Co-founder and general partner Ben Horowitz explains, “Fund III is all about extending our capabilities to more disruptors and pioneers. We’re remaking the modern venture capital firm, and entrepreneurs are responding to our unique approach.”

The firm has raised $2.7 billion since its founding in June 2009. Its portfolio consists of 90 tech companies. These include Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Groupon, Digg, Instagram, Skype, Zynga, Pinterest, and Airbnb, to name a few.

The new funding should help aid some more future household names.

“Software is the catalyst that will remake entire industries during the next decade,” says co-founder and general partner Marc Andreessen. “We are single-mindedly focused on partnering with the best innovators pursuing the biggest markets.”

Horowitz wrote a lengthy blog post about not only the funding, but really history of the firm and an essay about its philosophies. For example, he writes:

Marc and I share a simple belief that became the basis for our new venture capital firm: in general, founding CEOs perform better than professional CEOs over the long term, and a venture capital firm that enables founding CEOs to succeed would help build the best companies and yield superior investment returns.

The firm says Fund III is available to be deployed immediately.

“Gidsy is exploring, booking and offering unique things to do,” CEO Edial Dekker tells WebProNews. “We launched in Amsterdam, NYC and Berlin eight weeks ago and are aimed to replace the Lonely Planet by answering the question ‘what to do’.”

Gidsy describes itself as “a marketplace for authentic experiences.” It lets users book and offer various kinds of activities. Here’s a bit more of the site’s description:

Think unique walking tours guided by locals, nature hikes with wild cavemen and exclusive pop-up restaurants hosted by top chefs.

Gidsy does not function as an agent or ensurer, but only enables a contract between someone booking an activity and someone hosting an activity.

“The investors are joining Alex Ljung from Soundcloud and Matt Stinchcomb from Etsy, who helped finance the company through the first phase,” Dekker notes, adding that they’re planning to launch in LA soon.

“This year will be big for us,” Dekker says. “We’re focused on expanding, growing the community and we have a lot of exciting features in the pipeline.”

WebProNews interviewed CEO Alex Iskold about the funding and the growth of GetGlue (it has surpassed 2 million users):

GetGlue created the following infographic to recap its year that has led up to the announcement:

GetGlue also released a new update for its iPhone app and GetGlue.com, which includes a visual stream of check-ins, the ability to participate in multiple conversations, and a personalized recommendation feature called Guides.

Still, Unruly announced today that it is has just raised $25 million in funding in a Series A investment from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmers and The British Growth Fund.

Unruly says it’s the largest ever for a private company in the social video sector.

The company was founded in 2006. It has offices in San Francisco, London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Sydney. It claims to have delivered, tracked and audited 1.34 billion user-intended video views and executed 1,400+ successful social video campaigns for brands like Evian (Roller Babies), T-Mobile (Life’s for sharing) and Old Spice (Man Your Man Could Smell Like).

They’ve also done campaigns for EA, Adidas, Unilever, and of course Google.

“Today represents an important milestone for the company and social video as a whole,” said Unruly founder and CEO Scott Button. “Five years ago, we set out to help brands capture the massive opportunity in social video and we’re delighted that such a distinguished group of investors share our conviction.”

Button’s response to the whole Google ordeal, was (via Peter Kafka):

…we don’t ask bloggers to link to the advertiser’s site. It’s just not part of our business model. We help advertisers distribute video content and that’s what we get paid for. All links from the video player itself are wrapped in Javascript, so although Google can follow them, they don’t influence search engine rankings. Even though we don’t ask bloggers to link, we do advise them to use nofollow if they do link to the advertiser’s site. This is really important and they should do it to protect themselves as much as the advertiser.

It’s also a key part of how we operate that we don’t tell bloggers what or how to write. It’s really important that opinions expressed and the tone of voice belong to the author not the advertiser. Occasionally that leads to human error, as here, so we’re always really happy to have these kinds of example flagged and will sort them out as quickly as we possibly can.

Shortly thereafter, several Google employees started discussing the whole thing. Jason Morrison, for example, responded to a post from Google’s Matt Cutts about the situation, by saying:

This is embarrassing, but a good illustration of two things:

2. Why you should pay attention to what any marketing, advertising, or SEO companies might be doing on your behalf.

Either way, I’m sure some of Unruly’s campaigns, such as Old Spice and Evian will be remembered long after the Google ordeal is forgotten.

“Unruly’s proprietary technology platform and aggressive global growth strategy in a fast-growing market is really impressive,” said Richard Anton, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners. “We are delighted to be supporting the company build on its success, bringing our experience of building a number of international marketing and advertising technology companies, including Celltick, ComQi and EPiServer.”

“With global online ad spend set to reach $110 billion by 2014 and online video ad spend predicted to be the fastest growing category, we believe Unruly is strongly positioned to be the winner in the global social video market,” said Martijn Hamann, Partner of Van den Ende & Deitmers.

“In a short space of time, Unruly has played a major role in the explosive growth of social video and this investment gives it additional firepower,” said Marion Bernard, Regional Director of BGF. “We look forward to working with the company and our co-investors to take advantage of the very significant global expansion opportunities. BGF is working in partnership with other investors to expand the pool of investment capital to growing and ambitious UK companies as a key part of developing the entrepreneurial economy”

Torch Partners and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP advised on the funding.

In a Union Square Ventures blog post, Brad Burnham writes:

When I first got into the venture capital business in the early 90s, it seemed to me that half of the deals I brought to the partnership were dismissed with the line “sure it’s cool but what the heck do they do if Microsoft decides to enter this business.” Today the role of the dominant player is played by Google (and increasingly Facebook). So as an investor, one has to consider how a potential portfolio company can thrive in the shadow of Google. No where is this more true than in Search.

So, as you can imagine, we had a lot of interesting conversations in the process of evaluating our latest investment in Gabriel Weinberg’s alternative search engine,DuckDuckGo. Our confidence in Gabriel and DuckDuckGo is informed by having watched the decline of Microsoft’s hegemony in the 90′s. Two things happened that fundamentally changed the game: a shift in venue and a shift in business model. The venue moved from the desktop to the web and the business model shifted from packaged software to open source. It turned out that the way to compete with Microsoft was to not to compete, at least not directly. The way to compete with Microsoft was to change the basis of competition. We invested in DuckDuckGo because we became convinced that it was not only possible to change the basis of competition in search, it was time to do it.

It seems as though Union Square sees something in DuckDuckGo that reminds them of when Google entered the scene. “The company is young and under staffed so there are definitely holes Gabriel hopes to fill, but his observation that “traditional algorithmic signals are not the only authority on the web,” and his clever use of real authorities to curate search results makes Duck Duck Go an interesting alternative to your everyday brand,” Burnham says.

Here’s an interview we did with Weinberg earlier this year, where he makes the case for DuckDuckGo (vs. Google):

In a post on his own blog, Weinberg says:

So why now? At the end of last year I noticed that the search engine started to really click with a greater percentage of people in a way that it hadn’t before. Don’t get me wrong — we still have a long way to go to reachour vision — but it was obvious that some things were really starting to become compelling, e.g. our Zero-click Info, privacy policy and goodies. 

We’ve been trying to address this issue from a number of angles. We leverage external APIs as heavily as possible. We’ve been slowly open sourcing things and recruiting developers to help us integrate data and goodies. (If this piques your interest, start here!) 

He notes that the company has already begun building its team, and expects to be able to build on that significantly with the new funding.

The amount of the funding is unclear.

Unfortunately, this is exactly the scenario that our friend Rand Fishkin, the CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz, found himself in not long ago. In 2007, the company received venture capital funding from investment firm Ignition, and earlier this year, was approached by a number of firms interested in investing further.

Fishkin told us that the company had not planned on raising funding but that it began to get excited about the potential opportunity. During the bidding process, there was clearly one firm that stood out. Fishkin said it made them a good offer and the companies signed a term sheet.

As he explained, this is “usually a done deal unless the investment firm finds fraud of some kind.” However, three weeks after the signing, the investment firm pulled out. Aside from the fact that SEOmoz did not receive the funding, he said it was also hard to understand why it happened since the firm did not give a clear reason for its action.

“That experience was new for us,” said Fishkin. “I think folks tend not to write about the fact that even after a term sheet is signed, the investor can still pull out.”

Because he has always been very open about all things SEOmoz, Fishkin wrote a very detailed post, within legal bounds of course, about the entire experience. WebProNews asked Fishkin about why he felt so compelled to be open since most companies would not go to the extreme to find out what they could actually disclose.

He told us that transparency has always been a core value of SEOmoz and always would be. He believes that this includes both the good times and the bad times.

“There’s nothing up my sleeve,” said Fishkin. “It’s all out there.”

Is it possible for a business to be too transparent? What do you think?

Fishkin and SEOmoz take transparency very seriously and believe in being upfront about all matters, even when they involve finances and legalities that aren’t flattering.

“It’s one of the qualities that consumers and business customers appreciate so tremendously much these days,” pointed out Fishkin. “We’re getting a culture, it’s particularly in the technology world, that anticipates, loves, and rewards transparency.”

With this transparency, there is also a risk since investors may avoid SEOmoz in the future out of fear of being the subject of a blog post. Fishkin admits that this is a very real concern but said it was one that he was willing to take.

“It’s a risk that we feel comfortable with,” he said. “I would rather say I’m going to commit to our core values, we’re going to do it 100%, we will be transparent no matter the costs, rather than say… we’re transparent but only when it’s convenient for us.”

Even though SEOmoz didn’t receive the funding, no one can say that the company doesn’t stick by its values. The experience, however, has made the company hesitant about raising capital in the future.

“We’re going to go back to our original mission of not raising capital,” said Fishkin. “Maybe we’ll think about it again next year, but I sort of hope we don’t.”

“I’d prefer not to go through that process,” he added. “It takes a lot of time and energy away from running the business.”

If the opportunity were to come up again, Fishkin told us that he would like his company to be in a position in which it doesn’t need the funding, so that it could walk away if it wanted. Since most startups that are covered by the Silicon Valley media receive funding, he also said that he would try to create buzz around his company before he attempted another VC round.

Although the experience was difficult, Fishkin and SEOmoz have received a lot of praise and support for being transparent. Fishkin told us the praise is a “good consolation prize” but that it was a little “bittersweet.”

Going forward, he hopes that startups will be more aware of potential issues and that investors will be more cautious.

First, the funding. The NYT reported that Tumblr received an additional $85 million in funding from a number of venture capitalists, including Virgin’s Richard Branson. The $85 million increases Tumblr’s funding amount to $125 million. The reason for Tumblr is receiving all this cash comes from its ever-growing popularity.

In other words, Tumblr gets a lot of pageviews. In fact, according to a report from TechCrunch, Tumblr’s 6.5 billion monthly pageviews are more than Wikipedia’s count, which is at 5.6 billion. TechCrunch’s figures come courtesy of comScore. It should also be noted that Tumblr has more monthly pageviews than Twitter, but Twitter has more unique visitors than Tumblr does. Discussing Tumblr’s popularity, the Times’ article references a Nielsen report, which says, “Tumblr Nearly Tripled its Unique U.S. Audience” and offers the following:

New social networks emerge on a daily basis, creating fresh outlets for consumers and brands alike. Tumblr, which combines elements of blogging and Twitter by letting users post and customize everything from pictures and videos to links and quotes, has grown significantly over the last couple of years to become the 8th largest site in the U.S. Social Networks and Blogs category. An analysis of online buzz by NM Incite shows that Tumblr is also a popular conversation topic, generating an average of 21,280 messages and links
per day to the site during May 2011, spreading critical word-of-mouth fueling its viral growth.

Nielsen’s report also reveals that teenage females are big users of Tumblr’s service, so much so, in fact, female teens are “more represented on Tumblr than on any of the other 9 social networks.”

As many of you are already aware, the female teenager is an attractive demographic if only for the access to their parents’ disposable income and the willingness to spend it. With that in mind, should we expect Tumblr to start rolling out advertisements for Coach purses and Ugg boots? It wouldn’t be surprising.

As it stands, there is no advertising on Tumblr’s service, and some have questioned the service’s business model, especially in the comments of the NYT post. Is Tumblr priming itself for a bidding war for the rights to purchase the service? Or will Tumblr introduce advertising, especially as the service’s growth continues at the exponential rate it currently enjoys?

Let us know what you think.

When you add that to their previous funding, Airbnb now boasts total funding of $119.8 million. According to them, this new funding will be used to “fuel growth, accelerate the hiring of a world-class team and strengthen the Airbnb community at the local level.” Read: expansion.

Airbnb is a startup that allows people to forgo traditional lodging and stay in privately listed locations when they are traveling. People who want to rent out their properties can list them through the site and once a renter shows interest, the host has total control over whether or not they allow the prospective renters in their space.

According to Tech Crunch, the split looks like $60 million from Andreessen Horowitz, $40 million from DST Global and $5 million from General Catalyst.

Airbnb’s valuation reportedly sits at $1.3 billion.

“Over the past three years, we’ve built a community marketplace for unique properties and brought it into the mainstream and into almost every country on the planet,” said Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb. “Today is a watershed moment – both for Airbnb as a company and for our community – that will enable us to touch new markets and expand our vision to make the world’s most interesting and inspiring places accessible to our users.”

Here are some stats that Airbnb dropped today -

• 2 million nights booked, doubling from 1 million just 4 months ago
• Their site receives over 30 million page views a month
• Since May, their number of Social Connections has tripled to 54 million

Airbnb is in over 16,000 cities in 186 countries.

“We’re thrilled to have led this investment round in Airbnb. The company is defining a completely new category in e-commerce – a marketplace for all kinds of spaces, from homes and apartments to tree houses and yachts,” said Jeff Jordan, general partner, Andreessen Horowitz. “Airbnb’s explosive growth and passionate community of users reinforce the uniqueness of what they’re doing, and in the same way eBay redefined online shopping, Airbnb is redefining the way the world thinks about accommodations.”

In May, Ashton Kutcher announced that he had invested in the company. Airbnb said that he had also joined as a “strategic adviser.”

The round raises AdKeeper’s total funding to $43 million since it came out of stealth in October and is set to publicly launch in February.

AdKeeper allows users to save ads in personal “Keepers” to review the ads later. Users can click on the “Keep Button” which is embedded in the ad.

AdKeeper clients include Allstate, AT&T, Best Buy, CBS, Ford, Gap,Macy’s, McDonald’s, The Home Depot, Unilever and Warner Bros.

Fred Harman, Managing Partner of Oak Investment Partners will join AdKeeper’s Board of Directors. Harman is currently on the Boards of several Internet media companies, including Demand Media, Federated Media and the Huffington Post and was previously on the Board of  Internet advertising services company aQuantive.

“We believe AdKeeper’s solution for keeping ads will be an important and welcome addition to the Internet ecosystem,” said Harman.

Oak joins earlier investors, including DCM, True Ventures, Spark Capital, First Round Capital, Lerer Ventures, Stan Shuman, The New York Times Company, Betaworks, David Cowan and Scott Kurnit.

Rocket Fuel’s ad serving platform is used by agencies to buy online inventory on ad exchanges. It has conducted campaigns for brands like Infiniti, Domino’s, and Lord & Taylor. The company’s founders  Richard Frankel and George John previously led Yahoo’s behavioral targeting group, helping it grow to millions in revenue.

The new round of funding is led by Nokia Growth Partners with additional investment from new investor Northgate Capital and existing investors Mohr Davidow Ventures and Labrador Ventures.

"We chose Nokia Growth Partners because they have an excellent reputation among portfolio CEO’s in Silicon Valley, a global footprint with offices in Europe, China, and India, and we trust Marc to be a thoughtful and helpful board member," said John. "We’re proud to be working together to scale Rocket Fuel from a startup to a speedup."

"Northgate is a respected global fund that typically invests in companies at our stage via its investments in top-tier venture capital funds like Mohr Davidow, Kleiner and Sequoia," added John. "We were delighted at their direct interest given their expertise and network in media and advertising."

"We know firsthand that advertising is changing and Rocket Fuel is well-positioned to benefit as advertisers are increasingly looking for better results and innovative ideas," said Tommy Vardell of Northgate Capital. "We’re excited to be involved and eager to help Rocket Fuel as it grows."

Rocket Fuel will use its new funding to expand its market presence in online display advertising.