Palo Alto, California-based imo.im, which offers a comprehensive communication and social discovery platform with the same name, has raised $13 million in a round of funding led by co-founder and very early Googler Georges Harik.

The imo.im service basically offers a unified dashboard for a wide range of messaging applications, including the most popular ones built by the likes of Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.

In conjunction with the funding announcement, the company is today announcing a new feature called ‘Broadcasts’ for its Android and iOS smartphone apps.

With Broadcasts, imo.im essentially wants to connect users of its native apps with others who have similar interests.

It builds upon the company’s imo Network, a real-time sharing and discussion network that made its debut on the Web last year, and has now been redesigned with mobile platforms in mind.

‘Broadcasts’ is a key part of the imo Network. It’s basically a channel where imo.im users can easily discover people, information, news and topics they care about. The company says it has developed a sophisticated proprietary algorithm to power the system, but we haven’t gotten the chance to actually test-drive the apps yet.

“Social discovery is an important feature,” said Ralph Harik, CEO of imo.im. “We want users to find relevant and useful information, people, news and other content that will make their lives better. imo broadcasts is a platform to achieve that.”

Starting today, users will also be able to upload and share photos directly to the Broadcasts feed.

The imo.im apps are free and have been downloaded more than 7 million times to date, according to the company, with 750,000 unique daily visitors sending 50 million messages per day on average.

➤ imo.im for Android, iPhone and iPad

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Tencent, the Chinese Internet giant behind the popular WeChat messaging service, today revealed that it plans to open a new branch office in Malaysia.

Posheu Yung, Vice President of International Business at Tencent, told the Malay Mail in a local media roundtalk that the strong WeChat user base in the country made it a natural choice for expansion.

“We feel that we don’t need to market the application as we have a foundation already,” said Yung. “However, we seek to further localize the products by collaborating with local firms and celebrities.”

WeChat has been popular in Malaysia for quite some time, reportedly reaching the 1 million local user-mark last autumn. Yung added that since the app’s country-specific, localized launch six weeks ago, the app has reached 70% market penetration among smartphone users in Malaysia.

“In Malaysia, most people use WeChat and WhatsApp, which is good for us as we see ourself more of (sic) a social communication platform whereas Whatsapp is more to messaging,” said Yung, pointing out a oft-cited difference between the two services.

Tencent’s most recent expansions include a research office in the United States, as well as a partnership with Indonesian firm MNC Media. The move to establish a branch in Malaysia seems to confirm, that as WeChat sets its sights beyond China, Southeast Asia will remain a fertile territory for growth.

WeChat is approaching a userbase of over 400 million, 50 million of which are located outside of China. Meanwhile, Tencent recently surpassed Facebook in Millward Brown’s Brandz Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2013 list, a sign that the messenger has done a lot to enliven the Chinese company’s overall brand perception internationally.

WeChat’s biggest rivals in Asia are Japan’s Line, which has a total of 150 million users (105 million of which are outside Japan), and Korea’s Kakao Talk, which has 90 million users worldwide, the large majority of which are in Japan.

Image Credit: SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images

Jawfish Games, a social gaming company, has launched its new real-time, multiplayer tournament service that will work across all platforms. With it, gamers can compete against their friends and even total strangers on iOS, Android, and the Web. The service will launch with two of the company’s top games: Jawfish Poker and Jawfish Words.

Recipient of the Best Consumer 2.0 award from the recent LAUNCH Festival, Jawfish Games seeks to make online gaming much more competitive. It was at the conference where the company debuted its platform and the two games that supported it.

Starting with Jawfish Poker, in tournament mode, gamers are will play in against one another in a virtual room just like you would expect when watching The World Series of Poker. 

Additionally, Jawfish Words is also available for gamers to play in a game that one might not think would be that competitive: word searching. The company says that players can compete to accomplish one of three objectives. The game was available initially on the Amazon Kindle through Jawfish Games’ exclusive partnership with Amazon. Next month, the game is going to arrive on iOS and Android devices, as well as Facebook.

Jawfish Games bills its platform as being scalable, built for mobile, able to support tournaments, and works not only on iOS devices, but also Facebook — at the same time.

There have certainly been games that allow users to play against each other like Words With Friends or Candy Crush Saga, but Jawfish Games looks to evolve that model and bring in the spirit of competition into social gaming. It is unfortunate that the company only has two games currently supporting this model, but its CEO Phil Gordon, says that more real-time offerings are “coming out of our studios at a blistering pace.”

Photo credit: Thinkstock

HTC unveiled the Desire 600 today, the first mid-range smartphone to be equipped with dual BoomSound speakers and run its new Sense 5 Android skin, including its Flipboard-inspired BlinkFeed home screen.

The device offers a 4.5-inch super LCD2 display – no pixel resolution just yet – and runs on an unspecified 1.2 GHz quad-core processor.

Interestingly, there’s an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera that appears to forgo the new ‘UltraPixel’ philosophy bestowed upon HTC’s latest flagship Android smartphone, the HTC One. There’s also a 1.6-megapixel front-facing camera for video calls and the like, as well as HTC’s dedicated camera app for burst mode shooting and ZOE animations.

The original HTC Desire was a popular device and it therefore comes as no surprise to see the moniker carried on HTC’s next range of low and mid-end Android smartphones. We’ve already seen the HTC Desire X and HTC Desire C fill this space, which made sense last year given the refreshed HTC One X, S and V naming system – however the Desire 600 seems to stand all on its own.

That’s perhaps not surprising, given the relatively small room for maneuverability created by the refreshed HTC One branding. The Desire 600 is also notable because it supports two SIM cards, which suggests that the device is being targeted at emerging markets, or at least those with inconsistent network connectivity. It also uses HTCs “dual active” system, which means that the user can receive a call on one line, even if they’re already using the other.

They’re not as pronounced as the HTC One, but the Desire 600 is also equipped with dual front-facing speakers. These ‘BoomSound’ amplifiers were one of the stand-out features of the HTC One – we’ve never experienced sound quality like it on a smartphone – and should help to provide a clearer and more balanced listening experience.

HTC says its new mid-range smartphone runs on Android Jelly Bean, although the exact firmware version hasn’t been disclosed. It will be available in either silver/red or black “in a number of markets” from early June. When we have more specific details, we’ll be sure to let you know.

Related: HTC One review: An absolutely superb Android smartphone with software flaws

European telecommunication operators Telefonica and Telenor have signed an agreement with mobile payments firm Fortumo, further solidifying the fast-growing company’s position as one of the leaders in providing such a service.

Telefonica and Telenor’s collaboration with Fortumo would help provide direct carrier billing services to more than 460 million additional subscribers worldwide, according to a news release on Thursday. Direct carrier billing means consumers pay for digital goods via their mobile billing plans with their operators rather than cash, credit cards, or debit cards.

“It makes it much simpler and convenient for consumers to buy digital goods which in turn helps content owners monetize their content,” said Jose Valles, Head of BlueVia at Telefónica Digital.

The latest deal comes not long after Fortumo inked a deal with two of the largest telecom groups in the world, namely Vodafone and China Mobile.

Fortumo, a fast-growing company with offices in Estonia, San Francisco and Beijing, had also in February raised cash from Intel and Graycroft.

The company’s mobile payments work over the web – on desktop, in mobile web and HTML5 apps – and for in-app purchases on Android, Windows 8 and Windows Phone devices. It boasts payment connectivity to over 300 mobile operators in 80 countries, including a number of exclusive direct carrier billing partnerships.

Headline image via Thinkstock

Sky broadband customers should see their Internet connection get a whole lot faster in the next few years, thanks to a new £49 million ($73.6 million USD) deal inked today between BSkyB and Virgin Media.

The new five-year contract with Virgin Media Business, the corporate arm of Virgin Media, will be used to overhaul BSkyB’s network capacity across Great Britain. Virgin operates the UK’s only nationwide fibre optic network and currently carries roughly 35 percent of all business-related broadband traffic across the region.

The company will be using this network to connect around a third of Sky’s unbundled local exchanges with Sky’s own wholly-owned nationwide broadband network, improving general coverage and speeds.

Five years might sound like an awful long time to roll this out, but Virgin Media Business says it hopes to have the “core” of this new network up and running before the end of 2013. The new connections between Sky’s local exchanges and nationwide broadband network should be able to deliver speeds of up to 10 Gbps, courtesy of Virgin Media’a High Capacity Services product.

Which is pretty darn fast, by anyone’s standards.

“As we see traffic on our network grow significantly year-on-year, this agreement provides us with the capacity we need to keep innovating for customers and as such are committed to maintaining our high-capacity network,” Mohamed Hammady, director of Sky Network Services at BSkyB said.

The deal announced today will be improving the underlying infrastructure of BSkyB’s broadband network. The impact might not be felt straight away, but Virgin Media Business claims that in the long run, the development will strengthen the services accessed by over 10 million Sky customers in the UK.

The new connectivity established by Virgin Media should also help Sky accelerate the timeframe needed for the company to develop and deliver new products and services – take its on-demand streaming services Sky Go and Sky Go Extra, for instance – to its colossal group of customers nationwide.

In the end, faster speeds and a more stable broadband network across the UK can only be good news for Sky broadband customers. Oh, and an extra £49 million probably won’t go amiss at Virgin Media either.

Image Credit: BEN STANSALL/AFP/GettyImages

Alibaba-owned Taobao, China’s most influential online retail site, is widely known as a place where one can buy everything and anything under the sun. Now, in cooperation with Guahao.com, a Chinese non-profit, the platform offers a new product – hospital appointments.

According to China Daily, Taobao rolled out a hospital appointment booking service on its website earlier this week. Patients looking to schedule an advance appointment with a doctor can go to life.taobao.com and search for a date, department, local hospital, and doctor. Upon entering personal information into the service, users subsequently receive a text message specifying the exact time and location to pick up their formal appointment ticket.

The service is currently available in 17 provinces and municipalities (including Shanghai), and claims to have partnerships with over 600 hospitals and over 70,000 doctors.

Taobao provides the appointment booking service entirely for free. But pilot programs for payment of registration fees (usually paid on-site) are being rolled out in cooperation with Alipay, Taobao’s sister online-payment platform (both are under the Alibaba umbrella).

Traditionally, Chinese hospitals utilize a line-up-and-take-a-ticket method of booking appointments, but that process has created a huge problem in the country’s health-care infrastructure – appointment scalping. As the status-quo system features minimal oversight, it’s not uncommon for scalpers to buy appointment slots and sell them to patients at inflated prices. Since Taobao’s new service relies on the collection personal information, it imposes an extra hurdle for those looking to profit off an imperfect system.

According to the China Daily, 12 million users booked hospital appointments through Guahao.com. Its integration with Taobao, which has over 500 million users, now puts the platform in a strong position to widen its reach.

Banned in Beijing

The existence of a non-profit providing hospital booking services shouldn’t be too controversial as far as NGOs go in China. However, the incorporation of what is in essence a public good onto Taobao, a privately-owned retail site, has some depressing implications with regard to the efficiency of China’s health care system. Is it really more secure to book an appointment with your cardiologist on a website that sells counterfeit Nike sneakers than at a proper hospital?

Already, the Beijing Municipal Health Bureau has enacted a temporary city-wide ban on the service. Citing the existence of its own city-wide appointment booking platform (www.bjguahao.gov.cn, reportedly in operation since 2011), the department added that no for-profit website, organization, or individual should be involved in the distribution of a public good.

Taobao has accepted Beijing’s ban, but in a statement to the press, emphasized that despite its status as a profit-making entity, it was providing the service for free and with the well-being of the consumers in mind.

 Image Credit: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images

Amid security concerns over the cross-border takeover of Sprint Nextel by Softbank, the Tokyo-based company has agreed to give the U.S. federal government the right to approve a director it will nominate to Sprint’s board.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal (spotted first by The Verge), the director, who will be one of 10 on the board, will be in charge of overseeing national security issues. He will ensure that Sprint complies with the agreement on network security that it is negotiating with federal agencies.

On top of that, the U.S. government is also said to be seeking more concessions – including the right to oversee some of Sprint’s equipment purchases and a request to remove Chinese equipment from a Sprint affiliate’s network.

The US government harbours concerns that a takeover by a foreign company could open the door to security issues via intrusion into its telecommunications networks, and is especially worried that Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE could provide telecom equipment that may threaten its safety.

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son had earlier told US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers that he would remove Huawei equipment in use by the affiliate, Clearwire Corp, the publication said. The step will reportedly cost up to $1 billion.

Sprint is being courted by both Softbank and American satellite-TV provider DISH. Sprint last month said it had received a waiver from Softbank to start preliminary talks with DISH regarding it’s $25.5 billion bid.

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Amazon has just announced that its Kindle Fire HD tablet – both the 7” and 8.9” HD display-sporting versions – are now available to customers in over 170 countries and regions around the world.

The devices are available for pre-order through Amazon’s flagship website and will start shipping June 13, the company says.

More specifically, the Kindle Fire HD 8.9” is available for preorder starting today for $284. The Kindle Fire HD 7” is also available for preorder, and retails for $214.

The 8.9-inch screen on the Kindle Fire HD has a resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels (equal to 254 ppi), a dual-core 1.5 GHz TI OMAP 4470 processor, and Dolby Digital Plus audio. It also houses 1GB of RAM, a 6000 mAh and either 32GB or 64GB of internal storage.

Dave Limp, VP of Amazon Kindle, says in a statement:

Kindle Fire HD is the #1 best-selling item in the world for Amazon since its launch, and we’re thrilled to make it available to even more customers around the globe today.

Not only does Kindle Fire feature advanced hardware, it’s also a service. When combined with our content ecosystem, great email and browsing and top-rated customer service, we hope people around the world will agree that Kindle Fire HD is the best tablet for an incredible price.

The content he speaks of encompasses millions of apps, games, magazines and e-books, including more than 300,000 books that are exclusive to Amazon’s Kindle Store.

In other, fresh and related news, the Amazon Appstore for Android is now available in nearly 200 countries (as expected).

The news of the geographic expansion comes two months after Amazon announced that the 8.9″ version of its Kindle Fire HD tablet became available in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

At the time, it also got a lower price point in the US, starting at $269 for the WiFi-only version and $399 for the 4G-enabled edition.

The devices started shipping in the US back in November 2012.

Also read:

Despite recovered margins, Amazon disappoints in Q4 with revenue of $21.27B and EPS of $0.21

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Red hot payments startup Square is invading Asia after it announced that its service has launched in Japan, which becomes its third market worldwide in addition to the US and Canada.

The company — which counts Starbucks among its investors — will be supported by Sumitomo Mitsui Card Corporation, the same firm that co-launched Visa in the country. Square has long been linked with a launch in Japan (TNW has heard whispers of an early-stage recruitment drive and domain name acquisition since December 2012) and the expansion makes a lot of sense given the relative maturity of mobile payments among consumers in the country.

The Japanese service will be the same as in North America, taking a 3.25 percent of the cut of transactions across its platform with no contract or additional fees.

Square is by no means the first overseas firm to launch a payment solution in Japan. Arch-rival PayPal partnered with SoftBank back in 2011, creating a joint venture to manage its PayPal Here service, while a range of domestic players, including local e-commerce giant Rakuten, are involved in the space.

Jack Dorsey, Square CEO and co-founder, has had much success in Japan already with Twitter, and he’s optimistic on continuing that with his other startup:

I am honored to introduce Square to a country with a rich history of design, innovation and tradition. Square shares the same values and attention to detail in our products. Our tools are made to enable business owners to create a delightful, seamless experience for their customers. I look forward to Square assisting in Japan’s continued economic growth and entrepreneurship opportunities.

The timing of the news is particularly interesting since it comes off the back of news of the departure of Vice President of Partnerships Alex Petrov and Vice President of International Alyssa Cutright which was revealed yesterday.

Cutright, who departed in March, had been responsible for the company’s first international expansion into Canada. The dismissal of Petrov was more bewildering since he was hired from PayPal at the beginning of May, and left without actually starting at Square.

Square’s absence from Europe is all the more marked following its entrance into Asia, but that hasn’t stopped the local payments in Europe scene from blossoming. Startups like Rocket Internet-backed Payleven, Sweden’s iZettle and SumUp in Germany have raised significant funding, introduced requisite Chip & PIN solutions and are expanding across the continent at pace.

Ever the advocate of his companies’ services, Dorsey — who earlier teased a significant news announcement via Twitter — posted a Vine to mark the occasion.

Finding a taxi via a smartphone app may be highly convenient, but authorities in the Chinese city of Shenzhen are cracking down on such services, which it accuses of lacking standards and breaching regulations.

According to a report on Sina Tech (via Tech in Asia), an internal memo issued by the Transport Commission of Shenzhen Municipality demands taxi companies to “immediately investigate their fleet of taxi drivers and warn those with taxi-finding apps on their mobile phones to stop using them. Those found to continue using the apps will be recorded for a practice of dishonesty and sent for evaluation.”

The internal memo was dated April 28, the Sina Tech report says. The publication spoke to taxi drivers, who said that their companies have issued orders earlier this month to stop using the taxi-finding apps, if not risk punishment.

The transport department has since responded to Sina Tech, saying that it is taking steps to regulate standards governing taxi-finding smartphone apps, and putting a stop now isn’t meant to discourage the use of  such services. If developers can refine their apps to meet the requirements of the transport department, it would “welcome the promotion and use of such software.”

The internal memo had noted that the use of such apps could create instability in the taxi industry by allowing drivers to reject or choose their customers.

Last month, it was reported that authorities in Beijing could be considering a foray into the taxi mobile app space for a unified platform that would work with private companies.

The move by Shenzhen’s transport department is, however, currently posing a headache for app developers. One of them, based in Beijing with more than 4,000 users in Shenzhen, is said to have received a notice requesting that it stop promoting its service there.

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