Get the latest announcements from MEF Members across the mobile ecosystem globally in this weekly review of member news…
Evernote is eight – and it has 200 million users
Evernote is eight – and it has 200 million users
On the week of its eighth anniversary, note-taking platform Evernote has just welcomed its 200 millionth customer.
The firm has amassed its user base across 200 countries and 31 languages, with 24 per cent in the US, 35 per cent in Asia and ten per cent in China. It said that over eight years, its users had written five billion notes.
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Twilio launches IPO – share price doubles
Investors gave a big thumbs up to Twilio when the cloud messaging firm went public this week.
Shares closed up nearly 92 per cent in their first day of trading on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange. They closed at $28.79 per share compared with the $12 to $14 Twilio proposed in its prospectus. IPOs are still quite rare in the tech space, so this one was watched closely.
Twilio offers developers a cloud-based service for adding voice and text into their apps. It means they don’t have to negotiate with operators or aggregators.
The firm floated 10,000,000 shares of Class A common stock.
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Chinese conglomerate buys Smaato for $148 million
The consolidation in adtech goes on – China’s Spearhead Integrated Marketing Communications Group has bought Europe’s Smaato.
It paid $148 million for Smaato, which delivers a real-time ad sales platform for mobile publishers and developers. The deal follows shortly after another MEF member, Opera Mediaworks, was bought by a conglomerate of Chinese companies for $1.2 billion.
Smaato was early into the mobile RTB landscape, having launched in 2005. Its CEO Ragnar Kruse, said: “Spearhead will provide us with a big fund that will allow us to do acquisitions ourselves and drive organic growth,” Kruse said.
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OpenMarket teams up with specialists in coupons and MMS
Two messaging specialists, CodeBroker and Vehicle, have joined OpenMarket’s partner program. They take their place in a group of ‘best-of-breed’ firms contributing to OpenMarket’s overall solutions for enterprise customers.
CodeBroker specialises in mobile couponing, while Vehicle uses multimedia messaging (MMS) to create one-on-one interactions with customers. The partners will now get access to more than 400m customers.
OpenMarket launched the program in February with two partners: In the Chat, a text messaging customer-service program, and Interactions, the virtual-assistant provider.
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Blippar targets digital agencies with DIY augmented reality tools
Blippar targets digital agencies with DIY augmented reality tools
The augmented reality giant Blippar has released an updated set of creative tools so that agencies can crease AR experiences “with no code or technical know-how required.”
It is inviting agencies to participate in a beta launch of the Blipperbuilder tools. Blippar is one of the world’s leading AR evangelists and has worked with brands including Heinz, Oreo and Maybelline.
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Mozilla funds eight firms to keep the internet ‘open’
Browser firm Mozilla has announced the winners of its Open Source Support (MOSS) Mission Partners awards. Eight projects share $385,000.
The big winner is Tor, the system for browsing anonymously and without being tracked. It received $152,500.
Recipients were chosen for their ability to improve the openness and availability of internet services. The firm’s statement said: ”Aside from accessibility, security and privacy are common themes in this set of awards. We are supporting several secure communications tools, a web server which only works in secure mode, and a distributed, client-side, privacy-respecting search engine.”
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