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Buddy Media Raises $54M For Brand-Focused Social Media Management Platform
Can’t copy email addresses
How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate?
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric airplanes, CO2-storing bricks and solar-powered bags
Can’t copy email addresses
How to retrieve photos from Photofolders app after synced
How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate?
How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate?
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric airplanes, CO2-storing bricks and solar-powered bags
Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric airplanes, CO2-storing bricks and solar-powered bags

Buddy Media Raises $54M For Brand-Focused Social Media Management Platform

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 09:06 PM PDT

Buddy Media, a company that provides Facebook Page and social media management tools to brands, has raised $54 million in Series D funding led by GGV Capital with Institutional Venture Partners, Bay Partners and Insight Venture Partners. This brings Buddy Media’s total funding to just under $90 million. GGV partner Jeff Richards has joined the Buddy Media Board of Directors. One of Facebook’s first ad sales execs, Kevin Colleran, has also joined the company’s board of advisors.

Buddy Media is best known for its all-in-one social media management system to help create, manage and track social campaigns on Facebook. With regard to Facebook, the platform lets brand managers agencies create, manage and track Facebook pages in a variety of languages to drive and increase user and brand engagement. Users don't need to have any prior FBML knowledge to create pages on Facebook and can create sleek and interactive pages fairly easily.

But Facebook isn’t the only social media platform that brands need to engage; Twitter has also emerged has a powerful communications tool. And Buddy Media also offers a Twitter Management System as well. As CEO and founder Michael Lazerow tells us, it’s no longer just about Facebook, and as brands engage across a variety of channels, Buddy Media will provide them with a SaaS to manage this. He added that as Google+ scales and eventually adds a brand and company feature, the company will look to provide integration with the social platform.

Earlier this year, Buddy Media acquired social analytics tool Spinback, which develops a social commerce widget allows consumers to share products and purchases via Facebook, Twitter and email. This product is in the process of being integrated with Buddy Media’s SaaS

Of course, as more brands look to social media for engagement with consumers, Buddy Media is reaping the benefits. The company’s revenue has more than doubled since the end of 2010. Last year, Lazerow told us that Buddy Media was on track to make $20 million in sales, so revenue could be at least $40 million.

Buddy Media has added close to 200 new customers in 2011, including brands, retailers and media companies such as Ford Motor Company, Hanes, ESPN, Hearst Corporation (read more about that partnership here), and Virgin Mobile USA.

Buddy Media’s employee headcount has grown from 40 employees in 2009 to almost 200, and the company opened a London office this year as well. Recent hired include a CFO, Dennis Morgan, who led corporate finance and acquisition efforts for Yahoo.

Lazerow says the company is constantly evaluating a few things: how do brands better target content on a Facebook wall or on twitter; how do they get the right content to the right person, and how do you leverage the social graph to make all os this happen. He explains that for large brands and companies, social media monitoring is complicated by provisioning, auditing and scaling across various countries. Buddy Media makes this process simple, says Lazerow.

And Lazerow says that has the company continues to grow, this capital will help scale development, global expansion, hiring, sales, acquisitions and more. One of the challenges, he says, will be hiring the right people, but he plans to double the company’s headcount in the next year.

Can’t copy email addresses

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 09:06 PM PDT

How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate?

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 09:00 PM PDT

Splurged on a T-Mobile G-Slate, did you? Here’s your opportunity to voice your opinion to LG (and anyone else who’ll listen). Sporting an unorthodox aspect ratio and an affinity for a carrier that may not exist on its own by this time next year, it’s certainly one of the odder slate options on the market. Combine that with the inability to buy a WiFi-only model, and you’ve got yourself firmly into niche territory. That said, we’re confident that LG moved quite a few of these, and chances are that some of those buyers are reading these words right now. If that’s you, we’re interested to hear how you’d do things differently the next go ’round. Are you a fan of the form factor? Pining for a matte panel? Would you have preferred a WWAN-less variant? Is the UI everything you’d hoped for… and more? Go on and drop your thoughts in comments below — mama always encouraged the art of getting things off your chest.

How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric airplanes, CO2-storing bricks and solar-powered bags

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 09:00 PM PDT

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green.

This week green architecture boldly went where no buildings have gone before as Inhabitat reported on Jordan’s plans for a $1.5 billion Star Trek theme park that will be powered by alternative energy. We also showcased plans for a spiraling self-sufficient skyscraper that generates its own water, food, and power, and we took a first look at a shimmering office complex in India crowned with a digital eye. Meanwhile, GE launched a shining solar-powered carousel in Manhattan and a team of researchers developed a new breed of CO2-storing bricks that are 2.5 times stronger than concrete.

In other news, high-flying green vehicles charted the horizon as Pipistrel introduced the world’s most powerful electric airplane and an incredible human-powered helicopter broke a world record. We also saw Ohio State unveil plans for the 400 MPH Buckeye Bullet 3 and we showcased designs for a stunning concept car with a segmented transforming skin. Autonomous vehicles were a hot topic as well — London’s Heathrow airport rolled out a set of electric personal transportation pods, and China’s Hongqui unveiled a driverless car to compete with Google’s vehicle (which crashed this week).

It was also a big week for wearable technology as researchers developed new breed of stick-on tattoos that can track body functions and we took a look at a sonic fabric bag made from recycled audio tapes. Finally, we got set for the start of the academic year by bringing you six of the best solar-powered bags, an innovative new breed of e-paper that doesn’t require electricity, and we launched a blowout back to school contest where you could win $1155 in green school supplies — including a photovoltaic backpack and a HP Pavilion laptop.

Inhabitat’s Week in Green: electric airplanes, CO2-storing bricks and solar-powered bags originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 21:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Can’t copy email addresses

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 09:00 PM PDT

How to retrieve photos from Photofolders app after synced

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 09:00 PM PDT

How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate?

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 08:58 PM PDT

How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change T-Mobile’s G-Slate?

Posted: 14 Aug 2011 08:58 PM PDT