Peter Thiel Invests (Ag...

Online accounting software maker Xero has raised $16.6 million in new funding from existing investors — including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, whose most famous investment, Facebook, just filed for an IPO , Thiel first invested $3 million in New Zealand-founded Xero back in 2010, with the aim of fueling expansion in the United States. The company says that’s also the reason for the latest round. This time, Xero also notes that it recently doubled its US team, from three employees to six, and hired Jamie Sutherland (formerly vice president and general manager at Sage Software) as the president of US operations. Other investors in the round include Sam Morgan and MYOB co-founder Craig Winkler. The company says it has 60,000 paying customers and 240,000 users. It partners with Yodlee to bring automatic bank feeds into the service, with 5,000 feeds in the US. “Xero transforms the way small businesses handle their accounting,” Thiel said in the press release. “Where conventional accounting software is cluttered, slow, and anchored to a desktop, Xero’s cloud-based services and intuitive design simplify an impressive suite of financial tasks. We’re excited to see Xero grow throughout the U.S.”

Draft of Proposed “Mobi...

The concept of mobile privacy has been thrown into the spotlight more than ever recently as the fiasco surrounding Carrier IQ has come to light.  As such, new mobile privacy guidelines are being proposed to combat the fears of consumers and help keep sensitive mobile data secure and private. This week, Rep. Edward Markey introduced what could become federal legislation to add mobile privacy safeguards to mobile phone users in the United States.  Markey released a “discussion draft” of the proposed “Mobile Device Privacy Act,” which would obligate wireless operators and their partners to “notify subscribers if they employ mobile analytics measurement tools like the controversial Carrier IQ.” Some key protections include: Third party receiving the personal information must have policies in place to secure the information. Agreements on transmission to third parties must be filed at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Outline an enforcement regime for the FTC and FCC, along with State Attorney General enforcement and a private right of action. More info on the Mobile Device Privacy Act is available here , and in this Mobile Marketing Watch article .

E-Commerce Site For Hou...

Alice.com, the retail platform for household goods, has raised $3.6 million in funding from an undisclosed group of Spanish investors. This current round brings the total funding amount raised by Alice.com to $18.2 million. Launched in June, Alice.com’s retail platform allows consumer packaged goods manufacturers, like Procter & Gamble, to sell directly to consumers instead of going through retail channels like Target or Wal-Mart. On the consumer side, Alice.com lets users create a profile of their household (i.e. how many adults, kids, babies) and then the site will keep track of items and reminds users with emails when they are running low and need to reorder. Each shipment is bundled together in a single ‘Alice’ box, delivered directly to the consumer’s door, with no shipping costs. The e-commerce marketplace is now home to more than 600 manufacturers and thousands of household brands – from large household names, to smaller niche brands. In the past year, Alice says it has seen a 200% increase in the number of direct-to-consumer online storefronts the platform powers for CPG brands. These brands include Kellogg’s, Slim-Fast, BIC, Seventh Generation, 3M, Ecover and Solo Cup. Last year, the company announced a merger with spanish company Koto.com to expand the marketplace to an international European audience. Alice launched in Spain last year, and plans to debut similar sites in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom in 2012 and 2013. Alice says it will use this latest round of funding to enhance its consumer offerings through site advancements and new features.

Is Bebo Finally Dead? (...

Update: Apparently all the online grieving was over a false alarm. A Bebo spokesperson just emailed me to say that the site was down due to “a technical clusterfuck” — it’s not actually dead. He also says that the site still has a niche audience, largely in the United Kingdom, and it will be launching more products soon. Largely forgotten social network Bebo may have shut down today. Bebo users certainly seem to think that this is the end. The Bebo website is down, and as a result there’s a steady stream of sad tweets using the “ #bebo ” and “ #ripbebo ” hashtags. And if it’s a false alarm, the company isn’t doing much to combat that impression — the most recent posts on both the Bebo and Team Bebo Twitter accounts date from November. Bebo co-founder (in its first incarnation) and investor (in its latest) Michael Birch also tweeted : “Am super sad that Bebo has actually gone. Some very fun times with very cool people. #RIPbebo – keep sharing that luv!” (He later corrected himself : “Hold the press (too late for that), Bebo should be coming back in a matter of hours. #LongLiveBebo”) You probably haven’t heard anything about Bebo lately, but you may remember that AOL (which, of course, currently owns TechCrunch) acquired the site for $850 million back in 2008. AOL never really figured out what to do with the site, and eventually sold it to Criterion Capital Partners for less than $10 million. After that, there were signs that things might start picking up — Xbox co-creator Kevin Bachus joined as chief productive officer, and Birch, one of Bebo’s original co-founders, invested in the new company . There was a redesign, too . There weren’t, however, any obvious signs that Bebo was gaining real momentum, and the company has been silent for the past few months.

With Funds Frozen &...

First the US Justice Department raided Kim Dotcom’s sprawling New Zealand estate and seized random items from cars to Predator statues . Then they shut down the massive website, froze their assets and threw seven men into a New Zealand jail pending an extradition trial. Dotcom and his cronies weren’t the only ones felling the pinch, though. Megaupload’s 180 million reported users were left locked out, unable to access their files. Now those files might be deleted forever as soon as Thursday. The word comes from a letter to Megaupload from the US Attorney indicating that since the Justice Dept. already executed their search warrants, they were done with the servers. Because of past due bills, the management was delegated to the storage hosting companies, Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc, who can start wiping the servers as soon as this Thursday, February 2, 2012. Megaupload’s legal team is actively seeking the help of the prosecutors to prevent the data genocide. Upon filing the charges against Megaupload, the company’s funds were frozen. Without cash Megaupload cannot pay the past-due bills to turn the servers back on. However, Megaupload’s lawyers are arguing that the company needs its servers and the files they contain for the company’s legal defense. Hopefully, if the this tactic is successful, users will once again gain at least read-only access to their files. “Megaupload’s assets were frozen by the United States. Mega needs funds unfrozen to pay for bandwidth, hosting, and systems administration in order to allow consumers to get access to their data stored in the Mega cloud and to back up the same for safekeeping.” MegaUpload lawyer Ira Rothken told TorrentFreak . Megaupload might be gone forever. Many of its users probably learned their lesson to entrust critic data to the cloud. But won’t someone please think of the innocent files? Someone?!