Alta Ventures Closes $70M Fund

Chinese Internet giant Tencent is opening an office in Malaysia, in part to consolidate its gains in the country with popular messaging app WeChat. The app has more than 1 million users in the country, representing 70 percent market penetration among Malaysian smartphone users. The app has about 400 million users worldwide, Tencent claims. [Source: The Next Web]

Loyal3, a startup that lets people invest in companies without having to pay transaction or management fees, has raised $18 million in Series C funding, led by DNS-L3, with participation from former Facebook privacy officer Chris Kelly, and Loyal3 Chairman and CEO Barry Schneider. The company has raised a total of $45 million. [Source: TechCrunch]

Facebook Home, the social network’s new launcher for Android phones, has been trashed in the US and is now striking trouble in Europe. HTC First, the phone that comes with Home pre-installed, won’t be launching on time in the UK or France, because Facebook has decided to instead improve the software before rolling out to international markets. [Source: TechCrunch]

Uber-messaging app imo.im, which is reminiscent of the old Meebo, has raised $13 million  led by its co-founder Georges Harik, an early Googler. The universal messaging dashboard has also unveiled a new “Broadcasts” feature for its Android and iOS apps that connects users with similar interests. [Source: The Next Web]

Mailbox, the stupidly popular email app for iPhone that recently sold to Dropbox, is now available on the iPad. Looks pretty much the same, but bigger. Apparently a version of the app is coming to Android soon. [Source: Mailbox]

Two execs, Alyssa Cutright and Alex Petrov (who hadn’t even started at the company yet!), have been dropped by Square, according to AllThingsD. Cutright was Square’s vice president of international, while Petrov was going to be the new vice president of partnerships. [Source: AllThingsD]

Today, 3M and Nanosys announced that “quantum dot technology” (tiny nanoparticles that emit light) are almost ready to be built into smartphones, tablets, and TVs. [Source: 3M via Mashable]

Although HP’s stock was up 13% in after-hours trading, the company’s PC sales keep plummeting, down 20% for the year. Meanwhile, although CEO Meg Whitman was once a fan of Windows 8, today she namedropped the company’s non-Windows products at every opportunity. [Source: Business Insider]

Yelp has dealt with claims for a long time that say the company benefits businesses that advertise with it by featuring those reviews more prominently. Today, Yelp’s VP of Communications and Public Affairs fired back at these claims, saying, “The sensational allegation that Yelp manipulates reviews and ratings to reward advertisers or punish non-advertisers… is not — and has never been — true.” [Source: Yelp via The Next Web]

Google Trends now has charts updated monthly that list the top searches in over 40 categories. A smattering of top searches — actor: Salena Gomez; athlete: Michael Jordan; authors: William Shakespeare. [Source: Google Trends]

The microsoft cofounder announced via Twitter that his band the Underthinkers will be putting out its debut album, “Everywhere at Once.” Amazon describes it as full of “blues-based rock guitar nuggets.” [Source: BetaBeat]

HP reported earnings per share of $.87, while analysts predicted $.81. Revenue was weaker at $27.58 billion, while the street had predicted $28 billion. [Source: Hewlett Packard]

Pittsburgh-based GiftCards.com will buy San Francisco-based startup Giftly to grow its mobile platform. Giftly has raised about $2.8 million in venture capital. It will remain in San Francisco but rolled into GiftCards.com. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. [Source: TechCrunch]

Twitter is rolling out two-step authentication for user accounts. Coming in the wake of a series of a account hacks, the feature asks users to enter a six-digit code from their mobile phones after they have signed in via username and password. The feature can be enabled in Twitter’s settings menu, although it doesn’t yet seem available to everyone. [Source: The Verge]

French startup Cookening has launched today, targeting tourists who want to eat homecooked meals. Cookening lets people invite travelers into their homes, Airbnb style, for paid meals. Cookening takes a 20 percent cut of the price as commission. [Source: The Next Web]

Google has revamped its Drive app for Android, adding a grid view for documents and files, and adding a new scanning feature. The update also offers offline support, letting you download copies of your files to your devices. [Source: Google]

Adobe has acquired Thumb Labs, the New York-based company that developed Behance’s mobile apps. The deal is effectively an acqui-hire, meaning the entire team – consisting of fewer than 10 people – will move in SoHo offices of Behance, which is owned by Adobe. [Source: The Next Web]