Techmeme: Plain Vanilla Games, Maker Of Ultra-Hot Trivia App QuizUp, Raises Another $22 Million From Sequoia (Ryan Lawler/TechCrunch)

Open Links In New Tab

Mobile Archives Advertise Site News Contact Editors

December 26, 2013, 5:35 PM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Christmas delayed: Amazon offers $20 gift cards, refunds shipping charges after UPS and FedEx problems — Didn't get what you expected under the tree? It's probably marooned in a package delivery center. — Following widespread complaints about absent packages, Amazon …

More: internetretailer.com, BGR, Gizmodo, Business Insider, VentureBeat, AllThingsD, The Next Web, NBCNews, VatorNews, Gotta Be Mobile and IntoMobile

Shelly Banjo / Wall Street Journal:

Surge of online orders causes fulfillment, delivery delays, frustrates customers on Christmas — Shipping Delays Left Many People With Little to Put Under Tree … Many shoppers are blaming online retailers for stealing Christmas. — Companies from Amazon.com Inc. to Kohl's Corp …

More: UPS, BetaNews, BestTechie, Business Insider, The Verge, Corporate Intelligence, TechnoBuffalo, louisgray.com and InvestorPlace

Tweets: @levie and @eholmeswsj

John Herrman / BuzzFeed:

Dogewallet announces Dogecoin theft, a dubious milestone for the new cryptocurrency that started as a joke — Millions Of Dogecoins Stolen In Apparent Heist — Much robbery, so anger, etc. Users of the functional joke currency are reporting emptied wallets.

More: doges.org, The Verge, The Register, SiliconANGLE, TechCrunch, Forbes, Business Insider, VentureBeat, Mashable, Mediaite, Tech in Asia, ReadWrite, Gizmodo, The Next Web, Vacuum and Electronista

Tweets: @daweiner, @cshirky, @samir, @tmfbiggles, @fmanjoo, @dcbigjohn and @russellbrandom

Jay Yarow / Business Insider:

Christmas shoppers on iOS outspent Android users by more than 5 to 1, according to IBM — Apple's iOS Completely Blew Away Google's Android For Shopping On Christmas — Apple's mobile operating system, iOS, continues to blow away Google's Android in mobile commerce, according to IBM analytics.

More: iMore, IBM, MacRumors and AppleInsider

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:

Amazon's “best ever” season saw 1M new Prime members in one week, 426 items sold per second — Amazon Prime tops 20 million members as company touts its best holiday season ever — Amazon is exiting the 2013 holiday season with “tens of millions” of Amazon Prime members …

More: Businessweek, NYT Bits, AllThingsD, Quartz, CNET, Gigaom, Businessweek, The Verge, Marketing Pilgrim, Benzinga, VatorNews, Gigaom and The Next Web

Tweets: @zseward and @zseward

Thanks:@belril. See also Mediagazer

Farhad Manjoo / Wall Street Journal:

Snapchat's popularity shows we all may want a more erasable Internet — The Internet doesn't necessarily have to keep our digital effluvia around forever. Do we want it to be erasable? — The Internet doesn't necessarily have to keep our digital effluvia around forever, and Snapchat has proved it.

More: BGR and MacDailyNews. Tweets: @fmanjoo, @stevesi and @hunterwalk

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Plain Vanilla Games, Maker Of Ultra-Hot Trivia App QuizUp, Raises Another $22 Million From Sequoia — Plain Vanilla Games, the company behind ultra-hot trivia app QuizUp, has raised a $22 million Series B Round of financing. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital, with participation …

More: Betabeat, VentureBeat, The Verge, The Next Web and AllThingsD

Tweets: @semil and @caseynewton

Thanks:@chrisvelazco

Hannah Karp / Wall Street Journal:

Scores of Music Services Stream Into Crowded Field — Many of the New Models Will Focus on Genre — The number of music-streaming services is set to explode next year, as record labels have warmed up to the idea of renting consumers access to a vast collection of tunes, rather than selling them individual albums or songs.

Tweets: @zseward

Steve Dent / Engadget:

LG mum on smartwatch rumors, but confirms that a wearable device is coming — Amidst rumors of 2K displays and octa-core CPUs for the LG G3, the Korea Herald has just added another: The upcoming smartphone will come with a G-Arch smartwatch and G-Health fitness band.

More: The Korea Heald, VentureBeat, WebProNews, MobileSyrup.com, TechnoBuffalo, TechnoBuffalo, Yahoo! News and Droid Life. Tweets: @liliputingnews

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Google punishes Rap Genius in search ranking for SEO practices, founders seek resolution — Google Destroys Rap Genius' Search Rankings As Punishment For SEO Spam, But Resolution In Progress — Google hit back hard today after it learned lyrics site Rap Genius had been using dubious SEO tricks to attain top spots in search results.

Shelly Banjo / Wall Street Journal:

Online retailers mine transaction data to discourage returns, a growing problem — Rampant Returns Plague E-Retailers — Sellers Suggest Sizes and Redirect Discounts to Break Bad Habits — Free shipping and lenient return policies have given online retailing a huge boost.

More: Intuitive Systems, SlashGear and Marketing Pilgrim. Tweets: @notaxation

Sarah Frier / Bloomberg:

KakaoTalk is used by 93% of South Korean smartphone owners, expects $200M revenue in 2013 — With $200 Million in Revenue, South Korea's Top Messaging App Is All Smiley Faces — In South Korea, there's no escaping KakaoTalk. The country has a smartphone penetration rate of 73 percent …

Tweets: @papadimitriou. Thanks:@electricwaffles

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:

Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.

Zoho:

What's new in Zoho Tables with Apple's latest OS updates — Your work shouldn't slow you down when you're on the move.With our latest updates for iOS 27, we're bringing more of Apple Intelligence …

IDrive:

Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Soxton:

Fast, affordable law for startups — Soxton automates startup legal so founders can move faster and sleep better. We handle incorporation, advisor, employment and commercial contracts. Join the waitlist for early access!

Sponsor Techmeme

Featured Podcasts

Sources:

OpenAI's Dots lead on the future of ChatGPT

Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.

Subscribe to Sources.

Great Chat:

What does the tech industry owe San Francisco?

A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.

Subscribe to Great Chat.

Uncapped with Jack Altman:

David George from a16z

Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.

Subscribe to Uncapped with Jack Altman.

Big Technology Podcast:

SAP CEO: AI Won't Kill Software, But It Will Change Your Job — With Christian Klein

The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.

Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.

Channels with Peter Kafka:

David Ellison's Paramount-Warner Empire & The Fight That Comes Next

Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.

Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.

Invest Like the Best:

Noah Shinn - Building Instinct: The Personal Agent

The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.

Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.

Add your podcast here

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:35 PM ET, December 26, 2013.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.