I Can Haz Your Millions?

Cheezburger Networks the company behind I Can Has Cheezburger, Fail blog, and Engrish Funny has announced a $30-million round of funding from venture capital firms Foundry Group and SoftBank Capital, amongst others.

The company plans to use the money to beef up staffing and take the blog network into "new directions" according the Mathew Ingram's GIGaom post. This only goes to prove that all of those Jr. High School teachers were wrong when they said "...nothing good will come of this" or "...you are headed for a life as a garbage collector!"

$250 million Venture Capital Fund Established For Investment In Social Web

Venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers along with Facebook, Amazon, and Zynga, are establishing a $250 million fund (the sFund) to aid the development of a new generation of social web offerings. 

"There's going to be an opportunity over the next five years or so to pick any industry and rethink it in a social way," said Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg. "We think that every industry is going to be fundamentally re-thought and designed around people."

With KPCB putting up most of the money, the others are offering assistance in various ways. Amazon will provide it's web services platform for one year to selected companies and Facebook providing access to it's platform team and beta APIs.

The big focus of the fund will be social start-ups from all industries but no money will be provided to direct competitors of Facebook, Amazon, or Zynga (so there's the hook!).

"Think of it as a quarter-billion-dollar party. The third great wave of the internet is mobile and social together. It's going to be tectonic," said KPCB partner John Doerr.

Source: BBC 

Foursquare Raises $20,000,000 Round B Financing

The one and a half year old location-based social sensation Foursquare has just secured a $20 million Series B investment led by VCs Andreessen Horowitz, with Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures also participating. According to Business Insider:

• Foursquare can finally start working on its product again after moving a lot of resources to building out its infrastructure, which was crumbling after its huge growth.

• Foursquare can finally start hiring again because it's moving into bigger offices. Before, it couldn't physically put more people in the room.

• For the forseeable future, Foursquare will continue to be one main app -- not a bunch of apps for different purposes.

The deal values the company at $95 million pre-financing.

We have several players in our office and the competition is really heating up... Congrats Foursquare! We look forward to seeing more great stuff now that you've got the money behind you.

Google Announces Venture Capital Fund

In a tough economic downturn many companies are having a hard time to find the funding they need to move innovative ideas forward. Yesterday Google announced it's own brand of venture capital called, Google Ventures of course. In a post on the Official Google Blog Rich Miner and Bill Maris, Managing Partners, of Google Ventures say "Economically, times are tough, but great ideas come when they will. If anything, we think the current downturn is an ideal time to invest in nascent companies that have the chance to be the "next big thing," and we'll be working hard to find them. If you think you have the next big idea, or if you just want to to learn more, please see our website at www.google.com/ventures."

Twitters Investors Include Amazon's Bezos

In a blog post last week, twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced who was behind the latest round of financing. Two new funding partners, Bijan Sabet of Spark Capital in Boston and Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos of Bezos Expeditions in Seattle. Launching what he's calling 'Project Runway' Stone says "Twitter will become a sustainable business supported by a revenue model. However, our biggest opportunities will be worth pursuing only when we achieve our vision of Twitter as a global communication utility. To reach our goal, Twitter must be reliable and robust. Private funding gives us the runway we need to stay focused on the infrastructure that will help our business take flight..." Most twitter users will agree that the money will be well spent on overcoming the services scalability woes that have many complaining openly about twitter. Hang in there a bit longer folks, perhaps this new money and the expertice of the likes of Bezos can get twitter over the hump.

Twitter Attracting Venture Capital Attention

Gigaom is reporting that micro blogging service, Twitter has ignited a bidding war amongst venture capital firms who are hot to get in on the companies next round of financing. Twitter has been spreading like wild fire amongst the tech savvy but has had it's growing pains too. Some of the companies senior staff members have left, willingly or otherwise, due to difficulties scaling the service and numerous outages as the result. Nevertheless the valuations for Twitter are said to be upwards of $70 million, though there is no clear business model as of yet.

If you are yet to give Twitter a try I'd encourage you to do so, though be warned it is addictive. You can follow this blog by adding GreatBigGeek to the list you are following or message me direct @GreatBigGeek!

RIM, RBC and Thomson Reuters Create $150 Million BlackBerry Partners Fund

Research in Motion (RIM), Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), and Thomson Reuters have announced the creation of a $150 Million venture capital fund, to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry and other mobile platforms. "The mobile world has evolved well beyond phone calls and simple messaging to require more empowering and liberating solutions that connect people to everything that matters most to them, wherever and whenever they want," said Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, Research In Motion. "RIM, RBC and Thomson Reuters share the common belief that mobile applications and services will propel the industry forward and the BlackBerry Partners Fund is being formed to help fuel innovation and activity in the mobile ecosystem." John Albright, Managing Partner of JLA Ventures who will co-manage the fund says "Whether it's access to corporate data or the latest craze in mobile entertainment, we want to fund companies that are forerunners in driving adoption and further enriching the mobile experience."

Justin.tv opens platform to the masses

Wired's epicenter blog is reporting that Justin.tv is opening up it's platform to allow users to broadcast their lives, with their own equipment. The company had opened up to a select group of beta broadcasters in May, contrary to earlier reports that it wasn't planning on broadcasting the lives of the masses. The move puts Justin.tv in competition with a number of other players, but it comes on the heals of a round of venture capital and cost cutting measures like moving to Amazon's Web Services.