Ventures
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'Fortnite' finally sheds its Early Access label
Epic now considers 'Fortnite' an established game.
Report: Kevin Rose moving within Mountain View, now a partner at Google Ventures
Have you been wondering what Digg co-founder, Kevin Rose, has been up to since joining the Mountain View team a couple months back? Well, AllThingsD is reporting that Mr. Rose has left his duties as senior product manager of Big G's social network in order to make a move to the company's investment firm, Google Ventures. According to the report, the switch has now been confirmed by an undisclosed Ventures spokesperson, although no further details were given at this time. The move itself isn't exactly a surprising one, given Rose's previous, and hefty history of venturing into startups within the industry. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments section below.
Smule raises $3.9 million in funding
There's money in them thar App Store! Smule, the company behind the popular Ocarina and Zephyr apps for the iPhone, has informed us that they raised a whopping $3.9 million from a round of venture funding led by a firm named Granite Ventures. That's a lot of capital -- while a lot of people are aiming to get their hands in the cookie jar in a big way in the burgeoning economy of the App Store, $3.9 million is the biggest single payout we've seen yet (the iFund actually paid out $100 million, but that was split among various companies and people, and we haven't heard specifics on exactly what they got). The company brags that they've attracted over one million users already, and that they will use the funding to "help people experience music as it's never been experienced before and in turn find new ways of bringing people together." We can't help but wish them well -- hopefully we'll see more high quality apps in the App Store, and hopefully that'll pay off for both investors and consumers.
