LinkedIn acquires Pulse news reader for $90 million

LinkedIn Acquires Pulse

Pulse's Talent, Technology, and Products to Help LinkedIn Accelerate Its Content and Mobile Initiatives

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 11, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD), the world's largest professional network on the Internet with more than 200 million members worldwide, today announced it agreed to acquire Pulse (owned by Alphonso Labs, Inc.), a leading news reader and mobile content distribution platform.

Pulse was founded in 2010 by Akshay Kothari and Ankit Gupta while they were students at Stanford University. It quickly grew to become one of the most widely used platforms for content consumption on the Internet.

Pulse currently has more than 30 million users who have activated its iOS and Android-based news reader apps in more than 190 countries.

Pulse is available in nine languages, and approximately 40% of users are outside the United States. More than 750 of the world's leading publishers distribute their content through Pulse.

"We are thrilled to be able to add Pulse's considerable talent, technology, and products to our growing ecosystem of content offerings, and we believe that they will help us accelerate our ability to deliver to our members the insights they need to be better at what they do, on any device," said Deep Nishar, SVP of Products and User Experience. "To continue to deliver that value to our members, our vision for content is that LinkedIn will be the definitive professional publishing platform, and Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision."

"News--the people, the places, the stories--is part of our daily conversation. Over the past three years, Pulse has established itself as a key part of that conversation; it has grown from a small project, to a platform for millions of readers to access their favorite content," said Kothari. Gupta added, "Now that our team is part of LinkedIn, we'll work together to expand the possibilities for content discovery, helping readers engage in conversations with colleagues, mentors, industry leaders, and beyond."

Following closing, members of the Pulse team, including those from Engineering, Product and Design, will join LinkedIn at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters. The existing Pulse apps will continue to be supported as the integrated Pulse and LinkedIn teams work to build future generations of professional content consumption products.

The transaction is valued at approximately $90 million, subject to adjustment, in a combination of approximately 90 percent stock and approximately 10 percent cash, and the stock being issued in the transaction will be done so in a private placement. Subject to the completion of customary conditions, the acquisition is expected to close during the second quarter of 2013.

Nishar blogged about the acquisition at

http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/04/11/welcome-pulse-to-linkedin-family, and a SlideShare presentation outlining the deal can be found on LinkedIn's SlideShare page at:

https://www.slideshare.net/linkedin/welcome-pulse-to-linked-in-family and on the investor relations section of the LinkedIn website at: http://investors.linkedin.com/. Kothari and Gupta blogged about the acquisition at http://www.pulse.me/linkedin.

About LinkedIn

Founded in 2003, LinkedIn connects the world's professionals to make them more productive and successful. With more than 200 million members worldwide, including executives from every Fortune 500 company, LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network on the Internet.

The company has a diversified business model with revenue coming from Talent Solutions, Marketing Solutions and Premium Subscriptions.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley, LinkedIn also has offices across the globe.

The LinkedIn logo is available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=11096 Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements related to LinkedIn, Pulse, and the potential benefits of the acquisition, including statements regarding future product plans and strategies and the timing of closing. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements due to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks associated with: our ability to successfully integrate Pulse and its technology and personnel; execution of our plans and strategies, including with respect to mobile products and features; demand for content consumption products; and other important factors that could cause results of the acquisition and related transactions to differ materially from those contained in LinkedIn's forward-looking statements described in the documents LinkedIn files from time to time with the SEC, including LinkedIn's most recent Form 10-K, as well as LinkedIn's future filings. Although LinkedIn believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, LinkedIn cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements.

LinkedIn is under no duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform to actual results.

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By: Unknown On 9:10 AM

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Fujitsu shows off a tablet prototype with a built-in palm reader (hands-on)

To be honest, CeBIT is a fairly sleepy tech show, especially compared to Mobile World Congress, which just wrapped last week. For Fujitsu's part, the outfit already showed off its waterproof slate and GPS cane (aka the best thing we've seen so far this year). But the company did keep at least one trick up its sleeve: a tablet with a built-in palm reader. If you recall, we knew a year ago that Fujitsu was working on a tablet that could scan the palm as a form of authentication, but we've never actually seen a finished product, or even a functioning prototype.

So here we are. This thing has a 10-inch screen, though its dimensions are considerably larger than on any other 10-incher, as its housing has to accomodate that palm reader. As it happens, though, Fujitsu is already developing a sensor small enough that it could be built into the tablet itself, most likely in the upper bezel. Even so, that won't be ready until at least the end of the year, says a Fujitsu rep. For now, then, the device comes bundled inside a plastic and magnesium enclosure, and the tablet itself will be the same Arrows V F-04E we showed you last week. (It will be sold under the Stylistic, not Arrows, brand in Europe.)

Like other proofs-of-concept with Fujitsu's PalmSecure technology, you don't actually have to lay your hand on the sensor to make it work -- hovering above it will work just fine. As with a fingerprint sensor, you'll be required to recreate the same hand motions several times as a way of setting up a user profile. In the case of palm-reading, though, you can also register both a right and left hand -- as you can see in our video below, the system will most certainly reject you if you offer the wrong one.

In terms of pricing and availability, well, we definitely don't have a price, but Fujitsu did indicate it would arrive in Japan first, followed by Europe in June. Oh, and given that its main selling point is a security feature, you can bet it'll be sold to businesses over consumers. If you don't live in Japan and aren't working for The Man, we've got some photos and video below which should hopefully satisfy your curiosity. Fujitsu PalmSecure prototype tablet hands-onSee all photoswhen.eng("eng.galleries.init")

Dan Cooper contributed to this report.

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By: Unknown On 7:51 PM

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Verizon offers another way to pick up a Square reader, make your eventual fortune

Accepting Mobile Payments Comes Full Circle for Small Businesses: Rounding Out a Business with Square

For some small businesses, accepting credit or debit cards can be an expensive, time-consuming and complicated process.

Fortunately for small business owners, wireless technology can provide a simple solution to allow businesses of any size to expand payment options for customers. Using a mobile payment tool such as Square, businesses from boutique shops, to plumbers, to professional services, to salon professionals and independent contractors can accept credit or debit card payments using their smartphone or tablet.

Beginning on Jan. 31, the Square Card Reader will be available nationally at Verizon Wireless stores. Running on Android and iOS platforms, Square will sell for $9.97 and comes with $10 credit to a Square account. There are no contracts, minimums or set-up fees.

It takes just a few minutes for a merchant to set up Square. After the Square app is downloaded, the user completes a few quick sign-up steps, links the service to their bank account, and within moments, is up and running.

Transactions are completed with a swipe of the card on the Square Card Reader followed by the buyer's signature. The seller can email or text the receipt to the buyer. The seller pays a fee of 2.75 percent for swiped transactions and 3.5 percent plus 15 cents for sales that are manually keyed in. The funds are deposited in customers' bank accounts generally within 24 hours. Customers can also manage their Square account online at www.squareup.com.

Now merchants have a better chance to close the sale when a prospective customer doesn't have enough cash on hand, but truly wants the product or service.

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By: Dilusha On 9:06 PM

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Press: Google Reader done right? Or just different?

Press, a brand new Google Reader news client, has been the focus of the Android app community since its release, being heralded for its great design choices and general ease of use. It certainly isn't the first -- nor will it be the last -- in this arena, but right now its one that has everyone watching, and early indications are that it's living up to the hype.

Do the design and features offer enough of a draw to pull you away from another reading app of your choice? Stick around after the break and see if Press is worth your consideration.

The basic premise of Press, if you're not familiar, is to sync with your Google Reader and serve up news that you've added via RSS feeds. It's generally something that the more tech savvy -- or dare I say "power users" -- among us will use to consume news, but that's not to say that a novice couldn't set up a similar system on their own. Make no mistake, however, this isn't as simple and visually appealing as an app like Flipboard or Google Currents will be to the average user. That being said, for those who need to churn through thousands of stories every week -- say, like writers for a technology website -- a great, minimalist RSS news reader is a necessity.

This is a minimalist news reading client done right.

 

The main interface and navigation of Press isn't more than a stone's throw away from what Google already offers in its first party Reader client, but that last bit of difference is what makes it so great. To be honest most of the hard design work for Press was done for them -- this app follows Google's "holo" guidelines extensively. That's not at all meant to take anything away from the developers, the folks at TwentyFive Squares have made one hell of a nice app here, but more to say that Press is just taking the great Android design cues already available and making the best app possible. You can tell that time was spent on the user experience and ease of use rather than superfluous animations and wasted features.

Navigation is extremely simple, with just three tabs across the top of the app -- unread (a filled circle,) read (an open circle,) and starred. For some reason my immediate reaction was that the circles for read and unread should be reversed, and it really took a while to get used to it. Something about the open circle tells me "unfinished," and the closed circle means it's "complete." Weird OCD moments aside, everything here is simple to use. You get a numerical count of read/unread articles at the far right of each folder listing, and a set of red dots that indicate the number of feeds the articles are in. For example, two red dots and "10" on the side mean there are two feeds with ten unread stories between them. It helps you get a feeling for how much news is really in the folder before you tap through -- if there's one feed with 30 unread stories, you can probably guess someone reset an RSS feed and flooded the folder.

 

The settings menu of Press is an exercise in minimalism -- which isn't usually found in conjunction with a power user type of app -- but all of the main categories can be found here. You can manage the number of articles that can be synced, a few different UI tweaks and that's about it. One setting that seems to be missing is a background sync interval to keep articles in order. I don't necessarily need this personally because I'm always going to hit the refresh button when I enter so I have the absolute latest news, but I could see some users wanting this. A happy (battery and data friendly) middle ground would be a "refresh on app open" checkbox.

Another setting that I personally wish was there is a way to hide specific folders from views. I also use Google Reader to manage my podcast (both audio and video) feeds on my computer, and I just have no need for those to show up in my news client. My podcatcher is smart enough to take in just my podcast feeds, my news reader should be able to handle the opposite.

I alluded to the extreme simplicity and ease of use in the above sections, but there really is nothing fancy about the interface here, and that's a really good thing. The interface of Press just gets out of your way and lets you read your news. When in a news feed, you're mainly using the sliding panel paradigm. You tap a story to view it, and when you want to go back to the articles list you slide it back over and select a new story. You can use the overflow settings key in the top right to share the article, copy the URL, open in the browser and change fonts. 

 

Speaking of fonts, there are several available: Roboto, Open Sans, Source Sans Pro (default,) Lora, Bitter and PT Serif. I'm really a fan of Roboto (the default font in Android since ICS) so I kept with that in my use. I'm far from a font connoisseur -- I know some of you are -- but I really enjoyed all of the font offerings here. Any regular user picking up the app will be happy enough with the default font that they won't even consider looking for a setting to change it. There are two simple buttons at the top left of each page to increase or decrease the font size -- a nice touch. Again, the fonts are just another part of the app that simply let you read. Perfect.

Of the articles I've read using Press, everything formatted nicely with no issues. Inline pictures, block quotes and links all displayed properly, making for a smooth experience. Scrolling and navigation were extremely quick (this running on my Galaxy Nexus) with nary a hiccup. I highly suggest you use the integrated browser as well, as it offers a nearly seamless switch between RSS and web views. Pages load much faster than an external browser and have the same great performance as the pre-loaded RSS stories.

As with any new app, it will take some time to get used to the gestures and controls before you feel comfortable with it. That time comes quickly with Press, and it won't take long before you start to get into some of the neat hidden features -- such as double tapping images to enter a zoom mode or tapping article favicons to mark stories read/unread. When it comes to just picking up the app and using it, I still can't express how simple Press is to use.

If you're already in the Google Reader ecosystem when it comes to managing and reading news, there really is no better choice out there right now than Press. With a simple design and easy to use navigation, it blows Google's own Reader app out of the water and surpasses many of the more complicated clients out there.

If you're currently using a more casual app -- such as Flipboard or Currents -- to read news, moving to Press is a bigger investment than just the app. The choice of whether or not this app commands such a big move (to an RSS feed system) is a personal one, but if you do make it then Press is the client to get.

Press is only $1.99 in the Play Store, and after a few days with it you'll likely think it commands a much higher premium for the quality experience it offers.

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By: Dilusha On 1:11 PM

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