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TNW's European Tech5 - Help your favourite European Tech5 company get on stage at TNW Europe. IDOART. Apple Said to Fire Maps Manager After Flaws Hurt IPhone 5. Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s Eddy Cue, who took charge of map software last month, is racing to turn around the troubled service, firing a senior manager and urging partners to improve data amid an escalating rivalry with Google Inc. (GOOG) Cue, 48, senior vice president overseeing Apple’s online services, pushed out maps supervisor Richard Williamson in a management shakeup soon after taking over the program, said people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public.

Cue is seeking advice from outside map-technology experts and prodding maps provider TomTom NV (TOM2) to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple. Apple is under pressure to remedy mapping software widely faulted for unreliable landmark searches, routes that get users lost and a lack of public-transit directions. Flashback: Critics have faulted Apple’s new map software for unreliable landmark searches, routes that get users lost and lack of public transit directions.

Close. Apple iPad Art Exhibition in London.

Sport

Curation. Klout raises ~ $30 million at $200 million valuation. Klout, the startup that calculates how socially influential you are on the web, has raised a heaping pile of capital -- or so we hear from multiple sources. We hear from a source with 90% certainty that Klout has raised ~ $30 million at a $200 million valuation. Kleiner Perkins led the round with participation from IVP. Four other involved sources gave no comment. Klout was founded in 2008 by Joe Fernandez and Binh Tran. It previously raised $10 million from Kleiner Perkins, Greycroft Partners, ff Asset Management and angel investors. We're told the big excitement around Klout is its vision to become like people's credit scores for the web. You can also imagine advertisers champing at the bit to get their brands in front of the most socially influencial people. Square Processing $2B In Payments Per Year, Has Signed Up 800K Merchants.

Disruptive mobile payments company Square is making a number of announcements today relating to growth and new user features. First, the company is dropping its new user limits. For background, Square offers an iPhone, Android and iPad app which allows merchants to process and manage credit card transactions with a handy little credit card swiping device that plugs into the headset/microphone jack.

The device and service is the brainchild of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey. In May, the company debuted a new service to replace the cash register and loyalty card, and in June, Square raised a $100 million in funding, which valued the company above $1 billion. Historically, if a new Square user processed more than $1000 in transactions per week, anything above that $1000 will be held for a certain amount of time.

“We’re not going to sleep until we improve the entire experience of buying and selling,” he says. Facebook releases its official iPad app. 10 October '11, 10:20pm Follow Facebook has finally revealed its official iPad app. This long awaited tablet version comes with multi-conversation chat, a photo browser etc. Persistent access to notifications, messages, and requests will also allow users to check for new alerts while bookmarking their previous place elsewhere in the app. Among the revealed features is the option to access third-party apps and games directly from the app, allowing users to jump directly to the App Store if available for download. iPad users can now also access Facebook’s slide-out navigation menu that enables convenient switching between core in-house apps, with all of the alerts users would need also located on the top dashboard.

Multiple conversation chats, full photo browsing, gestures that allow zooming and HD video recording — the app appears fully featured. UPDATE @ 2PM PST: The app is definitely available on iPad now. Netflix Abandons Plan to Rent DVDs on Qwikster. 7:19 p.m. | Updated The New Coke experiment lasted less than three months. Qwikster did not even make it out of the bottle. In a swift reversal, Netflix said Monday that it had decided to keep its DVD-by-mail and online streaming services together under one name and one Web site, abandoning the breakup it had announced three weeks earlier.

The company, which will keep a recent 60 percent price increase in place, declared that it had moved too fast when it tried to spin-off the old-fashioned DVD service into a new company called Qwikster, angering many subscribers. Some reacted on Monday by teasing Netflix and its chief executive, Reed Hastings, for being topsy-turvy, but many praised the company for, as Ingrid Chung of put it in an analysts’ note, “listening to its customers (finally) and working to fix its relationship” with them. Maybe, some said, after a season of spectacular missteps, Netflix has finally figured out how to communicate effectively about its future.

Mr. How Groupon Uses the Cloud to Scale its Business. The Scaling Startups Series is supported by Brother International. Brother’s Inkjet All-in-One printers are loaded with powerful business features, including 11"x17” duplex printing and scan glass. Tell us how 11”x17” capabilities will help you achieve your bigger picture for a chance to win a $10,000 business grant. Visit www.shareyourbiggerpicture.com! Since launching in late 2008, deal-of-the-day website Groupon has emerged as one of the hottest web startups on the planet. Serving more than 250 markets worldwide and boasting more than 35 million users, Groupon is the poster child for a rapidly growing company. We spoke with Ryan Miller and Chris Bland from Groupon about how the company has managed to scale its business so quickly and with such agility. Growing With the Cloud One of the reasons Groupon has continued to succeed and expand over the past two and a half years is because the company has managed to keep the pace with its business.

Anatomy of a Deal Workflow.

Funding

Facebook. Levchin and Gurley Say That Next Big Company Will Capture The Interest Graph. Yesterday, at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco, Googler and PayPal founder Max Levchin and Benchmark GP Bill Gurley discussed “game-changing technology” and the future of the Web. Emblematic of today’s mindset, they attacked this rather large topic by comparing the strengths and objectives of Google and Facebook, using the latter’s jaw-dropping stats (500+ million users, 1 in every 13 people on Earth logs into Facebook each day) and its promotion of the social graph as a measure of what’s to come. Levchin said that Facebook is fast becoming the new social white pages, i.e. when you don’t know where someone is on the Web, you go to Facebook to find and connect with them.

But, in addition to that, he says, the social networking giant is really “the rich white pages,” where you not only locate someone but have the added benefit of finding out what they like, what they read, what their favorite movies are, and so on. Google Boost, le modèle publicitaire d’Adresses s’étend à l’ensemble des Etats-Unis. Google renforce son positionnement dans la publicité de proximité et confirme le business modèle son service Adresses. Désormais, au début des résultats d’Adresse, les utilisateurs retrouverons des annonces publicitaires. Après trois mois de tests, Google annonce le déploiement sur l’ensemble des États-Unis de son nouveau service publicitaire à destination des commerces de proximité: Google Boost. Pour les commerçants, le service fonctionne sur le même principe que les Adwords, les commerçants peuvent programmer leurs annonces promotionnelles tout en fixant un budget quotidien.

Celles-ci apparaitront, accompagnées des commentaires des utilisateurs, sur le moteur de recherche accessible depuis un iPhone ou un mobile Android. Un taux de rebond qui excède 50% est mauvais signe - taux de rebond. La croissance de l'e-commerce français dépasse 26 % en 2010. Awards: The Full List of Finalists. The Mashable Awards, our annual contest highlighting the very best the web has to offer, is entering its final round.

After receiving 700,000 nominations, we've narrowed down the 40,000+ nominees to just five finalists per category. You have from now until December 15 to pick the winners. If you have questions about the Mashable Awards and the list of finalists, please post them to our GetSatisfaction page. Here is the full list of the finalists in each category. You can vote once per category per day. Get voting! Vote For Your Favorites » Social Media Must-Follow Brand Most Creative Social Media Campaign Must-Follow Personality Best Social Media Customer Service sponsored by BlackBerry Best Social Media Management Tool Best Social Media Service for Small Business Startup/Company Most Promising New Company Entrepreneur of the Year Best New Gadget Best Location-Based Service Web Best Internet Meme sponsored by Dynadot Best Music Discovery Service Best Online Game Best Use of an API Best Web Video Mobile.

10 Business Models That Rocked 2010. Emailvision acquis par Francisco Partners - Principales acquisitions de l'e-business en 2010.

Group buying

Itunes.apple. Mobile. Infographie : les marques les plus virales en 2010. La fin d’année approche et les bilans aussi, après le lip dub reprenant tous les buzz de l’année, voici une infographie qui revient sur les marques les plus virales en 2010. On retrouvera donc les marques et personnes qui ont été les plus vues sur le net, mais aussi celles qui ont été le plus partagées sur les réseaux sociaux (Facebook et Twitter). Vous avez aimé cet article ? Tweeter Inactif Partager vos lectures sur Facebook exemple : Benjamin a lu : Infographie : les marques les plus virales en 2010 sur Begeek.fr Réagir à cet article Vous souhaitez réagir ? Je n'ai pas de comptecréer un compte en 15 secondesCréer un compte Connexion. The Real Reason Groupon Is Selling: They’re Nervous About Publishers. I’ll start by saying that, yes, $6 billion is a lot of money.

It would be Google’s largest acquisition ever and a complete grand slam for Groupon, its employees and its investors. Why Sell Now? On the other hand, why would they sell now? Groupon is killing it like no one other company has ever killed it before. Seriously. Fastest growing company ever according to ForbesAlready figured out their business model and is expected to make $500 million of revenue in just their second year (this isn’t a YouTube, Twitter or Facebook situation)LivingSocial is spending enormous amounts on advertising to keep up while the 200+ other daily deal sites that have launched, while profitable businesses, have struggled to scale (see chart below)Huge international opportunity and they are aggressively going after itClearly have a longer-term vision for the company as revealed by their Groupon Stores announcement What is Groupon’s Magic?

Get all the PR. But what if they did have a competitors with scale? La quasi-totalité des jeunes est connectée à Internet - Usages Internet des jeunes. Facebook Acquires a Startup That Knows You Like a Friend(.ly) Two-year-old social network enhancing service Friend.ly has been acquired by Facebook, announced the Friend.ly blog earlier today. Friend.ly is a place where people can get to know each other based on random questions you might have in common.

Answer a question posed by the service, and you'll be able to see how other people have answered that question. You can also search for a question by typing it into the site's search bar. So, are you ready to get even more friend.ly with Facebook? For example, I typed in the phrase "how many," and the following questions popped up: If you can't think of a question, you can click on the Questions tab at the top of the page, and then you'll get a list of questions you can choose from, along with everyone else's answers to those questions. You can answer as many questions as you want, meaning Friend.ly will only acquire as much information about you as you are willing to give it.