Gary Vaynerchuk has been hustling since he was a kid. Recently he started a company with his brother A.J. called VaynerMedia. Before starting VaynerMedia, Gary was a video blogger and the director of operations at a wine retail store. He has also authored a couple of books called Crush It! Why Now Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion and The Thank You Economy.
Twitter has hired the team from Cabana. Cabana is a team of developers that is known for creating visually stunning mobile applications. The terms of the deal are unknown, but we do know that Twitter was mostly interested in the talent. The team will be joining Twitter and Cabana as a company will be shutting down effective December 1st.
Google has acquired Wildfire Interactive for $250 million. Wildfire Interactive helps companies manage their presence on Facebook and Twitter. Google outbid Facebook for the deal. Previously Google tried to buy Buddy Media, but they lost on that deal to Salesforce.com.
9GAG is a meme website that competes against websites like KnowYourMeme and Quickmeme. 9GAG, a company that participated in Dave McClure’s 500 Startups incubator, has raised $2.8 million from Silicon Valley investors like True Ventures, Freestyle Capital, Greycroft Partners, 500 Startups, Scott Banister, Chris Sacca, David Tisch, Kevin Rose, Tim Ferriss, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ben Ling, Karl Jacob, James Hong, Philip Kaplan, and several others. The Hong Kong-based 9GAG has 70 million global unique visitors and over a billion page views per month. [AllThingsD]
Airtime is a startup that was founded by Sean Park and Shawn Fanning. It is a video chat program that connects you to people on your Facebook network and the company has raised $33.5 million in funding. Today Airtime released a new viral video that features celebrities like MC Hammer, Kurt Russell, Gary Vaynerchuk, Ronnie Lott, and San Francisco mayor Ed Lee. The lead character in the video is Ian Pfaff. Check out the video below:
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Milk Inc. is a new company that was co-founded by Kevin Rose. Rose is the founder of Digg and co-founder of Revision3. Milk is essentially a company where several developers brainstorm technology and mobile ideas and works away at building them. If there isn’t any sudden traction, then the project gets shut down. Milk has raised $1.5 million in angel funding from well known investors. Investors include Mike Maples, Jr. (Floodgate), David Sze (Greylock Partners), Ron Conway, Dave Morin, Philip Rosedale, Evan Williams, Joshua Schachter, Ashton Kutcher, Michael Arrington, Philip Kaplan, Chris Sacca, Tony Hsieh, Gary Vaynerchuk, and several others. [VentureBeat]
Yobongo is a location based mobile group chat startup company that has raised $1.35 million in funding from several angel investors. You can chat with random people that are near you and they plan to launch an Android app soon too.
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Cork’d was a wine reviews website that was led by Gary Vaynerchuk. Cork’d launched in 2006 and they hired Lindsay Ronga as CEO about 1.5 years ago. Ronga decided to move to other opportunities and Vaynerchuk is involved in too many other projects. People that have data on Cork’d can export it over the next 90 days or so. Cork’d Senior Editor Jon Troutman will be working with Vaynerchuk on other projects in the wine industry. Below is a video from Vaynerchuk explaining the changes:
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