Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Caterina Fake

Google, Twitter, Yahoo!, and Other Tech Company Execs Sign Petition Against SOPA

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 19:49:35 +0000

Stop Online Piracy Act is a bill that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives in October 2011 by Lamar Smith (R-TX). This Act would allow the Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders against websites accused of copyright infringement that would prevent online ad networks and payment facilitators from doing business with those websites. Opponents in this bill believe that this is Internet censorship. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, and Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang oppose the bill. Their letter will appear as a paid ad in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other newspapers.

The timing of this letter coincides with the scheduled committee vote taking place tomorrow with a revised version of the Act. The revision of SOPA will “give the U.S. government the power to censor the Web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran.” Below is the full letter from the Internet executives:

An Open Letter to Washington
We’ve all had the good fortune to found Internet companies and nonprofits in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.
However we’re worried that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act–which started out as well-meaning efforts to control piracy online–will undermine that framework.
These two pieces of legislation threaten to:
* Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;
* Deny website owners the right to due process of law;
* Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and
* Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.
We urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet. Let’s not deny the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders the same opportunities that we all had.
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

eBay Acquires Hunch For Roughly $80 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:20:04 +0000

eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) will be announcing that they have acquired Hunch for around $80 million according to Michael Arrington. Hunch was started by Chris Dixon, Caterina Fake, Tom Pinckney, and Matt Gattis. Hunch has raised about $20 million in total funding since they launched.

Hunch is a start-up company that allows users to answer questions using crowd-sourcing techniques. Hunch will be used on eBay for recommendation technology to revamp their own e-commerce recommendations. Dixon will be responsible for the existing 50 person recommendations team and will be opening an office in New York.

The New York office will grow to about 200 employees that will focus on recommendations. The team will analyze a lot of eBay purchase and sales data to predict inflation or a potential recession.

Hunch was founded in 2008. In mid 2010 Google was rumored to be in talks with Hunch for an acquisition. Investors in Hunch includes General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, SV Angel, and Khosla Ventures.

[Uncrunched]

1000Memories Raises $2.5 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 18:49:39 +0000

1000Memories has raised $2.5 million in a round of funding led by Greylock Partners. Angel investors Caterina Fake, Ron Conway, Keith Rabois, Paul Buchheit, Mike Maples, and Chris Sacca also participated in this round. David Thacker of Greylock will be joining the board of directors at 1000Memories. 1000Memories is a website where loved ones can express words about people in their lives that have passed away. The appeal of 1000Memories is that it does not have ads and the website design is stylish. [TechCrunch]

Stack Overflow Raises $6 Million From Union Square and Several Angels

Amit Chowdhry — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:33:55 +0000

Stack Overflow is a website where users can ask technical and programming languages. The website has just raised $6 million in their first round of funding led by Union Square Ventures. Other investors include Ron Conway, Caterina Fake, Chris Dixon, Bob Pasker, Micah Siegel, Naval Ravikant, Nirav Tolia, and Joshua Schachter.

Stack Overflow describes themselves as a wiki, a blog, a forum, and a social website. Stack Overflow receives 7.1 million unique visitors per month. While the company receives high traffic, they had a hard time charging for their services. This may be one of the reasons why they needed to raise funding according to VentureBeat.

[VentureBeat via NYT]

Hunch Raises $10 Million In Series B, Led By Khosla Ventures

Amit Chowdhry — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:46:32 +0000

Hunch is a startup service that allows users to answer questions using crowd-sourcing techniques. Khosla Ventures is rumored to be leading a $10-$12 million round of funding in Hunch. Other investors include General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Ron Conway. Hunch was started by Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr. Chris Dixon is also a co-founder in Hunch. Dixon started SiteAdvisor and sold it to McAfee in 2006. Hunch receives about 1.2 million uniques per month according to internal numbers. [AllThingsD]

DailyBooth Raises $1 Million From Sequoia, SV Angel, Betaworks, Kevin Rose, and Caterina Fake

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:00:18 +0000

DailyBooth is a real-time photo blogging website that launched out of Y-Combinator. The website launched this past August and has been receiving a good amount of traffic ever since. Now the company has raised $1 million from investors such as Sequoia Capital, SV Angel (Ron Conway), Betaworks, Kevin Rose, and Caterina Fake (Flickr founder). DailyBooth was co-founded by Ryan Amos and Jon Wheatley.

The service encourages users to send messages along with webcam photos. DailyBooth receives about 6 million monthly visitors and a majority of their visitors are 15-25 year old women. The company said that they plan to use the funding for developing a premium offering and photo-printing distribution platform. Below is a screenshot of the service.

Flickr Execs Working On New Start-Up

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:28:24 +0000

Stewart Butterfield (left), Cal Henderson (right)

Many engineers from Flickr have been laid off as part of a massive lay-off that took place at Yahoo! yesterday. Flickr Chief Architect Cal Henderson and Co-founder Stewart Butterfield are now rumored to be parterning on a new start-up.

Butterfield resigned from Yahoo! in June 2008 and Henderson left yesterday. The new start-up is expected to revolve around social gaming according to Kara Swisher. Yahoo! purchased Flickr for $35 million in March 2005. Caterina Fake, wife of Butterfield and another co-founder in Flickr joined a start-up called Hunch as the chief product officer.