CEO Dennis Crowley announced the funding Thursday morning.

“The stuff we’re building takes a lot of work. Look at yesterday’s big update, for example. The most amazing thing about it is that it tells you interesting things around you, anywhere in the world, the second you open the app. That’s not easy. We have to crunch your 3,500,000,000 check-ins, layer your social data over it, semantically analyze our tens of millions of tips, and take a look at real-time activity around you. We do all that in under a second, all to recommend two or three places that are perfect for you,” says Crowley.

“We’ve got a ton left to do. We’re building tools for local businesses to connect with their customers. We’re making search better, every single day. We’re building that location layer for the internet – the platform that all other companies use to power location in their apps. This takes time and a lot of work, and great investors.”

On Wednesday, Foursquare launched version 6.0, a significant update to both their iOS and Android platforms that puts local search and recommendations front and center. This update is more in line with the vision that Crowley has for the service – to move well beyond the check-in.

And along with the stated goals of expanding the service and building better tools, you know that Foursquare has to now focus more on monetization.

According to Bloomberg, Foursquare is planning on a whole new slew of ad partnerships, letting every merchant it works with buy ads. They’ll also be expanding their sales team to around 40 people. Foursquare has had ads for a while in the form of sponsored location posts inside the feed and in search results in the app. But they haven’t really taken off, with reports alleging Foursquare only generated about $2 million in revenue last year.

The majority of this $41 million comes in the form of a multiyear loan from Silver Lake, and everything else is convertible debt which can be exchanged for shares later. Taking on this debt allows Foursquare to buy itself some time to figure out how to monetize.

According to Crowley, 1.3 million businesses and 33 million users have “given a try” to Foursquare.

Qwest Communications is taking this approach as noted over at MediaPost. The @TalktoQwest is monitored by 7 employees (or company reps as the article states which makes one wonder are they real Qwest employees?) 24 / 7and is designed to help aid customers in near real time regarding services like high-speed Internet, billing, pricing, technical support, and more.

The campaign was done by Room 214 out of Boulder, CO. Founder James Clark had this to say about
addressing customer concerns and providing quick feedback is the first step.

The challenge resides with integrating comments into daily processes. “Companies need to find a way to integrate the feedback in product development,” he said. “Those that do that will have extremely loyal customers for life.”

Others who have adopted this forum to aid in customer service and experience are Comcast, JetBlue, Odwalla, Starbucks and the Travel Channel. All are following the lead of Dell and others who were the earliest adopters of the social media tool. Surely more will get involved which will certainly help those who use Twitter.

Twitter themselves must be thrilled because they are now going to likely see numbers of Twitter users go up so they can access the service if they are a customer of that company.

Gregory Galant, CEO at Sawhorse Media, Brooklyn, N.Y., recently published “The Shorty Report” report, which explores how companies use Twitter for business. He talks about the online reputation monitoring aspect of Twitter as well.

Galant said a push for better customer service via Twitter has helped to diffuse sites like ComcastMustDie.com founded by Bob Garfield. In a post on the Web site, Garfield explains plans to put the Comcast site to rest and redirect traffic to CustomerCircus.net, “where other infamously arrogant corporations will be subjected to power of aggregated rage.”

While Twitter apps are all over the place we are now seeing more and more business applications of Twitter like those use to further develop characters for TV shows. As business folks become more and more savvy could there be the possibility of Twitter generating revenue for the right to use the platform for these kinds of activities? I don’t know. I just figure that has to cross someone’s mind at Twitter at some point with all that annoying monetization talk being thrown around all the time.

The personal nature of Twitter is helping some companies get back in touch with customers and allows opportunities for other programs like offering discounts etc. Looks like we are really starting to scratch the surface of how Twitter as a business tool will impact how we all do business in the foreseeable future.

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SES Chicago returns, and WebProNews is on hand to bring you reports and videos from the Windy City. Enjoy our coverage this week.

Investment. It’s the key to taking a small business to a larger scope, or even beyond.

For all of its wealth today, Google required some seed investing to build its scale. The same idea applies to the search marketing world.

Patricia Hall of Hallmark Capital talked about what SEMs need if they want to be the object of desire of possible investors.

The SEM’s clients rate at the top of her five areas for evaluating a company.

Investors also want to know about the nature of the company’s revenues; their technology strategy; scalability; and the leadership abilities of the firm’s management/ownership.

"There is really not a right answer, but it’s important how all 5 areas interact with one another," said Hall.

The SEM business that has sustainable revenue, visionary leadership, and a competitive positioning in the market will be attractive to investors.

Above all, investment-seeking SEMs need to keep their focus on the needs of their clientele. "Make sure to take care of your clients because your future and your future value depends on it," said Hall.

WebProNews Internet reporter/anchor Abby Prince contributed to this report.

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Hercules Technology Growth Capital is learning that lesson the hard way after sending a c&d to The Funded–a site that lets companies anonymously share thoughts about VC firms. VentureBeat has a copy of the letter sent and TechDirt points out why Hercules’ effort will likely backfire.

This seems like a bad idea for a huge number of reasons — all of which Hercules and its lawyers probably should have realized before sending the C&D. First off, as it seems we have to repeat almost weekly around here, section 230 of the Communications Decency Act very, very clearly states that a site is not liable for content its users post, and any law firm should know that. Second, and more importantly…Prior to this, not a whole lot of people would see the review of Hercules. Now, however, many, many, many more entrepreneurs will not only see and remember the negative review, they’ll see how Hercules responded to it, which may be even more damaging to the firm’s reputation.

It’s understandable that Hercules Technology had a knee-jerk reaction–who wants something negative posted about them? But, as they’ll learn, taking such a heavy-handed approach will now leave potential start-ups questioning whether they should take funding from a company that "releases the dogs" first and asks questions later.

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AT&T Dials Up Ingenio Buy

When we reported on Ingenio riding the CPA wave, we didn’t know the wave would drop the company on AT&T’s shore.

The privately held Ingenio, which has Benchmark Capital as its biggest backer, joined up with AT&T. Bringing the pay per call technology Ingenio possesses will give AT&T the ability to promote leads across mobile, Internet, or print media as the advertiser desires.

AT&T already does local search advertising through the Yellowpages.com Network, AT&T Real Yellow Pages and 1-800-Yellow Pages. They cited a growing trend towards performance-based advertising as the motivation for making the Ingenio deal.

“As advertisers add performance-based advertising to their marketing mix, this investment makes sense for our business,” said Ray Wilkins, AT&T group president for Diversified Business. Yellowpages.com will be Ingenio’s destination within AT&T, which expects to keep the existing management in place.

Kevin Harvey, general partner at Benchmark and a member of the Ingenio board, could not comment on specifics of the deal. We asked what made now the right time for this deal, to which he averred the timing must have made sense to AT&T at the time.

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Tumblr has Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures to thank for the money, according to peHUB.  That first firm has previously invested in Veoh, and the second entity has worked with Del.icio.us, FeedBurner, Twitter, and Indeed.  In other words: Tumblr’s in good company.

And never mind corporations and investments; that statement is supported by the number of fans Tumblr has earned.  On the Tumblr Blog, a post involving a simple graphic that states “November 1” and “It’s ready” has received around 65 replies from people who are interested in the impending update.

What, then, is all the hubbub about?  Tumblr compares its blogging service to a scrapbook, as opposed to a traditional journal-style blog.  It’s easier – and quicker – to use, according to the company.

Some of the $750,000 will probably be used to ensure it stays that way even as people climb aboard after November 1.  As for the rest . . . look for cryptic graphics on the Tumblr Blog.

So far, it looks like knowledge workers may not be completely sold out on it just yet and keep commenting on what works really well and what needs some further improvement. One of those really good articles that I have enjoyed thoroughly is the one from Thomas van der Wal titled "Facebook for Business or LinkedIn Gets More Valuable", that he shared a couple of days back, where he concludes:

"Facebook really needs to open up and to get a clue about people and information and the needs people have for information, such as holding on to that information and using it outside the system. Facebook is just fodder for the next social software service that does this right, on top of the 45% of things that Facebook got right and be the next media darling worth billions that never amounted to much"

I strongly suggest you take a look and read through the entire article that Thomas put together, because it surely has got some really good points on what really works from other social networking tools like LinkedIn and Facebook, but it also indicates where the latter is failing to deliver with really insightful gems as this one:

"Facebook developers have a huge amount of learning about information, information flow, and information use in people’s lives. Information is part of social interaction and what makes literate beings stand out is doing something, often using and reusing information."

I must say that I have been using LinkedIn for quite some time now and still use it quite heavily to connect with other business contacts. But all along I have felt that there was something missing in it that I just couldn’t figure out (And it wasn’t the capability of adding your picture that was added recently). And that was till I decided to jump into Facebook.

Yes, I am sure that most of you would remember my initial reservations about making the move to it, but after those initial reservations have been fixed, I must say day in day out I am enjoying quite a bit the Facebook experience. More than anything else because it has allowed me to stay connected with my various social networks and further contacts at the same time that it is helping me fill the void that LinkedIn was leaving all along. And that was the fact that through Facebook I am able to build further up on my social capital skills in such a way that not only do I feel connected with my business contacts, but at the same time I am able to find lots of different social capital details that I wouldn’t be able to in other tools, i.e. LinkedIn. In short, I am able to build up better images of the people I connect with on a regular basis.

I am not really going to deny that Facebook really needs to improve on a wide range of the different capabilities that it has got, like managing the re-use of information, that Thomas mentioned above, or the groupings, for instance, but if you are looking for an application that would allow you to keep in touch with your social networks, not only from a business perspective, but also from a personal perspective, Facebook is probably as good as it gets. At least, for now.

I am not sure what you would think, but, to me, one of the best ways to connect with people is by being able to find common ground, interests, ice-breakers, something in common to both that we can share going further than just the pure business contact, so that we can start slowly building up our trust levels and collaborative working. To me that is the whole key behind social networks, that kind of connection. And Facebook seems to be exceedingly good at it, although I can agree there is still room for improvement, but I am sure that over time it will eventually get there.

That’s why, as you may have noticed from my one of my Internet blogs, I have now removed a good number of the different widgets I had on each side of the blog template and moved most of them to Facebook (Still waiting for MyBlogLog to jump on board), where I have finally decided to invest in building my social capital. At the same time, I am also adding a number of different FB apps. that would allow me to keep building further up on my trust levels with my contacts.

Dennis McDonald asked me some time ago what kind of approach I would be taking with regards to FB apps., whether I would be going minimalist and just add the odd one, or whether I would go full board, meaning adding plenty of them. I must say that at the beginning I thought about going minimalist on the overall approach, but very soon I realised it was not going to work. Main reason being that I am actually making use of a good number of applications that help me get a much better picture from each and everyone of my social networks contacts.

I am not sure whether I have settled in already with the number of FB apps. I will be using, perhaps I will create a blog post at some point putting together my Top 10 favourite ones, but, for the time being, I am still experimenting at the same time that I am watching quite closely how Facebook may be pulling its act together so that in the end it would help me manage and re-use better the information from those connections. Oh, and if in the mean time it doesn’t provide me with a complete picture of it all, what would be the problem? It will not be the first, nor the last social software tool where conversations come and go by and where / when needed they would eventually get back to me. In whatever the shape, in whatever the form. It’s all part of the flow…

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The data comes from SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets, and isn’t expected to make up for Yahoo’s otherwise unimpressive financial period.  Still, “While marketer spend increased quarter over quarter by 1.8% . . . . [s]pending on Yahoo increased by 7.8% from Q2 to Q3 while Google only increased 0.8%, reversing previous trends,” according to the two companies.

Yahoo needs to take victories where it can get them.  What’s more, there are reasons to believe that Yahoo could maintain these gains: Panama appears to be coming into its own, and an algorithm change on Google’s part (that SearchIgnite and RBC say “was intended to increase the price of bidding for first position”) had little effect.

Also, SearchIgnite and RBC believe they’ve taken seasonal oddities into account, so Yahoo’s success isn’t just an anomaly caused by back-to-school fluctuations.

Yet even if these findings don’t affect Yahoo’s earnings call, the discussion that takes place could affect them – if things go badly, search marketers may back away.

About the search engine:

"iheard.com makes it easy for people to find their favorite internet radio stations by providing an easy to use search interface and directory with thousands of stations organized by genre, country and language. We do not host or stream radio stations, we capture and store rich meta data about each station and connect listeners with stations around the world. We work closely with station owners, helping them find new listeners through onsite advertisement, paid placement and promotion. If you are interested in featuring your radio station on iheard.com, you can submit your station or advertise online now."

One can search for radio stations based on language, genre, country or most popular from all over the world. The best part about this services is that radio stations are rated.

• Alternative
• Ambient
• Blues
• Classical
• Christian
• Country
• Eclectic
• Dance/Electronic
• Folk
• HipHop/Rap
• International
• Jazz
• Latin

Try it out, there are some real gems from all over the world.

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Matthew has been tracking VC funding to OSS vendors for quite some time now. Matthew reports that VC funding to OSS vendors in 3Q07 decreased 42% to $78M from $133M in 3Q06. To the end of 3Q, $267M has been invested vs. $339M last year. However, 2006 was a banner year for OSS firms receiving VC funding. As the OSS market matures, we’ll surely see VC funding decline as the VCs find the next new thing. Matthew explains that while the total investments may be declining, Series A investments in OSS are up and mature OSS vendors are getting acquired:

“The level of investment via seed and Series A funding rounds actually increased for the second quarter in succession, while the big money for established vendors went on M&A activity rather than venture funding.”

Few could argue that we seem to be moving into the OSS vendor consolidation stage of the lifecycle (for most oss markets). I wonder how many OSS vendors will remain ‘oss vendors’ by October 2009. At the end of the day, the large OSS vendors that can acquire smaller OSS vendors number in the handful. And, Oracle could buy all the large OSS vendors in an afternoon….sigh.

It’ll be interesting to see how much Citrix or Yahoo! have to write off (a la Skype) in a few years to account for the premiums they paid for XenSource & Zimbra respectively. I’m thinking that Citrix won’t as they’ll be acquired by Microsoft. Yahoo! on the other hand…

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