VENTURE CAPITAL POST

Twitter is now offering an alternative way of sending Tweets via SMS after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan lambasted social media for linking him to a corruption scandal and blocking the social network in the country.

Internet company Mail.ru signed an agreement to buy the 12% stake of Ivan Tavrin in Russian social network VKontakte.com for an undisclosed amount to bring its total holding to 52%.

San Francisco, US-based health tech firm Metabiota pocketed $2.38 million in a venture round to monitor emerging threats of viral diseases around the world using big data analysis.

Menlo Park, US-based article and video bookmarking mobile app Pocket, which used to be available only for English articles, has now added French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish to the languages that its supports.

San Francisco, US-based social news service Nuzzel came out of beta testing to open let all users view a public feed of the most relevant and popular news that are automatically customized according to their interest.

Burlington, Massachusetts-based computer software technology firm Nuance Communications Inc released a voice biometrics solution called Nuance Forensics that can help authorities identify and rule out suspects in criminal investigations.

The alarming levels of pollution in Paris, France have pushed the government to ban half of the city's vehicles except electric and hybrid cars on Monday and Tuesday in an effort to help clear the smog trapped in the city.

Bedford, US-based SQL database startup VoltDB raised $8 million in a Series B funding round led by an unnamed investor from Silicon Valley to scale databases both up and out.

San Francisco, US-based cloud storage giant Dropbox acquired Cambridge, Massachusetts-based stealthy workplace chat solution Zulip for an undisclosed amount to integrate its services into its product offering.

In contrast to a previous report by Newsweek, Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto issued an official statement denying any alleged ties he has with Bitcoin including allegations that he created Bitcoin.

San Francisco, US-based firm Kontangent+PlayHaven, a company that resulted from a merger three months ago, is rebranding as Upsight to create a single platform that integrates both game analytics and monetization.

After gaining popularity last week for its easy-to-use movie streaming interface and being shut down shortly after that, Buenos Aires, Argentina-based app Popcorn is being revived by torrent site YTS.

American e-commerce giant Amazon is planning to hire hundreds of workers for its fourth fulfillment center in Kent, Washington, where customer orders will be packed and shipped.

Helsinki, Finland-based smartphone giant Nokia now made the Nokia Refocus app available to all Lumia smartphones to allow users to take refocusable photos using their phones.

Santa Monica, US-based events planning mobile app Klutch scored $1.5 million in a funding round led by LaunchpadLA to help people plan get-togethers and socialize offline.