Webware

Online money-saving tool BillShrink launched on Tuesday a new Savings and CDs feature designed to help people find the highest interest rates.

BillShrink, which also offers help on finding cheaper cell phone plans, more advantageous credit cards, and low gas prices, told me in a conference call Monday that it's on track to help users save more than $1 billion by year's end across all three of its money-saving features.

With its Savings and CDs tool, BillShrink now enables people to take the cash they've saved and invest it in a savings account or a certificate of deposit.

BillShrink asks for simple information to get you going.

(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)

To do so, users input basic information about their financial standing, including how much they have saved, how much they would like to put away each month, and the kind of amenities they would like to see from their bank account, like check writing or ATM access. From there, BillShrink delivers a list of recommendations on savings accounts, CDs, or a combination of both, that would deliver the highest return on their money, while still fitting their preferences.

The Savings and CDs tool also allows people to input where they live and what company they work for. With that information factored in, BillShrink can narrow the selections down even further.

According to BillShrink, all the banks in its listings are FDIC insured. The company also said the information contained in the listings is updated weekly. So if a bank has changed interest rates on an account, BillShrink's service will reflect that.

BillShrink features a combo of CDs and savings accounts.

(Credit: BillShrink)

BillShrink's new feature also includes alerts that will send out monthly updates about the best deals based on users' Savings and CDs query. BillShrink's representatives said the alerts account for the choices users have made. They include fees and other applicable charges that might go into a switch to a better savings account or CD. Another alert tells people that rates have changed on their current accounts.

Although BillShrink's tool is decent, it's missing some key features that would make it far more appealing. For example, if a user decides to switch from one savings plan to another based on the alert received from BillShrink, there is no option to inform the site of the change. The company told me that the feature will be coming in less than a month.

Another glaring omission is the ability to transfer all the savings users have tallied from other parts of the BillShrink site to the savings tool to see exactly how to get that money working for them. Right now, users need to input figures themselves.

BillShrink is aware of that shortcoming and plans to deliver a "reporting" feature that will let people track the money they've saved and "transfer" it into other areas of the site. It didn't provide a timetable for that feature.

If you want to try out BillShrink's new Savings and CDs tool, the feature is live on the company's site.

Shoeboxed announced this week that it has improved the way it handles digital receipts sent to its online filing system. The company, which scans and hosts paper receipts, business cards and full-size documents, can now pick out specific information from forwarded e-mails containing purchase information, and put it into one of the system's 15 purchase classifications.

Like users would do with purchases on travel services like TripIt and Worldmate, simply sending the confirmation e-mail to your Shoeboxed address means that it gets filed along with the rest of your expenses. The goal is to make it easier for customers who are already using Shoeboxed's receipt scanning by mail service to blend in purchases they make online.

The company says the new technique is 95 percent accurate and removes the need for customers to enter in purchase information manually. This is a noticeable improvement over the previous system, which would simply paste the information into a blank message without giving it a title or a expense category. The new system also pulls in things like vendor names and the total amount spent, which can be compared and cross-referenced with other expenses it tracks from your paper receipts and scanned photos you've taken of receipts from your mobile phone.

E-mailed receipts are now automatically categorized, including how you paid for it and where you bought it from.

(Credit: CNET)

I gave it a spin earlier today on 10 different receipt confirmations from different vendors and had a 100 percent success rate on it accurately figuring out where the item was from, how I paid for it, and its price. It also did a pretty good job on categorizing the purchases, getting seven of the 10, while leaving the remaining three blank.

One thing it doesn't pick up on, which is worth mentioning, is the actual purchase date. It only keeps track of the date it was sent into the system. This isn't a big deal, since you're probably going to be forwarding items the same day you're purchasing, and you can also see the source copy of the e-mail from Shoeboxed's interface. But it's something to keep in mind if you're planning to forward a bunch of old purchase confirmations.

The receipts by e-mail service is completely free, although other parts of Shoeboxed, like its paper scanning, and mobile photo transcription require signing up for a paid monthly plan.

Previously: Shoeboxed now tags scanned receipts for you

Mint.com is the premiere web-based money management solution available Tuesday. The site pulls transaction information from your various financial accounts and presents the data in a beautiful, easily digestible format. CEO Aaron Patzer boasts that 50 percent of Mint's users have used the service to stick to a budget for the first time in their lives. Hoping to raise that number even more, its latest update, available now, focuses on making it easier for users to control their spending with advanced budgeting tools.

While Mint already had some budgeting features before the new update, it was mostly simplistic and offered little in the way of customization options. Features found in this update include the ability to set up and manage specific budgets for categories of purchases, monitor the overall effects of budget changes, budget for specific expenses (such as taxes), and track all of these budgets in real time. Users are now also able to distinguish between personal and business accounts to help separate their associated expenses. Finally, in typical Mint fashion, it has added a great looking graph visualization of your net income, broken down by month.

Mint's new net income visualization.

(Credit: Mint)

With this update, Mint is also pushing its users to transfer their dormant 401k accounts in to rollover IRAs through its "Ways to Save" feature, claiming that the action will result in an additional $65,000 in savings (on average) when retirement rolls around. While Mint's intent with Ways to Save appears to be genuine, be sure to properly evaluate and investigate these offers before signing up. Mint's main revenue stream comes from affiliate fees garnered from its users signing up for these offers.

These new features are certainly a welcome addition to Mint's already strong offering. Bringing responsible money management to users is an admirable goal, especially in this economy. Mint's new budgeting features should help to show even more people the way.

Mint's new budgeting feature allows users to break down expenses by category.

(Credit: Mint)

SAN FRANCISCO--At the FinovateStartup conference, one thing is clear: a lackluster economy can be the best time for financial start-ups to get new users.

Apps that help people track and manage funds outside of their bank or investment service's site are in high demand, and many of the services presenting at the conference are trying to get those financial companies on board.

Why? Because those companies are still the gate keepers of trust. People are more willing to hand over their account credentials and detailed personal information to larger institutions over some hot, new Silicon Valley start-up. That, and it's a whole lot easier to get in the door if you're built into a financial institution's tools. The hard part of course, is proving you have a system that really works.

To that end, nearly all the sites that gave quick, eight-minute pitches at the financial innovation conference are trying more user-friendly approaches to common financial activities such as keeping an eye on bank accounts, managing and paying off loans, or helping people sign up for credit cards.

One site, KnowBeforeYouApply is simply taking user credit history, then recommending various cards people could sign up for based on that. Another card play, called Tempo, is trying to make debit cards more like credit cards. It's offering a third-party card that's linked up to a user's checking account, which skips the monthly bill in place of taking the money out as soon as it's spent. It also includes personalization and promotions, things that aren't usually offered by the banks that supply them.

Sites featuring simple, colorful charts, tables, and status bars are also aplenty. These charts aren't just for looks, though; for these sites, it's all about aggregation. Just like Facebook and FriendFeed are working to harness the never-ending flow of social information, these sites are attempting the same with accounts from multiple services. Even if it's not a core part of a product, companies want to keep users inside their apps with a dashboard that lets them view dozens of streams of information within a very small amount of space.

Kapitall's creative director Cordell Ratzlaff demos his company's financial Web top.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn / CNET)

One of the best examples of this is Kapitall, which is designed like a Web desktop. It has a customizable workspace of company icons and portfolios that users can drag and drop to track their investments and compare sets of data. Creative director Cordell Ratzlaff calls this workspace "the playground," which sits atop a never-ending stock ticker with companies you're watching. It seems like a total data overload at first, but Ratzlaff managed to create and organize portfolios as if he were moving around picture files on a desktop PC. It actually looked kind of fun.

Speaking of fun, there were even finance tools for kids. IThryv, which launched late last year has a financial dashboard with account info and goal-tracking aimed at tweens. It's also set to expand to other demographics like senior citizens who are managing finances on a fixed income.

Not all the sites on display at Finovate are aimed at consumers, though. A few are focused on business users while retaining the look and feel of a consumer app. Expensify, which handles expense reports, is one such site. It links up to your checking account and can track purchases you've made while on a trip, and pay out directly to it. It even lets you add receipts for payments made in cash by using your cell phone's camera.

Looking forward
So what are some of the big financial trends to look for in 2009 and beyond? White-label services and mobile apps are likely to top the list. Wesabe, which is a dashboard for consumer finances (similar to Mint.com), recently introduced a version of its services that banks can give to their users as a way to track their financial activities. The company has already done this with a Delta Community Credit Union but wants to expand to other markets, too. The same goes for payment and loan services, which want to be more deeply integrated as payment options in places like hospitals and online retailers.

Each service also wants to make sure users can access their apps while away from a desktop PC in the form of a secure mobile application. Most companies who mentioned either having or working on mobile applications cited the iPhone, which could become its own payment tool since developers will soon be able to offer in-app payments that are linked up directly to user bank accounts.

With all these tools it seems as if the ultimate goal is to make it so users don't have to go out of their way to sign up to use them. Yet it requires a far more intense commitment and trust than a simple e-mail address and Captcha, which makes me wonder if 2009 will bring a Facebook Connect for finance.

LoanMarket.net announced on Monday that it has launched its online marketplace for buying and selling mortgages.

According to the company, its service allows both buyers and sellers to come together in a "neutral, open marketplace" to trade mortgages and other real-estate secured note investments.

The site has a variety of sellers, including mortgage originators, banks, and lending institutions, mortgage pool investors, small private investors, and seller carry-back note holders. All the notes listed on the site include current market value information, as well as a photo of the property taken within 14 days of the post. All vital loan documentation, such as the note, deed, and title will also be included in the listing. The site is live now.

Vertical ad network Glam Media raised $10 million in a round of funding that was led by Mizuho Bank, the company announced Monday. According to the company, it will use the funding to continue its expansion in the United States, and grow its operation in Japan and Germany.

Glam Media also announced on Monday that it has formed a joint venture with agencies and media companies in Japan. Dubbed Glam Media Japan, the venture combines the country's third-largest advertising agency, Asatsu-DK, and a variety of other Japanese firms with Glam.

Revolution Money, a company that helps users reduce the cost of credit cards online, announced on Monday that it has raised $42 million in a Series C round of funding led by Goldman Sachs. Citigroup and Morgan Stanley also participated in the round. The company plans to use the funding to grow its cost reduction operation.

Online real-estate search site Zillow announced on Monday that it has inked deals with Leads360 and LoanSifter, firms that specialize in real-estate leads and loan information, respectively, to improve the site's Mortgage Marketplace.

Users can now follow leads and use LoanSifter's loan-pricing engine to get accurate information about how much a mortgaged property will really cost. The new features are available now on Zillow.

The murkiness surrounding Facebook's valuation got in the way of its attempt to acquire Twitter last year, according to a BusinessWeek article posted Sunday.

Early Facebook investor Peter Thiel's interview with BusinessWeek make it sound like while the talks were serious, they simply didn't go that far: "It became pretty clear it wasn't going to happen...The deal would have to be done with Facebook stock. And then you have to figure out how much the stock is worth." Twitter, according to an anonymous source, was told that the social network's valuation was in the range of $8 billion or $9 billion but was aware that employees were privately trading stock at a valuation that was, at most, half that.

So the deal didn't happen.

Controversy over the true value of the privately owned company also came into play earlier last year when the settlement of the ConnectU vs. Facebook lawsuit was being negotiated. Court documents were redacted to keep the true valuation under wraps, and media outlets, including CNET News, petitioned to have the documents made public. The founders of small social-network ConnectU, who had sued Facebook because they claimed founder Mark Zuckerberg stole their code and business plan, contested the original settlement when they said they had been misled as to Facebook's true valuation.

Way back in October 2007, Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation. The company's actual valuation was never really that high, and with the recession, it's currently somewhere south of $4 billion.

But valuations aside, would Twitter really have been a smart buy for Facebook? The "status update" feature on Facebook is very Twitter-like, but integrating the two services would've involved all kinds of complications. For one, Facebook's content is still hidden behind a log-in wall, whereas Twitter's "tweets" proliferate all over the Web. And while Facebook's profitability woes have been well-documented, Twitter beats it in that department: the buzzworthy start-up hasn't yet made public a business model of any kind.

In his interview with BusinessWeek, Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, didn't discount the possibility that Facebook could make other acquisitions in the future. But as the interview also points out, that could be difficult as long as Facebook's valuation remains as volatile as it has been in recent months.

Forget flowers and chocolate. Valley darling Twitter is going to have a really sweet Valentine's Day. The company announced Friday that it has added some more cash to its most recent round of funding, thanks to an infusion from Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners.

The deal just closed on Thursday night, according to a post on Twitter's official blog. But the team at Twitter, which has not yet put forth a business model, hopes to make it clear that they weren't desperate for cash.

"We weren't actively seeking more funding because significant capital from last year's partnership with Bijan (Sabet) and his team at Spark (Capital) is still in the bank," the post by co-founder Biz Stone read. "Nevertheless, our strong growth attracted interest and we decided to accept a unique opportunity to make Twitter even stronger with a very attractive offer."

Financial terms weren't disclosed in the blog post. The Silicon Alley Insider said they've heard $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners. We're looking into this; we heard that the company's valuation, meanwhile, may be as high as $250 million.

But wait! It sounds like money's on the way, even though Twitter just keeps raising more venture capital. "We are now positioned extremely well to support the accelerating growth of our service, further enable the robust ecosystem sprouting up around Twitter, and yes, to begin building revenue-generating products," Stone's blog post read. "Throughout this year and beyond, our small team will grow much bigger to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead."

Twitter raised its third funding round, led by Spark Capital, last spring.

This post was updated at 11:33 a.m. PT.

Here's a message for all the tech bloggers and reporters freaking out over the alleged Associated Press bombshell that some copy-paste legerdemain led to the revelation that Facebook valued itself at $3.7 billion at the time of the ConnectU vs. Facebook court settlement:

Please, chill out! This is not news!

While it had not yet been reported that the ConnectU settlement was a reported $65 million (though since it was in cash and stock, that value may have dropped with the onset of the recession), the $3.7 billion Facebook valuation has been around since July.

The New York Times' Brad Stone broke the figure--well, $3.75 billion--amid the hullabaloo surrounding the redacted court transcripts. I know we're bloggers and we have the attention spans of goldfish and all, but the hype over this "shocker" is a bit silly.

Earlier this week, the AP had obtained court documents dating back to June, when ConnectU vs. Facebook was settled. The founders of ConnectU, former Harvard classmates of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, had sued the eventual CEO because they alleged he stole their intellectual property when he was employed as a programmer for ConnectU. But the court documents were kept sealed, largely because there was information pertaining to the privately owned Facebook's valuation. Media outlets, among them CNET News, had lobbied to have the redacted documents made public. The AP eventually used a copy-paste function in an electronic version in order to expose the censored content. Oops.

ConnectU, meanwhile, has contested the settlement because its founders, who include identical twins and Olympic rowers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, claimed they were misled as to how much Facebook was worth.

Facebook's valuation has been the subject of scrutiny ever since Microsoft invested $240 million in the social network at a sky-high $15 billion valuation. But that investment was one of preferred stock, and it soon became clear that Facebook's paper valuation was significantly lower.

The AP story does have one new tidbit: Facebook was appraised at $8.88 per potential share as part of the $3.7 billion valuation. That figure obviously has dropped since then, given the impact of the recession.

Aside from that, this is a story that was reported almost eight months ago. Keep calm and carry on, folks. To my fellow members of the media, I'm sure there's a "cool new use for Twitter" story to be reported. We clearly can't get enough of those.

Talk about spilling the beans: A marketing brochure for law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, which represented would-be social network ConnectU in its much-publicized suit against Facebook, claimed that the final settlement netted the site's founders a handsome $65 million in Facebook stock and cash.

Oops.

A Law.com article dug up the brochure and its claim, and has posted a .pdf file on the Web. According to the same article, principals at the law firm now regret posting the results. Meanwhile, ConnectU remains in a fee dispute with Quinn Emanuel, a fact which came to light when the plaintiff changed its mind about the suit's eventual settlement last year.

ConnectU was founded by twins Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss, along with their classmate Divya Narendra, when all three were students at Harvard University. They hired Mark Zuckerberg, now the CEO of Facebook, as a programmer and eventually alleged that he swiped their code and business model to create the now-ubiquitous social network.

ConnectU vs. Facebook, which had dragged on since 2004, eventually settled in August right around when Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who are identical twins, were finishing in sixth place in a rowing event at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

It seems like a staggering amount, considering the casual terms of ConnectU's employment agreement with Zuckerberg had meant that it was very difficult for the Winklevosses and Narendra to prove that there had been a physical theft of code. So keep this in mind: Even if Facebook's valuation is nowhere near the $15 billion that it was valued at in the halcyon days of that $240 million Microsoft investment, $65 million is fairly small potatoes for Zuckerberg & Co. They were likely willing to make some concessions to get a longstanding legal tiff off the table. (CNET Networks, then-publisher of CNET News, had intervened in the lawsuit for the limited purpose of trying to unseal some court records.)

Facebook, unsurprisingly, has opted not to comment on this situation.