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Hunch, a New York City-based startup founded by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake and SiteAdvisor founder/angel investor Chris Dixon, has raised $10 million in funding for its questions and recommendations site.Nearly a year ago, Ms. Fake revealed her new startup to the world. Her goal: to create a service that would help people make decisions via crowdsourced questions and advice from its users. Hunch launched last June and has been growing steadily ever since (it peaked at nearly half a million U.S. visitors last month).According to MediaMemo, the startup has raised $10-$12 million from Khosla Ventures and previous investors General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and original angel investor Ron Conway (an early investor in Google and PayPal). The lead investor seems to have been Gideon Yu, the former CFO of YouTube and later Facebook.It’s tough to bet against Hunch and its stellar leadership team. Our tests of the service have always been a positive experience, although it’s tough to say just how much of a market exists for their service. Hunch also has some valuable data that could be an asset into the future.Reviews: Facebook, Google, Hunch, YouTubeTags: business, funding, hunch, venture capital Read more

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. Name: Giiv Quick Pitch: Giiv is a mobile gifting service that delivers gifts in real time in the format of a friendly text message. Genius Idea: Gift certificates are an awesome (if occasionally generic) way to say “You rock!” Giiv.com makes this process easier by letting you give gift cards and certificates to someone you care about via text message.Giiv.com is fairly simple: you find a gift that you want to give a friend or loved one, and then you enter in his or her mobile number and a note. Giiv.com texts them a URL and a giiv code to redeem his or her gift, either with a retailer or online.There is a $0.99 processing fee added on to the gift amount, which seems pretty fair considering the convenience factor. You can get gifts from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, TOMS Shoes, Fandango and others.Sure, you can give a lot of gift certificates electronically over e-mail, but text message can be even faster — depending on the person you are giving to. Plus, if you have an iPhone, you can use the free Giiv iPhone app, which is really cool.How do you give gifts online? Let us know in the comments.Sponsored by Microsoft BizSparkBizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”Reviews: PHPTags: gift certificates, giiv.com, iphone apps, SMS, talkshoe, web apps Read more

Yesterday, Foursquare turned one. You read that right: The mobile social network that made its splash at SXSW 2009 and has tremendous buzz is just 366 days old.Despite that short amount of time, Foursquare has more than half a million users, 1.4 million venues and 15.5 million checkins, and it’s still growing. Experian Hitwise decided to use this milestone to analyze Foursquare’s growth.As you might imagine, not only have Foursquare’s mobile apps seen growth, but so has Foursquare.com. What did strike us as surprising is that the site’s number-one referrer is Facebook, which accounted for a whopping 33% of upstream visits last week. That’s even bigger than Google (22%) and Twitter (8%) combined. It’s yet another indicator of how much traffic the world’s largest social network can drive.Searches for Foursquare have also been sharply rising, accounting for around 0.00032% of all U.S. searches. Its most recent peak was February 20, about the time Please Rob Me was gaining the press’ attention.With more than 15.5 million checkins and nearly 300,000 yesterday (many due to SXSW), Foursquare seems to have a bright future. However, competition from Gowalla, Yelp and Facebook in the local space could give the startup a run for its money this year.Reviews: Facebook, Foursquare, Google, Gowalla, Twitter, YelpTags: foursquare, Mobile 2.0 Read more

Amid class-action lawsuits over privacy and subsequent FTC inquiries, Netflix announced today that it will not be pursuing the next Netflix Prize.For more than three years, individuals competed to win the $1 million Netflix Prize, in the process improving the company’s algorithm for recommending movies to its users.When the results were first announced last summer, Netflix followed them up with an announcement that a second contest would take place.Unfortunately, the next iteration is not to be. A class action privacy lawsuit arose when a customer claimed that the rental information that Netflix makes available for use in the contest wasn’t anonymous enough and could theoretically be linked to her and reveal her sexuality.As Ars Technica notes, researchers have often said that the external data source could be linked to an individuals renting history, something that does present certain privacy risks.Netflix has settled the class action suit and the FTC inquiry, but the Netflix Prize is no more. While we understand the potential privacy concerns and why this could be an issue, we’re sad to see the Netflix Prize go.Netflix said that it intends to continue to look at how it can collaborate with the community when developing its recommendation engine. Here’s an idea: Ask people if they are willing to opt into public research. Frankly, I’d be more than willing to do that in exchange for better and more accurate movie recommendations.What do you think about the end of the Netflix Prize? Let us know!Tags: netflix, netflix prize, privacy, recommendation engine Read more

It’s true that there are enjoyable jobs out there, and there are also those that are not so enjoyable. Well, we are not going to talk about the ones that are no fun because you’re probably all too familiar with them as it is. Instead, we are going to talk about transcription jobs and how they can make your life much easier. Medical transcription is considered to be a popular position because it is usually done at home. Read more

Present day economics is forcing U.S. citizens to look for alternative means of employment. International citizens are also faced with the same dilemma in attempting to find remote work from within the United States that would allow many retirees, stay at home mothers and students to take advantage of. Read more

K.I.S.S. is an acronym originally designed as "Keep it Simple and Stupid" but it is commonly known as "Keep it Simple, Stupid" it was first coined by a lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk works by an engineered named Kelly Johnson. His whole thought process around this was we try to fix the simplest things with the most difficult practices. Read more

For starters if your a complete newbie don’t run because unlike so many other opportunities and products out their you really don’t need any experience! The Certified Cash Club is not my product but after 60 days I have found that it’s worth the $27. Read more

Two of the most important things you need to have today are a computer and a stable Internet connection. If you’ve been using the Internet for a long time, then you probably have seen numerous online home-based opportunities. So, why aren’t you taking advantage of these opportunities? You can make money online by grabbing any of these business opportunities. Read more

Social Media Marketing: An Overview

The Social Robot (blog)

Social media marketing is a term that defines marketing that is done via social networks, such as online communities, networks, blogs and many other …

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