Nordic Performance In The Deloitte 500
Every year Deloitte puts together a ranking of the fastest growing companies in Europe. We edited that list down, and put together all the companies featured in the top half of the Deloitte 500 that were in ArcticStartup's area of interest. The first number you'll see is the company's ranking on the complete European list of companies, and also keep in mind the final number is based on the percentage revenue growth over the last five years:
While South Korea Named As Top Tech Market, Nordics Remain The Land Of Promise For Startups
While none of the Nordic or Baltic countries have made it to the very top, despite our wishes, we are proud to see Sweden, Iceland, Denmark and Finland in the top 10 of the latest ICT Development Index (IDI). These global rankings come from the Measuring the Information Society 2011 report, published by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). ITU is the UN agency for information and telecommunications technologies.
The top spot belongs to South Korea. The country has been termed as the most advanced Internet economy in the world and this is the second consecutive year that it has been ranked number one. This is by no means surprising given the fact that South Korea has:
Greylock Partners Starts Tech Fund Worth $160 Million For Europe And Israel
Looks like the technology scene in Europe is getting another backer as the prominent US VC, Greylock Partners announced a $160 Million technology fund. The funds are poised to be used for Internet technology companies in the European region as well as in Israel. The firm has been pretty a notable mention with stakes in leading internet brands like Facebook, LinkedIn and Groupon.
Facebook And Spotify Rumored To Partner To Bring Music Streaming To The Social Network
This is definitely making things for Spotify as (unconfirmed) reports rolled out that Facebook will be launching a music streaming service. This is expected to be launched in the first week of June. The service is currently being tested and upon launch will have users of the social network seeing a Spotify icon just beneath the Photos and other links on the left hand side.
Cabforce Taxi Services Just A Click Away, Partners With Finnair
Finnish start-up Cabforce entered the the taxi business scene back in 2010 with plans of building an IT solution for taxi entrepreneurs. The platform provided a web-based dispatch and fleet-management tool along with multichannel booking tools for passengers. This also included a user friendly software that helps cab drivers interact with both clients and dispatchers. Earlier last week Cabforce made announcement on expanding its cab business globally.
Zerply Joins 500Startups, Coming Soon Out Of Private Beta
The next generation professional network (to be), Zerply is going beyond its private beta and coming out for the public. And while this news is worthwhile another one is of Zerply heading over to 500Startups. This means they will be a part of the 500 Startups accelerator program in the Valley, bringing them closer to the big names in the region along with accelerating their learning during their 4 months.
Sofanatics' Stadium Rings Loud During Ice Hockey World Championships
When there is a platform available to ensure maximum user engagement, there isn’t really a point why it shouldn’t be fully leveraged and Sofanatics has everything to give to sports fans they need. We've written in the past about their latest improvement to the service, the stadium feature, which is one of the reasons for the wide usage relating to this post as well.
B2B Gets More Social With Ziliot
Social networks generally bring the idea of making friends to people's minds, but that trend has rapidly evolved. Businesses are beginning to user this for marketing and engaging their customers to help build a better brand image and professionals have taken this up to collaborate with others across borders. There is no end to possibilities on the web and it has made things a lot more efficient, at least in terms of communications.
Endomondo, Among 25 Apps At The Google I/O, Announces Social Features
Endomondo, a sports community based on real time GPS tracking for trekking, cycling etc has registered another milestone. The Copenhagen based startup was among the 25 developers selected to showcase their talent at the ongoing Google I/O conference. Endomondo Sports Tracker, the mobile app that transforms the mobile device into your pocket trainer can also boast of being the one out of the 100,000 or so apps in the Android Market to be invited for the same.
Microsoft Acquires Skype For $8.5B: The Who Takes What Of The Deal
It couldn’t have come at a better time than this. We had been anticipating the official word on the Microsoft’s acquisition of Skype since early morning and word has been rolled out that the acquisition has been finalized and done with. The rumored buyout price was $7 Billion and the tech community across the globe thought it was far fetched. Here’s a shocker; Microsoft paid a healthy $8.5B for its acquisition of Skype, giving it a total control of the company, even the $686M debt on it.
Voddler Hits 1 Million Users
We have been keeping track on the progress of Voddler for a long time at Arctic Startup and perhaps the best possible mention came when we talked about the movie streaming service hitting past 300,000 user mark back in 2010. The service has now scaled to over I million users as 13 year old Phillip became its 1 millionth user. This is quite an achievement given that the movie streaming service had removed the need for invite based registrations and opened for all in 2010.
Update: PremiumFanPage Now Handles Direct Translations Of Twitter Feed And Facebook Pages
ArcticStartup covered PremiumFanPage back in January when it was launched at the CES ‘11. The venture is the brainchild of Jani Penttinen, CEO and founder of XIHA Life and is based on XIHA’s multilingual social media platform. This means your content on numerous social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, blogs can amalgamate at one single fan site via a platform that offers real time translation.
TechStars Outshines Y-Combinator As The Top Startup Accelerator Program In The US
When you mention startups, funding, mentoring and networking are the most essential ingredients needed by each aspiring founder. There are great ideas waiting to be put into practicality and the only thing that keeps them from shooting from their roots has been the absence of incubators and accelerator programs. Things have been changing and a number of startup accelerator programs and incubators have surfaced, this is where ideas are carved into reality, founders are provided guidance, the essential tips to direct them towards success and the ever needed funding.
Russian Search Engine Yandex Shared Information With FSB
Yandex has been on top when it comes to coverage recently and sharing another piece won’t be surprising. Unless it isn’t positive. BBC has mentioned that Yandex, Russia’s largest search engine has confirmed sharing confidential data with the state’s secret service; the FSB. Bad news, given that Yandex had set its eyes on raising $1 billion via listing on Nasdaq.
Mobile App Download Will Exceed 44 Billion By 2016
An app for everything is where we are heading onto as almost everything goes mobile. By mobile I simply point at mobility and not just smartphones in the likes of the Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, etc, although these are the devices that take the cake away the instant you mention mobility. We have witnessed how the app stores have swarmed with applications of all sorts, from those associated to communication, social networking to gaming. You think of it and there is something available, a major reason why there is a crazy number of downloads taking places each instant.
A recent study was published by ABI Research, the gist of which states that the current trend of smartphone apps will continue successfully for at least another 5 years. Before I proceed with the exact download numbers, it would be better to jot down the number of applications available for various mobile operating systems:
Foodie.fm Becomes More Social
Foodie.fm, the startup we reviewed back in February last year. Foodie helps you with grocery shopping in a reverse way; lets you add a meal to your cart and breaks it into the ingredients that you need to prepare the meal. The value of the application is clearly in its ease of use - it basically combines your cook book with recipes and your shopping list.
WOT Continues To Grow, Crosses 20 Million Downloads
Web of Trust or WOT, the safe surfing software that protects surfers from malicious links, spyware and spam continues its growth that has been exponential in the last one year especially. The service recently crossed the 2 million registered user mark and out comes another update. The Web of Trust went past the 20 million download mark, quite significant since it took only a year to add another 10 million.
Russia Goes Mapping With Yandex Maps
Yandex has success written all over it when it comes to being the leading search engine and the most visited site in Russia with over 21.5 million average monthly users. When you are this big, there is little reason why you won’t try different things. We have been talking about the Russian Internet company and news has always been different. From providing aspiring entrepreneurs with mentoring at Yandex.Start to funding the same with Yandex.Factory. In its latest release, Yandex announced the launch of Yandex Maps, with map of Moscow and Moscow region being the first to be rolled out earlier.
The Four Favorite Teams From Last Weekend's Garage48 Tallinn Event
While Garage48 is still a little under a month away from the African Safari, the event at Tallinn last weekend has had the curtains dropped. The event saw over 120 people working hard in 18 teams to give their ideas a touch of reality. Garage48 is a weekend type company development project, where people of different crafts get together to work on projects for the duration of 48 hours. After the weekend, teams present their results in front of an audience.
Wordy Professional Editing Gets Wordier: Multiple File Uploads And New pricing
Publishing content online might be considered to be the easiest job for many but for those who mean serious business, pushing content online is a matter of great importance. Many bloggers out there would readily agree to this when they switch from writing for their personal blog to someone else’s. You have to adopt to a certain standard, the perfect writing style and tone of voice, just to name a few. We reviewed Wordy, a startup that takes up the responsibility of all your editorial nightmares by providing you a quick, standardized and cost effective solutions. Write, submit, pay and publish with confidence. Quite simple. Recently, they announced new pricing and features to their service.
TruthFeed, Now With A Few New Features
Experience sharing social startup, TruthFeed made entry to help users make better decisions as well as share their experience with a global audience. TruthFeed is easy to use, helps you with making the correct choices or decisions and it has made some updates. We covered the company earlier in this post.
Uplause Crosses 2 Million Audience Mark
When we called Uplause the Real World Massively Multiplayer Crowd Games, we weren’t wrong at all. The developers who create games for large events to enable the audience to collectively play interactive mini games. Uplause has recently made news with registering a milestone of hitting 2 million users.
Stardoll 5 Years Old And 100 Million Strong
We had mentioned Stardoll a couple of weeks ago regarding them counting days till they hit the 100 million member milestone. Another milestone that they hit over time was their 5th birthday. Yesterday Stardoll announced that they had been operational 5 years. It is worth noting that in 5 years, they have reached a 100 million members, something not many others are able to do.
Swedish NetClean Helps Fight Child Pornography
NetClean, a Sweden based company uses image recognition in a new manner to tackle a difficult problem - child pornography. The company has a new approach to the problem and instead of using traditional image recognition, which has its problems, it has partnered with local law enforcing agencies and organisations to fight the problem.
Skype Reaches Another Milestone - 29 Million Users Simultaneously Online
There has to be a bit of Skype in every communication. It might sound a bit exaggerated given that quite a massive chunk of the world is yet be online or take advantage of the latest innovations in technology for effective communication, but talking about Skype for the moment, it registered another milestone.
Interview With Vesa Perälä On Web Of Trust Lawsuit
We had reported about the lawsuit against Web of Trust (WOT) last week and had mentioned that we will be inquiring Vesa Perälä, CEO of WOT about the same. While talking about the lawsuit alone would have been a repetition, hence we thought of providing a well rounded information on WOT as well. I was quite impressed with its growth, its community is expected to grow to 50 million by the end of the current year.
Shooples Your Real Estate Agent For Online Webshops!
Online shopping is not exactly a very new idea but it is definitely one of those areas that has seen quite a lot of innovation and implementation of newer ideas over time. It started with services like Amazon, eBay, Craigslists, etc and has continued to expand with newer services. Leveraging the same idea Shooples has made it out as the latest startup from Denmark as an online webstore provider.
DataMarket Expands Horizons: Adds 100 Million Time Series, 600 Million Facts
After launching last year, DataMarket stepped into the web space as an important place to help one find essential figures and structured data from public and private services achieved another milestone today. DataMarket shared news on inclusion of more data and facts in a bid to become the Wikipedia of World Facts.
Habbo Hotel Continues To Register Success After Success: 200 Million Users And Counting
2010 was the best year for Habbo Hotel and I thought this would be one news regarding Habbo Hotel for quite some time to come. But success is not stationary and it continues to move ahead. The world’s largest teen virtual community and social game, Habbo registered its 200 millionth user just with the start of January. Quite a news since its tenth anniversary.
Startupbootcamp Comes To Madrid, Next Stop London And Berlin!
When you succeed at first, you have every reason to expand and take up newer and bigger challenges. That’s exactly what Startupbootcamp is doing after the very successful first edition, which was launched as a quarter long program in Copenhagen between August and November, 2010. It brought 10 teams of 32 selected entrepreneurs from 12 different countries, face to face with 75 top mentors in the industry. All that came with thanks to Startupbootcamp’s co-founder, Alex Farcet who put a good number of months to find the right mentors to guide these entrepreneurs.
