Branch Sells to Facebook for “Around” $15 Million

Want to know how quiet your critics?

Well, you buy them up of course!

This morning The Verge broke the story that Facebook is acquiring New York-based startup Branch for $15 million. While early reports indicated that the Branch team expected to be building out their product at Facebook, a Techcrunch update clarified that a Facebook rep says the acquisition is for talent only.

Branch is (was?) a link-sharing service that allowed you to have conversations about anything on the Internet, then publish those conversations on a blog or website. Most recently it launched Potluck, an iPhone app that allowed you to discover news bites and talk about them with friends in-app.

Last year, Branch CEO Josh Miller wrote a popular post on Medium calling Facebook an “irreversibly bad brand.” He pointed to the fact that his teenage sister makes a point to visit the social network as little as possible. Our CEO Nick Tippmann had a similar experience with younger siblings, where he was informed that “Facebook is for old people.”

A few weeks ago, however, Miller wrote that he was “bullish on Facebook.” Still, bullish or not, the post offered some–ahem–healthy criticisms of his future employer on things they could do to improve the News Feed. There’s little doubt, given the length of time it takes to make an acquisition, that Miller wrote the more recent post while in talks with the social network.

Fair enough. Even after a $2 million raise, Miller and his cofounders are most likely experiencing their first day as millionaires today, and they have nice jobs at Facebook to add to the deal.

Branch isn’t the only startup trying to disrupt the way we consume news. Quibb is another popular (if exclusive) service that allows industry professionals to share links and discuss them. And then, of course, there’s always Twitter, which seems to work well for everyone. Branch is hoping to bring Facebook back to the news game.

Perhaps we’ll be seeing fewer cat memes in 2014?

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ReplyAll Debuts The World’s First “Blogcasting” Service

ReplyAll is a content creation/distribution startup based out of New York City. Founded by former college classmates Zach Abramowitz (CEO) and Ari Gold (CPO) {now joined by Emanuel Ilyayev as CTO}, ReplyAll came into being as the result of ongoing, daily conversations among a group of friends. The founders were regularly engaging in daily messaging sessions on topics like sports, pop-culture, and current events. These intriguing and often humorous conversations among friends begged an audience. It was this realization and search for a distribution platform that led to the creation of ReplyAll.

Ari tried his hand at podcasting. Zach sought an audience as a stand-up comic. They examined the possibility of blogging. Between the solitude of blogging, the scheduling conflicts of podcasting, and the uncertainty of the comedy circuit, it was obvious to the two that none of these platforms was the solution they sought. Enter ReplyAll.

ReplyAll offers a platform for invited participants to engage in an ongoing online conversation. Unlike comment platforms, ReplyAll participants are community members that are invited to contribute to conversations via an email.

No need to worry about drive-by comments littering a feed or derailing a topic. No need to worry about trolls and spammers. ReplyAll allows an ongoing conversation to take place between interested participants, and that conversation can happen in real time. Invited participants are able to add their contribution to the discussion when their schedule allows.

No need for a pre-scheduled meetup time. No need for all participants to be in the same time zone or location. The conversation can happen naturally and proceed according to the will of the invited participants. Community members and onlookers are able to offer their contributions too, but those contributions are only added at the will of the existing, invited conversation participants. If your contribution doesn’t add to or further the conversation, chances are it won’t be included.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “Whoopee a closed conversation for invited-only participants…Big deal, what’s in it for me?”

ReplyAll is launching an embeddable widget that allows these ongoing conversations to be embedded on any website or blog. SEO friendly, these conversations can be indexed by search engines and offer a way for online content creators to add fresh content to their site on an ongoing basis without having to be the sole creator of that content.

Think group blogging meets podcasting.

As the conversations evolve over time, no single party has to be solely responsible for the creation of the content. Want a way to boost your site’s presence on the web and grow your community at the same time? Host and embed a community discussion on a topic near and dear to the hearts of your community. From investment chat on a startup blog to trade talk on a baseball blog, the options are only limited by your imagination.

See a conversation happening on Twitter amongst your peers relevant to your website? Why not invite specific participants to expand on that conversation via a ReplyAll discussion? No need for 140-character contributions; the conversation can grow and expand inside a ReplyAll discussion. Unlike question and answer sites or comment platforms, ReplyAll captures the camaraderie of a conversation. A group blogging platform where the conversations are the content; winning concept, right?

Their business model is pretty straight forward: premium accounts to be offered, native advertising, and white label offerings.

Think ReplyAll’s content creation/distribution platform might make a profitable addition to your portfolio? Connect with the team on AngelList.

Eleanor Wall (aka Tech Tidbits) is a freelance tech blogger and startup cheerleader. When she’s not busy unearthing intriguing startups, Eleanor ghost writes brand marketing content for corporate clients.

Fred Wilson, PrivCo’s Report On Tumblr Deal Is Total Garbage

Fred Wilson, who some consider the godfather of New York venture capital, made some money in the Tumblr deal. However he is quick to point out that a PrivCo report that suggested his firm, Union Square Ventures, netted a 5,000% return is “total garbage” Business Insider reported late Tuesday.

PrivCo is a private firm that reports on startups and they claim that they had access to details of exactly how much everyone made in the landmark $1.1 billion dollar deal between Yahoo and Tumblr.

Wilson took to Hacker News where he said “Total garbage. There is not one fact in this privco thing that is close to right. The numbers are good but nowhere close to that good. This is the same firm that predicted Foursquare would be out of business this year which will also prove to be nonsense.”

Time Magazine is reporting the Privco data, that Tumblr founder David Karp is taking home $253 million dollars in the deal. They’re also reporting that on a combined investment of $5.25 million dollars over 2007 and 2008, and in conjunction with Boston based Spark Capital Union Square Ventures saw a return of 50x which was worth $253 million to USV and $231 million to Spark.

Privco also suggests that Sequoia yielded $176 million and a combined, Greylock Partners, Insight Venture Partners, CrunchFund and Draper Fisher Jurveston made $88 million.

Wilson has not revealed what the actual numbers are, and probably won’t which could make this information just a shot in the dark.

Another early Tumblr backer, Bijan Sabet said on Twitter that the PrivCo report was “complete garbage and incorrect”.

Now check out Fred Wilson’s Venture Capital Do’s & Dont’s

Arrington’s Favorite Game, NY Incubator Betaworks’ Dots, Hits 25M Played In A Week

Last week at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2013, Mike Arrington had a sit down with Betaworks’ John Borthwick. After that, the founder of TechCrunch and the Managing Partner at CrunchFund was able to get Borthwick to give him an early release of a game that just hours later would turn into a megahit in the iOS app store. That game was Dots.

Through a series of tweets, Arrington has kept us up to date with his progress, showing off a score of 290 on May 3rd

Only to top that score and reach 442 later that afternoon.

It’s probably safe to assume with big things happening at CrunchFund, like MG Siegler leaving for Google Ventures, Mike’s been a little busy lately and hasn’t had time to brush up on his Dots.

In the meantime though, since it’s release last week Dots has already seen 25 million games played. It’s an addictive little bugger. It’s like that game of dots you would play in grade school on a piece of graph paper, except as an app and with a spin. You can get points every time you connect two or more of the same colored dots.

I’ve been playing the game since day one as well but can’t get past a score of 357. Several of Mike’s followers on Twitter thought he was cheating, but he’s just figured out the strategy. Mike explains to Trustev CEO Pat Phelan:

Since it’s release Dots has reached #2 on the free iOS apps chart. They also predict they will have one million players by the end of the day.

You can download dots for your iPhone here.

We’ve got over 30 startup stories from TechCrunch Disrupt here.

A Tribute To My Personal Favorite New York CEO, Dan Porter, Wire Style

Dan Porter, the CEO of OMGPOP became Zynga’s New York chief when the popular social games company acquired the New York based company that created “Draw Something”.

Sure one of the main reasons I like Dan Porter so much is that he named every conference and meeting space in OMGPOP’s headquarters after characters from the hit HBO drama “The Wire”. Being from South Baltimore and having extrad a few times during the run of “The Wire” I naturally loved the idea of meeting rooms named after such influential characters as Avon Barksdale, Marlo Stansfield and Proposition Joe.

What came apparent though, as Zynga set sail with OMGPOP on board was that Porter was like the Stansfield character. Porter told it like it was, probably causing a major level of discomfort for Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.

Porter drew fire when Quartz, a business news website quoted him as saying that Zynga copies other publishers games.

Porter is leaving his post as vice president and general manager of Zynga’s New York operations. It’s unclear whether or not he is staying with the company. He is leaving his post as Draw Something 2 is preparing for release.

The original Draw Something caught on like wild fire. The game, which allows two players to play in a head to head win lose or draw style competition, was the game of the month right up until the sale to Zynga. It’s popularity faded as hits like SongPop started picking up steam.

The exact amount that Zynga paid for OMGPOP was never reported. What was reported, was the fact that Zynga had to write down $95 million dollars on the OMGPOP deal.

Even with all that in mind, Porter is credited with helping to move Zynga from the Facebook dependent social gaming space to the mobile screen. Reports surfaced on Monday morning that Zynga was about to unveil online gambling games in the UK as well.

While Zynga’s focus isn’t clear to anyone at the moment, we are confident that Porter’s is. So Dan closes your eyes, and breathe easy, your next big thing is right around the corner.

See why Dan Porter earned that bump like a mother fucker, here.

Ready For Weed Startups? Conference Coming To New York

With two states adopting laws around the recreational use of marijuana and more states adopting laws for medical marijuana it’s just a matter of time before weed startups start cropping up (no pun intended). Cannabis industry trade publication has announced a business seminar for investors and entrepreneurs eager to learn about the business of marijuana.

The event will be held on March 14th at The Lofts At Prince (177 Prince Street Penthouse in New York City). The seminar runs from 6:00pm until 10:15pm and features a panel of industry experts and time for networking.

Chris Walsh, Editor of MJJ Business Daily; Tripp Keber, Medical Marijuana Inc; Jessica Billingsley co-founder, MJ Freeway Software Solutions; and Eric Williams, President, CT Medical Cannabis Alliance, will all speak on the latest trends and industry data.

There will also be four sessions:

Session #1. New Financial & Business Benchmark Data for the Cannabis Industry

Session #2. Investing Advisory on the Cannabis Industry

Session #3. Typical Cannabis Business Mistakes & How to Avoid Them

Session #4. Tri-State Area Cannabis Business Opportunities & Regulatory Outlook

MJJ Business Daily was launched in 2011 with offices in Denver Colorado and Providence Rhode Island.

Tickets for the event are $149 in advance and $199 at the door. MJJ Business Daily warns that the event is for serious investors and entrepreneurs and not for patients or consumers.

For more information or tickets visit this site.

New Incubator: IncubateNYC Comes To Harlem

We all know that New York City is for the most part, Silicon Valley of the east. Some of the top Startups and technology innovators are being born in the city that never sleeps. We’ve covered a slew of great New York Startups like Sonar, Edaman,FourSquare and plenty more.

We learned t TechCrunch Disrupt NYC that unlike the Valley which encompasses several areas in the region like San Francisco, Menlo Park, Sunnyvale, Mountain View and countless others, the New York tech scene is united on one front a segregated on the other. Each area within New York, like Manhattan, Brooklyn and now even Harlem has their own thriving tech hubs.

Marcus Mayo and Brian Shields are two Harlem based entrepreneurs who are trying to unite the Harlem startup scene and invigorate its infrastructure by launching a new startup incubator called IncubateNYC.

According to this story from cnbc.com, New York may have a thriving startup scene, but Shields and Mayo are willing to bet that most of the 486 Startups that have received funding are confined to 9 zip codes.

Mayo and Shields officially launched IncubateNYC in December after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg put out a call for proposals for a Harlem based small business incubator. Shields and Mayo couldn’t wait for Bloomberg to select a winner, they immediately went to work in borrowed office space.

IncubateNYC helped the two founders connect with a technical co-founder to help with their own startup focusing on digital payment processing for retail stores. They also immediately started helping other Startups. To date they’ve helped 10 other Startups with resourcing, networking, mentoring and other things that area Startups need. They’ve also partnered with Columbia University and Google to bring resources to startups.

“What we’re providing is an environment for entrepreneurs to collaborate, share ideas and work together to take those ideas to the next level,” Mayo told cnbc.com

Linkage:

Find out more about IncubateNYC at incubatenyc.org

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Follow Up: Twitter’s Fame Game Shut Down Already

Just a few weeks ago we brought you the story of the Fame Game. Fame was a side project for Adam Ludwin a principal at RRE Ventures in New York. The premise was simple, a raffle website “game” where the winner of the daily raffle got everyone who entered that days contest to follow them in one fell swoop. It was up to the winner to engage all the new followers into sticking around.

Well according to Betabeat, the Fame game is now over. The company sent out a Tweet on Thursday saying they planned to shut down the service because it violated Twitter’s terms of service. When it first launched Twitter didn’t seem to mind at all and in fact the team behind the Fame game thought they were clear because of a loop hole in the Twitter api.

“It was always a question mark about what Twitter would do,” RRE Ventures principal and Fame cofounder Adam Ludwin told Betabeat via phone. ”I have a lot of respect for the guys at Twitter and they gave us an extension, they gave us ideas about ways to change the app to conform more with what they viewed as in line with the spirit of their terms.”

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NY Startup Birch Box Teams Up With Gossip Girl XO XO

Birchbox is a women owned startup in New York that’s received a lot of traction. They are a monthly subscription club where their club members receive a box every month filled with the latest and greatest in cosmetics and pampering gear.

Subscription based clubs have been great for people with a hustle and bustle lifestyle. Nowadays you can find a subscription club for everything from shoes, to fashion, to cosmetics. We even profiled Chicago based KlutchClub earlier this year, they offer health and wellness products monthly.

Birchbox had two major pieces of news this week. First off they’ve introduced the Birch Box for men which comes complete with colognes, after shaves, and other pampering products that men love (but sometimes don’t like to shop for).

Their other announcement is that they’ve teamed up with the CW hit show “Gossip Girl” for their season finale.

The May Birchbox theme is “Gossip Girl” Birchbox founders Katia Beauchamp and Hayley Barna have teamed up with Amy Tagliamotti the shows department head for makeup and Jennifer Johnson the shows department head for hair. Tagliamotti and Johnson helped inspire the treats that will be in this months Birchbox.

“We’re all really big fans of Gossip Girl,” Beauchamp told Betabeat.com “The idea was to help the audience basically engage deeper with the show by getting a look into some of the looks from the show.”

Gossip Girl chronicles the lives of the upper east sides debutantes and their soap opera centric lives. “Gossip Girl” is a secretive blogger who posts the gossip that’s happening around the shows main characters. It airs on the CW network and is about to go on their season break.

source: Betabeat

New York Start Up: Stamped Let’s You Put Your Stamp Of Approval On Things

Review sites like Yelp are great. The problem is when you’re looking for something in a hurry the last thing you want to do is read a 2500 word review on something. You want the meat and potatoes now and that’s what Stamped specializes in.

Stamped launched in November and was born in New York. Founders Robby Stein and Bart Stein previously worked for Google. The third co-founder, Kevin Palms worked with risk analytics at a New York hedge fund. They’ve already secured $1.5 million in seed funding from Bain Capital Ventures and Google Ventures.

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NY Sex Offenders Banned From Online Gaming With “Operation Game Over”

In a move that’s being praised by parents and child advocacy groups, and criticized by some others, New York Attorney General, Eric T. Schneiderman, with the help of some of the biggest online gaming publishers in the world, banned 3,500 accounts belonging to NY registered sex offenders from their online games.

New York has one of the strictest watches over registered sex offenders and their online habits. A registered sex offender in New York must register all their email addresses and online accounts in order to be in compliance with their registration laws. Those who don’t do that sometimes find them the subject of a parole or probation violation.

In a press release today Schneiderman said:

“I applaud all the companies participating in this first-of-its-kind initiative for taking online safety seriously and purging their networks of sex offenders. Together we are making the online community safer for our children, not allowing it to become a 21st century crime scene.”

Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Blizzard Entertainment, Electronic Arts, Warner Brothers and Disney Interactive all cooperated with the Attorney General in New York to remove these sex offenders from their online games.

The fear is that some of these sex offenders will use text chat and voice chat in games to cultivate relationships with underage game players.

Website Tech.li reports:

The initiative aims to eliminate situations where sexual predators have worked to befriend and lure underage gamers via popular gaming networks.

Some, including Tech.Li’s Corey Cummings, feel that a move to ban 3,500 accounts in one fell swoop from online gaming entirely may be a bit overboard. There may have been the option for something less drastic like banning them from chat and video chat.

Schneierman is hoping that other states will follow New York’s “operation game over”

source: Tech.li

NY: This Worldly Entrepreneur Puts Social Into Finding A Hostel Online With Inbed.me

Inbed.me is a new website that connects young travelers who stay in hostels together socially. It’s the brain child of Diego Saez-Gil who spent a good portion of his life backpacking across the world and staying in hostels along the way. His backpacking experience brought about his first business, the backpacking community, Off Track Planet, the ultimate backpacker’s online guide to travel. He quickly grew that site to 120,000 users from around the world.

Inbed.me is the first socially injected website for booking hostels, beds and couches and is targeted at the student traveler market. The company is headquartered in New York, and Bogota, Colombia. They currently have 1200 hostels on inbed.me however TechCrunch reports that they are about to start a partnership with Hostelworld, which is the market leader for booking hostels online. Hostelworld books beds in over 25,000 hostels worldwide. According to the site that’s only half of the hostels available.

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Huffington Post Co-Founder Has His Sights On CNN With New Startup

Ken Lerer, one of the co-founders of the Huffington Post has embarked on a new video startup. He is going to deliver the news via the web and has his eyes set on traditional tv cable news outlets like CNN and Fox News. According to AllthingsD’s Peter Kafka Lerer is looking to provide a news outlet for those who watch Jon Stewart, and a generation that consumes most of their media from the internet.

It’s obvious that people are moving to the web for news, and real time events especially when there are live events and breaking stories. That’s evidenced in a 20% upswing in NCAA tournament viewing online.

Lerer who, with co-founder Ariana Huffington, sold the news giant Huffington Post last year to AOL for over one million dollars. Of course the Huffington Post is a more traditional new media outlet.

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Ed Tech Start Ups Heating Up In New York

New York is a great city for start ups. There are a lot of hot marketing, web based and of course social discovery start ups out there. There are also a lot of culture start ups flourishing among the skyscraper of the concrete jungle where dreams are made of. Another important start up category is heating up in New York now as well. That category is Ed Tech, or Education Tech.

Douglas Crets, who works for Microsoft as the Developer Evangelist for the Bizspark program, founded the program, and then teamed up with Saad Alam CEO of citlighter, an online academic research tool, and came up with a new strategy to launch similar Ed Tech programs in Silicon Valley, L.A., Nairobi, Kenya and other countries.

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