabeat, GeekWire, Softpedia News, Bits, TechNet Blogs and The Next Web

Mary Jo Foley / ZDNet:

Microsoft schedules Windows Phone developer summit for June — Summary: Microsoft is inviting Windows Phone developers to a developer conference in late June. Could both the Tango and Apollo operating systems be on the agenda? — Microsoft has begun sending “Save the Date” …

More: AllThingsD and Windows Phone Thoughts.com

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Windows Phone web Marketplace launches in 22 new countries

More: The Next Web, Engadget, PhoneArena, Softpedia News, Techie Buzz, Neowin, WMPoweruser and The Windows Blog

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Apple Is Beating Android In The U.S., Despite Reports To The Contrary — Apple appears to have taken control of 50% of the smartphone market in the first quarter of 2012, despite a report to the contrary by NPD this morning. — NPD put out a press release saying Android …

More: GigaOM, parislemon, Macgasm, TechCrunch, SlashGear, I4U News and Daring Fireball

Kunur Patel / AdAge:

Zynga's New Ad Pitch for Draw Something: ‘Draw This Brand’ — NHL Among First to Buy Paid Terms in Hugely Popular Social game — Zynga's latest big-ticket acquisition has already figured out how to draw in users, but now Draw Something has an ad model that brings brands into the picture.

More: TechCrunch, Betabeat, WebProNews, Tecca, Simply Zesty, The Next Web, memeburn, The Verge and VG247. Thanks:@kunur

Tero Kuittinen / Forbes:

Is the OMGPOP Acquisition Haunting Zynga?

More: CNET, Gotta Be Mobile, BGR, The Atlantic Wire, www.pocketgamer.biz, New York Times, Pocket-lint, Know Your Mobile and Betabeat

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

YouTube Commits $200M to Promote Premium “Channels” — Jay-Z Gives Surprise Performance, And, Yes, It's Already on YouTube — There was Jay-Z, Flo Rida and the Neon Trees; Julia Stiles, Jennifer Beals, Virginia Madsen and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

More: VentureBeat, AllThingsD, Business Insider, WebProNews, The Next Web and Adweek

New York Times:

Target, Unhappy With Being an Amazon Showroom, Will Stop Selling Kindles — Target, signaling its growing irritation with its rival Amazon, announced on Wednesday that it would stop selling the online retailer's Kindle e-readers. — Target, with almost 1,800 stores, is one of the bigger carriers …

More: Forbes, Mobile, USA Today, Jacket Copy, Associated Press and The Tech Trade

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

Judge: An IP-Address Doesn't Identify a Person (or BitTorrent Pirate) — Mass-BitTorrent lawsuits have been dragging on for more than two years in the US, involving more than a quarter million alleged downloaders. — The copyright holders who start these cases generally provide nothing more than an IP-address as evidence.

More: Gizmodo, Betabeat, Fight Copyright Trolls, WebProNews and Boing Boing

Philip Elmer-DeWitt / Fortune:

With 8.8% market share, Apple has 73% of cell phone profits — Among the major vendors, Samsung captured 26%, HTC took 1%, and the rest lost money — FORTUNE — Asymco's Horace Dediu on Thursday updated his quarterly review of mobile phone profits, and the news for everyone but Apple (AAPL) and Samsung is not good.

More: MacRumors, asymco, PC Magazine and The Next Web

Joel Schectman / The CIO Report:

Skype Knew of Security Flaw Since November 2010, Researchers say — Skype was told a year and a half ago about a security flaw that allows for the location tracking of customers, but left it unfixed, the security researchers who first discovered the vulnerability told CIO Journal.

More: ZDNet, TechWeekEurope UK, The Verge, Naked Security, Inquirer, eWeek, The CIO Report, Wired and Digits

Ryan Mac / Mobile:

Reid Hoffman And Peter Thiel In Conversation: The Biggest Misses — This is the final post of a five-part series from a conversation between Founders Fund cofounder Peter Thiel and LinkedIn cofounder and Greylock partner Reid Hoffman. One new video has been posted each day leading …

More: SocialTimes and Forbes

Ethan Smith / Wall Street Journal:

AT&T Chief Says Blocked Deal Will Cost Consumers — BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—The government's decision to block AT&T Inc.'s takeover of Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA unit will result in higher prices to consumers, AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson contended during a public interview Wednesday.

More: PhoneArena, SlashGear and IntoMobile

Reuters:

Settlement with HP isn't going to happen: Oracle — (Reuters) - An Oracle Corp attorney ruled out a settlement with Hewlett-Packard Co in a bitter lawsuit over the Itanium microprocessor, a day after the judge refused to resolve the case for either side before trial.

More: eWeek, AllThingsD, The Register and TechEye

Michael Carney / PandoDaily:

LifeStreet Media Closes $66 Million Financing to Reign Supreme Over Facebook and Mobile In-App Advertising — What if there was a company that had paid mobile and social app publishers more than $100 million in ad revenue and driven 200 million app downloads to date but almost no one knew about it?

More: VentureBeat, VatorNews and AllFacebook

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Code Advisors Takes a $25 Million Investment From J.P. Morgan — Code Advisors is getting a $25 million investment from financial services giant JPMorgan Chase for a minority stake in the Silicon Valley-based boutique investment bank and advisory firm. — The influx of cash will allow Code …

More: Om Malik

Stephen Lawson / Computerworld:

Judge again orders Apple, Samsung to streamline claims in iPad patent case — The companies' lawyers have until Monday to simplify the case enough for a scheduled July 30 trial — Apple and Samsung Electronics have until Monday to further boil down the number of claims to be considered …

More: TUAW, Engadget, PC Magazine, AppleInsider, CNET and Phone Scoop

Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:

Wireless Carriers Who Aid Police Are Asked for Data — WASHINGTON — A leading House Democrat is demanding information from the country's biggest cellphone companies about their role in helping local police departments conduct surveillance and tracking of suspects and others in criminal investigations.

More: dailywireless.org and Betabeat

Leena Rao / TechCrunch:

Next-Generation Publishing Platform Hyperink Wants To Transform Blogs Into Books — YC company Hyperink, a next-generation digital book publishing platform, is debuting a new service which helps bloggers create short books from their existing content. — As we've reported in the past …

More: Good E-Reader, Fast Company, The New Persuaders, VatorNews, BetaKit and PandoDaily

Don Jeffrey / Bloomberg:

Google Argues for Dismissal of Authors' Book-Scan Lawsuit — Google Inc. (GOOG) (GOOG) asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by an organization representing authors over the search engine company's project to digitally scan millions of books, saying the group can't represent the copyright holders.

More: Associated Press and Wall Street Journal

Chris Velazco / TechCrunch:

Thorsten Talks: RIM CEO Sounds Off On Licensing, Updating Devices, And The U.S. Market — Just because the first day of BlackBerry World is over doesn't mean we mobile geeks have run out of BlackBerry-related tidbits to pick apart. — Oh, far from it — in fact, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins took the stage …

More: Inquirer, ZDNet, The Verge, PhoneArena and Shiny Objects

Colleen Taylor / TechCrunch:

Clarity Launches Mobile Mentorship Service To Connect Startup Founders With Good Advice — I often hear people say they moved to San Francisco and Silicon Valley to be in the thick of things — to open themselves up to running into a new mentor at the local coffee shop …

More: PandoDaily, GigaOM, BetaKit and Tech Cocktail

Michael Gorman / Engadget:

Google's Language Immersion Chrome extension translates random text to teach foreign lingo — Berlitz may be the best way to learn a foreign language, but most of us have neither the time nor the ability to fully immerse ourselves in the vocabulary of another country.

More: 9to5Google, The Verge, Google+ and WebProNews

Sponsor Posts

Channel 9:

Announcing TypeScript 0.9: Generics and More — Anders Hejlsberg, Steve Lucco, and Luke Hoban join us for a conversation about TypeScript 0.9. TypeScript now has generics! (and more)

Cloud Foundry:

Static.com Adds Hadoop Support for Cloud Foundry — In this guest post, Jake Farrell, CTO for Static.com, explains how the major shift in the hosting industry towards platforms for high developer productivity …

Rackspace Blog:

99.999 Is Not Enough: An OpenCloud Approach to Delivering Application Uptime and Performance — Executive Summary — The pressure to keep vital applications online and performing well is extreme.

Hortonworks » Blog:

University makes major investment in big data development — As news of the benefits provided by big data platforms such as Apache Hadoop spreads, more organizations are investing in the burgeoning technology.

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Who's Hiring In Tech?

Google: Do cool things that matter.

Automattic: 18% down, 82% to go. WordPress.

CBSi: Have your people call our people.

@WalmartLabs: A thin line between work and play.

Disqus: Build something worth talking about.

FancyCorp: We are real fancy.

imo: Awesome People. Awesome Products.

Zoosk: Fall in love. With your job.

Facebook: Best place to build & make an impact.

Amazon: Work hard. Have fun. Make history.

Square: Come simplify the complex.

Twitter: Less characters; more fulfilling.

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