The Boston tech scene is always changing. Perpetually, execs play musical chairs with companies, startups surpass record numbers and businesses buy other businesses. All of that was certainly true over the past seven days, and we’ve brought all of that together in this week’s business roundup.
Jumptap Taps Former Yahoo Exec as COO
Jumptap, a mobile ad network based in Cambridge, has appointed Frank Weishaupt as their COO. Weishaupt spent 10 years at Yahoo! holding such positions as VP of advertising marketplaces. His latest endeavor, however, was as SVP of sales and publisher marketplace at Criteo. Jumptap has raised roughly $121 million in venture funds since 2004 and, according to an interview with Boston Business Journal, will be filing its S1-IPO documents and going public sometime later this year.
PowerInbox reaches 1M Emails Viewd, Rolls Out Slew of New Features
PowerInbox is a startup that enables emails from websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pitnerest, Spotify, Hulu and LinkedIn. PowerInbox’s plug-in allows the user to take care of Facebooking and Tweeting within the email itself. As of last Tuesday, PowerInbox’s apps have allowed for over one million emails to be sent. They serve over 50 different websites. The Cambridge-based company went public last October, and recently launched new features that expand URL previews, maps, music and videos; integrate with new email clients; and allow users to receive notification icons.
Akamai Hires IT Veteran for Sr Vice President and General Manager, Americas
Akamai Technologies is a cloud platform that provides its services to any device. They’re (surprise, surprise) based out of Cambridge. On Monday, they announced the appointment of Jim Ebzery as their new SVP and GM, where he’ll be leading sales, services and marketing operations across the Americas. He formerly ran the Security, Management and Operating Platforms business at Novell, having led the growth of the security business and expansion of their strategic cloud business.
RunKeeper Brings ‘Goals’ Feature To Mobile Apps
The ‘Goals’ feature by RunKeeper was, up until Wednesday, only reachable via web browser. Now, the Boston-based fitness tracker has made ‘Goals’ available on Android and iOS devices. The feature allows users to set specific goals and track how they’re living up to them over time. The four types of goals that can be set are: Achieve a specific distance, achieve a cumulative distance, complete a race and lose a specific amount of weight by a set timeframe.
Communispace Brings Management Expertise to China
On Tuesday, Communispace announced their expansion into the Asian market. A leader in building online communities that transform the way global brands listen to and understand their consumers, Communispace is setting up shop in the world’s most populous country, China. The hometown company implements its own proprietary platform and innovative tools custom-built for gathering insights, guaranteeing member quality and ensuring robust privacy.
Brightcove Acquires Encoding Service Provicer Zencoder
For a cool $30 million, Brightcove announced their acquisition of cloud-based video encoding company Zencoder yesterday. Brightcove, a Boston-area provider of cloud-based solutions for publishing and distributing professional digital media, looks to build on Zencoder’s 1,000 members. One of Zencoder’s video players is used on over 24,000 websites. Brightcove plans to continue to develop, operate, support, and promote the Zencoder encoding and Video.js services in their current form as distinct product offerings.
