Startup Roundup: myYearbook Chatter feed surpasses 1 million posts per day, Duck Duck Go whups Cuil

Introducing Technically Philly’s Startup Roundup. Here, we’ll parse out the small pieces that make our greater Startup ecosystem thrive. We want to keep you in touch with the innovations that we can’t quite get to covering, but that deserve highlight. Follow along with the Startup Roundup’s dedicated RSS feed. If you’ve got news to share, get in touch.

DEFINITE READS

myYearbook has announced that its real-time location-based Chatter stream feature—launched last November—receives 1 million posts per day. According to a press release, two new features, which allow users to ask questions and rate each other, ala HotOrNot.com, have accelerated the stream’s growth rate. myYearbook’s traffic continues to grow at an impressive rate, with over 55 million monthly visits and 4.3 million unique visitors.

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Venmo mobile payments drives exchange for charities, retail

A few weeks after a disastrous 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing more than 150,000 people, Peter Groverman was organizing.

By the end of his planning, Groverman—a Villanova law student and CEO of local advertising startup Tapinko—had brought together 126 people from around the world and 40,000 pounds of cargo, including $1 million in medical supplies, which all traveled on an airplane chartered to fly to Haiti last month.

It was another drill for Groverman, who first began organizing relief efforts when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005 and he gathered 40 students to head to New Orleans. But Groverman says another Philadelphia entity was helping drive his recent mission: Rittenhouse-based mobile payment startup Venmo.

Using the text message-based payment system, Groverman was able to raise $50,000 immediately—when that immediacy was vital. “Venmo [was] the whole backbone of our fundraising effort,” he says. “I cant imagine any nonprofit not using text message-based donation systems. There’s no need for a check, no need to go to a bank to deposit. I didn’t have time for checks to come.”

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Shop Talk: XIPWIRE mobile payment platform lets you text cash

Sharif Alexandre wants you to text more.

The founder of Fitler Square-based mobile payment platform XIPWIRE lets consumers send and receive money by SMS message. After registering for the service and linking a bank account, users can send a simple message which automatically pulls money from a virtual wallet or bank account.

“Xip $10 to Bill.” Bill’s got your dills.

The service works, Alexandre says, for inconvient circumstances when someone’s forgotten a wallet or has to divvy up a tab. “If you go out to lunch and have to split the check, you go to ATM, you don’t know how much you owe,” Alexandre says. “If everyone has a XIPWIRE account, you can literally xip them money.”

Currently in soft-launch, plans are for XIPWIRE to be available to consumers next week.

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