Funding, Social Networking | featured news

Pinterest, which allows users to share photographs, recipes and other media on custom "pinboards," raised $100 million in a funding round led by the Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten.

SoundCloud, a startup focusing on audio-sharing in social media, has announced a new (and reportedly sizable) round of funding. The round, which was led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, may have been as large as $50 million, TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher reports. A SoundCloud rep confirmed all the details except the amount in an email exchange with VentureBeat this afternoon.

Twitter said it received a "significant" round of funding led by Russian venture firm Digital Sky Technologies.

Foursquare, a location-based social networking startup, raised $20 million from a group of venture capitalists to help fuel its expansion.

Twitter is about to raise a boatload of cash. Last week we broke the news that Twitter is raising another round of funding at a $1 billion valuation and that one of the new investors in that round is Insight Venture Partners.