Facebook continues its march across the Internet with the release of its Like button, recommendation feed, comments box and other social plugins as WordPress.org and WordPress VIP widgets. There’s also new one-click WordPress admin options like auto-sharing what users read and auto-publishing blog posts as links from Facebook Pages and author accounts.

The idea is that more blogs will integrate with Facebook now that adding social functionality is as easy as checking a box rather than writing code. Facebook hopes bonus referral traffic will lure in authors, allow it to suck more content into the news feed, and stamp its name everywhere.

TechCrunch is one of the launch partners, but we want your input on which options we should use. We already employ Facebook comments to cut out the trolls, but should we do auto-sharing of your reading habits? I’m going to take a wild guess and say most of you would hate that.

We’re going to start by testing the Recommendations plugin for some users so you can get suggestions for what to read next based on what your Facebook friends are reading. Those in the test will see it in the bottom right corner of article pages. Social reading is off by default but you can activate it if really want to start broadcasting your reading activity.

Let us know your thoughts in the *Facebook* comments below.

Here are the full list of new WordPress options and widgets:

Page and Post Features

All of these features are easy to enable via checkboxes on the Facebook settings page.

• Post to an Author’s Facebook Timeline whenever they publish a new WordPress Post or Page.
• Mention friends and Facebook Pages. This posts to their Timelines as well as lists them on the WordPress Post or Page.
• Post all new WordPress Post or Pages to a specified Facebook Page.
• Like, send, and subscribe buttons can be enabled in a click and are fully customizable.
• Facebook Comments, including full SEO support.
• Open Graph Protocol integration.
• Recommendations bar, which allows users to click to start getting recommendations, Like content, and add what they’re reading to Timeline as they go.

Widgets

All of these features are easy to enable via the Widgets settings page.

• Activity Feed Box. This shows the Facebook user the activity that their friends are doing on your website.
• Recommendations Box. This shows the Facebook user recommendations of pages they should visit based on the actions their friends are taking on your website.
• Like, send, and subscribe buttons.

It’s understandable why you might have been confused. Apple made Siri’s expansion about as clear as mud yesterday at Apple’s WWDC keynote.

She learns more, moves to the iPad, gets all kinds of new integrations in iOS 6 (which most certainly will come to your iPhone 4/3GS), but does she actually hop on over to the new hardware and chat at you like the condescending connectivity-challenged genius that she is?

In short, no.

Officially, Siri is only available on the iPhone 4S and the new iPad (third generation). You can see for yourself in the Keynote video at the 81:15 mark.

So what does this mean for all of the new services and apps in iOS 6 that tap into Siri? Fear not, dear fanboi. You’ll still be able to perform a “Flyover” in Maps, and there are really no limits to what you’ll be able to post on Facebook. You just won’t be able to have Siri post those things for you.

Siri is also the default voice for turn-by-turn navigation in the Maps app, which shouldn’t change if you have an iPhone 4 or 3GS. You simply can’t ask her for directions to the local drugstore.

Update: Pocket-lint has discovered a bit of tiny text at the bottom of Apple’s iOS 6 page saying that 3D mode and turn-by-turn navigation will not be available on the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, or iPad 2. Here’s the official wording:

Flyover and turn-by-turn navigation will be available only on iPhone 4S and iPad 2 or later.

It’s been said over and over again that Siri can work on the iPhone 4, and she can probably function on the iPad 2, too. But Apple is trying to scale out Siri to make sure the user experience isn’t entirely awful. Plus, Apple’s really good at that whole “turning a profit” thing, and the company likes to keep flagship features such as Siri on flagship devices, such as the iPhone 4 and the new iPad.

The same was true for Facetime on the iPhone 4, but Apple then had the excuse of no front-facing camera on the 3GS. This time, the masses will likely be a bit more raucous about a lack of voice-powered fun. Either way, you shouldn’t feel bad. People aren’t proving adventurous with their Siri usage, likely because the experience is underwhelming at best.

Wish for Siri when she can actually get things right the first time and possibly understand your accent.

Apple’s Scott Forstall officially introduced the world to iOS 6 less than 24 hours ago, and already it seems like an intrepid hacker has managed to jailbreak it.

MuscleNerd (of iPhone Dev Team fame) announced from his Twitter account earlier this morning that he managed to jailbreak a 4th generation iPod Touch running the recently-released iOS 6 developer beta, though he’s quick to note that it’s not exactly ready for prime time yet.

Before you get your hopes up too much, know this — the jailbreak is still in its very early stages, and as such it isn’t yet available to the public. Hell, even if it was made available, it wouldn’t actually do people much good, as crucial features like the Cydia third-party software storefront don’t work yet.

On top of all that, it’s also a tethered jailbreak, which means that should the jailbroken iDevice ever run out of juice, it must be connected to and rebooted from a computer. Not exactly the kind of process one likes to deal with on a regular basis, but an untethered jailbreak method is sure to come down the line.

All that said, it’s still pretty astonishing to see such progress made already, and it bodes well for a full-fledged jailbreak method to come after all those little hiccups have been addressed. Apple plans to release iOS 6 to the masses some time this fall, and with any luck the jailbreaking community will be as diligent about this release as they have been about others — let’s not forget that particularly brave users were able to jailbreak iOS 5.0 just a day after it was officially released.

Music startup Songkick, which tracks your favourite bands and tells you when they are gigging, has gotten plenty of traction on the Web and on iOS. But a missing link in the platform play has been Android. That changes today with the launch of their Android app.

By scanning a user’s music library, Google Music account, or Last.fm app, the Songkick for Android app lets users create a concert calendar based on the artists they like and their location.

On Android, all the usual features are present such as importing your favorite artists from Facebook, Pandora or your Last.fm accounts; receive alerts on new concerts; comparing the best ticket offers and a host of social features.

Songkick is now claiming to be the second largest concert destination after Ticketmaster, and they say their own research shows that fans attend nearly twice the number of concerts the year after they start using Songkick. Ticketmaster for its part is the one to beat in this space of course, but their play contains far less social features and integration at present, something which is probably helping Songkick’s growth.

There will be plenty of bits spilled over the next few days about whether Apple is going extinct, whether Jobs’ touch was integral to the Apple experience, and whether this was “The.Worst.Keynote.Ever.” I posit, however, that Apple still has a few good years left and this keynote (now available here) – a precise and well-orchestrated experience dedicated mostly to software – is proof that the Apple vision runs far deeper than the efforts of a figurehead CEO.

To be clear, I despise the fawning adulation given Apple by the tech press. It’s made the company weird and twisted – at least when it comes to media relations – and it gives fans far too much currency in the game of “My computer is better.” Arguably no one else comes close to the ridiculous lengths fans and anti-fans will go to praise or excoriate this company and I assure you that Samsung or Sony execs would give up their private jets and personal chefs for just one ounce of the excitement associated with the Retina MacBook, but that’s another story.

Apple still has it for a number of reasons. First, they are still innovating on the hardware side. The smart among you will note that the Retina screen resolution and pixel density isn’t particularly new in theory but in practice, and in a laptop, it’s quite a stunning feat. There are plenty of 1440×900 laptops but, like the iPad’s retina display, the implementation is far more exciting than the actual technology.

What people consistently fail to understand when it comes to hardware manufacturing is that the vast majority of high tech products produced by Samsung, Motorola, RIM, etc. are mostly built of off-the-shelf designs and are dictated by the vagaries of the market and by the decisions made by Microsoft, Intel, and other major suppliers. Apple hardware is dictated by part availability and price but, in most cases, they are not stymied by parts manufacturers. Apple never buys the “latest and greatest” i.e. the latest graphics cards and chipsets and the best processors. They buy what works for the line-up at that time. Apple also doesn’t have to emblazon their laptops with badges and stickers, either, because it doesn’t play by OEM rules.

So for the company to release a high-res laptop and to move entirely to SSD shows that it is still in the lead. Four months from now, for back-to-school season, you can be almost guaranteed to see a MacBook Pro clone from HP, Sony, and Dell with “HD Super Display” and “Super Fast Flash Drives.” Once Apple takes a technology mainstream, the rest of the manufacturers can easily inject it into their line-ups.

Second, the company is still innovating in software. Naysayers will point to Windows 8 and Metro as the best OS available but, arguably, it’s not yet available and isn’t expected for months – if not years. Mountain Lion adds a number of useful iterative features and supports the new hardware features. The Safari update brings features that power users have been looking for and while it probably won’t draw me away from Chrome, it definitely looks promising.

iOS 6, on the other hand, looks to be a must-have. The Map update looks amazing and the various syncing improvements as well as apps like PassBook (an NFC precursor if I’ve ever seen one) make sense in terms of software continuity.

We can complain all we want about the missing iPhone 5 and Apple’s refusal to respect their set top box or their desktop machines but in the end this is Apple doing what Apple does best: creating a spectacle around what at any other company would warrant maybe a team kegger and cookout for a software or hardware job well done. Apple’s magic is still there, whether we like it or not, and it will take an awful lot of failure to deplete the excitement, goodwill, and fanaticism the company has engendered over the past decade.

Image via Reddit

Uncovet is launching to the public today as a recommendation engine for offbeat clothing and design items. Founder and former Myspace creative director Heather Lipner tells me that the larger play is using data received from purchases and social shares to capture user’s “style graph” — which is structured data like an “interest graph” or “social graph” but pertaining specifically to shopping taste.

The company considers itself a spontaneous recommendation engine like Fab and Ofakind, except focusing on personalization, current trends and seasons vs. inventory it needs to unload. Like Fab, users get rewards and discounts for signing up their friends and followers.

Right now users who are part of Uncovet’s “Inner Circle” get a $30 credit if 10 friends join, a 5% additional “BF” discount if 20 more friends join and an  additional 8% “BFF” discount if 40 more friends join.

Very reminiscent of a pared down Fab, the startup uses Facebook Connect to allow users to invite friends to the site and takes a users’ Facebook Likes into account when recommending products if a user allows. She wouldn’t reveal any more details about what algorithms were driving the engine.

Lipner holds that her algorithmic style recommendation engine is what differentiates the site from other eCommerce plays, “We’re a personalized shopping service – our aim is to be experts at style recommendations. We’re building out our style graph to map users to recommended products & trends they’ll like, helping customers refine & develop their personal style.”

Like other flash sales sites before it, Uncovet uses an daily email newsletter to further user engagement.”Our emails are like opening a magazine,” Lipner tells me, “Customers discover new trends and in this case can click to buy the products.”

Lipner’s future plans included renewed focus on product discovery, “We are currently working on a technology platform that will make our graph queries much more specific and timely to be more and more accurate in our discoveries and suggestions,” says Lipner, “In the near future, you will see us combine our discovery platform across Pinterest, Svpply, Twitter, and Facebook — and email.”

The startup is solely backed by the LA-based incubator Science, which is also responsible for novel eCommerce plays Wittlebee and DollarShaveClub.

Want to try it out? TechCrunch readers can get a $15 discount by using the code “TECHCRUNCH”.

Over the last several months, the biggest Western social gaming companies have been making moves, and attracting attention as a result. Japanese gaming giant GREE bought Funzio for $210 million to help it move into Western markets, and Zynga grabbed Draw Something creator OMGPOP for $183 million. Meanwhile, European social gaming companies, like Sweden’s King.com and Germany’s wooga have been steadily moving up the developer leaderboards.

While the bigs all focus on Western markets, Istanbul-headquartered social gaming company Peak Games is busy taking a different tack, producing titles specifically for emerging markets, like the Middle East and North Africa. And it seems to be working. With just under 30 million monthly active users (MAUs) and 9.5 million daily active users (DAUs), Peak Games said today that it has become one of the three largest social gaming platforms in the world.

The company’s chief strategy officer Rina Onur says that the company has been able to do this in just a year-and-a-half based on its laser focus on building social titles based on popular card and board games that are native to the region and are tailored to Turkish and Arabic (local) markets, in their native tongue.

It’s a defensible strategy, Peak Games believes, as this approach to building games based on native, offline games (in the native language) can’t just be whipped up or ported in a few weeks. The startup has been quietly acquiring local development operatios, like hardcore strategy game studios Umaykut and Erlikhan (both of which are Turkish), as well as its recent purchase of Saudi Arabian social games giant Kammelna Games. At the time of its acquisition, Kammelna’s popular Arabic-language title Happy Farm had some 2.2 million daily active users.

Again, these moves were made as part of the company’s effort to expand into markets underserved by gaming companies with localized, culturally-specific titles. Why? Well, for starters Onur says, young people in these regions are coming online en masse and they love games. There’s also the fact that Turkey and MENA have increasingly connected populations, and Turkey, for example, has the seventh largest Facebook markets, with over 30 million+ using the social network.

What’s more, in February, Onur told us that more than two-thirds of Internet users in Saudi Arabia were playing games online and that “the country has one of the highest average revenue per user (ARPU) rates in social gaming.”

Today, Peak Games seems to be benefitting in kind from this active gaming market, as Onur tells us that it’s seeing an average of between seven and eight cents in daily average revenue per user (DARPU) in Gulf countries — a rate which, she says, is noticeably higher compared to what’s seen in the U.S., U.K. and Germany.

Not only that, but of its some 10 million DAU and 30 million MAU, Onur says that an average of 2 percent convert to paying users on Facebook, 5 percent on iOS and 20 percent on the iPad. This led to Peak Games seeing a 10-fold increase in revenues in Q1 2012 over the same quarter in the year prior. And apparently this revenue growth is accelerating, as Peak’s revenue has grown 600 percent since January 1st.

There’s no question that Peak Games is growing fast and that it’s localization strategy is finding validation in a market that’s exploding with new gamers. But, as to its claim that its now the third largest social gaming company? If you look at AppData’s developer leaderboard for DAUs among gaming companies, Zynga is in first, King.com in second, EA in third, wooga in fourth, and Peak Games in fifth.

But, according to Onur, that some 5.7 million DAUs that one sees on Peak Games’ AppData profile page doesn’t include DAUs for their published titles. Adding the 3.7 million from their 11 published titles, one gets the 9.5 million number the company announced today, which sees them leap-frogging over EA (8.8 million DAUs) and wooga (8.2 million DAUs) into third.

These numbers are subject to change, and AppData is not always reliable, so these numbers should be viewed in that context. However, Peak Games certainly has reason to consider itself now part of a handful of the largest social gaming companies on the planet.

On the heels of this growth, the startup is also attempting to build out its leadership team to help it move beyond social into mobile and online platforms in emerging markets. Today, Peak announced that Ali Kutay, an angel investor and former CEO of WebLogic and GoldenGate (both multi-billion-dollar companies acquired by Oracle during his tenure) will be joining the company’s board of advisors.

Robert Unsworth is also joining the startup as director of business development. Unsworth was previously the VP of global sales and business development at Digital Chocolate.

The company is backed by $18 million from Earlybird Venture Capital and Hummingbird Ventures and now has over 170 employees.

Find Peak Games here.

Layar, the startup which is one of the few to really power ahead with Augmented Reality applications, recently revealed it’s well-thought out business model after a long period of scaling the app’s usage. Their Creator tool allows offline print publishers to upload advertising imagery so that any Layar user can pass their smartphone over the ad content and see an augmented reality enhanced advert. So, goodbye QR codes, ugly visual signals or watermarks or the requirement to log a location. The publishers pay, and Layar is in the middle of the transaction. It just works. Google's Project Glass is some way away, so Layar is in a sweet spot for this kind of application. I think it will be big.

So what happens with Layar’s original AR business? Well it looks like they are going for a much more social idea. Today they are releasing a new app with Layar technology inside it. Stiktu is a free mobile application that allows users to “remix the real world”. You can download the iOS app here and the Android app here. This is designed to be the social / user-generated equivalent of Layar, allowing users to add their own drawings, text, images and stickers to magazines, posters and more by simply scanning them with a smartphone. Think of it as AR graffiti.

Thus anyone can scan the image in the real world and see what someone has done to it.

Users can connect by discovering, liking, sharing and commenting on interesting posts.

Raimo van der Klein, Layar cofounder, says “Stiktu opens tremendous new possibilities to interact with the physical world around us. At Layar, we want to democratise space.”

It reminds me of what RjDj has done with sounds in the real world which can be uploaded and remixed. Now Stiktu plans to do it with AR but in a location sense. I think it’s going to be very interesting to see where this app goes.

Check it out in the video below:

Layar was founded in 2009 and attracted $15.6 million funding in total to date.

Qwiki seems to be spreading. Last month, it announced a new Creator platform for publishers and bloggers that’s already being used by ABC News and others. Now it’s announcing a partnership with Bing.

The companies say that Qwikis, which are essentially multimedia presentations, complete with narration, will now be embedded into Bing results, and they can be played directly inside the search page. Qwikis will initially be attached to the Wikipedia search results, but the plan is to expand the partnership to include “many kinds of search results.”

Obviously, this should help get the Qwiki concept (which can sometimes be a challenge to explain) in front of a lot more eyeballs, while Microsoft says this should take Bing further in the direction of being “more about doing and less about finding.” You can watch a demonstration of the integration here.

When Qwiki won the TechCrunch Disrupt startup competition in San Francisco in 2010, the initial version of the site drew some criticism for being little more than a repackaging of content from Wikipedia. At the time, founder and CEO Doug Imbruce insisted that the site was just a demonstration of the technology, and that the company had a much broader vision for transforming the way information is presented. It’s getting closer to achieving that vision today, not just with the announcement of the Bing integration, but also the broader opening of the Creator platform and the launch of a developer API, which together should make it possible for a broad range of individuals and companies to create their own Qwikis.

The company has raised $10.5 million from investors including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Greylock Partners, and Lightbank.

It’s been over a year since Amazon debuted its cloud-based music storage and streaming application, Amazon Cloud Player, and today the app is finally arriving on iOS. This morning, Amazon announced Cloud Player for iPhone and iPod Touch has gone live in the iTunes App Store, allowing users to store up to 5 GB of music for free, and then purchase additional storage, if need be.

The service works much like Amazon Cloud Player for desktop and Android, but you’re not able to purchase any music within the application at this time. (Surprise, surprise). However, Amazon is offering a launch discount – users who pick any premium storage plan will receive unlimited space to store their music files (MP3 or AAC/.m4a) at no additional cost. (The cheapest plan starts at $20/year – normally for 20 GB of storage).

As a refresher, for those who’ve forgotten how Amazon Cloud Player works: a desktop application lets you upload your digital music collection from iTunes or other folders on your computer into Amazon’s cloud storage. Afterwards, that music becomes playable in the app, and is even available for offline listening. You can also create and edit playlists, play music in the background, control the music via lockscreen controls, or use Bluetooth to stream the music in your house or car.

Cloud Player is actually the name of the player front-end to Amazon’s Cloud Drive – a Google Drive competitor that can host more than just music. And Cloud Drive competes with Google Music, the desktop app/mobile app for storing and streaming music purchased via Google’s own ecosystem.

Amazon offers a few perks to entice users to buy from its own MP3 store instead of iTunes. In addition to the (temporary) offer of unlimited storage with any paid plan purchase, any music purchased through Amazon MP3 is stored free in your Cloud Drive.

The Amazon Cloud Player app is available here in iTunes for free. Details on how it works are here.

Twitter may be synonymous with the term “microblogging” but a new service launching in beta today brings a new chapter for the medium that could just find a niche in today’s distracted, busy world. Checkthis, a site dedicated to letting users create one-off, visually slick blog posts and other kinds of single-purpose web-content, is today announcing several bits of big news: the launch of a public beta, seed funding of $910,000 led by Lerer Ventures, a list of advisors that includes a design honcho from Instagram, and a relocation to New York from Belgium to better tackle the (distracted, busy) market of the U.S.

The list of investors and advisors is a strong one and says a lot about the company’s ambitions: in addition to lead investor Lerer, backers include SV Angel, Index Ventures, Betaworks, Seedcamp and angel investors Taavet Hinrikus (early Skype employee; founder of TransferWise) and GroupMe co-founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci. Among its advisors are Tim Van Damme from Instagram, François de Halleux from Google, and Robin Wauters (formerly of this very blog, and now at The Next Web).

Checkthis is created on the premise that people in today’s world sometimes like to publish more than just throwaway comments on social media sites, but perhaps not frequently enough to start full-fledged blogs to document what they want to say or do. Moreover, sometimes sites like Facebook or Twitter don’t really do the trick when you are looking for something with a bit more weight to it — say for a diatribe on the problem of rude people, or a party invite, or to hawk your car. Checkthis is fast and slick, and it has created several templates to fit different purposes: “tell,” “sell,” “ask,” and “invite.” And as you can see, that means that there is already a kind of potential business model worked into the platform (for example through selling and getting commissions on goods).

Frédéric della Faille, founder and CEO of the company, is charmingly lyrical (and tongue in cheek) when he describes what Checkthis is most close to: ”We feel pretty close to [defunct Yahoo blog site] Geocities,” he told me. “A kind of Tumblr for a new type of post that can be called a poster.” And the phrase that Robin caught when he first covered the site for TC (hopefully before joining as an advisor…) “Between nothing and a blog.”

This is done, Checkthis says, with “no registration, no clutter, no set-up, no 'save' button, no sidebar widgets, no theme picking — and with the utmost respect for user privacy.”

There does seem to be a checkthis-sized gap in the market at the moment: "There are numerous ways to quickly share a status update, set up a blog or create your own website, but there remain significant barriers to entry and inherent constraints with most services that checkthis aims to remove," said della Faille in a separate statement. "Photo sharing on the web was supposed to be a solved problem as well, and then Instagram came along and garnered dozens of millions of users with a beautiful, innovative product that removed a lot of the friction that was still involved. Our goal is to do the same in the social publishing space." In other words, checkthis wants to become the Instagram of social publishing.

There is a bit of viral interest in the site already: since launching with no marketing in October 2011, the site is seeing the creation of 4,000 pages each month, and at its current size, there are more than 260 pageviews per page on average, the company says.

In addition to helping out with relocation, the new funds will be used to staff up the company and continue developing its platform.

Lemon.com, the company behind the handy cloud-based receipt organizer and spending tracker mobile app, has now expanded its platform to include digital wallet functionality. And it has just landed an $8 million Series A, too. The new funding was led by Maveron, the VC firm co-founded by Starbucks’ CEO Howard Schultz – an investor specifically chosen because of Starbucks’ success with its own branded mobile payments application. Also participating in the round were Lightspeed Venture Partners, CampVentures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Chamath Palihapitiya’s Social+Capital Partnership and other angels.

The digital wallet feature actually soft-launched a few days earlier with little fanfare, as a way to organize the cards your wallet currently contains. That includes credit cards, store and loyalty cards, ID cards, insurance cards and more. The app is PIN-protected and currently works mainly as a backup of what’s in your wallet for safe-keeping. (Or copying/pasting into checkout screens when mobile shopping, perhaps). But, despite its name, this “wallet” isn’t offering any sort of mobile payment functionality as of yet.

Instead, explains Lemon.com CEO Wences Casares, the idea is to create a platform where all mobile payment and loyalty card players can operate. “Our focus is on the consumer experience,” he explains. “We want to be a very open wallet…so we’re allowing third parties to work within Lemon provide these kind of services.”

While the wallet functionality has gone live for end users, the platform itself (which makes it open to third parties) won’t launch until July. However, Casares tells us that there will be a number of partner announcements which will accompany news of that launch when the time comes. The idea seems to be that coupons, offers and other loyalty-related discounts will not only be stored in Lemon’s wallet, but will also be location-enabled, so the app will remind you of your available deals when you walk in a store. But to be clear, Lemon itself isn’t moving into the loyalty space – it’s planning to partner with those who are already there.

Although forming partnerships with both loyalty programs and brands is going to be an important part of Lemon’s future expansion, Casares explains that there’s a lot Lemon can do without specific partnership agreements in place. “If you have a gift card, we can process and scan it,” he says, “and then you can throw away the card.” As for mobile payments, he says that it’s going to take a while for the industry to come up with a standard everyone agrees on. But whatever that may end up being, Lemon wants to support it through its wallet platform. (In other words, making all your store cards work as well through Lemon as that Starbucks card/app does today isn’t something that will be switched on in the immediate future).

The Lemon wallet looks a lot like Square’s digital wallet in terms of interface, but Casares doesn’t see Square as competition, saying that Square is more merchant-focused, while Lemon is consumer-focused. In addition, some of the features the Lemon digital wallet offers or plans to offer have also just been wrapped up in Apple’s newly announced “Passbook” app which will collect boarding passess, store cards and movie tickets when it launches later this year via iOS 6. (And Apple’s could very well serve as the basis for a more robust wallet platform in the future, if you want to speculate. Lemon could still have the advantage of being cross-platform, though).

But neither Square, Google Wallet nor Passbook include the exact feature set which Lemon plans to – not just receipt scanning, storage and sharing, but also the ability to save and store all your cards (payment and otherwise), as well as (forthcoming) support for finding and saving coupons, too.

Casares says the additional funding will be used in hiring more engineers, marketing and for customer acquisition purposes. This is the first outside investment for the Palo Alto-based startup, which had been bootstrapping until now.

Lemon is a free download, but a premium version ($9.99/month) offers advanced capabilities for power users.

Yext, a company that helps local businesses synchronize their listings across 50 different sites, just announced that it has raised $27 million in Series E funding.

Yext did not provide a valuation, but a source close to the company tells me that it was $270 million. The round was led Marker, a new fund launched by Rick Scanlon, founder of Crescent Point Capital Group. CrunchFund (whose investor AOL owns TechCrunch) also participated, as did past investors Sutter Hill Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, and WGI Group.

The company demonstrated at the TechCrunch50 conference in 2009, an appearance that CEO Howard Lerman credits with landing Yext a $25 million round shortly after. At the time, Yext was in a different business — a pay-per-call advertising service which it spun off earlier this year into a wholly-owned subsidiary called Felix.

Now Yext is focused on its PowerListings service, which businesses use to make sure their information is up-to-date on all the different local search and listings sites across the Web. Yext says that it has powered 950,000 different location updates for 50,000 businesses. The updates include:

• 68,000 changes of address
• 109,000 phone number changes
• 150,000 hours of operation updates
• 160,000 photo updates
• Over 250,000 featured product updates

There’s a new version coming next week, Lerman says, and the funding will be used to further develop the product. Yext, which is based in New York, may also be opening an office in Silicon Valley.

The company has now raised a total of more than $65 million. As for possible exits, Lerman claims, “Our exit strategy is to build a great company.” He admits that may sound a little generic, but he emphasizes that it’s particularly important for Yext to stay independent, because that allows it to work with many different publishers in a “neutral” fashion.

Jim Fowler has already disrupted one industry by launching Jigsaw, the crowdsourced contact database that was acquired by Salesforce.com for $175 million (higher than initially reported thanks to earnouts). Now he’s hoping to do it again with a company called InfoArmy.

This time, Fowler’s looking at the competitive intelligence industry dominated by companies like Dun & Bradstreet, an industry that he says hasn’t seen any real innovation in ages. To change that, Fowler wants to build an army of researchers who can create reports for tens of thousands of companies (and eventually more than that).

Each report is created by two InfoArmy researchers — the primary researcher who does most of the initial legwork, plus a senior researcher, who will usually have higher standing on the site, and who double-checks and approves the work. Fowler says this army may come from the ranks of people who already do competitive intelligence research, but at the same time, the work should be doable by anyone who’s reasonably educated and intelligent.

Basically, when someone creates an InfoArmy report they’re filling out a big form with information like a company’s revenue, competitors, press coverage, and leadership team. In some cases, this information will be publicly available, while in others it can be extrapolated from public data.

For example, Fowler showed me some estimates for payment company Zuora’s revenue. Zuora is a private company, so it doesn’t release regular revenue numbers, but InfoArmy researchers took CEO Tien Tzuo’s statements about how many payments Zuora is processing, then used what they know about the company’s pricing, and about software-as-a-service business models, to make their estimate.

Fowler says this approach results in something that’s better than traditional competitive intelligence in a number of ways. For one thing (and this is a little ironic given the terminology), InfoArmy has data about the competition, so that you’re not just looking at a report about one company. Instead, you can also follow links to full reports about the companies that the one you’re reading about is taking on. Fowler says InfoArmy won’t publish a report until it’s linked to the report of at least one competing company. Another difference: InfoArmy reports are designed for quick browsing on the iPad.

“The days of reading a 25-page analyst report are gone,” he says.

InfoArmy reports will cost $99 each, and they will come as a year-long subscription — you get an initial report, but also the quarterly updates. Each payment is split between InfoArmy and the researchers, with 50 percent going to InfoArmy, 40 percent going to the primary researcher, and 10 percent going to the senior. When there are enough reports in the system, Fowler says he’ll probably add a subscription plan for unlimited reports. And if you don’t want to pay, you can also get access by signing up to be a researcher.

Fowler’s efforts have attracted some controversy in the past — perhaps most memorably with Michael Arrington called Jigsaw “evil”, a description he later revised to “amoral”. I’m don’t think anyone is going to react quite as intensely to the InfoArmy idea, but there will probably be plenty of complaints about individual reports, as companies say that this or that piece of information is wrong. It sounds like Fowler isn’t too bothered by the idea of criticism, but he notes that the reports include plenty of caveats about the fact that the financial estimates are just that — estimates.

And yes, companies can submit corrections. While Fowler says researchers should view those corrections skeptically unless they’re backed up by evidence, they will have an incentive to get things right. After all, if they or their report gets a bad reputation, they’re probably going to make less money from sales — and if things get bad enough, a certain company might get reassigned to a different researcher. Other researchers can also submit suggestions for a report, and if there’s a dispute, it will be adjudicated by judges, who are ranked even more highly on the site than senior researchers.

InfoArmy has raised $2 million in funding, including $1 million from Fowler.

Top European VC firm Balderton today has confirmed to TechCrunch that it is ditching a 13 percent stake in Finnish social networking and virtual world company Sulake, creators of Habbo, after the youth-oriented site was exposed for hosting illicit content not appropriate for its intended users. Balderton had been an investor in Sulake for the past eight years and together with other backers had invested some $35 million in the site. This is the first time in Balderton’s history that it has exited an investment over a matter like this, we understand. Meanwhile, another investor, 3i, which owns 15 percent of the company, has told TechCrunch that it will “remain committed to Sulake.”

The story of the dodgy content was first brought to light as the UK broadcaster Channel 4 was investigating allegations over the content, for a program that is due to be aired tonight. That investigation was then picked up by the UK tech site The Kernel, which reported Balderton’s exit. TC understands from a source that Balderton is leaving behind its stake and not looking to recover any funds.

According to the source, Sulake had apparently known about the problem with some of the content last week, and possibly even earlier — but even as recently as this morning, there were still chat rooms on Habbo containing content of a sexual and illicit nature. Balderton’s decision to exit Habbo was made last week, we understand.

Habbo is theoretically designed for people aged 13 and older —  it says 65 percent of its users are between the ages of 13 and 16 — but it’s relatively easy to fake an age through the sign-up page. Sulake says that to date, there have been more than 268 million Habbo users, and up to a further three million users join each month. No indication of active monthly users from Habbo directly but Compete notes that in April 2012 there were less than 20,000. Sulake cites stats from Quantcast that says it has 9 million unique users monthly.

Sulake’s CEO, Paul LaFontaine, has issued a statement on Sulake’s site today emphasizing the company’s commitment to child safety online — without directly addressing this current scandal.

“To keep users safe, we filter content and block inappropriate users. We also employ more than 225 moderators, tracking some 70 million lines of conversation globally every day on a 24/7 basis,” he writes. “We work with child safety organisations and local police forces to address inappropriate behaviour.”

He also notes that it has been recognized for its child safety procedures by different organizations. But if all of the above is true, it calls into question just how effective these vetting procedures really are.

While the Kernel post highlights the issue of a VC pulling out of a company just at its time of need, our source paints it in a different light: “This is not a question of rogue sellers on eBay. It’s child safety. Balderton has shareholders, institutions to answer to, and it was not comfortable being an investor.” The source said the material it had received from Channel 4 was “absolutely disgusting.” Balderton is also an investor in other youth-oriented social networking sites Bebo and Weeworld.

TechCrunch understands that even if Sulake cleaned up and changed the mechanics of the site, Balderton is finished with the investment. “It would be good for users, of course, but Balderton has made its decision.”

We have contacted LaFontaine with further questions and will update this post when he responds.

Update: His response, via email — which I have to say is at least commendable in its frank honesty: “I was incredibly concerned to see the findings of the Channel Four News investigation. My top priority has always been our user’s safety.

“I was sorry to hear of Balderton's decision to withdraw its involvement, but my priority right now is to address the issues raised by the investigation. I remain committed to ensuring the right thing is done.  I am encouraging anyone concerned to contact me on Twitter @PaulLaFo.”

Further answers to my specific questions:

What has Sulake done to remove the offending content? What is it doing to prevent this in future?

We have responded immediately to remove offending content. We already filter content and block inappropriate users. Since hearing about the findings of the investigation we have increased the number of active moderators at any given time and strengthened our automated filtering technology. We have also begun to undertake a comprehensive review of our practices to ensure that user safety is further strengthened in the future.

I understand that you were facing this problem at least a week ago, and possibly longer; what is your response to that?

We moderate 70 million lines of conversation every day and invest heavily in technology to filter inappropriate content. This is a critical element of our business. We have spent more time, effort, resource and attention on this topic in the past five months than any other single issue.

Will Balderton’s exit mean financial difficulties for your company? What do you plan to do?

Balderton’s decision is regrettable, but it will not impact the online community or the extent of our current investment in safeguarding our site users. We remain committed to continuing to manage Habbo with a focus on rectifying the current challenges to deliver a safe and secure user experience.

Verizon Wireless today announced the addition of Share Everything plans. They’re essentially family plans, allowing you, mom, dad, and big or little brother or sister to share from a pool of unlimited voice minutes and text messages, plus a specified amount of data. The service also offers a free mobile HotSpot service to any device on the plan. Share Everything plans support up to ten phones.

This is good news for Verizon, who has been struggling to find common ground with customers on data pricing.

“Customers asked, and today Verizon Wireless delivered an industry first," said Tami Erwin, VP and CMO for Verizon Wireless. "Share Everything Plans are the new standard for wireless service. They are simple; customers no longer have to think about their voice and message plans, because both are unlimited.”

The idea is that you pay an original fee for each device coming on the plan — for smartphones that’s $40. Voice and text are unlimited, so no worries there, and the smallest amount of data (1GB) starts at $50. Data prices go up $10 per each tier of data, which includes 1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 6GB, 8GB, and 10GB ($100).

They feel a bit expensive, but the truth is these plans work out rather well with completely unlimited voice and texts for what will likely be lots of teenagers. Any parent knows this can be a life saver. But Verizon is smart — if you throw your wife, a kid, and your tablet onto this plan, you’ll pay $40 for each smartphone ($120), another $10 for your tablet ($130), and you’d likely need at least 6GB of data ($210).

The bill goes up quickly, but that's sometimes the price you pay for unlimited phone usage, big buckets of data and a free mobile Hotspot feature. The plans are available June 28, and you can feel free to learn more here.

Mobile app measurement and advertising platform Flurry is expanding its product lineup with a new service that will allow app marketers the ability to track the effectiveness of their mobile ad campaigns. Flurry Ad Analytics, as the service is being called, works with the major ad networks, such as Apple’s iAd, Google Admob, and Flurry’s own AppCircle, for example, and will show from where users arrived, which campaigns were effective, and what any given network’s userbase looks like over time.

This is a big deal for mobile app developers and marketers because, currently, these folks are buying from something like ten to fifteen ad networks, and yet have little visibility into the types of users being returned. The timing is right for a service like this, explains Flurry VP of Marketing Peter Farago, because app publishers are starting to move beyond the typical “spray and pray” strategy where they would do anything to just get to the top of the charts. No single ad network can get your app to the top of the charts, and if they can, then they’re returning low-quality users, he says.

(Related: Apple recently banned download bots specifically to address the problem of apps using sheer downloads to rapidly climb in the rankings. This has now caused a direct impact to the number of iPhone app downloads over the past couple of months.)

So what’s happening instead, says Farago, is a shift to a more common sense type of marketing. As in: wouldn’t it be nice to get people who might actually like and use the app to download it? “We’ve noted that there’s a stage of maturation we’ve entered into,” Farago says of this shift, “you have companies that are approaching building their audience using more of a classic marketing framework.” They’re looking for quality users, not just numbers.

With Flurry Ad Analytics, the service can sort users from the various ad networks and campaigns into buckets, allowing app marketers to see which strategies were the most effective – “effective,” of course, being determined by the app maker itself. Maybe they were hoping to target 18-24 year old males, or maybe they wanted to pull in users who would spend on in-app purchases. The metric for what’s “successful” doesn’t matter – it’s just about bringing a sense of transparency to the system. And because these users can now be segmented off, app marketers can watch their activity over time, too. Do they remain engaged? Do they refer friends? Do they upgrade to premium features? Etc., etc.

The goal is to support all the various ad networks, but the all the majors work right out of the box. There are ways you could configure this feature to track other campaigns, too, if you really wanted to. (As long as there’s a campaign URL to track, you could track an email or online campaign, for example).

Flurry Ad Analytics is built on top of Flurry’s Analytics service but will be offered as a premium, standalone service. The cost starts at 5 cents per install and goes down on a per install basis as volume increases. The service goes live next month, but Flurry is accepting sign-ups as of today from its website.

Sometimes finding a solution to those little annoyances in life can turn into a big business. Take Roqbot, a virtual jukebox solution that lets users crowdsource music in bars, cafes and stores. Frustrated by losing turns every time they went to pick a song at the jukebox at their local bowling alley, Roqbot co-founders Garrett Dodge and Masen Ewald developed a mobile solution. The app, which runs on any internet-enabled device connected to a venue’s local sound system, allows users to personalize their music experience at their local hangout spots.

The app took off, and Roqbot is now working with businesses in San Francisco, New York, and LA and has collaborated with brands like Miller Lite, Gap, and Samsung, and even bands like Motley Crue to bring public, crowdsourced song-selecting to the masses. And today, Roqbot is kicking its national expansion up a notch with a round of seed funding led by Google Ventures and Detroit Venture Partners. Accelerator Ventures, T5 Capital, and Penny Black also contributed to the startup’s $1.2 million seed raise.

Simply put, the Roqbot co-founders say that they want to put an end to boring background music. If you’re shopping in a local store and you hear yet another Bieber song come shrieking over the sound system, you should be able to play maestro. At least, that’s the vision. Currently, Rogbot’s iPhone and Android apps allow you to take our your smartphone and deejay in certain select stores, like the aforementioned partnership with Gap.

With over one million songs streamed and a library of over six million songs, has seen some encouraging early traction, especially considering that this kind of public crowdsourcing of music selection has largely been avoided by the big social music apps. It’s been able to get over the hump, but it will have to continue to attract big-name retailers and chains if it’s going to take that next step.
 
It’s employing a smart approach by allowing users at participating location to use their smartphones to check-in at their local bar, see what’s playing, request songs, upvote tracks in the queue, and view the venue’s specials. The ability to crowdsource their music experience is appealing, it’s social and interactive.

On the flip side, merchants dig the experience because they get to control what songs can be requested, tailoring the collective playlist to fit their venue’s vibe. That means no death metal at flower shops, and no classical at dive bars. Maybe instead, some nice string metal. Plus, Roqbot offers continuous streaming, so that employees don’t go crazy listening to the same iPod playlist over and over again, or Kenny G’s greatest hits.

To push this idea forward, the startup is also today announcing a new feature called “Mix Machine,” which combines both user and venue musical preferences to create a custom playlist for each business. The idea, Dodge says, is to give a local bar a playlist that adjust to customer feedback, while letting the business maintain overall control. The intended result: Customers, being happy with the bar’s sound track, hang out longer and keep coming back.

Of course, again, you’re probably only going to be interested in Roqbot if your favorite local hangouts offer the service. Although Roqbot will be adding to its staff thanks to its seed round, its sales team is still small, and it can’t hit all the local nightlife spots. So, for customers that don’t have a Roqbot venue in their area, its new “Jukebox Reborn” campaign lets users suggest their favorite venues via the startup’s Facebook page. The venues that receive the most votes will be pegged for integration.

The team believes that the future of music in public venues will be social and mobile, so they’ve started by enabling users to publish their check-ins and music picks to Twitter, Foursquare, Last.fm and Facebook. If you want to add a song that’s not in the queue, you can use the app’s credits to buy on Amazon or Paypal, or use your credit card. And that’s where the startup’s monetization aspirations come in.

Roqbot is not alone in the belief that consumption is going social and mobile, as we’re hearing the same from eCommerce companies talking about the future of shopping. But when it comes to socially crowdsourced music, Roqbot wants to be at the front of the pack.

Find Roqbot here.

A sudden, but perhaps unsurprising, bit of e-book M&A today in the UK: the music and entertainment company HMV is selling its 64 percent stake in e-book retailer Anobii to the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, for the princely sum of £1 ($1.55).

The deal will give Sainsbury’s a jump start into the e-book market as part of its stated strategy of becoming a bigger player in the digital media business. It has been gradually building this up since 2010, although without much fanfare: in November of that year it launched its Sainsbury’s Entertainment brand; in October 2011 it bought online entertainment company Global Media Vault; and earlier this year it started its own music downloading service. It also gives Sainsbury’s a window for international expansion: Anobii currently has 600,000 customers — not just in the UK but internationally.

The acquisition is a clear move on the part of Sainsbury’s to compete more directly with its big UK supermarket rival Tesco, which has its own e-books portal and resells e-reading devices like the Kindle from Amazon. Tesco’s has a modest number of titles in its catalog at the moment — 221,504 books, compared to the 60,000 in the Anobii catalog.

From the looks of it, for now Anobii’s other publisher shareholders are remaining on board. They include HarperCollins, Penguin and Random House UK. The four will continue to invest in the company to develop its services overseas.

Sainsbury’s is making much of Anobii’s strength not just in e-book retailing for multiple devices but also its social and engagement aspects. ”Anobii’s innovative use of social media is a clear differentiator. This acquisition is a valuable addition to our digital portfolio and shows our commitment to becoming a key player in the digital entertainment market,” said Mark Bennett, Sainsbury’s Head of Digital Entertainment, in a statement.

Still, this is not exactly unique in online book retailing, considering that Amazon and others also offer reader reviews and ratings to help with the sometimes tricky process of discovery on e-book websites.

As both Tesco and Sainsbury’s continue to shift more of their business online — the UK supermarket industry has a thriving online shopping/ home delivery service, something pioneered by Tesco — they are additionally looking for more products to shift through that infrastructure, and for ways of more comprehensively competing against companies like Amazon, which continue to encroach on their territory.

On HMV’s side, the company, built primarily on the troubled music market, has been in a tight situation for some time now and has needed to shed assets and fast — as evidenced by the very low price tag on the Anobii sale.

But that also points to the challenges that Sainsbury’s and existing shareholders will continue to face to make headway in an industry that is dominated by Amazon, with several other big retailers like Waterstones in the UK (also once part of HMV, until HMV sold the chain to Russian Alexander Mamut in 2011) linking up with the U.S. giant to make the playing field even less level.

Update: HMV is not commenting on the deal, and nor is GP Bullhound, the tech investment bank that acted as financial advisor to HMV on the sale.

But the numbers look like they stack up to an exercise in cutting losses. HMV had paid $3.25 million for its Anobii stake last year and, combined with its stake in 7Digital music streaming service, the pair made a loss of £1 million ($1.5 million) last year, according to paidContent. That number may well have been on track to be even bigger this year.

It looks like the Sainsbury’s deal also represents a significant (undisclosed) investment in Anobii: the company’s stake is now 64 percent, compared to the 45.4 percent that HMV originally owned in the e-book company.

Spotify's move last year to open its platform to other apps has created more stickiness for its streamed music services. Now, one of the startups based around that idea has found some traction of its own: Oslo-based Soundrop, which creates “listening rooms” and social jukebox-style service for Spotify users (think Turntable.fm here), has picked up its first round of investment, $3 million from Northzone, one of Spotify's own leading backers.

Soundrop is a relatively young company: it had been bootstrapped before the Northzone investment and only went live in January 2012, but has already seen the creation of thousands of listening rooms and tracks played. Inge Sandvik, the CEO and co-founder, says that the new funds will be used to develop its product and to "execute on its road map." As we've noted before, that plan involves expanding its own catalog of listening rooms and users — at the moment 7,000 rooms and counting, with some 60 million songs and 3.3 million listening sessions logged. It is also developing commercial services in partnership with labels, venues and more.

"If Twitter can make a billion dollars on placement of tweets, will we also be able to make money on helping artists and labels reach out to their fans," he says.

That has seen the company already partner with labels like Universal Music, where one room for dance music DJs Sebastian Ingrosso & Alesso  picked up 28 million OTS users (a traffic metric standing for "opportunities to see") after heavy marketing from both Universal and Spotify. Other official listening rooms have been created for Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, The Fray, The Smiths, Iron Maiden, Carl Cox, Sigur Rós, One Direction and others.

Soundrop is also hiring. "We need more hands on deck," Sandvik told us. It's added a designer and front-end developers to its small staff. And it is now setting up offices in Berlin and Stockholm, to work more closely with Spotify, as well as ramping up elsewhere. "We have a lot of business coming up now with the labels in New York and London," he says.

Other future plans involve more activity on mobile. Sandvik did not specify what that might mean, but it could involve people being able to find "music rooms" based on their physical location, something that the company has had in the planning. (When describing the idea to us in April, Sandvik said the idea was twofold: to let users listen to music from other locations, and to extend the market of legally played music to public places.)

Another will likely be developing more sophisticated algorithms for its service as it continues to grow. Although Soundrop was created in part to help with discoverability in Spotify, it could be facing discovery problems of its own as its service continues to grow. "Where there is a lot of content, is there also challenges with discovery," admits Sandvik. "This is why our full focus is on enabling a much stronger recommendation and discovery in Soundrop." He notes that the most recent version of Soundrop's app features and filters rooms and there will be more improvements coming.

Other developments will see Soundrop making the mechanics of the service more reliable: Sandvik notes that in April the company had to move all of its servers from the cloud to dedicated services because of "too much instability" — "we needed to have more control over the hardware." There have also been some security issues with users on corporate networks' antivirus protections. Since implementing fixes for these, "We have had a steady traffic increase are now ready go go faster," says Sandvik.

Sandvik says that the decision to go with Northzone came after several other VCs came knocking — it is continuing to develop its relationships with those VCs and is currently under NDAs with several of them.

Soundrop chose to go with Northzone, he says, based on its track record with Spotify and wider strategy to invest in the digital music — a sign of how Soundrop might evolve its service beyond Spotify in the future. The company has evaluated, but has yet to offer its listening rooms on any other streaming platforms apart from Spotify's.

As part of the deal, Torleif Ahlsand from Northzone becomes chairman of the board of Soundrop. "We're big believers in services that are social and scalable by design, and on top of it are helping enrich the music ecosystem," Ahlsand noted in a statement. "Soundrop builds brand value and consumption opportunities for artists and labels, whilst creating a more fun listening experience for the consumer."