Sunnyvale, CA-based Juniper Networks announced today the establishment of the Junos Innovation Fund, a new corporate venture capital initiative for the tech giant. The $50 million fund was formed to invest in early stage VC-backed technology companies with a focus on expanding the ecosystem of technologies, software and applications built on Juniper’s cross-network software platform called Junos.
According to the press release, the Junos Innovation Fund will invest in companies over the next two years, and focus on areas such as networking technologies, applications, and services that foster the development and deployment of security infrastructure, mobility and video solutions, virtualization, network automation, optical technology, and green networking.
Google has announced Google Buzz today amongst a lot of fan fare and competitors immediate mixed reviews. Google Buzz is the Silicon Valley’s latest foray into the social media frenzy. Google Buzz is like taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp and other social services and putting them together in one package centered around Gmail. Welcome to Google Buzz. Check out their short video on what the Buzz is all about – sorry couldn’t help myself.
Foursquare announced today a new partnership with Bravo TV which will integrate a number of Bravo TV shows with the site. The partnership is designed to engage viewers after they turn their TV’s off in leveraging Foursquare’s rapidly expanding location-based gaming presence. Foursquare will begin integrating various show personalities and their city tips, as well as a Bravo badges, into the game experience.
This new deal will include the introduction of a number of new Bravo-themed badges to Foursquare will also turn some of Bravo’s top personalities behind its hit reality TV shows like The Millionaire Matchmaker, Top Chef, The Real Housewives, Top Chef Masters and Shear Genius into content creators. These personalities will share their tips and to-do’s with users effectively adding a plethora of new city-specific content to venture.
By using TweetPhoto’s new API, developers using the Foursquare platform can add picture functionality to the site or application. Not only is this a big expansion opportunity for TweetPhoto, but its a pretty significant “proof-point” in Foursquare’s mission to become a platform enabling location-based service company – following their Twitter roots.
As I’m sure everyone has seen, Google has entered the mobile phone business. While the Silicon Valley giant has historically resided in the mobile operating system or applications space, their launch earlier this week of the Google Nexus One moves them into a very real player in the mobile personal devices marketplace.
Many technology pundits have hinted for some time that Google may have Apple envy and the launch of the Google Nexus One seems to prove it.
Will 2010 be the year of acquisitions in the social media world? Only 4 days into the new year and we have our first social media deal, and this one is quite interesting.
Loïc Le Meur, CEO of the social networking application player Seesmic, has announced its acquisition of social status updater Ping.fm. This deal now positions Seesmic as the leader in social status management via their application suite on the web, desktop and mobile platforms.
Ping.fm enables social status updates across 50 social networks and will bring over 500,000 current users to Seesmic. In addition, Ping.fm co-founders Adam Duffy and Sean McCullough will be joining the Seesmic full time and are now shareholders in the combined company.
It seems this time of year every publication, online and offline, rolls out their predictions for the new year. Well, we thought we would jump on that bandwagon and make our 2010 prediction as well. Instead of coming up with some list like top 10 ‘fill in the blank’ of 2010, we chose to be more bold and pick a solo social media star for the new year. And the winner is….Foursquare.
Founded in 2009 by the team that brought us Dodgeball, the mobile social network that was acquire by Google in 2005 and later shut down, the rapidly growing location-based startup has a simple purpose by letting users share their location with a group of friends.
Earlier this week the high-profile stealth LA startup called Gravityannounced their private beta. Initially started earlier this year and named Blue Rover Labs, the startup of former MySpace executives has been much anticipated and attracted venture capital for two top tier firms, Redpoint and August. Gravity is a new way of approaching conversational data on any given topic and is a bit of cross between forums and groups, with a social media angle of course. Gravity lets users create conversations around certain topics.
Location-based game and social networking company Gowalla has announced its push for the holidays with their “10 and a half days of Christmas” game (because the 12 days of Christmas is too predictable). Foursquare competitor Gowalla recently closed a Series B investment round from an all-star Silicon Valley cast earlier this month in an effort to unseat Foursquare in the buzz-worthy location-based game/social network race.
Apple announced today on their official blog that they will enable its 2G and 3G handsets to record video by admitting the new iVideoCamera (iTunes link)app to the iTunes store. This now means that users can now legitimately record, share and save videos without having to hack their handsets via ‘jailbreak‘. The app will be released for 99 cents in the US store and will have similar entry-level pricing in other iTunes stores around the world.
By adding this new application to an iPhone 2G or 3G handset, Apple has made their older users quite happy and has eliminated one of the big incentives to upgrade to the 3GS model. Interesting move by Apple.
nextATOM is a social media and networking blog covering new technologies, innovations and ideas on the social web. We tend to cover new startup companies or products that introduce change through social media services, applications and networks.
Sunnyvale, CA-based Juniper Networks announced today the establishment of the Junos Innovation Fund, a new corporate venture capital initiative for the tech giant. The $50 million fund was formed to invest in early stage VC-backed technology companies with a focus on expanding the ecosystem of technologies, software and applications built on Juniper’s cross-network software platform called Junos
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