Google Hangouts competitor Rounds has just announced the launch of a new “co-browsing” feature which lets friends browse a limited number of popular sites together simultaneously.
This news follows Round’s rollout of HTML5 games in May, which included Tetris and Draw Something clones, plus classic board games like chess and checkers. Currently, Rounds says it has 8 million total users, approximately 6 percent (500 thousand) of which are on mobile.
To launch co-browsing, Rounds teamed up with Channel.me, a Netherlands-based startup which provides multi-user Web browsing services for consumers and businesses. Rounds calls its site browsing feature an “open URL” experience, but it is limited to just 14 sites: Google Search, Wikipedia, Preen.Me, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Amazon, eBay, ESPN, The Huffington Post, wanelo, Imgur and TheFancy.
We’re betting that free services like Pinterest will be most popular for Rounds users, but the company seems determined to make a truly social shopping experience popular on mobile devices. With support for major sites like Amazon and eBay, Rounds will quickly find out if shopping is the sort of behavior users will want to embrace during a video chat.
➤ Rounds for iOS, Android, Web and Desktop
Image credit: Thinkstock
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See the original post: Google Hangouts competitor Rounds now lets users browse websites together while they chat
Online coupon giant RetailMeNot has just filed for $230 million IPO, according to an S-1 released today.
RetailMeNot, which was acquired in 2010 by the $300 million-funded WhaleShark Media, operates one of the largest digital coupon marketplaces (WhaleShark was subsequently rebranded as RetailMeNot this year). In 2012, the marketplace featured digital coupons from over 60,000 retailers and brands, and the site saw more than 450 million total visits to desktop and mobile websites last year. As of December 31, 2012, the company said it has contracts with more than 10,000 retailers, or paid retailers. RetailMeNot sites account for the majority of the company’s traffic.
In terms of financials, RetailMeNot reports that revenues increased from $16.9 million in 2010 to $144.7 million in 2012. In the same period, net income increased from $2.3 million to $26 million, so the company appears to be profitable, and growing.
The Austin-based company has raised $300 million in funding from Google Ventures, IVP, Austin Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Adam Street Partners. Whaleshark had previously acquired a number of other coupon sites, including vouchercodes, deals2buy, coupon7, couponshare, cheapstingybargains.com, and deals.com.
It’s good to see a non-enterprise, consumer-focused company bet on the public markets in this climate. We’ve definitely seen a number of strong enterprise IPOs, so it will be interesting to see how the markets react to the more consumer-facing, and ecommerce-related RetailMeNot.
November 25, 2009
NASDAQ:SALE
RetailMeNot, Inc. (formerly WhaleShark Media, Inc.) is the world’s leading marketplace for online coupons and deals. The company’s websites enable consumers across the globe seeking to save money to find hundreds of thousands of offers from retailers. RetailMeNot, Inc. experienced more than 450 million consumer visits to its sites in 2012. The RetailMeNot, Inc., portfolio of coupon and deal websites includes http://www.RetailMeNot.com, the leading online coupon site in the United States; http://www.VoucherCodes.co.uk, the leading online coupon site in the…
Read this article: Online Coupon Giant RetailMeNot (Formerly WhaleShark Media) Files For $230M IPO
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