VSS Monitoring, a network traffic monitoring company, has taken $20 million in growth equity from Battery Ventures. The funding was the first for the company — founded in 2003 — and it will be used for R&D and to accelerate the company’s expansion. What’s noteworthy is that until this point, VSS had built network monitoring software and hardware and sold it for five years without taking venture capital. &#…  Read More →

Most website users still prefer logging in with a Google account, but Facebook is a close second, according to new data from Janrain , a Portland startup whose software plugin makes it easy for websites to offer multiple login methods. The company’s latest survey looked at statistics from more than 250,000 websites and services that use its software, and found that close to 40 percent of users prefer to sign in with a Google…  Read More →

After warning analysts that its financial results for the latest quarter would be disappointing, AOL couldn’t even manage to hit those lowered expectations , thanks in part to a $1.4 billion writedown on assets — primarily Bebo, the European social network that it unloaded earlier this year. AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong, a former Google executive who joined the company last year, said that he was “pleased with this quarter’s... 

Thirty-four percent of U.S. cell phone users surveyed in May said they use their phone for recording video, according to a study released today by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. That’s up from 19 percent the year before, and while uploading video and watching it online may be less common today, that’s about to change…  Read More →

It’s all good to talk about the big-picture goals for Twitter (as we did earlier this morning ), but the company is still having problems keeping its service alive in the face of rising usage. Today, after the Netherlands upset Brazil in the World Cup, Twitter admitted to “a period of high unavailability” that appeared to last at least an hour. Just before 9 a.m. PT, the…  Read More →

It didn’t get as much attention as some of the other things that Facebook rolled out during the F8 conference in April , but one of the changes the social network made was to link user profiles to “community pages” — in effect, a kind of wiki-style page about a topic or an issue, but one created by an algorithm rather than individual contributions. If your profile states that you’re a fan of a specific movie or... 

Apple said today it sold 1.7 million iPhone 4s in the first three days , far outpacing last year’s record of 1 million iPhone 3GS handsets sold over the same time frame. In light of increasing competition from Google Android devices , how did Apple manage to sell 70 percent more iPhones with this launch? An improved phone combined with strong marketing is part of the story — but for…  Read More →

Smartphone use for maps and navigation in the U.S. has nearly tripled in the past year as GPS radios become standard fare in such devices. Smartphone owners seeking navigation or maps now choose software over a browser , according to digital analytics firm comScore. The majority of map access is in a vehicle — 87.2 percent of all use — while the next largest usage is for walking, running or biking activities. Such research highlights... 

This weekend I’m going to see “Toy Story 3″ in 3-D with my family, which I’m pretty excited about, but the idea that 3-D content is going to become widespread within the next few years thanks to Hollywood and sporting events isn’t likely, according to Paul Sagan, the CEO of Akamai. I asked Sagan at our Structure conference yesterday if Akamai was building up its content delivery network in anticipation of an onslaught... 

Heading up the team at that’s responsible for Dell’s server products, Forrest Norrod leads a kind of startup within the PC giant’s organization. Other groups typically consider anything less than five-for-five record of success for any given project a failure. But Norrod said today that the Data Center Solutions team launched in 2006 with a less rigid goal — seven wins out of 10 attempts — in hopes of having the... 

Verizon Wireless has introduced the Droid X , a successor to the popular Droid launched last October , the first handset to run Google’s Android 2.0 operating system. Built by Motorola, the updated Droid X joins the HTC Incredible, LG Ally and Motorola’s own Devour in Verizon’s Android lineup. While many of its features make the device look like a “me too” when compared to the Incredible — both offer large... 

Google Voice, the service that’s been behind a velvet rope for almost a year, is finally opening up to all comers , at least in the U.S. Google Voice is based on Grand Central’s one-number-for-life service. Google acquired Grand Central in 2007 for a rumored $50 million and since then has been trying to integrate it with its various offerings. From today’s …  Read More →

According to a number of reports from users of Q&A startup Quora , the site is unavailable to Facebook employees who are on the corporate network (although some have been able to reach the site using non-Facebook IP addresses). At first, some users thought that this was a result of the social network blocking its staff members from using the service while at work, but several of those affected — including a number who identified themselves... 

Google is apparently experimenting with adding a human element to its Google News pages, according to a report by the Nieman Journalism Lab . Writer Megan Garber noticed that the regular Google News page had a small box entitled “Editor’s Picks,” with articles from a number of publications selected by an editor at that particular outlet. So is Google trying to curry favor with newspapers and other media outlets that have criticized... 

Frank Meehan, chief executive officer of London-based social handset maker INQ Mobile, said at our Mobilize 09 conference last fall that his company would adopt Android as its main platform . Yesterday, Meehan told GigaOM that it will launch the first of its phones based on Google’s OS, a multitouch device, sometime in the fourth quarter. “We are going all-Android and touch,” said Meehan. The shift will be yet another blow...