LinkedIn acquires Refresh.io, Facebook launches a video app and more news from Twitter
This week has been a busy one for the biggies, there has been news from all fronts- Linkedin, Facebook and Twitter.
LinkedIn has acquired Refresh.io, a company that was started by Bhavin Shah and Paul Tyma to create a digital briefing book that every professional could use to discover common ground and build stronger relationships with people they were meeting. The value of the deal hasn't been disclosed but 12 of the 15 people team at Refresh.io will join LinkedIn. "Our joint passion for delivering insights that help professionals be more productive is what makes joining LinkedIn so exciting. Plus, LinkedIn gives us an opportunity to share insights with more than 347 million professionals across the globe," writes Bhavin. Refresh.io is no longer accepting new users and the app will be shut down on April 15. The team will focus its efforts on providing LinkedIn members with more insights to help them better do their jobs. Customers will be contacted soon regarding the shutdown process and will be explained how they can download notes they’ve stored within the app. (Charlie is an alternative for Refresh)
Moving ahead, Facebook announced the launch of its collaborative video app earlier this week. The app is called Riff and here is how it works- give Riff a topic, like #AprilFools. Then your friends can view it and choose to add their own clips on that topic. Once a friend adds a clip to your video, your friend’s friends will also be shown the video in Riff and will be able to add to it. The potential pool of creative collaborators can grow exponentially from there, so a short video can become an inventive project between circles of friends that you can share to Facebook, or anywhere on the internet, at any time.
This app started as a side project and has grown to a full product now. This reiterates the growth of videos and how every platform wants to latch on to it. Twitter recently added videos to its fold (users can tweet videos) inspite of owning Vine, a service that lets users create and share 6 second videos across the web. Twitter's Periscope also doubles down on videos, more accurately live streaming. When it comes to Facebook, it already allows users to create and share videos. It also bought out Instagram which again lets users play with videos. Riff is an addition to this line which is banking on the fact that user generated content and especially videos will be lapped up by users across the globe.
On Twitter's front, the microblogging website has acquired TenXer, a startup run by one of the card-counting phenoms who inspired the 2008 blackjack movie “21.” TenXer provides data-driven management tools for engineers and their managers to improve their work output. TenXer was founded by serial entrepreneur Jeff Ma and has raised $4.7 million in funding from investors like True Ventures, Radar Partners and Khosla Ventures.
Details of the deal haven't been revealed but Jeff will be joining Twitter's product team. Apart from this, Twitter's VC arm has also surfaced. Twitter's venture capital wing came to light when Twitter was mentioned as one of the investors in the $80 million funding round for Cyanogen, a company that is taking on Google by building a completely open Android.