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.

And the main aspect of that experience is the Cover Feed. It features all the fresh content from your Facebook news feed, basically turning your Android device into a photo-oriented, swipeable Facebook hub. You can like, comment, and view notifications directly from your Facebook Home screen – with no need to launch any sort of app. It’s without question the deepest Facebook integration any mobile OS has ever seen.

And you can bet that Facebook it going to try to monetize it.

After the event, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that ads will be coming to your Facebook Home Cover Feed.

“There are no ads in this yet, I’m sure that one day there will be,” he said. He then repeated his answer when asked again about whether or not ads would be coming to the Cover Feed. According to Zuckerberg, ads are just another kind of content.

C’mon. Don’t look so sour. You didn’t think that Facebook would build a grand new Android-based user experience and leave out the ads, did you?

When Facebook Home launches, it will be downloadable on the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III and Samsung Galaxy Note II – and eventually the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4.

And on that same day, the HTC First will launch as the first phone the comes with Facebook Home pre-installed.

According to All Things D, White will work closely with Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom in an effort to “expand partnerships, improve user operations and, presumably, come up with ways to make some money.”

White has a history of working on monetization, both as head of Facebook’s mobile partnerships and as a Senior Director of Emerging Business in marketing and ads with Google. Facebook stole White from Google back in 2010.

Here’s what Systrom had to say about the move:

“I’m excited to bring Emily White onto the Instagram team. As we continue to scale our operation to support over 100 million active users, her experience with partnerships and business operations will play a major role in our future success.”

It’s no shock that Facebook is making moves to monetize Instagram, which it bought for close to $1 billion last year. Presumably, White will work on finally bringing ads to the service. As you may remember, that concept sparked quite a bit of controversy last year when Instagram changed its terms of service to allow for future use of user content in advertising.

The lead photo is from White’s personal Instagram account, on which she’s already changed her title to Director of Business Operations at Instagram.

With the (currently) free product, site owners can track how pins that come from their site perform on Pinterest. Site owners can see how many people have pinned from their site, the reach of those pins across Pinterest, and the traffic referred to their sites from Pinterest.

The web analytics also show site owners info on the most repinned, most clicked, and most recent pins so that they can accurately judge what kind of content is most popular in the present. “For example, if you have a travel blog, you’ll be able to see whether people are pinning your ski vacation posts or beach vacation posts more,” says Pinterest.

The new Pinterest Web Analytics is only available for verified websites. If you’re looking to verify your site’s Pinterest presence, check your settings page. Once you verify your site, click on “Analytics” in the menu on the top right-hand side (with Pinterest’s new look). And that’s it. The service is currently free to any and all verified profiles.

“Today’s announcement builds on the set of tools we offer for website owners including business accounts, Pin It buttons and board widgets. We think that these tools will help website owners understand what’s working for them and what’s not so that they can create even better pins in the future. We even updated our business site with new tips and case studies to make things easier. Over the coming months, we hope to add new tools and more detailed insights, so let us know what else you would like to see,” says Pinterest.

It’s no secret that Pinterest is looking for ways to monetize, and slowly implementing more tools for businesses on the site is a first step. Laying down the groundwork for personalized analytics could help Pinterest show businesses the value of the service, if and when the site choose to get into the advertising game. Plus, the analytics service by itself could possibly generate revenue for Pinterest, considering the company keeps expanding its features so that it could offer additional services for a premium fee.

BitTorrent Inc. announced a crazy new plan today that will monetize BitTorrent. What’s this crazy new plan? Ads will now be included in the torrent. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but the basic premise is that of any other monetization plan on the Internet. Give away content for free and support it with ads.

I mentioned that it’s a bit more complicated than that, but not by much. The first bundle on offer today is a sample from DJ Shadow’s new album “Hidden Transmissions From The MPC Era (1992-1996).” Alongside the download is some bundled software. If the person downloading the tracks also installs the software, the artist and BitTorrent get a cut of the ad revenue.

If you already have uTorrent installed, expect to see ads for DJ Shadow’s new album pop up in your client sooner or later. If you just downloaded uTorrent, the package will be advertised in the installer. It’s a simple, but effective, way to get the word out.

Oh, and before you start to get mad about ads in your downloads, nothing is being forced on you. You can skip on the software entirely and don’t even have to download it. It’s offered as a complimentary add-on and only helps the artist if it’s installed.

Of course, the argument here is that people will just download the music and skip on the software. That’s true and it will probably happen more often than not. That’s why the package only includes a selection of tracks while advertising the full album release which people will pay for. Those same people can still pirate the entire album, but music fans generally buy music from the artists who treat them right. By releasing a free sampler package, DJ Shadow has guaranteed himself at least one sale from this fan.

You can grab DJ Shadow’s uTorrent package right now. While you’re at it, grab the free album sampler from Counting Crows as well.

[h/t: TorrentFreak]

Indie game developer, Madfinger Games, recently launched Dead Trigger on Android. The game is a zombie FPS that’s supported by in-app content purchasing. It was originally on sale for the super low price of $0.99, but has now gone free-to-play. Why? Here’s what the developer had to say on a Facebook post:

DEAD TRIGGER3 hours ago

Regarding price drop. HERE is our statement. The main reason: piracy rate on Android devices, that was unbelievably high. At first we intend to make this game available for as many people as possible – that’s why it was for as little as buck. – It was much less than 8$ for SHADOWGUN but on the other hand we didn’t dare to provide it for free, since we hadn’t got XP with free-to-play format so far. – However, even for one buck, the piracy rate is soooo giant, that we finally decided to provide DEAD TRIGGER for free. Anyway – DEAD TRIGGER is not FREEMIUM, it always was and still remains FREE-TO-PLAY, that means, all players are able to play it without IAP! We stand up for this statement, because all members of our team are playing (and enjoying) DEAD TRIGGER without IAP. Powered by socialditto  78 likes ·  70 comments

The problem stems from Android being an open platform. It’s ridiculously easy to root a phone and it becomes easy to pirate content from there. The same could be said of iOS, but Apple at least makes it difficult to jailbreak an iPhone compared to rooting an Android phone. That’s why you see the piracy rates on Android being far higher than they are on iOS.

There’s still money to be had in the Android scene, but you have to be on Amazon’s marketplace to have any realistic shot at making the kind of money that iOS developers make. Even then, the stiff competition on all the platforms make it hard for any developers beyond a select few to make any money anyway.

Regardless, piracy is still a major problem on Google’s platform and they must address it. They need content on Google Play to convince people that Android is something worth developing for. That’s why Google put App Encryption in the recent release of Jelly Bean:

App encryption: From Jelly Bean and forward, paid apps in Google Play are encrypted with a device-specific key before they are delivered and stored on the device. We know you work hard building your apps. We work hard to protect your investment.

There’s still a lot of people on Android 2.2 to 4.0, however, and they’re part of the problem. Google needs to step up its game to protect these developers who pour their resources into making games for the platform. If not, it’s going to have a negative impact on the recently announced Android game console, Ouya. Why would people pay money for games when they can just crack the console and pirate all the games for free?

[h/t: The Guardian]

Patrick O’Keefe, the owner of the iFroggy Network and also the author of Managing Online Forums, calls online forums the “backbone of the social Web.”

“They are where the most meaningful, deepest discussion on the social Web takes place,” he said. “These are communities where people engage around a specific topic or interest – something they are passionate about.”

He went on to say that people can find online forums on any topic, no matter how obscure or niche that it is. According to him, there are active discussions going on all across the Web over just about anything.

Another aspect about online forums that is often overlooked is that they take a lot of time and effort, just as a business would, since they require management and revenue streams. What’s more, just as we’ve seen Facebook, Twitter, and many other social startups struggle to become profitable, it’s a difficult process for online forums as well.

O’Keefe just released a new free ebook called Monetizing Online Forums in partnership with Skimlinks, in which he addresses these very issues. Interestingly, one of the first points he makes is that not all forums need to be monetized. As he explained, some forums are hobbies or part-time efforts. There are others though, that are full-time and take money to pay hosting bills, software, and other necessities.

“Managing a large community can become a full-time job,” explained O’Keefe,” and if it does, then you have to make a choice. Either you can make a living through the community, or the community will suffer.”

“You will have to give it away or do something else with it, perhaps even close it,” he added.

When the need to monetize the forum arises, O’Keefe told us that it is very important to find a balance between making money and maintaining a positive experience for the community. In other words, you don’t want to put tons of ads all over a forum.

“When you monetize a forum poorly, you can kill that forum,” he pointed out.

O’Keefe gives several effective approaches for monetizing forums including:

• Display advertising
• In-text monetization
• Classified and thread-based advertising
• Sponsored brand placement
• Affiliate networks
• CPA networks
• Product sales
• Premium memberships
• Mobile monetization
• Monetization of outposts

While there are a lot of options, it is important not to overmonetize because in the ebook, O’Keefe says, “overmonetization can kill a forum.” He told us that forum owners should look at their audience and then decide on the best approach for making money.

“Different audiences definitely have different levels of toleration for what they are willing to accept when they visit the community,” he said.

He went on to suggest experimentation for deciding on which methods work best for each audience. While he doesn’t give a specific percentage for content versus ads or other monetization approaches, he does say that forum owners again need to be careful in finding a balance.

Incidentally, O’Keefe told us that, with the influx of sites like Facebook and Twitter making the entire Web social, it is much easier to get advertisers on board with placing ads on forums. In the past, he said, they were somewhat hesitant, but now that everything is social, advertisers and ad networks know that they need to have a presence on these sites.

Overall, O’Keefe told us that, if forum owners are careful in their approach to monetization and test and track their results, they will find a way to be profitable.

“There’s more than one way to make money with your Android app: Paid apps, in-app billing, advertising, and so on,” Google says in the description. “This session covers the subject comprehensively, with details on the monetization tools in Google Play and a close look at the AdMob SDK, ad network mediation and Google Analytics. Walk away armed with knowledge on how you can make more money, get more users and gain more insights.”

I’d suggest keeping an eye on Google’s GoogleDevelopers YouTube channel for more videos like this, if you’re looking to get better as an Android developer. There are already some other videos posted that you may find useful, and there will no doubt be plenty more as the event rolls on.

With Jellybean unveiled, there will be lots of new stuff to learn.

More Google I/O coverage here.

Tom Rikert, the Director of Product Development at Wildfire, which is a company that works closely with Facebook and provides a social media marketing software suite, is familiar with the position that Facebook is up against. You see, Rikert used to work at YouTube and, of course, also faced the challenge of monetizing a massive amount of users through advertising.

According to him, Facebook is the centerpiece of the majority of brands’ social media efforts. Through Wildfire’s close relationship with the company, it understands that Facebok has a huge audience, a global reach, and that it allows for rich forms of engagement for brands through the use of images, video, and more.

“We find brands are finding Facebook… to have a lot of staying power, and ultimately… they’ve built an audience [and] they’ve accumulated a lot of fans,” said Rikert.

“The question is now,” he continued, “what do I do with them to really engage them and to enlist them as advocates for word-of-mouth marketing and to also help them become customers, not just fans or conversation partners?”

While this is a challenge, Rikert is confident that Facebook can succeed in its advertising efforts. As he explained to us, Facebook has a “treasure trove” of data. This, combined with its user base, could potentially give the social giant a lot of leverage on the advertising front.

“I do believe, in the long run, that Facebook is sitting on a mound of amazing data on one of the largest audiences in mankind’s history,” said Rikert. “I think if they are smart about how they turn that into dollars through a strategic ad product – mobile [and] ads that could reach across the whole Internet beyond Facebook.com – I think they have incredible legs for long-term growth.”

Rikert believes that Facebook is being aggressive in its advertising approach but that it has an advantage given all the information it has on users. The social network knows that users can get “ad fatigue” really quickly, which could completely turn them away from the service. But, he thinks Facebook is being smart in its strategy by providing relevant ads based on user’s activities and interests.

“When done right, ads are actually value add,” Rikert said. “They are connecting people to information they care about and entertainment they care about.”

“It allows a lot more advertisers to reach the users and gives them the higher comfort level that their ads are gonna be worthwhile and well-received by the users,” he added.

He, along with Wildfire, feels so strongly about Facebook and its ability to be successful in advertising that he thinks its ad platform will become a critical factor in all online advertising going forward. Specifically, he envisions Facebook having a universal log-in system that could essentially be an open door for all things on the Internet and mobile devices.

And, to answer the questions about Facebook developing its own version of Google AdSense, Rikert said he could “definitely foresee that” since it already has a “huge footprint of their social plug-ins on hundreds of thousands, if not millions now, of publisher sites.”

Facebook has also been questioned for its mobile advertising efforts, especially since the company openly admitted in its S-1 filing that its monetization efforts for mobile were yet to be proven:

“Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where our ability to monetize is unproven, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results.”

Still, Rikert has no doubts about Facebook’s mobile strategy either. The company has, of course, started out slowly in mobile, but he expects it to pick up its efforts in the near future.

“What’s gonna be more interesting is when Facebook can take the mobile experience and really tailor ads based on where a user is and what they’re doing [and] who they’re with,” he said. “That’s when the ad becomes super relevant and much more interesting, and I think it will generate greater click-through rates and better results for advertisers, and more revenue for Facebook.”

Overall, Rikert is confident in Facebook’s advertising efforts and believes the company’s new real-time exchange ads will further its goals of being profitable.

That quote is straight from the mouth of Facebook, as part of their amended IPO filings prior to going public in May. It was this sort of speculation that was echoed by analysts during Facebook’s massive stock plunge following the IPO. One such analyst cited Facebook’s struggle to monetize their mobile platform as reasoning that the company would “disappear” before 2020.

Class-action lawsuits were even filed that accused Facebook of concealing “severe and pronounced reduction” in revenue growth prior to the IPO.

The general consensus from Facebook doubters has been a complete lack of faith that the company could successfully monetize mobile, and since everyone is moving towards mobile, that’s a pretty big kink in their plans. Mobile ads on the Facebook platform have only existed for a few weeks, and as of right now the only type of mobile ad appearing on Facebook are Sponsored Stories in the News Feed (no traditional, right-side ads).

But some new information from some of Facebook’s Ads API partners suggests that Facebook mobile ads are wildly successful – much more so that desktop ads.

SocialCode data reported by AdAge suggests that the click-through rate for Facebook’s mobile ads (appearing as Sponsored Stories in the mobile News Feed) is more than quadruple the CTR of all ad placements – and more than double that of ads in the desktop News Feed. They report a CTR of 0.79% for mobile-only ads, as opposed to 0.148% when it comes to all five types of ads combined (mobile only, desktop News Feed only, desktop right-side ads, mobile & desktop news-feed only, and ads across all platforms).

When it came to the same types of Sponsored Stories ads on desktop, the CTR was 0.327%. CPMs for the mobile-only ads were $7.51, compared to $1.62 across all ad platforms. SocialCode suggested that these mobile Sponsored Stories are “less disruptive” that traditional ads – a point that we’ve speculated on for some time.

TechCrunch got a hold of some more partner data and the trend appears to be the same. TBG Digital reported mobile Sponsored Stories with a CTR of 1.14% at $0.86 CPC. Total this out and you get $9.86 per 1000 impressions. Compare that to the stats for desktop Sponsored Stories, which see a .588% CTR at $0.63 for a CPM of $3.72.

You find even more discrepancy when you look at their data for ads across all platforms – 0.083% CTR at $0.88 CPC for a CPM of $0.74.

Data from Spruce Media and AdParlor followed suit – the latter reporting a 25x better CTR for the mobile ads.

So…are the mobile ads working? It appears that Facebook’s recent decision to break up the ad offerings and allow advertisers to buy mobile-only sponsored stories has paid off – and will continue to pay off when advertisers see these numbers.

When you couple that with the fact that Facebook is working on a real-time ad bidding service for more targeted ads and are rumored to be possibly working on location-based mobile ads, the company’s monetization outlook doesn’t look so dire. Don’t look now, but Facebook stock it up for a third-straight day to close Monday at $31.41 – up nearly $6 from its low point but of course still way below the initial IPO price of $38.