[Israel] FlyScreen, the mobile phone lock-screen replacement from Israeli startup Cellogic, has added Foursquare integration to its Android app ahead of this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) festival.

The new Foursquare widget lets users of the location-based social network access its main features, including the ability to quickly find places nearby, “check-in”, share their location with friends via Foursquare, Twitter and/or Facebook, as well as access their foursquare friends-list.

The company says it’s the first time that a location-based mobile service has been made available on Android’s lock-screen, and that the app now offers the fastest way to “check-in” to Foursquare on a mobile since you can do it without even unlocking the phone. No need to drill down into apps or Android’s web browser.

Cellogic plans to add further features in a future update, such as being able to access user profiles, leaderboards, and add new venues.

FlyScreen, which offers widgets for a number of social networks and RSS-powered content, has been doing great in the Android Market, the company tells me, and is already in the top 3% downloads and powering close to 300K widgets per-day.

Moving forward, Cellogic sees FlyScreen as a mobile syndication platform in its own right. “FlyScreen widgets get an unprecedented amount of daily exposure, making it a highly effective means of syndicating content over the mobile medium.” Due to this exposure, the company is exploring various monetization options and says it will be announcing “some great partnerships and integrations in the coming months.”

Read more: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/03/11/flyscreen-for-android-adds-foursquare-integration/

[Finland] This is exactly the type of deal that Spotify needs to achieve the kind of distribution that might lead to economies of scale and therefore reduce the cost to end-users with regards to its Premium offering. And of course, generate much needed revenue. The music streaming startup has signed up telco TeliaSonera as its exclusive partner in Finland to market and sell Spotify Premium. The two companies already have a similar arrangement in Sweden which started at the end of last year.

The new two year agreement will see Spotify and TeliaSonera work together to provide the telco’s Finnish customers with a range of Spotify Premium offers on computers, mobile phones and TVs.

The latter is particularly noteworthy as it coincides with today’s launch of TeliaSonera’s new IPTV service in Finland dubbed ‘Sonera Home TV’, which will give Sonera customers access to a wide range of free and pay TV channels as well as Spotify on the TV – although integration with the music streaming service won’t come until the summer when it will potentially be available in approximately 1.6m living rooms across Finland, says the company.

In the UK, Spotify already has a deal with mobile carrier 3 where the service is bundled with a 2 year contract on select phones getting a lot closer to the ‘feels like free‘ price-point many believe is needed to make the company’s Premium offering go mainstream. What’s as yet unclear is how close to that goal Spotify will get in Finland with today’s announcement.

Read more: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/03/09/spotify-signs-exclusive-deal-with-finnish-telco-teliasonera-for-its-premium-offering/

[Germany] Team Europe Ventures, the Berlin-based VC firm, has launched a new €6 million fund for early stage startups in the Internet and mobile Internet space. The fund is mainly targeting companies in Germany and Europe, but also in the USA, and the focus will be on the seed stage, with 4-5 startups being invested in per-year for a maximum of €500K per company.

This is bound to be good news for startups in Europe, and particularly in Germany where seed funding is seen to be a problem for early stage companies in the Internet space. Pawel Chudzinski, one of the partners of Team Europe Ventures comments:

“We see a gap in the area of seed investment. For example in Germany there are only very few angel investors who invest six-figure amounts; on the other hand, business angel consortia have various drawbacks, e.g. the problem that none of the investors ever feels wholly responsible, which has negative impacts during due diligance as well as when companies need support in tough times.”

Another thing that Team Europe Ventures are keen to stress is that early stage means, when appropriate, early. Kolja Hebenstreit, also a partner, says:

“We are able to invest in very early stages. If a team is complete, or nearly complete, we’re happy to come on board during the so called ‘powerpoint’ stage. Experience shows that decisive decisions are often made during the foundation phase, so we think it’s good to speak with experienced potential partners as early as possible.”

Team Europe Ventures is managed from Berlin by the its four partners Lukasz Gadowski (founder of Spreadshirt, co-founder of StudiVZ), Kolja Hebenstreit (early employee at Spreadshirt, seed investor in StudiVZ), Pawel Chudzinski (formerly Grennhill & Co.) and Steffen Hoellinger.

The firm is currently a shareholder in 15 self founded companies or lead investments as well as 40 co-investments.

Aside from the Team Europe Ventures management themselves, the fund’s investors consist of other Internet entrepreneurs as well as active business angels, including Arend Iven and Ron Hillmann; Dario Suter (film producer, formerly StudiVZ); Matthias Spieß (Spreadshirt), Heiko Hubertz (Bigpoint), Mueller Medien; Günter Faltin (Professor for entrepreneurship and business angel); Jan Becker, Robert Wuttke and Andreas Etten (CGI AG); Kai Bolik, Michael Kalkowski and Boris Wasmuth (Gameduell); Mario Kohle and Robin Behlau (Käuferportal); Masoud Kamali (Software & Support Verlag); Christoph Janz and Christopher Münchhoff.

Read more: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/03/09/team-europe-ventures-starts-e6m-fund-for-early-stage-internet-and-mobile-startups/

[UK] Now this is getting a little silly. Snippa, another UK-based Groupon clone launches today, this time from two experienced entrepreneurs: Tim O’Shea, founder of Blurtit, and David Hobart, founder of PureContent. The company is self funded by O’Shea and Hobart from their existing businesses, operating with a six person team headquartered in North Walsham, Norfolk.

Snippa, which is focusing on London initially, pretty much follows the usual group buying model: Each day various deals are on offer for things to do in the city, with a minimum number of buyers required for the deal to go through. If not enough people sign-up within the allotted time period then the offer is withdrawn and no money changes hands. The idea is that those interested will spread the word via email and social networks so as to increase their own chances of getting a bargain.

Although it’s here where I’m beginning to question the Groupon model as a whole, whereby the perception may be far more important than reality with the tipping point required, arguably, nothing more than a marketing gimmick designed to make the offers go viral – see below.

Snippa says its main differentiator from the plethora of competitors, including the extremely well funded US-based Groupon, along with others such as Berlin-based MyCityDeal or the just launched UK-based Groupola, is that it runs deals for more than one day, and has more than one deal live at any time. It also claims to have invested more heavily in securing the best deals for its users.

On launch day, the deals on offer include an £80 Super Car experience worth £160 plus a free 4X4 Fun Experience at Vision Motorsport, with a tipping point of 96 buyers. Or a Champagne Afternoon Tea for two for £35 (RRP £60) at Eric Lanlard’s Famous Cake Boy patisserie, with a tipping point of 30 buyers.

So what about the accusation that the Groupon-model is nothing but a marketing gimmick. I’m basing this possibility on the fact that many of the offers being advertised on group buying sites require as little as 25 people to sign up to make the offer stand. That’s not a huge number to back up claims of economies of scale to provide room for a 50% discount. So what exactly is going on?

Naturally, Snippa’s COO Hobart refutes these claims, although he says he can “understand people drawing this conclusion with the current influx of startups into the group buying space, most of whom seem to be operating deals with low tipping points, but in turn the offerings are not deals we would choose to publish.”

In other words, competitors might be using group buying purely as a marketing gimmick but not Snippa – although he would say that: “Tim and I truly believe the tipping point is inextricably linked with the best deal that we can offer to our customers. In our experience the minimum buy-in is in place to protect the merchant more than anything.”

Perhaps more noteworthy to the growing number of UK-based and other European Groupon clones is Hobart’s different experience in dealing with American merchants compared to British ones.

“From my experience with Purecontent.com, American companies are more comfortable to experiment with new marketing channels and are happy to operate break even or loss leaders for ‘customer acquisition’. This in turn offers companies like Groupon the ability to get great deals whilst achieving high commission rates. We have found the UK market place is not as open in this respect. In this difficult business climate merchants are reluctant to offer large discounts without the promise of a significant uplift in footfall and a guaranteed minimum return.”

Hobart isn’t saying that the viral aspect is unimportant to the group buying model’s success but argues that from a web user’s point of view, they are just as likely to send an offer on to their friends if they think it’s a great deal regardless of whether the tipping point is set low or high. Additionally, he says, in the UK Twitter seems to be much less significant at this stage.

“… a Twitter search for a Groupon deal vs any of the UK clones reveals a large difference in tweet volume, the UK deals are not getting as many Retweets. I think time will tell if the reason for this is the UK isn’t so addicted to Twitter yet or that the current UK deals just aren’t that attractive.”

Read more: http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/03/09/attack-of-the-groupon-clones-here-comes-snippa/