LivingSocial, a well known daily deals site, may scrap any thoughts of an IPO in 2011 and instead raise $200 million . The funding round would include equity and debt with efforts led by JPMOrgan Chase. LivingSocial would invite current investors to contribute as well as bring in new ones. READ MORE
Last week, Target‘s website crashed under the weight of thousands of eager shoppers, all trying to snag the retailer’s exclusive line created by designer Missoni. This has left business analysts cautioning against assuming the web can nimbly adjust as consumers have taken to social media to complain. READ MORE
A collection of 40 U.S. newspapers has developed a new mobile-ad platform in hopes of replacing lost print ad revenue. It looks and acts quite like print ad circulars, which continue to be a major profit source for newspapers and an important way for small businesses to market to local customers. READ MORE
From Monday to Wednesday in San Francisco, TechCrunch’s latest Disrupt Start-up Battlefield competition will showcase entrepreneurs from 30 start-ups vying for a $50,000 prize by making six-minute-long pitches to a rotating panel of venture capitalists, tech influencers, angel investors and Silicon Valley players. Monday featured three sessions of Start-up Battlefield, titled Disrupting Traditional Markets, Moving the Web Forward and Entertain Us; here are the start-ups presented in session three: Entertain Us. READ MORE
To help anyone dealing with leaked online information, the Consumer Federation of America has launched a new website and bills it as all-in-one location for information on virtual crime. READ MORE
Google Offers, a daily deals program engineered by the search engine giant to compete with Groupon, launched in Portland, Oregon last April before expanding to New York City and the San Francisco area. After a successful beta launch in all the requisite tech markets, Google Offers announced that it will launch in five new cities: Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. READ MORE
Business provider of wireless voice and data services Airband has raised $20 million with ABRY Partners of Boston as of this morning. The company, which merged with Sparkplug last year to create one of the country’s largest fixed-wireless companies, offers Internet access, VoIP, and other services, and has plans to expand. READ MORE
Google Offers, the daily deals service Google launched in June that now operates in the New York City, San Francisco and Portland areas, will soon be benefiting from the company’s acquisition of Dealmap, a site that posts aggregated deals, discounts, and coupons to a local map, reports ZDNet. Dealmap says it has more than two million users of its web, mobile, social and e-mail products, and more than 85 million monthly visitors to its partner network. READ MORE
Hot on the heels of the daily deals model, June 2011 start-up Crowd Seats is offering deep discounts for users in a new niche market: sports tickets. With the tactic of group-buying in mind, the super-young start-up aims to give users the ability to score sweet deals to their favorite sports stadiums, 50 to 90 percent off of face value, without breaking the franchise’s bank. READ MORE
Google and Virgin America–Inc. Tech’s Business Travel 50 winner for both in-flight entertainment and food and drink–have partnered to allow Virgin customers the chance to test out the new Chromebooks for free. READ MORE
