Tripbirds, a Stockholm-based startup that started life as a travel site, one that seized on data from Facebook, Instagram and other social networks, has been relaunched as a “social hotel-booking site” that combines “traditional” hotels with recommendations from users’ social networks. The company raised $740,000 in seed funding last year from Index Ventures, Passion Capital, [...]

When Facebook goes public as expected this spring, a casual observer might assume that Facebook alums will begin investing in startups. That person would be wrong, says one former insider with deep ties to the company.

You can’t go anywhere these days without someone pulling out their smartphone and taking a pic or two with their camera to upload to Facebook, Twitter, Foodspotting or other social media sites. It’s estimated that more than 200 million photos are uploaded to Facebook every day, making it the largest photo sharing site in the [...]

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers was tied for the most active U.S. VC in the first quarter, according to peHUB’s analysis of data from Thomson Reuters (publisher of this blog). Overall, the storied Sand Hill Road firm backed 30 companies, up from 19 in the same period a year earlier, but down slightly from 35 [...]