NEW YORK, NY – Today an enthusiastic crowd of indie filmmakers and media professionals gathered at 92Y Tribeca for the Tribeca Film Festival’s Future of Film lunch series. Kickstarter’s Elisabeth Holm spoke on a topic near and dear to every filmmaker’s heart: how to fund and promote a film.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
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Path Confirms Series B Funding From Redpoint, Richard Branson and Others (AllThingsD)
CEO Dave Morin noted the investors’ commitment to building Path “for the long term,” and said the funding would be used for “international growth and expansion as well as user adoption.” Inside Mobile Apps In February, Path revealed it has passed 2 million registered users, more than half of which had joined since the service relaunched in December as a personal journal app, pivoting from its original vision as a private photo-sharing service. GigaOM Ever since Facebook decided that Instagram was worth $1 billion, there has been recurring talk of Path, another social service being the next big buyout target. And while I am happy for the Path team, I find the comparisons with Instagram unfounded and premature. Business Insider Here’s what’s odd: RedPoint just invested in a startup that is in many ways very similar to Path: Caterina Fake’s new startup PinWheel. Read more
Social ERM (employee relationship management) software provider Yammer have raised another $85 Million from investors. This comes after a round of $17 million and shows that the company is planning to continue it’s aggressive growth and platform improvement strategy.
Kickstarter is the place for independent filmmakers/comic book writers/sculptors/etc to raise money for their ventures. The site lets anybody log on, find a project they like, and donate any given amount. If the donor give certain amounts, the content creators reward that person with a special item; a limited edition version of the film or a hard copy of a comic, for instance.
Just recently, the site achieved it’s 3rd million dollar project, a comic book entitled “Order of the Stick”.
Original web series destination site Blip has just closed a $12 million financing round to develop new tools and services for independent producers.
Global online ad spend is set to reach $110 billion by 2014 with video ad spend leading the pack, and social video advertising platform Unruly Media is positioning itself as one of the leaders in this arena. Wednesday they announced a $25 million Series A investment. The financing round clocks in at the largest ever for a private company in the social video space.
According to David Sacks, Yammer founder and CEO, the company really wanted to get Palihapitiya on board and raising the funds was part of that process. “Chamath is one of the most insightful people in tech and his experience at Facebook will prove invaluable to us as we scale Yammer in the years to come.”
European social media is humming with Ebuzzing ad platform. The company has raised $25 million in a second round of funding to kick its expansion across Europe.
Based in Luxembourg with 160 people in offices across Europe, Ebuzzing connects users to branded video content via social media. The company was formerly called Wikio Group and has reached about 28.5 million unique visitors in July through its own resources. Those resources include the No. 1 European blogging platform — OverBlog. What is particularly interesting about this funding is that it isn’t just U.S. social media companies that are bringing in large amounts of money.
According to VentureBeat, Pierre Chappaz, chief executive of Ebuzzing, said that the company’s business is booming thanks to the growth of social video advertising. Ebuzzing seeds video commercials into social media. The platform uses its network to connect brands with large communities of bloggers and other social media users. Ebuzzing has exceeded 2,000 international and regional brands as its customers.
The company plans to integrate its Wikio news sites into the Ebuzzing web site.
Ebuzzing investors involve GIMV, a European venture capital fund, and existing investors Lightspeed, Gemini, Solorun and Chappaz. So far, the platform nabbed eight acquisitions in the past 18 months.
The prediction is that the company will likely pursue more merger and acquisition opportunities. Chappaz told VentureBeat that in 2010, the company generated revenue of $15 million and it expects to top $25 million this year. So that’s what all that buzz is about in European social media.
The number 10 million was notable for foursquare earlier this month, as the location-based mobile app reached the 10 million-user mark. The next important number for foursquare: 50 million, but dollars, not users.
CatchOfTheDay, an Australian online retailing group, operates e-commerce site CatchOfTheDay.com.au and daily deal site Scoopon.com.au. The social shopping platform raised an undisclosed amount of funding. Estimates are around $80 million, valuing the company at $200 million.
