Prismatic Gets $15M From Jim Breyer And Yuri Milner To Attack The Impossible Problem Of Bringing You Relevant News News aggregation is a glory-less pursuit, where even the companies that do succeed have to grapple with the fact that no algorithm is ever going to be as good as the human brain at judging what news/content will appeal to said brain. It’s an AI-hard problem. So when Prismatic founder

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and FAQ ME. You can follow him @jaltucher. Many people have said to me in the past few months, “I’m going to buy a home.” Or, “What do you think of the idea of me buying a home?” Everyone

[Editor’s Note: Brenden Mulligan is an entrepreneur who created Onesheet, TipList, ArtistData, MorningPics, and PhotoPile. He’s a mentor for 500 Startups and several startups. You can find him on Twitter at @mulligan.] Highlight is one of the most talked about apps out there. It was touted to be the breakout app at this year’s SXSW. But it wasn’t. In fact, almost everyone I’ve talked to who used i

Media & Entertainment Instagram Reaches 27 Million Registered Users And Says Its Android App Is Nearly Here Instagram, the photo-sharing app that has taken a definitive lead on iOS, said it has surpassed 27 million registered users today at the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. Co-founder Kevin Systrom didn’t disclose daily active users during his fireside chat with TechCrunch editor A

Startups All The Location Apps You Have To Use At The SXSW Royal Rumble It’s turning into a royal rumble at SXSW — the sheer number of location-based networking apps hoping to emerge from the conference as this year’s breakout hit is nearly overwhelming. What’s worse, they’re often so similar in nature, so it’s hard to discern the advantages of one over another. They can’t all be winners. Is the a

Media & Entertainment Pinterest Hits 10 Million U.S. Monthly Uniques Faster Than Any Standalone Site Ever -comScore It’s beautiful, it’s addictive, and now Pinterest is having its glorious hockey stick moment. TechCrunch has attained exclusive data from comScore showing Pinterest just hit 11.7 million unique monthly U.S. visitors, crossing the 10 million mark faster than any other standalone site

This Facebook mobile developers page is pretty interesting, first of all because it starts with a statistic, “350 million users access Facebook from a mobile device every month,” which was just released and then because it describes Facebook mobile web app features and includes screenshots that are unlike anything we’ve seen live. From what I can tell from the screenshots, the app’s core component

Media & Entertainment Study: Facebook Pages Shouldn’t Post More Than 1x Every 3 hours The average news feed post by a Facebook Page receives Likes and comments for 3 hours after being published. To maximize the engagement, impressions, and traffic driven by the news feed, Facebook Page owners should wait at least 3 hours between posts. This new finding from a study by Facebook Page analytics compa

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Joseph Puopolo is an entrepreneur and start-up enthusiast, who blogs on a variety of topics including green initiatives, technology and marketing. In 2011, social media had its share of growing pains. Large brands and corporations took to social media in force to try to find footing in this expanding medium. Some brands found success, while others found peril and n

Editor’s note: Guest contributor Catherine Cook is the co-founder of MyYearbook, a social network for meeting new people. When John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale reach for the same pair of black gloves in the movie Serendipity, they meet and fall in love.  The goal of social discovery applications is to engineer this kind of serendipity. By leveraging demographic and interest data, and by providing g

Etsy Makes It Easy For Users To Post Items To Pinterest With New ‘Pin It’ Button Online pinboard Pinterest is all the rage these days, and as Etsy is showing today with its latest product announcement, e-commerce sites are starting to realize the power of pinning. The e-commerce marketplace is making it easier for Pinterest users to pin and organize Etsy items, via a new Pin It button on Etsy list

Quora Expands Beyond Q&A, Launches ‘Boards’ — A Way To Personally Curate Information Quora is taking a step beyond Q&A this morning with its latest product launch, boards. Users can now set up their own personal-themed bookmarking boards, sort of like a Pinterest for text-based information. Writes Quora CEO  Adam D’Angelo in a blog post, “As Quora has grown, we’ve learned that people want to read

(Founder Stories) Turntable.fm’s Billy Chasen: “Whatever It Takes, Get That Product Out There” Having launched two companies that have gone in dramatically different directions; one’s secured $7-million in funding (Turntable.fm) and another ceases to exist (Stickybits), Turntable.fm’s Billy Chasen wraps his Founder Stories conversation by lending advice to other founders and discusses the biggest