Boxee is a startup whose flagship service is the ability to deliver online content to TVs and to Apple TV.  Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures have invested $4 million in the social media center platform company.  Bijan Sabet and Fred Wilson will be joining Boxee’s Board through the rounds of funding as well.

Boxee has about 100,000 alpha testers using the service and funding was needed to expand their services.  By the end of 2009, Boxee plans on launching a “kick-ass beta,” building more functionality and content, improving the product based on user feedback, work with team-xbmc and additional developers for resources, and finish the year with over 1 million users.

Currently Boxee delivers content from Hulu, CBS, Comedy Central, Last.fm, and Flickr.

Zynga is a social network game-making machine.  The company has just raised $29 million from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Institutional Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, Avalon Ventures, and Foundry Group.  Union, Avalon, and Foundry were all previous investors.  Zynga is based out of San Francisco, Calif.

Zynga was started by Mark Pincus.  Through this round of funding, Kleiner Perkins partner and former chief creative officer of Electronic Arts Bing Gordon will join Zynga’s board of directors.  Zynga’s last round of funding was $10 million in January 2008.  Reid Hoffman and Peter Thiel of the PayPal mafia were a couple of investors involved in the last round of funding.

Zynga currently has about 18 million uniques per month.  Zynga’s revenue model is advertising and selling game add-ons.  Zynga’s top games on Facebook are Poker, Blackjack, Scramble, Word Twist, PathWords, Sudoku, Sea Wars, Mafia Wars, Dragon Wars, Triumph, Attack!, My Heroes Ability, Ghost Racer, Dope Wars, and YoVille.  Zynga recently acquired YoVille.

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Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) have announced that they have joined Twitter’s Board. It was not revealed before today that Jeff Bezos was an investor in Twitter’s rumored $15 million third round of funding [GigaOm].

“Existing partners Union Square Ventures in New York City and Tokyo-based Digital Garage exercised their pro rata rights to participate in this round as well,” wrote Twitter founder, Evan Williams on the Twitter blog.

Twitter chose Bijan because he is a man that understands the direction of Twitter.  Bijan is “super excited about the possibilities.”  Bezos was selected because he is a seasoned veteran and because he is a source of inspiration for Twitter.

“Jeff’s attention to business process details and distinctive, ‘honk-like laugh’ are similarly admirable traits as far as we’re concerned,” added Williams.

Twitter, the quick blogging tool that allows users to write what they are doing in 140 characters per less through messenger software, mobile phones, and on the web has supposedly raised $15 million.  The $15 million puts Twitter at a valuation at $80 million.  An unnamed investor led the round and participated with previous investor, Union Square Ventures.  With this round of funding, that puts Twitter at above $20 million in total funding.

The new investor is suspected to be Spark Capital.  Some of the hints that lead to Spark Capital being the new invesot is that Bijan Sabet was in San Francisco visiting “a very special company.”  Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter also “Tweeted” that he was “Walking down Newberry St.” in Boston, Mass. which is where Spark Capital is based.

Keep reading Pulse 2.0 as the story develops.

Information Sources:
[1] GigaOM: Twitter VC Funding Done. Raises $15 MM by Om Malik
[2] TechCrunch: Highly Likely Rumor: Twitter Closes Third Round Of Financing From Spark Capital by Michael Arrington

“In our first nine months we have demonstrated that there are tens of thousands of self-directed investors out there who are as good, if not better than the pros,” stated Covestor CEO, Rikki Tahta.

Covestor is a social network with a niche that focuses on investment managers. The company announced today that they have raised $6.5 million in investment from Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and Amadeus Capital Partners. Todd Dagres of Spark Capital along with Alberg Wenger of Union Square Ventures will be joining the Covestor Board of Directors.

Covestor launched in Beta over this past summer and the social network allows members to share and track stock portfolios.  If a portfolio does well, the owner can charge other members to follow them.  Current members are sharing data across $100 million in securities.  The company will be using the funds to advance the technology behind the site.

Covestor also has a widget that compares real time trades against other indexes such as the S&P 500.  An example of the widget is available on the sidebar of Fred Wilson’s blog, A VC.

Information Source:
[1] CNET: Investor social network pulls in financing of its own by Stefanie Olsen

Zynga Game Network is a company that builds online games for social networks like Meebo, Bebo, Friendster, and Facebook.  The Zynga Game Metwork was created by Mark Pincus.  Mark Pincus also started Tribe.net and Support.com.  Currently, Zynga has 27 employees and the team have created games like Poker, Black Jack, Risk, Battleship, and Boggle for social networks.

Some of the games that Zynga has created stick out more than others.  For example, Texas Hold Em’ has thousands of users.

“People already love to play casual games,” stated Fred Wilson, partner at VC firm, Union Square Ventures. “But when you take a casual game and stick it inside a social network, it becomes way more exciting. This is like pouring gasoline on fire.”  Union Square Ventures recently led a $10 million investment in Zynga.

Zynga generates revenue by selling ads to creators of the games.  Everytime a user installs an advertiser’s application, the advertiser is expected to pay 50 cents.  Or game players are given incentives for installing advertiser applications such as increased funds for games of Black Jack.

Brooklyn, N.Y. based web company, Outside.in announced today that they have raised $1.5 million in funding. With this round of funding, the company plans on developing a geo-targeted advertising platform.

Steven Berlin Johnson started the company last year and raised $900,000 last Spring. Some of the investors for the $1.5 million round includes Union Square Ventures, Milestone Ventures, George Crowley, John Seely Brown, Esther Dyson, and John Borthwick. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape participated in the seed funding, but not in this round of funding.

Outside.in auto-detects your location when you enter their URL into your browser. When I typed in the URL from my apartment in Minneapolis, I was relocated to: http://outside.in/Minneapolis. This connected me to news about the 35W Bridge and an article that relates to a police chasing a criminal from St. Paul to Minneapolis.

The site also shows nearby bloggers/local experts that provides information related to the city that one belongs to. This is a neat concept because it is the locals that select what content is relevant. Outside.in even has an iPhone-compatible version of the site.

Outside.in is expected to also make a major announcement this week so stay tuned.

Information Source:
[1] Silicon Alley Insider: outside.in Raises $1.5 Million, Preps Site Revamp

A few days ago, Wesabe announced that they have raised $4 million in funding from Union Square Ventures and O’Reilly AlphaTech.  Wesabe is a website that promotes users to track financial goals.

Creating an account in Wesabe is very simple.  The website registration just asks for a user-name, public name, password, and a couple of security questions.  After that, users can upload accounts whether it is Brokerage, Cash, Checking, Credit Card, Credit Line, Money Market, and Savings. 

If a user wants to upload a Checking or Savings account for example, Wesabe asks for the bank name.  After a bank account is selected, the next step is to download account statements to the computer.  It doesn’t matter whether it is OFX, Microsoft Money, Quick, QFX, QIF, or OFC file types, Wesabe supports them all.

As users input information into Wesabe, tips are provided to help with achieving financial goals.  Some of the user-generated tips are quite obvious such as “pack you own lunch” as a means of saving money, but I’m sure more useful content will be added soon enough.

Jason Knight is the founder of Wesabe and Union Square Venture partner, Brad Burnham will join Wesabe’s board of directors.  The announcement is on Wesabe’s blog^[1].

[1] Wheaties for Your Wallet: Wesabe Raises $4M in Series A Funding