There are so many interesting stories out there and unfortunately we don’t have the time to cover all of them. With our section “Worth reading”, we provide you once in a while with some links to interesting articles of other publications:
Sulake, the company behind Habbo Hotel, is to lay off up to two-thirds of its workforce in Finland as it tries to reinvent itself as a gaming and entertainment platform. Investors fled after a TV investigation back in June revealed how the Habbo Hotel virtual world was being used by sexual predators to groom kids for abuse. Read more on GigaOm.com (Update – March 2023: The article seems to be not visible anymore, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
The Skyscanner app is now also available as a Windows 8 version. The free app allows free-text search, which means that users can enter, for example, “Flights to LA next Tuesday, back a week later”, rather than completing several data fields. Skyscanner also announced plans to create 100 new jobs in its Edinburgh HQ, with a new Glasgow office planned for 2013. Find out more on TC Europe.
Smeet, the Berlin-based 3D social networking site and social gaming publisher is reportedly laying off half of its technical team today, due to key changes in Facebook policy, making it more difficult/expensive for games publishers to exist on its platform. Smeet decided to close its second product line of publishing social games on Facebook. Continue reading on VentureVillage (Update – March 2023: The article seems to be not visible anymore, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
Elaia Partners announced today a closing of the new €45 million fund, Elaia Alpha. The Paris-based fund is dedicated to seed-stage startups, and while a part of the fund will be dedicated to investing €500K to €1 million tickets in startups raising a seed stage around, there will also be a portion of the fund dedicated to investing €100K to €300K in order to help startups get their feet off the ground. More on RudeBaguette.com.
The event app Vamos has secured an “undisclosed €6-digit friends and family round” to hire more freelance developers and continue their expansion (Update – March 2023: The website seems to be out of use, and we therefore deactivated the original link). The Berlin-based startup, created by a team of Swedes, announced its public launch last August. Vamos aggregates public Facebook events through an iPhone app. Find out more about this app and its recent funding on ArcticStartup.com (Update – March 2023: Arctic Startup seems to be no longer in business under this website and we therefore deactivated the link).
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