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Twitter to unveil major 'search and discovery' update today

Twitter could be planning a major update to its search and discovery feature later today, according to one of its employees.

Twitter's Pankaj Gupta, who runs the company's Personalization and Recommender Systems, sent out a tweet yesterday congratulating his team on an improvement to its search and discovery tools that, he says, will dramatically change the service.

"Search and discovery in Twitter [is] set to change forever after tomorrow," Gupta tweeted. "Team -- congrats and enjoy the enormity of your impact few understand today."

Twitter has quickly realized that improving the user's ability … Read more

Fancy's plan to know what you want before you do (Q&A)

The social-media darling Pinterest is a not a site Joe Einhorn likes to talk about. In fact, Einhorn seems almost annoyed when I lump it together with his startup, New York-based Fancy. Sure, there are similarities: both sites offer ways for people to create streams of images they like -- rather, "pin," or "fancy" -- from around the Web. But Fancy has something more: a growing revenue stream.

Fancy, which is backed by an all-star cast of investors that includes Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey, added a shopping tool in … Read more

Cloze gives relationship scores to everyone you know

Has it come to this? Do we need corporate CRM tools to manage our individual relationships?

The startup Cloze has launched a utility that scores every relationship you have with your e-mail contacts, based on when and how you communicate with people. The scores look like Klout numbers, but they're personal to you. Cloze uses those scores to rank your people, flagging the top-scorers for followup when you don't respond to their messages. Creepy? Maybe. But fairly handy.

Cloze was designed as a work tool. Founders Dan Foody and Alex Cote said they wanted to create … Read more

Uber to branch out with hybrid car service

Uber, a company that lets people request private car service in select cities, is trying to appeal to a less-affluent customers by using non-luxury, hybrid vehicles, according to a new report.

According to Uber, which spoke with The New York Times in a story published yesterday, the hybrid service will kick off in San Francisco and New York on Wednesday. The cars will cost customers 10 percent to 25 percent more than a standard taxi fare between two locations. According to the Times, its premium service typically costs customers between 40 percent and 100 percent more.

Uber is one of … Read more

Entrepreneurs: Please do your homework on the competition

Choosing the right market opportunity will make or break a startup. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs choose to tackle markets that are over-saturated, not realizing their mistake until it's too late.

I've listened to thousands of pitches from thousands of startup founders. Most of the time, these pitches don't stand up to my scrutiny for one reason or another. Some don't have differentiating features while others simply don't tackle big enough market opportunities.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks that trips up most entrepreneurs though is their lack of market and competitive research. They come up with … Read more

Is Pinterest more popular than Tumblr in the U.S.?

It's well known that Pinterest is growing in leaps and bounds. But is that success starting to outpace even popular microblogging site Tumblr in the U.S.?

Royal Pingdom today revealed the results of data it compiled comparing traffic for both Pinterest and Tumblr. The blog first turned to Alexa, and found Pinterest to be just inching out Tumblr in traffic. On Google Trends, Pinterest scored more daily unique visitors than Tumblr. However, analytics services Compete and Quantcast gave the nod to Tumblr.

Not satisfied with the results, Royal Pingdom moved on to research firms, and found that Experian … Read more

Corporate VCs still have love for the Golden State

Corporate venture capital investments are down from last year but more than half of that money has stayed in California, according to an investment trends study released last night by CB Insights.

The report -- which tracked more than 220 corporate VCs, including Google Ventures, Intel Capital and Dow Venture Capital -- found that corporate VCs contributed to 11 percent of all venture deals in the first quarter of this year, but the $1.09 billion total invested is the lowest amount in the last five years.

The money was spread over 84 deals, the number is down from last … Read more

Institutional Venture Partners closes $1 billion fund

Institutional Venture Partners has secured $1 billion for a new investment fund.

The company broke the news to TechCrunch earlier today, telling the startup blog that it's calling the fund IVP XIV. The $1 billion raised is the largest fund the company has ever had and brings its total committed capital to $4 billion.

"Essentially it's going to be the same strategy," IVP General Partner Jules Maltz told TechCrunch in an interview. "We're a late-stage firm, we're very focused. We only do tech investing. We don't do China, we don't do … Read more

Thiel-backed Mithril Capital targets growth-stage tech ventures

"Mithril" is a metal in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," said to be stronger than steel but much lighter in weight. It's malleable, doesn't tarnish and extremely rare.

PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel hopes some of the invented metal's properties are imbued on his new venture capital firm of the same name, announcing this morning that the San Francisco-based company is seeking growth-stage technology companies in which to invest.

"Technology holds solutions to most of the world's most pressing challenges, from resource scarcity to disease," Thiel … Read more