Want A Meeting With Tim Cook? You Can Win One For Charity
ChartityBuzz in conjunction with the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights is auctioning off a coffee break with Apple CEO Tim Cook at his Cupertino office, a prize valued at $50,000. That’s right: if you have a great idea for the next Apple TV With Smellovision this could be your chance.
The campaign begins today and will run through Tuesday, May 14. The proceeds go to the RFK Center.
CharityBuzz is a New York-based charity organizer that has raised $75 million since launch. The company keeps 20% to cover services and operating costs and the remainder goes to the charity.
The bidding is up to $5,200 right now but I suspect that it will skyrocket over the next few hours. After all, getting sit down with the most powerful man in Silicon Valley is not too shabby. Hopefully he’ll unveil the iPhone 6 in your presence but then he’ll have to silence you – using any means necessary.
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U.S. Online Reputation Management Firm Reputation.com Acquires U.K.’s Reputation 24/7 To Expand Internationally — Will Invest “Millions” In U.K. Operation
Call it a digital dark art but there’s apparently a growing market for companies that sell services to help individuals and businesses improve their online reputation by removing or burying negative bits and bytes. Redwood City-based online reputation management and digital privacy company Reputation.com has announced it’s acquired Liverpool, U.K.-based Reputation 24/7 to bolster its international business — which is active in more than 100 countries. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Reputation 24/7 has been rebranded Reputation.com (U.K.) and will sell Reputation.com’s suite of consumer and business online reputation management offerings to European customers.
“With this acquisition, Reputation.com is expanding Silicon Valley to the United Kingdom and opening the door to a strong market for future growth,” said CEO and Founder Michael Fertik in a statement. “Reputation 24/7 exemplifies the best of the U.K.’s robust tech industry and its capabilities align nicely with our core strengths. This acquisition supports our growing international presence, which includes customers in more than 100 countries.”
Reputation.com said it plans to invest significantly in the Liverpool-based operation, using it as its European headquarters. A company spokeswoman told TechCrunch it would be investing “millions [GBP] over the next year to support the UK branch’s expansion — in both capabilities and hiring”.
Fertik also told Liverpool’s Daily Post newspaper that he had chosen to base Reputation.com’s European HQ in Liverpool ahead of London and Germany because of the quality of the city’s workforce and universities. ”The other great thing about Liverpool is that Liverpool people want to stay in Liverpool. That gives us a stable workforce, and that’s a terrific resource for a company like ours,” he added.
Reputation.com, which says it has patented “solutions that safeguard and remove personal data from the Internet, monitor and respond to online reviews, build a positive and accurate Web presence for clients, and help businesses proactively engage customers” describes online reputation management as “removing or burying any website, online newspaper article, blog, forum or review which does not represent our client as positively as they deserve”, and cites the following among its past successes:
- DEFENDED: Search suggestions presented when searching this client’s brand highlighted recent regulatory announcements.
- DEFENDED: A disgruntled ex-employee of our client had been posting malicious comments online for several years.
- DEFENDED: One dissatisfied customer in 1000’s created a hate-site dedicated to a Reputation.com client’s business.
- DEFENDED: News of the World story appearing in search results for our client’s brand.
Full release follows below.
Reputation.com Acquires U.K. Online Reputation Management Leader
Acquisition Supports Company’s Customer Base of Global 2000 Corporations and More Than a Million Consumers In Over 100 CountriesREDWOOD CITY, Calif., Jan. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ – Reputation.com, the market and technology leader in online reputation management and digital privacy, announced its global expansion with the acquisition of Reputation 24/7, a United Kingdom-based online reputation management firm.
“With this acquisition, Reputation.com is expanding Silicon Valley to the United Kingdom and opening the door to a strong market for future growth,” said CEO and Founder Michael Fertik. “Reputation 24/7 exemplifies the best of the U.K.’s robust tech industry and its capabilities align nicely with our core strengths. This acquisition supports our growing international presence, which includes customers in more than 100 countries.”
Now known as Reputation.com (U.K.), the former Reputation 24/7 will offer Reputation.com’s suite of consumer and business-focused online reputation and social media management solutions to European customers. Reputation.com will also invest in the U.K. operation, enabling it to grow significantly over the next year.
“As a global company, we’ll continue the mission we adopted since Reputation.com’s inception in 2006: to empower individuals and businesses with innovation that supports digital privacy and online reputation management,” said Fertik.
Reputation.com’s business products enable both small and medium businesses as well as FTSE 100 companies to manage their online reputations, including monitoring online review sites and social media outlets, analyzing content to understand customer perception trends, and creating customized outreach campaigns. Customers can also use Reputation.com’s patented scoring technology to obtain their reputation scores, which show how a business measures up against local and national competitors in the eyes of their customers.
Reputation.com also offers consumer-focused solutions that empower individuals to manage all aspects of their online reputation, from removing personally identifiable information, to monitoring social media photos and content to optimizing their search results.
About Reputation.com
Reputation.com was founded in 2006 to give individuals and businesses the power to control their digital privacy and reputation. The company continues to pioneer patented solutions that safeguard and remove personal data from the Internet, monitor and respond to online reviews, build a positive and accurate Web presence for clients, and help businesses proactively engage customers.
Reputation.com is a World Economic Forum Global Growth Company and multiple award winner, including the recent Silver for the Best in Biz Awards for “Most Customer Friendly Company” in 2012. It is funded by top-tier venture capital firms and has customers in 100 countries.
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Study: 75 Percent Of The World’s Heads Of State Are Now On Twitter
You know how some naysayers still like to dismiss Twitter as nothing more than a time wasting website where people talk about the sandwich they’re eating? Here’s another rebuttal for them.
A new survey from the Digital Policy Council (DPC) shows that 75 percent of the world’s heads of state have a presence on Twitter. The DPC’s annual study evaluates a total of 164 countries, and found this year that 123 of them have a head of state that is on Twitter, either with a personal handle or an official government one. That’s up significantly from 2011, when 69 out of the 164 countries had a Twitter presence. (It bears mention that there are a total of 193 states recognized by the United Nations, so we’ve reached out to the DPC for more details on which 164 countries they choose to monitor and why — we’ll update this when we hear back.)
In terms of followers, the study found that US President Barack Obama is by far the most watched world leader on Twitter, with 25 million followers. Coming in at number two? Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, with 3.5 million followers.
Twitter is perpetually setting new records in terms of users and activity at an almost annoying pace, and it is said to be increasingly turning all that usage into serious revenue. So, while Twitter still has a bit of a reputation for being frivolous — and it is still a great place for frivolity — it makes sense that some of the people with the most serious of occupations are finally starting to come around to the value of the platform.
More here: Study: 75 Percent Of The World’s Heads Of State Are Now On Twitter
After opening 51 retail stores in 2012, Microsoft announces locations for the first six in 2013
Microsoft on Wednesday announced the first plans for its retail strategy in 2013. The company says it opened 51 stores this year, and it’s already revealed where it will open the first six next year.
The news follows an announcement earlier this month that revealed Microsoft will be extending the majority of its Specialty store (just some products) locations into the New Year, as well as transitioning some of its Specialty stores into permanent Full-line stores (all products). The company has not disclosed the exact timing for when this will happen, and of course the same has happened with the new stores announced today.
Here are the first new locations for 2013:
- The Shops at La Cantera, San Antonio, Texas.
- Dadeland Mall, Miami, Fla.
- Beachwood Place, Beachwood, Ohio.
- Westfield San Francisco Centre, San Francisco.
- City Creek Center, Salt Lake City.
- St. Louis Galleria, St. Louis.
All the stores are located in the US, despite the fact that Microsoft opened its first international stores this year: in Edmonton, Burnaby, Vancouver, and Toronto, Canada. The company did not reveal any additional plans for more international stores, but more are bound to open next year, and we already know this the first UK store is coming to London in March 2013.
The retail push is key for Microsoft as it continues forward in the hardware market. With devices such as the Surface and Xbox 360, it helps to have a bigger and bigger retail presence. Retail stores also play a role in helping the company sell more software, which naturally still generates the larger majority of its revenues and profits. In fact, the only real criticism we have is that Microsoft is expanding its retail presence rather slowly.
See also – Is Microsoft putting its retail software empire at risk with Windows Store? and Ballmer: “We’ve got to beat” Apple anyway, so let’s build stores next to them
Image credit: Don Emmert/Getty Images
More here: After opening 51 retail stores in 2012, Microsoft announces locations for the first six in 2013
500px Acquires French iOS App Studio Pulpfingers To Beef Up European Presence
500px, the Toronto-based startup known for its slick photo sharing site, has already come a long way toward being the darling of the digital photo buff set here in North America. In 2013, the company is setting its sights on conquering Europe.
To that end, 500px has just acquired Pulpfingers, a Strasbourg, France-based startup that makes photo-focused iOS apps. It’s mainly an acqui-hire deal, which we’re told was an all-stock transaction in the “low seven figures” range.
Notably, one of Pulpfingers’ big apps has been ISO500, an iPhone app for browsing photos on 500px. Earlier this week in what now seems like a hint of the pending 500px deal, Pulpfingers announced that it would cease development on Photopular, its app for browsing Flickr photos.
Pulpfingers’ two-man founding team of David Charlec and Jerome Scheer (pictured in the photo at right, incidentally working at 500px’s recent Pixel Hack Day event) will continue to operate the Pulpfingers app for the next several months as they transition to full-time roles working on the 500px platform. They’ll be spending lots of time in Toronto in the coming months, but will ultimately keep their base in France as a European outpost of 500px.
The real focus here is expanding into the European market. 500px CEO Oleg Gutsol said in an emailed statement:
“It’s been our intention to increase our presence in Europe and we’ve been looking for the right opportunity. We have huge numbers of photographers in Germany, France and Spain, so a central presence in France makes a lot of sense.”
This is the second acquisition 500px has made this year. This past summer, the company bought another two-man startup, recommendation engine startup Algo Anywhere, for $2 million in cash and stock.
It may seem like an impressive level of M&A activity for a startup that has raised some $525,000 in seed funding from investors, but 500px makes money on its own by selling premium accounts. It’ll be interesting to see how it continues to scale in the months ahead as it looks to grow on a more global level.
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