Square now processing $10 billion in payments annually

Jack Dorsey can do the Dr. Evil impression 10 times over

Square, the mobile payments startup founded by Jack Dorsey, is now processing $10 billion in payments annually.

Since Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, the announcement of this milestone came not from a press release, but from a tweet.

"Today we're processing $10 billion in payments annually, an amazing and humbling milestone," said Square, Inc. on Twitter.

Rounding out the 140 character limit, the company credited its users, saying, "To the small businesses growing with Square, thank you."

Square talks

Square spokeswoman Faryl Ury added to that small business-focused sentiment.

"We've seen growth across the board," Ury told TechRadar, "from small food trucks and coffee shops, to retail stores and larger brick and mortar merchants."

A jolt expected from Starbucks

While Square may have a growing user base of small and medium-sized businesses, it's about to add a much larger client with 7,000 national stores: Starbucks.

Starbucks is scheduled to start accepting the Square Wallet this month following the coffeehouse chain's $25 million investment in the startup.

Square faces growing competition from PayPal Here, Intuit GoPayment and Groupon Payments, all of which offer slightly more affordable transaction fees.

However, the company remains the mobile payments leader.

Two months ago, Square reached $8 billion payments processed annually. With the impending addition of Starbucks, the "humbling milestone" tweets should keep on coming.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/square-now-processing-10-billion-in-payments-annually-1112684

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Square now processing $10 billion in payments annually

Jack Dorsey can do the Dr. Evil impression 10 times over

Square, the mobile payments startup founded by Jack Dorsey, is now processing $10 billion (UK£6.3 billion, AUD$965,158,000) in payments annually.

Since Dorsey is also the co-founder of Twitter, the announcement of this milestone came not from a press release, but from a tweet.

"Today we're processing $10B in payments annually, an amazing and humbling milestone," said Square, Inc. on Twitter.

Rounding out the 140 character limit, the company credited its users, saying, "To the small businesses growing with Square, thank you."

Square spokeswoman Faryl Ury added to that small business-focused sentiment.

"We've seen growth across the board," Ury told TechRadar, "from small food trucks and coffee shops, to retail stores and larger brick and mortar merchants."

A jolt expected from Starbucks

While Square may have a growing user base of small and medium-sized businesses, it's about to add a much larger client with 7,000 stores: Starbucks.

Starbucks is scheduled to start accepting the Square Wallet this month following the coffeehouse chain's $25 million (UK£15.7 million, AUD$24,128,950) investment in the startup.

Square faces growing competition from PayPal Here, Intuit GoPayment, and Groupon Payments, all of which offer slightly more affordable transaction fees.

However, the company remains the mobile payments leader.

Two months ago, Square reached $8 billion payments processed annually. With the impending addition of Starbucks, the "humbling milestone" tweets should keep on coming.

Source : http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/square-now-processing-10-billion-in-payments-annually-1112684

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Startup Six3 hits the video market with a new take on the messaging app

Telefonica-backed startup Six3 wants to bring video messaging to the masses with its new app -- which lies somewhere between Skype and Viddy.

UK-based, 14-month-old startup Six3 wants to shake up the messaging platform by adding video the mix, and with a backer like Telefonica, the largest telecommunications companies in the world, it might just be able to. There isn’t a direct competitor with any existing mobile app out there, so Six3 describes itself as a hybrid between Whatsapp and Viddy and hopes to be a game changer that opens up a market of users communicating strictly through short video messages.

There are undoubtedly countless messaging and video sharing apps out there, and Six3’s CEO and co-founder Tim Grimsditch categorizes them into three buckets. First there are one-to-one video chatting services, but Grimsditch says that the growth for those companies is slow since users “tend to stick to very tight circles using that service.”

In bucket two are the Instagram-for-video apps. The most well known in this market are services like Viddy or Mobli. Those apps, however, are about producing quality content. Six3 is about bite-sized messages and quick communication.

The third bucket is filled by the all-in-one communication services like Whatsapp and Skype. These apps tend to “focus all of their energy behind a piece of their service that they’re famous for,” says Grimsditch. The video part of a messaging service like Whatsapp, he explains, is weak. “We’re a tiny team with small resources, yet our video messages are twice as fast as Whatsapp.”

Internationally, particularly in Asia, there’s been a lot of experimentation with new types of chat apps — a popular one being WeChat. Its users are so accustomed to its unique voice messaging feature that I was told few WeChat users in China even send text messages anymore. Six3 wants to do something similar by targeting an untapped niche. “[We're] a platform to communicate with video messages in a way that’s easy, mobile, lets people decide on private or public messaging, and lets people use it within their existing network,” says Grimsditch.

Using the app is as simple. You can select a colored filter, record your video for a maximum of 63 seconds (which is where Six3’s name comes from), select the video’s recipients (via email, address book contacts, Twitter, Facebook, or other Six3 users), and press “Send.”

To take social a step further, Six3 announced a deeper Facebook integration yesterday at the Dublin Web Summit’s START conference, where the company was recognized as one of the “world’s 100 most promising early stage startups.” The update adds the ability for users to send private Six3 video messages to individual Facebook friends or share them publicly to your Facebook Timeline, while offering a faster and more seamless user experience. “It makes it incredibly easy to create good looking 63 second long video, share it through Six3, Twitter or Facebook, and respond to the video,” explains Grimditch.

The app will remain free for as long as it exists and you can find it in the App Store (the Android version is in the works), but Six3 will be experimenting with a few revenue models. The ones that Grimsditch was comfortable describing include charging users to archive messages for those important clips that you might have an emotional attachment to as well as the possibility of selling premium options like color filters or other visual effects as in-app purchases.

To many developers’ benefit, smartphone owners aren’t particularly app-loyal. Grimsditch is well aware of this and hopes to jostle competitors and become not jut a trend, but a staple app in the sea of 700 million smartphones. “The reality is that we’re just getting started and the dust isn’t going to settle in this market for years and years. So I think you’re going to see many years of explosive innovation, and we’re absolutely planning to be at the forefront of that.”

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/six3-video-messaging-app/

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Apple rumored to be dipping into its savings to acquire Color Labs

After Color Labs was rumored to be closing its doors, the photo-sharing app startup refuted the allegation by saying it was doing no such thing. Now, a new rumor suggests it's be acquired by none other than Apple.

One minute Color Labs, creator of the photo-sharing social app Color, is closing down, then the next it’s not, and now there’s a rumor it’s about to be purchased by Apple. No matter which one is true, it has certainly put then app-the-world-forgot back in the news.

Today’s rumor comes from TheNextWeb.com, where “trusted sources” say Apple is about to hand over a figure in the high tens of millions for company, and perhaps more importantly, its patent portfolio. The patents up for grabs include those related to GPS, battery saving, group content sharing and HD video recording.

Forbes.com points out that Color has a trademark on its name, and an acquisition would also nab the desirable color.com URL. It also says that Google offered to purchase Color before it launched, and suggests that Apple wants to keep the patents out of Google’s hands.

The report says that Color founder Bill Nguyen has thrashed out a deal with Apple thanks in part to an existing relationship with Eddy Cue, Apple’s VP of Internet Software and Services. Apple also purchased Lala, an online music startup and another Nguyen project, back in 2009. It’s said the Color deal is complete, and only needs a few signatures before it’s final.

If the acquisition rumor is true, it clarifies Color’s statement that “Color is not shutting down,” which under the acquisition scenario, it’s not.

An acquisition would also net Apple some more talent, of which there should be plenty inside the company. Just before Color launched, a report in The Wall Street Journal from March 2011 told the story of how Sequoia Capital got involved with the project. They apparently told Nguyen — after a 45-minute demonstration — that the concept was “transformative” and “not since Google have we seen this.”

Throwing $25 million at the company was supposed to accelerate five years of development into one, which would be achieved by hiring the “best-of-the-best engineers who will rapidly iterate and advance this terrific product.”

Apple rarely talks about its acquisitions, but Color may spill the beans, should there be any truth to this new rumor.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-rumored-to-acquire-color-labs/

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Reports suggest controversial startup Color may finally be throwing in the towel

Color has had a spotty history as an over-hyped up app that has floundered since launch, and a report indicates that the startup may soon be closing its doors for good.

According to VentureBeat, Color, the startup with more unsustainable hype than the the world has possibly ever seen, is preparing to go dark. Shareholders and the board have voted to close the company’s doors for good. 

Color has had a spotty history, and was a disappointment after raising $40 million last year from Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital, enjoying what was obviously now a serious overvaluation. Many saw Color’s inevitable demise, despite having received more money from Sequoia Capital than the early-stage venture capital allotted even Google.

At launch, the app jumped on the photo-sharing bandwagon while also introducing us to the idea of the elastic, location-aware social network. Users could share photos with others in their current location, giving them a real-time photo album of strangers near and around them. But even without location features, Instagram was still dominating the photo-sharing space, and we all know how that’s gone (hint: very, very well). Color’s intial idea floundered, and its founders went back to the drawing board.

Its pivot then transformed the photo-sharing app into a live video broadcasting service integrated with Facebook (and then Verizon). The concept had some potential thanks to the “Instagram for video” trend, and according to AppData was used by 460,000 users per month, but Color Labs’ investors and shareholders purportedly have finally come to the conclusion that it’s not enough.

Venturebeat got a hold of an email that was sent out to its employees that indicates the bleak future for the startup:

“I hope is all well with you. As you may or may not have heard, Color is going through a number of changes. Last week, the board and major shareholders voted to wind down the company.

We ask that you politely cancel any existing commitments stating we are closing our [redacted] program.”

The internal turmoil within Color Labs has been well-documented, and it should come to no one’s surprise that the startup has been on shaky ground for awhile. Color Labs was burning quickly through the $40 million to sustain its first app but had no significant user traction to show for the investment. To the tech world, Color has been the quintessential disappointment.

Color’s co-founder Bill Nguyen was rumored to have retreated from his role as CEO and in his stead, investor and Color Labs board member Geoff Raiston took over the reins. Boardmembers were torn between letting a new CEO officially replace Nguyen, while others have been loyal to its current CEO. Nguyen confirmed with TechCrunch that he had ceased his day-to-day activities with Color, but assured them that everything was in order back at Color Labs headquarters and that he was simply taking a breather. Of course if these most recent reports are valid, his words were simply meant to brush off the uncertain state of the company.

We’ve reached out to Color Labs and will update this space with any new developments.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/color-app-is-shutting-down/

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The Txtr Beagle e-reader will cost just $13, but there’s a catch

A German startup named Txtr has announced the Beagle, an e-reader that will cost 10 euros, but as always, there's a catch.

Berlin-based startup Txtr has announced the Beagle, a brand-new e-reader that could cause a shake up in its market to rival that of the Amazon Kindle Fire’s effect on cheap tablets.

The headline is its projected cost, just 9.90 euros, or about $13. It’s difficult to imagine any piece of consumer electronics — decent consumer electronics — costing so little, and to bring the Beagle in at this price has indeed meant some compromises.

Txtr says the Beagle is the world’s smallest e-reader, measuring 5mm thick at its slimmest point — it has a Galaxy S2-style bump, which we’ll come back to in a moment — and it weighs 128 grams. The screen is a 5-inch E Ink display with an 800 x 600 pixel resolution, and there is 4GB of internal memory. So far, so good. It gets better too, as it supports both .pdf and .epub book formats, along with all others normally supported by a smartphone, according to Txtr’s website.

Here’s where things change, as the Beagle doesn’t have Wi-Fi, and instead uses Bluetooth to transfer books from a smartphone or Txtr’s own Android app. Because the Beagle doesn’t have an operating system of its own, it will rely on the accompanying smartphone app to do everything except turn the pages, right down to altering the font size. There’s also no built-in battery either, and that lump at the bottom of the device is for two AAA batteries.

Companion reader

At first this sounds like a big problem, but Txtr says that two decent cells will provide a year’s worth of reading time, based on the average person reading 12 to 15 books. This also means there’s no charger unit or cables needed, and fewer components inside the device too.

But does abandoning a rechargeable battery, Wi-Fi and ignoring new technology really mean an e-reader can be sold for so little? Sadly, the answer is no, as according to a report in De Spiegel, the Beagle is going to be something called a “companion reader,” and will be sold as an add-on with a new smartphone contract. This subsidized pricing model means the price shortfall will probably find its way into your monthly payments.

The device is still a prototype, and isn’t likely to launch anywhere except Germany this side of Christmas, plus Txtr doesn’t have the best track record with e-readers either, as a previous Kindle challenger failed to catch on. However, the Beagle’s bare minimum approach and stupidly low price are suitably different to anything else on the market, and the world does love a bargain. Are we looking at a future hit?

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/the-txtr-beagle-e-reader-will-cost-just-13-but-theres-a-catch/

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Let’s go MeeGo: open-source OS is on track for its comeback

Jolla, the company resurrecting the MeeGo mobile OS, has announced $260 million in funding and plans to reveal its first phone soon.

In July, ambitious Finnish startup Jolla announced it had adopted the abandoned — by Nokia, at least — operating system MeeGo, and would be designing and developing new smartphones based around it.

Jolla’s seriousness was proven by the members of its team, the majority of whom worked on MeeGo with Nokia, and therefore were both personally and professionally attached to the project from the start. MeeGo has plenty of fans around the world too, thanks primarily to the Nokia N9, the one and so-far only MeeGo smartphone to be released.

That could all change very soon though, as Jolla has announced that it has raised 200 million euros/$260 million in funding, and that its first smartphone is almost ready for its public debut.

Details on the funding are sketchy, with Jolla saying only that it has formed an alliance with “leading players in the industry,” and that a data center to host the OS’s cloud services and infrastructure will be setup through Cyberport in Hong Kong. This is an important point, as Jolla plans to aggressively target the Asian and Chinese market, calling China a “game changer in the technology industry,” adding how it wants to create the “third smartphone ecosystem in China,” after Android and iOS.

Jolla’s MeeGo OS has a codename too, Sailfish, and it will make its first appearance very soon. Jussi Hurmola, Jolla’s CEO, called the OS “more open than Google Android regarding apps and service development,” and said in a tweet that now the ecosystem support system is in place, the company “is very close to announce the date for the device launch.” Speaking to Lightreading.com, Hurmola said that the launch dates for the hardware would be decided later this week.

International availability promised

International fans of MeeGo shouldn’t despair at this apparent focus on Asia, as a tweet from Jolla’s official Twitter account stated that Sailfish is “definitely not for China only.”

As for the first phone, if Jolla listens to those who voted in its poll to find out the preferred form factor for the debut device, it’ll be a touchscreen QWERTY slider. Of the just over 3,000 people who voted, 47-percent chose it, despite — or perhaps because of — the design having fallen from mainstream grace over the past few years. The phone announced is almost certainly going to be a pre-release device though, as Sailboat isn’t going to be available for licensing until early 2013.

Speculating on whether Jolla has a meaningful future ahead of it is almost impossible at this stage, particularly without a look at the Sailboat OS and the phone on which it will first appear. Concentrating on rapidly developing markets — in this case China — is a solid tactic, and something which other companies looking to re-invent themselves are also doing.

Competition is fierce though, with ZTE already adopting Mozilla’s Firefox OS, and the Alibaba Group pledging to invest $200 million per month into its Aliyun mobile OS. Jolla has certainly got some hard work ahead if it wants that coveted third position in the market.

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/meego-on-track-for-its-comeback-with-jolla/

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WeHostels takes on the space between CouchSurfing and Airbnb

Travel app WeHostels has all the app finesse of Airbnb without the high prices. The startup officially launches to target the last-minute backpacking crowd.

Today WeHostels is announcing its public launch, pivoting from its beginnings as Inbed.me. The currently mobile-only app is targeting the space between CouchSurfing and Airbnb — the world of cheap hotel and hostel bookings. The startup is still riding its $1.2 million raised this past spring, and silently added 30,000 downloads in the past three weeks.

Before the WeHostels mobile app, the service existed as Web client Inbed.me – but surprise, we users all have our minds in the gutter and interpreted the name in the most inappropriate way possible. Though there’s been a name change, the concept more or less remains the same: Connect to Facebook and find last-minute affordable last-minute accommodations on-the-go. It’s not all utility, however, and the social link gives you options to connect with other guests so you can, as WeHostels puts it, make friends en route before you even get to your destination.

Of course, the other big switch-up would be that fact that WeHostels is entirely ditching the desktop in favor of a mobile-approach. According to the team, it was a pure logistics decision when they saw traffic from smartphones growing 10 times faster than their Web app.

“We decided to focus only in mobile because it’s a fascinating new arena that requires a very unique set of skills in terms of product design and distribution,” says co-founder Diego Saez-Gil. “By focusing only in mobile, we’re forcing ourselves to become experts on it, and therefore we can outperform any team in any big company working on it.”

Despite that focus, WeHostels sees beyond the smartphone. “In the future we plan to develop solutions for all devices and platforms – we will need to be ubiquitous,” Saez-Gil tells me. “But we prefer to start on the one platform where the new ways of interacting with the Web are happening.”

The fast and quiet growth that WeHostels experiencd over the last few weeks saw the userbase grow largely in the United States, with Europe coming in second, and from there travelers in South America and Australia getting on board with the network. The current version of WeHostels has 80 cities available, but new partnerships with Hostelworld and Expedia will hugely increase those options worldwide.

“We will keep growing in terms of cities and accommodations, and we will develop for other devices,” says Saez-Gil, who mentions that iPad and Android are up next. “In the longer future we consider expanding to other verticals in the travel space and becoming the one-stop-shop where young travelers plan and book their trips from mobile devices.” 

Source : http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/wehostels-takes-on-the-space-between-couchsurfing-and-airbnb/

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