Ryan has spent more than five years covering business, technology, and telecom-related subjects for a variety of publications based in New York and San Francisco. Ryan currently works as a writer for TechCrunch.
Airport car rentals are a $10 billion business. But until recently, most travelers were stuck with poor customer service and high rates from the incumbent rental car agencies. Y Combinator-backed startup FlightCar wants to offer a much cheaper alternative to those companies in airports around the country, and it’s starting in San Francisco. → Read More
Audience development startup Alphabird has made a number of acquisitions over the last few years, from social video platform Media Social to video distribution platform Castfire. Well add one more to the list: The company has also acquired Australian digital agency Volt Media to expand its presence there. → Read More
Y Combinator-backed startup Balanced offers a platform for collaborative consumption companies to both take in and make payments to users on either side of the transaction. But what if they only need to make payments to users who provide the goods or services? With the launch of Balanced’s Payments API, announced to customers today, they’ll be able to do that. → Read More
Ride-sharing startup SideCar is getting serious about expanding into new cities throughout the U.S. The company just acquired Austin, Texas-based Heyride to help it improve its product and introduce service in that market, and is announcing plans to roll out ride-sharing in Los Angeles and Philadelphia this weekend as well. → Read More
Over the past few years, YouTube has been dramatically increasing the resources that it provides to the creative community that uploads videos on its platform. Today it expanded that effort in Japan, where it’s opened a new production facility that will be open to select YouTube partners, providing them with advanced equipment and training to improve their videos. → Read More
After operating for about 18 months in San Francisco, urban delivery startup Postmates is finally ready to expand into its second market. The company recently opened up deliveries in Seattle, allowing residents there to get food, groceries, and other products delivered from restaurants and other shops throughout the city in less than an hour. → Read More
To help publishers reach new users on mobile devices, a new startup called Strikingly enables publishers to quickly build mobile web experiences. The company, which is part of the current Winter 2013 Y Combinator class, is launching a platform that will create a framework for mobile web sites that can take as little as 30 minutes for users to build. → Read More
It’s been a crazy couple of months for Bombfell, the subscription clothing startup which aims to provide quality, fashionable clothing to men on a monthly basis. Since completing the 500 Startups accelerator last year, the company has moved to New York and seen six consecutive months of double-digit revenue growth. And now it’s raised a seed round to continue that momentum. → Read More
On a panel discussion at D: Dive Into Media with Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and Arrested Development creator Mitch Hurwitz, comedian Will Arnett praised the freedom that the streaming provider is giving creatives building its new slate of original programming. → Read More
At the D: Dive Into Media conference, Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos said that the company’s political thriller House of Cards has been the most-watched piece of content on the site a few weeks after its release. Not only is that true in the company’s home market of the U.S., but it’s true across all regions that the company operates in, Sarandos said. → Read More
At the D: Dive Into Media conference over the last few days, we’ve heard a lot of executives discuss the big paradigm shift of binge-watching being brought about thanks to Netflix and DVRs. But not everyone loves to watch TV that way. According to HBO President and COO Eric Kessler, binge viewing is an edge case for its viewers. → Read More
Over the last several years, HBO has been making its streaming video product more attractive to users by adding more and more devices that users can stream its programming on. At the D: Dive Into Media conference today, HBO President and COO Eric Kessler said that the company is enabling AirPlay streaming for its HBO apps, enabling iOS users to stream video from the iPad to the Apple TV. → Read More
Today at the D: Dive Into Media conference, Michael Lynton, CEO of Sony Corporation of America and Sony Entertainment, said that the rise of Netflix, DVR are fundamentally changing the way that viewers watch TV content. And that now changes the type of content is being produced and the quality of it. → Read More
Intel wants to be in the video business, and over the past few years has been investing heavily to build a new virtual cable service. The idea is that the company would to provide the same type of bundled TV content as Comcast, Dish, and others, but would deliver that content by streaming it over the Internet. → Read More
As Facebook is working to build partnerships with big media companies, the company sees a huge opportunity for growth in the sharing and discovery of movies, books, and fitness tools on its platform. At the D: Dive Into Media conference today, Facebook VP of Partnerships Dan Rose said the company expects the next wave of its app ecosystem to be driven by those media categories. → Read More
Mobile messaging is hot, with companies like Snapchat, WhatsApp, and others providing new ways of connecting users on their mobile devices. One startup with an interesting take on the mobile messaging market is Relay, which provides an easy way to share multimedia assets between friends. The company, which is based in Toronto and was part of the Extreme Startups Preccelerator, has raised $700,000… → Read More
It was just a few months ago that Redmond, Wash.-based startup 9Slides launched to combine slide presentations with video in a simple and accessible player that could be viewed on nearly any device. Now the startup is taking that mission a step further, with a native iPad app that will allow users to publish presentations and link videos to them, or to record videos to be added on the tablet. → Read More
WD is no stranger to making media streaming devices — it’s been in the business for several years, most notably with its WDTV Live and WDTV Live Hub products. But those devices both are priced at $99 and above, with the Hub also including built-in media storage. The new WD TV Play, by contrast, is focused on the lower end of the market, with a $69 price tag and a number of streaming… → Read More
A few years ago, the organization rolled out its NCAA Vault from years and years of March Madness. Now it’s putting some of that footage to use, with the launch of a new YouTube channel, called NCAA OnDemand, which will be home to hundreds of the best clips from years of the tournament. → Read More
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen had a few kind words for Netflix at the D: Dive Into Media conference today, saying that the streaming video provider would most likely be successful. More than that, though, he said that the company was already changing the way people are watching TV. → Read More
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen is no stranger to controversy, so it should be no surprise that he has a controversial plan for the future of advertising. At the D: Dive Into Media conference today, the outspoken pay TV executive said he didn’t want to kill advertising, but wanted to make those ads more relevant to consumers. → Read More
Simulmedia has raised another $5 million in funding in an inside round from existing investors, the company confirmed today. The money comes from Time Warner Investments, Avalon Ventures, and Union Square Ventures, which together have put a total of about $32 million into the company since it was founded in 2009. → Read More
Today at the D: Dive Into Media conference, representatives from Microsoft provided more details on its new video-production studio, which will provide a whole new level of interactivity for viewers. Nancy Tellem said that the company has already hired 150 employees in its Santa Monica studio in L.A. That’s a huge commitment to creating a whole new type of content for its Xbox game console. → Read More
Sonic Notify has built a platform that will allow broadcasters and retailers to instantly provide users with multimedia content and deals, through audio recognition technology that instantly triggers push notifications and alerts through mobile apps. Now that technology is live, enabling anyone with an app and an audience to begin sending messages and deals to their users or customers. → Read More
Personalization startup Sailthru has been growing rapidly, with revenues increasing 270 percent over the last year. With that in mind, the company has raised $19 million in new Series B financing led by Benchmark. Along with the funding, the company is adding Benchmark general partner Bill Gurley to its board of directors. → Read More
Menlo Ventures’ Shervin Pishevar and Goldman Sachs managing director Scott Stanford have left their day jobs to build a new venture called Sherpa. The creation of the firm, which was first reported by AllThingsD, is designed around a new model for building and creating companies through a mix and match of strategic corporate partnerships and working with well-known entrepreneurs. → Read More
The sharing economy is great, but if we’re talking about true efficiency, it seems to me that we’re going to need to go a step beyond just the owner-renter model for the collaborative consumption market, and into an area that’s based on fractional ownership of goods. → Read More
Stanford’s student startup accelerator, StartX, had its eighth demo day tonight in Palo Alto, showing off the latest class of 11 companies* to go through the program. The accelerator, which just raised another $400,000, has already had about 100 startups go through, raising $100 million along the way between them. This next batch is hoping to follow that lead. → Read More
StartX, which is a startup accelerator for Stanford students, has raised another round of funding, adding $400,000 to its coffers since last December. That money comes from new investors that include Cisco, Founders Fund, AT&T, Groupon, and Founder.org, and was primarily raised by Stanford students — StartX Sr Managing Director Jeff Mounzer and Partnerships Director John Melas-Kyriazi. → Read More
Goldbely is trying to connect its customers — which it refers to as “Food Explorers” — with interesting food such as Chicago deep-dish pizza, Philadelphia cheesesteaks, Texas barbecue, New York bagels, and Maryland crab cakes, among other treats. The idea is to ship food so that it can be enjoyed almost as if you were eating it in its native region. → Read More
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