Mobile Marketing

Urban Airship has raised another $25 million in funding to expand its mobile marketing platform to additional partners in the U.S. and abroad. August Capital led the new round, with existing investors Foundry Group, Intel Capital, True Ventures and Verizon also participating. Urban Airship has raised $46.6 million to date.

When most people experience the famous  Twitter Fail Whale , they grimace and come back later. When a similar performance issue occurs on the average mobile app, however, consumers may be much more likely to drift away forever. That's what made Crashlytics so potentially valuable to app developers, and why it may become even more valuable to Twitter itself.

A new commercial spotlighting the upcoming Paramount Pictures feature  Star Trek Into Darkness  quietly introduced a new promotional tool for Apple's developer partners: Customized App Store short links designed to make it easier for consumers to find and install iOS applications.

Gartner said worldwide mobile advertising revenue is set to reach $11.4 billion this year, with overall growth between 2011 and 2016 reaching 400 percent. However, the current economics of mobile advertising is such that, if they're not careful, developers could create a sort of "download bubble" that doesn't reflect the reality of what consumers are actually willing to pay.