BlueKai will be deploying this new methodology in various phases with the first installment being applied to the validation of demographic data across the company’s data offering. Immediately available are BlueKai Premium Demographic categories for gender. Age groups and Household Income categories will be available before the end of June.

“In a world of limitless audience data, marketers have been clamoring for a more viable way to ensure they are targeting the right audiences,” said Pieter De Temmerman, SVP of Exchange and Global Business at BlueKai. “We feel that the single-expert methodology is a flawed approach. There is far too much data across the digital landscape for one data provider or company to be the unchecked arbiter. We see consensus across a diverse group of data experts as the best way to validate audience quality and accuracy.”

BlueKai’s methodology for data validation works as follows:

– “Consensus” testing was run across BlueKai’s publicly available branded

data and unbranded 3rd party data to understand where data sources agreed

on the demographic profile of a user’s cookie.

– Attributes are assigned as medium or high confidence depending on how

many data sources concur and only in the case where there is no

conflicting opinion.

– Premium Demographic segments are tested regularly to continue to meet the

specified standard of excellence in data quality.

“Audience data validation is definitely an industry challenge and V12 Group supports BlueKai’s new approach to surfacing valuable signals that is concurred across a large ecosystem of data experts,” says Kelly Leger SVP/GM of V12 Group Digital Solutions. “This is going to be a true value-add to marketers and publishers who are tapping into demographic targeting today.”

About BlueKai

BlueKai is the world’s first and only complete enterprise data activation solution for intelligent marketing. BlueKai offers its customers a system for managing and activating all their 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data in all marketing and customer engagements. BlueKai represents the only end-to-end SaaS solution for marketers and publishers looking to maximize their cross-channel marketing efforts and create a proprietary solution for unlocking reach, scale and efficiency using data. BlueKai leads the data-driven marketing space with the industry’s first, and most advanced, Data Management Platform as well as the industry’s first, and most well-connected, Data Exchange. BlueKai currently works with thousands of companies and is currently trusted by almost half the Fortune 30 brands to activate their data. In 2013 BlueKai was named to Forbes “50 Most Promising US Companies” list as well as Fast Company’s “10 Most Innovative Global Companies in Big Data”.

Maker Studio is a hot company at the moment in the even hotter Web video space. But it’s not without its own drama and challenges. It had a very public breakup with YouTuber Ray William Johnson. It’s received funding from Time Warner Ventures. It’s also morphed its mission slightly while the space it plays in—YouTube MCNs (multi channel networks)—has come under scrutiny. And since Kreiz came on board, there have been a handful of layoffs.

Kreiz took time out to talk with Adweek to discuss his plans for the company, based in the burgeoning Silicon Beach section of Los Angeles.

Adweek: I’ve heard Maker describe itself as a studio out of the old Hollywood era. And more recently the company has talked about its role as a programmer that coaches talent on how to use YouTube, as well as just a video ad network. So what is Maker?
Kreiz: Maker at the core is a content platform. There are different ways to think about theMCNs on YouTube. Some are services, some are ad networks. This is a content-led company, with content in its DNA. We’re about production, understanding content flow. This is really a next generation media company … orienting towards connecting viewers and advertisers.

What are your plans as the new CEO?
There are a few key components to what we are investing in right now. We want to accelerate our investment in programming. There are going to be more channels under the Maker banner. That’s a key part of what we want do. We’re not reinventing ourselves. Another dimension is that we intend to build and develop and a full-fledged commercial infrastructure. We’re working with content producers, brands and agencies to build media products.

So, more original Maker-owned content?
We worship talent. And talent is crucial, in TV, film, media, any treatment. We tried to work with as many of the best as we can and try to give them the best platform. And we’re also looking to build our own talent. It’s not too dissimilar to the studio model, where you see a combination of multiple approaches. We intend to expand in more genres, more themed brands. Some of this could be scripted.

Regarding your commercial infrastructure plans, one challenge in this space is that it’s hard to make money as just a video ad network because pricing can be low. But brand integrations are tough to scale.
We’re not an ad network. We don’t see ourselves that way. We have a lot of scale and content. We’re working on packaging and positioning our content and making it more palatable for the ad ecosystem. That has to work at scale in a more focused way. Some of it is through brand integration.

What does that mean exactly? You want to automate branding somehow?
We’re now investing pretty heavily in tech tools, things that can help us optimize or support talent and help advertisers reach [their] target audience. We want to create … tools that will [offer] reliable data, the ability to optimize the way we commercialize our content. I don’t want to say too much but we have new products coming that complement what YouTube is doing.

What’s your take on the industry’s attempt to take on TV with the NewFronts?
The industry is young. It’s developing and broadening. the advantages of online video distribution will outweigh the challenges. The holy grail is reaching individuals with the right messages and measuring it. TV is very inefficient. … Online video ability to reach individuals is much more accurate. It’s more engaging. The value is higher, and critically, you can measure with 100 percent accuracy. It will become much more efficient. It’s still early. There are inefficiencies. It will find its equilibrium.

How big do you guys want to get? There have been some layoffs, and you have some affiliates and some full timers.
We’re north of 300 and it’s a good size. We move very fast. We’re in hyper-growth mode. We are hiring in some areas and reducing in other areas.

You didn’t have a NewFront, though your talent was featured. Do you want to become bigger in the eyes of Madison Avenue?
Yes we intend to become more active, collaborative. As a media company, we see the ad community as a commercial partner. We want to become more active and more involved and present with that community. Web video has become a mainstream product. It’s not an alternative. It’s early. We’re at the margins. We’re not going to destabilize it in a day. But it doesn’t matter what you or I think. Look at the facts and how video is growing. Google will have 4,000 people out selling Web video but it will be driven by its own velocity, and it will be very fast.

“With this launch we can help every local business replace their outdated cash registers with a modern, affordable, money-saving tool that allows them to save on credit card transaction fees and run their businesses better,” Groupon’s Mihir Shah said in a statement, “The successful adoption of Breadcrumb Pro by restaurants and bars has been very encouraging, with some of the finest venues in the country using it to run their businesses. As a result, we decided to launch Breadcrumb POS and bring the power and simplicity of this product to more merchants.”

Today has been a very busy day for the rapidly expanding iPad POS industry. PayPalannounced their new Cash for Registers program, which will offer financial compensation to businesses which swap out their cash registers for iPad payment terminals, and Square unveiled their new cash register replacement system for the iPad.

“YuMe delivers intelligent digital video advertising solutions across multiple screens for major brands, and we are very excited to work with them now on further monetizing Truli’s growing video and app inventory,” said Michael Jay Solomon, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Truli. “Additionally, YuMe’s multi-screen compatibility — across computers, tablets, mobile devices and connected TVs — is right in line with our goal of providing the most intuitive and robust offering for our users.”

“We’re looking forward to maximizing Truli’s monetization through our SDK technology while supporting their progress with our highly experienced and knowledgeable team,” said Bryan Everett, EVP of Business Development at YuMe. “YuMe’s video platform has much to offer Truli and we’re excited to get started.”

About YuMe

YuMe is a leading independent provider of digital video brand advertising solutions. Its proprietary data-science driven technologies and large audience footprint drive inventory monetization and enable advertisers to reach targeted, brand receptive audiences across a wide range of Internet-connected devices. Designed to serve the specific needs of brand advertising, YuMe’s technology platform simplifies the complexities associated with delivering effective digital video advertising campaigns in today’s highly-fragmented market. YuMe is a privately held company headquartered in Redwood City, CA with European headquarters in London and eight additional offices worldwide. The company is backed by Accel Partners, BV Capital, DAG Ventures, Intel Capital, Khosla Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung Ventures, Translink Capital and WestSummit Capital. For more information, visit YuMe.com, follow @YuMeVideo and like YuMe on Facebook.

YuMe is a trademark of YuMe. All other brands, products or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of their respective owners.

About Truli

Truli offers a unique distribution platform focused on Christian and family-friendly content that is free for users to view, interact and engage with on any mobile apparatus such as tablets, phones, smart TV, etc. Truli is free for ministries as many additional sermons are delivered weekly, as well as music videos, film/television content, sports, comedy and educational material. Truli offers a single platform that is flexible and easy to access to connect users, enabling the delivery of relevant and family content to the Evangelical community market of 100+ million people in the U.S. (and 700+ million outside the U.S.) representing $4.3 billion of annual gross industry sales in the U.S. alone.

Safe Harbor Statement

This news release contains statements that involve expectations, plans or intentions (such as those relating to future business or financial results, new features or services, or management strategies) and other factors discussed from time to time in the Company’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings. These statements are forward-looking and are subject to risks and uncertainties, so actual results may vary materially. You can identify these forward-looking statements by words such as “may,” “should,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “intend,” “plan” and other similar expressions. Our actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors not within the control of the company. The company cautions readers not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The company disclaims any obligation subsequently to revise any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statements or to reflect the occurrence of anticipated or unanticipated events.

‘SPDY’ is the protocol advancing ‘HTTP’, which can help websites load up to 40 percent faster. This is particularly useful since it helps power some of the biggest name sites, including Facebook and Dropbox.

The server is currently rising rapidly, and used by many major websites including WordPress, who said: “We are currently using Nginx 0.6.29 with the upstream hash module which gives us the static hashing we need to proxy to Varnish.

“We are regularly serving about 8-9k requests/second and about 1.2Gbit/sec through a few Nginx instances and have plenty of room to grow!”

One of the biggest assets Nginx has in its favour is versatility, being able to be used not just as a high-performance web server, but also as a caching engine; a load balancer, a mail proxy, or a HTTP streaming server.

This should help boost popularity of the server, which is currently third to by far the Web’s favourite – Apache. Apache holds 47% of web servers, whilst IIS holds 19%, closely followed by Nginx’s at 17% according to BuiltWith.com.

Whilst Apache has SPDY support through the ‘mod_spdy’ module, many enjoy the lightweight nature of Nginx, with benchmarks showing it can outperform most competitors.

Thomas Gieselmann of BV Capital commented: “Several of the companies we invested in were able to solve significant scaling issues by switching their web platforms to Nginx. Nginx transparently and effectively enables the growth of the largest sites on the Internet today.”

In alpha testing, content-delivery network provider, MaxCDN, reported a 1.57 second decrease in average page load times, with bounce rates dropping by 1 percent. While those seconds might not seem like a big deal, they are, especially when you have multiple visitors on your site performing multiple tasks. Think about how it feels when you use Hulu at a Starbucks; that almost 2 seconds could ease some of your frustrations in waiting for a page and video to load.

The module is available for webmasters on GitHub, with open source participation coming from Google, Taobao, We-Amp and individual developers.

In a post by Jeff Kaufman, who is an engineer on Google’s Make the Web Faster Team, (have to love Google’s team names), he explains how PageSpeed works:

Running as a module inside Nginx, ngx_pagespeed rewrites your webpages to make them faster for your users. This includes compressing images, minifying CSS and JavaScript, extending cache lifetimes, and many other web performance best practices. All of mod_pagespeed’s optimization filters are now available to Nginx users.

With Google pushing to bring faster Internet to everyone in the world, starting with a few cities in the United States, it makes sense that the company would participate in projects like this to help the rest of the web keep up. Naturally, Google is able to leverage the work of projects like this for its own sites, since speed is a huge concern of CEO Larry Page for its existing and future products.

I covered the company last year under its old name, PostRelease. Despite the name change, the vision remains the same — publishers add some code to their site and create a template for sponsored content, advertisers upload their content, then it’s displayed across relevant sites and formatted to match the look of each site. Plus, the ads work on desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets.

By calling itself Nativo, the company is embracing one of the big buzzwords right now, native advertising. Its ads have always been native — in the sense that they’re formatted to look like regular content on the site (though to be clear, they’re labeled as sponsored). Now, however, there’s a lot more excitement and competition around the idea. CEO Justin Choi said there are definitely more companies talking about native advertising, but he argued, “There’s some marketplace confusion about what native is.”

“To us, native is not only placed within the content stream, but the engagement with that content is the same as engagement with non-advertising content on that site,” he added. “So if you’re just placing a video at the bottom of an article, that’s not a true native experience.”

Choi also said that Nativo will have some big publisher- and ad agency-related news coming soon.

As for the funding, it was led by led by Greycroft Partners, with participation from e.ventures and Signia Venture Partners. Nativo previously raised $1.8 million from Signia and various angel investors.

“Given our close relationship with publishers, we knew that native advertising was emerging as a major advertising category, and we were looking for interesting companies in this space,” Greycroft managing director Alan Patricof said in the funding press release. “We were very impressed with the technology and traction that the Nativo team had already generated.”

Farfetch, the online hub for independent boutiques across the world (which might otherwise not be able to afford to run e-commerce), is one of those rare successes. And now, with another $20 million in funding—a round led by Conde Nast—Farfetch founder José Neves wants to revolutionize how e-commerce and traditional retail work together.

Last night Farfetch hosted a digital dress up event, where editors could style looks brought in from 10 Farfetch partner boutiques including Anna Della Russo’s Dante 5 Donna in Bari, The Webster in Miami, New York’s Fivestory, and Victoria 46 in Bucharest. (You can see Leah’s look below.)

I spoke with Neves, who is spending some time in New York, earlier this week.

Fashionista: We all know what Farfetch is now, but can you give me a little background on how it came to be?
José Neves: My first business was a technology business. I was 19 years old, living in Portugal where I’m from, working as a computer programmer, developing software and technology for the fashion business. And I fell in love with fashion. When I was 22 I moved to London, started a shoe brand, Swear, and opened a store. That business evolved into a multi-label showroom, and that’s still my other business.

When did Farfetch launch?
In 2007, big e-tailers were becoming more and more relevant. Small independent boutiques were at risk. Their survival was threatened. You know, they buy with their hearts rather than with their spreadsheets. I thought, we can do something to help. The internet could help them become relevant again. It’s a great business from a b-to-b side of things: it’s difficult for each one of them to individually have a proper e-commerce presence. And from a consumer side, suddenly you can shop the streets of Milan, Paris, Stockholm, and Los Angeles from anywhere in the world. We started in October 2008.

What does this latest round of funding, led by Conde Nast, mean for the company?
The business is very well-funded already, so it’s not like a game-changer for us. But we’re doing $130 million in sales, growing 150% a year, and you do need funding to keep up with that kind of growth. It allows us to be more ambitious. One area for growth is international. we want to develop more international markets: Japan, potentially Russia, the US, Brazil. The other area of growth is technology, the user experience side of things. We want to focus on omnichannel—the physical and digital experience—as well as mobile and tablet.

Leah’s digital dress up look from last night’s event. The model is wearing a Jil Sander dress and bag from A’Maree’s in Newport Beach and Carven shoes.

When you hear mobile shopping numbers and mobile website traffic numbers for 2012, it’s kind of crazy. Why did it take so long for fashion e-tailers to catch on to its importance?
Mobile was 5% of our sales in 2011, and 25% in 2012. That’s even without an optimized mobile experience. But that includes smartphones plus tablets—most of it is tablet, not smartphone. When you look at the demographics, our customers are definitely in the higher income bracket. They all own tablets, which lend themselves to the fashion experience.

What do you mean by “omnichannel”?
I think multichannel—omnichannel—will be the next big thing. Multichannel basically is sales made in one channel, completed in the other. Like finding out about a new gadget online and going into the store and buying it. Or someone at the car dealership test-driving the car and then buying it somewhere else. Cross-channel experience is really the future; in consumer electronics, most people research online and then buy offline. Fashion is the next category that will be revolutionized by that. It’s bound to happen, because people want to try on the clothes. The high street already understands that. But not luxury. The only one doing interesting things is Burberry. Their Regent Street Store is the store of the future. Other brands/retailers haven’t done anything. I think that’s where Farfetch can really be a revolutionary company.

How?
We have thousands of locations worldwide. We’re developing technology to enable…imagine you know you’re going to be in LA, and you buy something form A’maree’s in Newport Beach. We’ll have it delivered to H. Lorenzo on Robertson, and it’ll be there waiting for you along with a couple of pieces from H. Lorenzo that you might like. And then maybe you want to buy something from H. Lorenzo that they don’t have in your size. We can get it from the store in Paris that has it, so it’ll be delivered to you and waiting for you when you’re back in New York. There will also be an air miles-style loyalty card that will reward you. All the frustration of going to a store and it not having what you want will go away. But it needs to be done in a way that feels like second nature. I don’t want to make it harder for people, I want to make it easier. I’m very happy that it’s our next big step. The big websites, they don’t have the stores. To do this on a global level, you need a network of independents, and at the present we’re the only network.

The RealReal has raised $14 million to grow its luxury online resale marketplace, which it claims is “second only to eBay.” The startup’s team of professional stylists and fashion experts hand-select and authenticate pre-owned designer goods from brands like Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, and Cartier. The goods are sold in 72 hour flash sales for prices at up to 90% off the original cost.

For style mavens who can’t afford to shell out thousands of dollars for a Dior dress or Gucci blazer, The RealReal makes high fashion more accessible. Women also have the opportunity to sell their own stockpile of luxury items, to then (of course) buy different ones.

“We’re changing the way people view their designer wardrobe and luxury items,” said The RealReal founder and CEO Julie Wainwright. “We offer consignors a way to get a return on what they originally paid for their designer items, effortlessly and lucratively.”

When trying to build a marketplace for luxury goods, trustworthiness is key. No one want to pay $400 for a Hermès scarf. The RealReal tackles the uncertainty of buying luxury goods online with its team of “tastemakers” who are responsible for hunting items that “embody timeless luxury” and carefully examining each for authenticity. The stylists also work directly with people who want to resell their designer clothing, shoes, handbags, accessories, and jewelry to assess whether their goods are eligible for sale. Shipping is free and consignors receive between 60 and 70 percent of all sales.

In two years, The RealReal has grown its member base to 750,000 and attracted 1.5 million unique visits in January alone. The startup ships over 15,000 luxury items a month and claims to have a 75 percent sell-through rate for its flash sales. Its revenue has grown tenfold in the past year. The company will use this second round of funding to expand its infrastructure to support this impressive growth.

InterWest Partners led this round, with participation from existing investors Canaan Partners, e.ventures, and Greycroft Partners. Novel TMT Ventures, Panarea Capital, author Suzy Welch, and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy also made strategic investments.

“We’re changing the way people view their designer wardrobe and luxury items,” said The RealReal founder and CEO Julie Wainwright. “We offer consignors a way to get a return on what they originally paid for their designer items, effortlessly and lucratively. And, we offer shoppers a fun way to shop.”

This round of funding is led by InterWest Partners with participation from all Series A investors: Canaan Partners, e.ventures and Greycroft Partners. The company also added strategic investments from Novel TMT Ventures, Panarea Capital, Suzy Welch and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy.

“The RealReal is one of those thrilling, transformative business ideas you just don’t see very often,” said Suzy Welch, noted business journalist and co-author of the New York Times bestseller Winning, with her husband, Jack Welch. “I believe The RealReal has the power to change the way many women think about and acquire fashion and, in essence, change the whole lifecycle of luxury goods. Ultimately, I see it recreating the industry in a way that will benefit consumers and sellers alike.”

Keval Desai, partner at InterWest and the lead Series B investor, said: “Over the years, we have evaluated a number of e-commerce companies and there is no doubt The RealReal has created a marketplace with the most coveted product offering. This, along with their outstanding team, made it a very easy decision for us to invest in the company.”

To learn more about The RealReal or to join, visit www.therealreal.com.

ABOUT THE REALREAL

The RealReal is changing the way people buy and sell luxury items. The leader in luxury resale, the company is a full-service retailer offering customers authenticated pre-owned designer brands including Chanel, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Cartier, all at up to 90% off original retail. The RealReal takes possession of all items prior to sale in order for its merchandising team, authentication specialists and skilled gemologists to evaluate each item. The company also offers buyers merchandise returns, with an in-house customer service team available to answer specific product questions.

Consignors in major U.S. cities can schedule a free pickup or use the company’s direct service through its iPhone consignment app or online form. Consignors make up to 70% of the selling price.

The word “auction” evokes the swift chatter of an auctioneer, the reserved murmurs of a live crowd of spectators and bidder and the smack of a gavel indicating a closed bid. At least it used to. Now, in an age of ecommerce, we tend to think of sites like eBay, with its long bid times and low quality item images.

Berlin, Germany-based Auctionata is attempting to bring the action and live detail of auctions back by putting them online and it’s just raised $20.2 million to do it.

Auctionata’s platform is more or less an online television show. The company, led by CEO Alexander Zacke, has established a studio in Berlin made for showing items on the auction block and stocked it with high end camera equipment so that bidders – who could be anywhere in the world, watching online in real time – can see the minute details of the items up for bid. The equipment itself was specifically designed to film artwork, said Zacke, who added that the hardware used to capture the auctions is worth about $1 million in total.

That’s not to say that the equipment is the most expensive thing in the room. On  June 21 Auctionata will sell an original watercolor by Egon Schiele (his work, Reclining Woman) in an online live auction from its studio, with a starting price of $1.5M (EUR 1M). “There is already a list of very high profile bidders for this piece,” Zacke said. “We think it’s probably going to fetch a record.” After the sale, it could be the most expensive item sold at an online auction, he said.

The company employs about 250 auction specialists, curators and appraisers to guarantee authenticity of items up for bid. Not only an online auction platform, the company also has an online store where buyers can purchase antique or special items without the pressures of bidding competition

Zacke, once a Power Seller and advisor with eBay, feels Auctionata is definitely a disruptive force, but not one that should necessarily worry the mega-auction house. “It’s not against eBay, it’s going against Christie’s and Sotheby’s,” he told FORBES.

Auctionata’s in-auction interface.

Areas for growth are fairly obvious, at least to Zacke, who said that Auctionata will hold weekly auctions in between up to 12 categories, specializing in jewels, classic cars, wine or even real estate, among other areas.

With over $20 million in growth capital in his pocket, Zacke and Co. hired a television producer to oversee the auctions, will upgrade its technology to allow 20,000 bidders to take part in auction events at a time. “We expect the auction audience to grow significantly in the third quarter.”

Also on the ‘to-do’ list is establishing a showroom/broadcast studio across the Atlantic.

“The most important market for us is still the United States,” said Zacke, explaining that the United States as the most powerful background in the field of international fine art auctions.” Auctionata will be up and running in New York City within the next 12 months, he said.

Auctionata’s series A-round was led by venture capital firm Earlybird, Bright Capital,  HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, eVenture Capital Partners, and the Raffay Group, contributed to the round, as did Kite Ventures, which had invested previously.

“Lean In” is thebest-selling book written by Ms. Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, with Nell Scovell. Its message that women need to do a better job of finding and acting on their ambitions is also the goal of a nonprofit. LeanIn.org, financed by Ms. Sandberg’s book profits and her own money, uses the Internet to help organize small groups of women across the United States and internationally.

Not surprisingly for a movement originating from Silicon Valley, social networking technology plays a part in building out these Lean In circles. This includes online software to organize people, content like videos on how to better use body language, tools for LeanIn.org’s managers to monitor user behavior, and data analytics.

And, in a nod to Silicon Valley’s often blurred line between business and altruism, on Tuesday that technology will be offered as a commercial service.

“This is a way for people to create their own branches of groups,” said Gina Bianchini, the founder and chief executive of Mightybell, a maker of the networking software. “What if an influencer, or a brand, or an organization, could go from having passive followers to an active army? It’s like nothing that’s been offered before.”

Mightybell debuted in 2011 as a way for individual groups to organize online. To date, Ms. Bianchini said, “tens of thousands” of groups have used the service.

For LeanIn.org, Ms. Bianchini, who is listed as one of the group’s founders, changed the software so that it could create subgroups that refer to a central cause, while aspects of the initiative are locally managed.

Mightybell will offer the initial organizing software for free, Ms. Bianchini said, adding that likely users would include “media brands, bloggers, and corporations.” Starting this summer, the company plans to charge for premium features like data analytics, online stores and managing communications.

LeanIn.org may serve as an initial template. The organization encourages people to build social networks of eight to 10 people. Using calendaring software, they can arrange meetings 10 or more times a year, where they can watch lectures downloaded from LeanIn.org, which include ways to improve nonverbal communication or tips on how to negotiate a raise.

Additional content includes ways for circle members to discuss and develop strategies for professional opportunities. There is also software for managing online communications between formal meetings.

LeanIn.org, meantime, collects feedback by looking at how many groups are formed, how many posts are created, and how many invitations to join are sent out by members. Content from LeanIn’s 160 partners, which include both nonprofits and companies like American Express and Coca-Cola, may also be included.

“We think of them as book clubs with a purpose,” said Rachel Thomas, the president of LeanIn.org. “People can name and personalize their groups. We hope people will try an action, share the results, and continue to meet more often.” Men can also start circles, she said, though the organization expects the circles will primarily contain women.

“Our ultimate goal, which is going to take time,” is to expand the share of corporate leadership positions held women, which currently stands at 14 percent, Ms. Thomas said. To that end, she said, portions of LeanIn.org’s “programmatic” content are also being put into existing corporate training programs.

Ms. Thomas did not say how many circles had been formed since the program began three weeks ago. She noted that the group’s Facebook page has received over 140,000 likes. There has been interest in forming circles from as far away as China, Berlin, and rural Canada, although most of the early interest, she said, has been from urban areas in the United States.

Ms. Bianchini is a veteran of online social networking. In 2004, she co-founded, along with Marc Andreessen, a service called Ning for creating social networks. Ning raised over $100 million, but failed to make a profit. It was sold to Glam Media in 2011 for a reported $150 million, after Ms. Bianchini left the company.

“Ning had ‘the empty group problem,’” she said. “People form a group, but after awhile they may not have any idea what to do.” With LeanIn.org, and now the general release of the circle software, she said, “we want to make sure that there is new stuff to react to, and drive group engagement at scale.” Meetings are organized, she noted, by the leader picking four or so days that might work, then allowing others to choose a time within that constraint.

“No one has done networks like this,” she said. “It’s been done in the real world, and it is how the Web itself was built, but it hasn’t been done for groups.”

It’s a big buy for LinkedIn, costing a cool $90 million, according to the company.

The app, which collects news articles from a range of topics chosen by users and presents them in a clean, stylish format, rose to the top of Apple’s App Store ranks just a few years ago, quickly becoming a favorite among the many newsreaders currently available. Pulse currently claims more than 30 million users globally who read more than ten million stories daily using the app.

But more than that, it’s yet another move by LinkedIn to expand beyond being just a static resume service for recruiters and professionals. Spearheaded by executive editor (and former Fortune and Wired journalist) Dan Roth, LinkedIn has made major strides in pushing original and partner content through the site, aiming to keep users returning and engaged on a regular basis.

“We believe LinkedIn can be the definitive professional publishing platform — where all professionals come to consume content and where publishers come to share their content,” LinkedIn SVP of product and user experience Deep Nishar said in a company blog post. “Pulse is a perfect complement to this vision.”

In that vein, the company launched its “Influencer” program late last year, essentially asking big names in business, entertainment and politics to write original think pieces that users can read on the site. And, in Twitter-esque fashion, users are able to “follow” those influencers across the site, so that only the content users want will appear inside their respective feeds. (Not surprisingly, the move came only months after Twitter cut off LinkedIn tweet syndication, which provided LinkedIn with most of the content flowing through the system up until that point.)

And of course, let’s not forget LinkedIn Today, the company’s news aggregation service which also brings users tons of fresh stories on the regular.

Engagement, after all, is pretty much LinkedIn’s key theme for 2013. As the site undergoes multiple design revamps across user pages and the company’s massively profitable recruiting products, LinkedIn is trying to escape its image as a one-off, sparingly used online resume service. It wants to be the home page for professionals, including the place where those pros go to catch up on the biz news they care about.

So a service like Pulse, which lets a company know exactly what sort of stuff its users want to read and care about, is likely pretty valuable to what LinkedIn is trying to do.

Yes, engagement is good for the overall health of the site, and for keeping recruiters abreast of the latest movements and activity for the 200 million people who use LinkedIn. But it has another side effect: The more page views and user activity coming in, the more potential to bolster LinkedIn’s ad business, one of the company’s three revenue streams.

LinkedIn wasn’t the only one who saw Pulse’s value. As we reported previously, sources said Pulse was in discussions with Yahoo, Microsoft, Gannett and even Amazon at points.

Ultimately, LinkedIn emerged the victor. Now we get to wait and see just exactly how the company wants to make Pulse work for it.

Robertson joins Nginx as the company surpasses Microsoft in active web server market share, and will work to make Nginx the first choice for companies seeking to scale their high-performance web applications. Before joining Nginx, Robertson was Vice President of Global Business Development for Red Hat where he managed Red Hat’s strategic alliance relationships, and was responsible for vertical industry ecosystems and solution development. In his capacity at Red Hat, and at other senior management roles at Microsoft, Visio and Lexmark, Robertson has a proven track record developing mutually beneficial relationships with customers, major consulting and software firms, resellers, OEM partners.

“Nginx is without a doubt leading the market for modern architectures and I’m pleased to be working with such an innovative team,” said Gus Robertson, CEO of Nginx, Inc. “We’re experiencing explosive growth and that provides a great opportunity for us to commercialize in the very near term. The core team is underwritten by a passionate global community and software that has gained massive adoption with businesses large and small. I’m eager to build upon that foundation and grow our commercial offerings to better serve the market.”

NGINX recently passed Microsoft-IIS to become the second most used web server on all active sites, behind Apache. According to the April Netcraft survey, NGINX owns 14.81% of the total web market and is run on over 96 million web sites. Today, NGINX powers over 30% of the world’s top 10,000 busiest sites and 44% of the sites on Amazon AWS.

“I’m very happy to have Gus Robertson leading our company as CEO of Nginx”, said Igor Sysoev, author and principal architect of NGINX. “Gus has the the right mix of passion for the technology and knowledge of open source development models. Plus, he has a proven track record with over 20 years of experience driving sales and marketing teams for successful multinational branded software companies. I’m confident with our continued product development and Gus’ leadership we will build on the great value we deliver for our customers.”

Nginx, Inc. continues to innovate on and develop the NGINX web server. Recently, the company announced the inclusion of the SPDY and WebSocket protocols in its core product and services. Both technologies were released into the latest development versions of Nginx as part of an ongoing commitment to open source.

NGINX’s growth is due to the shift to distributed web architectures. With 80% of new applications being built on the cloud, delivery of content across the web is growing exponentially. NGINX has become the standard for these distributed application architectures, gaining widespread recognition for it’s ability to support high performance, scalability and reliability over alternative solutions.

Nginx, Inc., the high performance web company that provides products, solutions and services for its renowned open source software NGINX, launched in 2011 with a $3 million Series A round with funding from e.ventures, Runa Capital, and MSD Capital, and is headquartered in San Francisco. The open source NGINX project began in 2004.

To download the latest version of NGINX, please visit: http://nginx.org/

To connect with Nginx — follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nginxorg

About Nginx, Inc.

Nginx, Inc., the high performance web company, provides products, solutions and services for its renowned open source software, NGINX. Run by the busiest websites on the Internet, NGINX enables companies to match increasing demand for faster web experiences at scale, without incurring unnecessary costs in capital investments or time.

NGINX serves 30 percent of the top 10,000 websites and 96 million of all sites on the Internet. Successful online services such as Netflix, Pinterest, Airbnb, WordPress.com, Box, Instagram, GitHub, SoundCloud, Eventbrite, and Zappos, use NGINX as part of their infrastructure. For more information, please visit nginx.com.