But, as more and more consumer commerce is carried out online through etailers that operate independently, how can customers gauge sellers’ trustworthiness?

That is a problem Denmark-based Trustpilot has been trying to crack in Europe since it was founded in 2007. And now it is taking on a further €10 million ($13 million) to fund entry to the United States (announcement).

The money comes from Index Ventures, which is joining previous  backers SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone, which gave €4.5 million a year ago and which think Trustpilot’s method of letting buyers rate and review merchants will be big. CEO Peter Mühlmann writes that he wants to double staff from over 100 in the next year.

Trustpilot says: “The benefit for businesses using Trustpilot is that they can backtrack each customer review to the transaction on which the review is based. This helps businesses pinpoint where and how to improve customer satisfaction.”

But, as it tries to unlock the large US market, the outfit may nevertheless still face challenges at home. Despite operating in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands and Italy, I have never heard of it; it simply would not have occurred to me to use it to find trustworthy sellers.

That means it is starting from a lower base in the States. But Trustpilot also supplies reviews to Google product search pages — a place where people are more likely to see them.

But Trustpilot claims merchants who display its reviews on their site can increase purchase conversions by 20 percent. Its focus on providing value to businesses through highlighting positive reviews seems to take second place to providing a service to consumers.

The service claims to have garnered over six million reviews of over 100,000 merchants.

Formed in Finland late 2010 by Petri Rajha and tested mostly in Scandinavia until recently, the service is a mobile app through which users offer their photos for sale and through which media organisations can post paid photo assignments for users.

User submissions typically sell for around €17 ($22) whilst media entities typically set prices of €10 to €20 for “tasks”; Scoopshot takes a 30 percent cut.

CEO Niko Ruokosuo, an ex LA Times journalist, tells paidContent the service includes authentication that could help news publishers identify fake pictures:

“It works by having control of the image. When the image is captured with Scoopshot it is sent to us and no longer resides on the originating camera. It is impossible to edit those photos and that same exact file exists nowhere else, we guarantee that.

“Second, we know the exact GPS location and time where that photo was taken. It adds a level of security. We know the sender.”

These techniques aren’t necessarily fool-proof — not least because, as #FakeSandy showed, few such images typically come through formalised citizen-news services as much as they do through an array of social accounts and blogs.

“I wouldn’t trust a robot to do the job,” Stephen Sidlo, a breaking news picture editor for rival UGC service Demotix, which was acquired by Corbis this month, tells paidContent.

“Research on UGC verification manually is necessary, the rest can be manipulated.”

Likewise, Associated Press recently named Fergus Bell its social media and UGC editor after he constructed a similar human verification process for UGC atop the AP’s existing checks and balances.

“We can’t verify something unless we speak to the person that created it, in most cases,” Bell told Poynter last week. “When it comes to UGC, we only put stuff out when we can confirm it.”

Even the humans on social networks themselves seemed to do a good job of debunking fake Sandy images.

Still, Ruokosuo says Scoopshot also supports human editor checks on contributors. “Typically, we have their name and phone number. Editorial people in charge can actually contact those people for further information or verification.”

Regardless, Scoopshot’s main business line may not be news after all. Ruokosuo says the outfit has sold on 160,000 photos on its members’ behalf, but the majority are to online directory sites to accompany pages like restaurant reviews.

And already Scoopshot is extending its platform to brands for marketing, as well as editors for news. Fiat recently set Finnish members a Scoopshot task, through an advertising agency, to photograph its Fiat 500 car on city streets, resulting in 1,054 submissions.

But the outfit is also launching Scoopshot Pro, providing news editors with a sub-set of only professional photographer members whom to assign to events around the world.

“You can send assignments to professional photographers all over the world using the same interface in a matter of minutes – for example, in Gaza to cover your content needs,” Ruokosuo says.

News editors are often apprehensive about assigning amateurs and pro-ams on assignment to dangerous jobs. But Scoopshot claims 60 media partners are using the service including Finland’s Sanoma, Metro International, Time Out UK and Finnish public broadcaster YLE.

“We are definitely aware of the risks related to that,” CEO Ruokosuo says. “We would never encourage behavour that puts people at risk.”

What’s next? “We have identified a few key markets and are hoping to make some press releases about that in future. We are in a funding round that is looking good and should be closed soon.”

Scoopshot hired Dave Rickley, a senior editor at the Los Angeles Times, as north America EVP this month for its U.S. expansion.

Scandinavian’s Schibsted is following its spring acquisition of the Aspiro music service by purchasing 10 percent of Danish ebooks service Riidr, ArcticStartup reports.

Kobo-like platform Riidr is a service for reading .epub and watermarked ebooks through a simple web interface or through iOS and Android apps. So far, its titles are only Danish and Swedish. Riidr also lets readers move those titles over to Kindles, thereby growing the Scandinavian repertoire on Amazon’s device.

Aftenposten newspaper publisher Schibsted is one of the largest news and magazine publishers in Europe and Scandinavia and is diversifying from newspapers with this investment.

Schibsted CEO Rolv Erik Ryssdal wrote last month that the company has gathered its news content, classified and other payment efforts, started at its Fædrelandsvennen title, up together with others from its digital portfolio into a groupwide program it’s calling Schibsted Payment:

“[The aim is] to facilitate simple payment solutions for all of our companies’ customers, for buying everything from second-hand bikes on FINN.no to quality content in our newspapers.”

“We must lead the way in finding new quality content and new sources of revenue. We must derive most of our revenues from digital courses.”

Riidr and Aspiro are two ways Schibsted may get to build competency in this area.

Riidr tells ArcticStartup newspapers may get to offer its ebooks through their web pages.

The latest peddler is Danish public broadcaster TV2, whose Beep tech site says it has learned that Spotify is negotiating to distribute HBO’s upcoming HBO Nordic over-the-top pay-TV service across Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.

Spotify’s PR folks are being strategically coy, telling paidContent: “There’s always a lot of speculation surrounding Spotify but it’s something we never comment on.” HBO Nordic’s Danish reps also gave us a no-comment. Curious.

The notion that Spotify could branch out from music has always tended to pay more debt to fantasy (and, in fairness, to Spotify’s disruptive qualities) than to fact. Right now, Spotify’s application has no apparent way to deliver video.

But could there be truth this time around?

Besides the partners’ refusal to debunk the report, what is true is that Spotify has considerable clout across the region. At home in Sweden, the service has become music labels’ biggest revenue source; almost 90 percent of music revenue comes from streaming.

Spotify’s billing relationships with several million users throughout the region could prove attractive to HBO as it looks to export its programming on a legal subscription basis.

In fact, that billing relationship alone could be appealing enough for HBO – despite Spotify’s inability to offer video, Spotify customers could nevertheless use HBO Nordic on other platforms and devices. If HBO rode Spotify for bundling in this way, it would be highly ironic, since Spotify itself is desperately seeking bundled-billing partners.

If it works at home, then Spotify could try exporting the TV idea elsewhere, just like it has with music. That would broaden Spotify’s base considerably to becoming a multi-media subscription entertainment company – but it would also put it on a collision course with some far more powerful rivals, and put it at risk of focus creep.

Spotify offering HBO Nordic could also put it at odds with its most important regional partner…

Scandinavian telco TeliaSonera – which has a Spotify bundling deal – already plans to offer HBO Nordic itself to its 900,000 TV customers and on the web for €10 per month.

Spotify gets a quarter of its Premium customers in Sweden from TeliaSonera, the deal with which runs across TV app, mobile and broadband service.

Recently-announced HBO Nordic, launching in mid-October, will offer HBO shows like Boardwalk Empire, Game of Thrones and True Blood outside of pay-TV subscription but for internet subscription or on-demand transactions, right after U.S. premiere.

Netflix prefaced HBO’s announcement of HBO Nordic by announcing it will also go live in Scandinavia, marking the first time HBO and Netflix squarely will compete for the same customers on the internet.

HBO Nordic will also come pre-installed on Samsung devices.

Comcast product management executive director Mike Berkley became Spotify’s product VP in April.

Last month, Netflix said better-than-expected losses from its UK and Ireland launch will entice it to launch elsewhere in Europe this year.

Turns out, the new launches will be in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, Netflix announced on Wednesday.

Lovefilm already operates streaming-only movie subscription in three of those countries (Sweden, Denmark and Norway). Now the only one of Lovefim’s markets uncontested by Netflix is Germany.

Netflix signed more than a million subscribers in its first six months in the UK and Ireland, where it does not offer DVD rental. That likely overtakes Lovefilm’s own streaming-only service Lovefilm Instant, which it introduced to compete with Netflix in January.

But Lovefilm is not Netflix’s only competition in Scandinavia. Voddler, Bonnier’s SF Anytime, Viasat’s Viaplay and SVT Player are amongst existing Swedish VOD operators.

Netflix’s Wednesday announcement says it will carry “a wide array of Hollywood, local and global TV shows and movies”. That suggests it has succeeded in inking some content deals with Scandinavian broadcasters as well as movie studios.

IHS Screen Digest recently had this analysis:

“Competing with an entrenched array of existing incumbent players will generate additional costs for Netflix, particularly if the service provider decides to ink deals for the best movie and international TV rights.”

“Sweden presents an attractive market for Netflix, with high GDP, developed broadband infrastructure and positive consumer attitudes to using legal online video services.

“Viaplay has deals with all major international and local distributers. Importantly, many of the incumbent Swedish online video providers already distribute premium video content directly to different connected living room devices (TVs, Blu ray players, game consoles, etc) – traditionally Netflix’s strength.”

Same day Netflix announces Scandinavia move, HBO trumpets “HBO Nordic, which will serve Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.”

— Peter Kafka (@pkafka) August 15, 2012

DNA Ltd has bought a fifth of Booxmedia, whose BooxTV app is an internet-based DVR for smartphones and tablets.

BooxTV’s mobile app includes a TV guide offering around a dozen Finnish channels whose shows can be recorded in to the cloud for later playback in the app. The app also includes several live free-to-air channels.

Deal terms were not disclosed.

DNA will offer it free for six month to its more than three million customers, it said (release).

In the UK, TVCatchUp once offered a similar cloud DVR service, but took it offline after broadcasters complained. It instead began offering live streams without recording but has similarly attracted their legal complaint.

Booxmedia is also working on Booxmote, a parallel app that will let BooxTV users beam recorded shows to devices like TVs, projectors and laptops.

It is a vision of the smartphone as the centre of an in-home and out-of-home media system.

But, whereas Disney got early hits with Micky Mouse’s Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie and quickly expanded its portfolio to a host of new characters and franchises, Rovio has appeared a one-hit wonder.

It had developed a whopping 51 under-the-radar mobile games and nearly fell bankrupt before finally finding its Angry Birds hit in December 2009.

Now, however, Rovio appears finally to be looking beyond the birds. This video released by the company on Wednesday to mark a billion Angry Birds downloads also promised “more amazing things coming soon”, and a blonde-haired boy who appears to be a new character…

148apps believes that boy to be Casey, star of an existing game, Casey’s Contraptions, a $2.99 puzzler which lacks in-game purchase options but whose players have created and submitted over 325,000 levels themselves…

If Rovio has acquired Casey’s Contraptions from creator Noel Llopis, that means Rovio has not diversified its franchise offering under its own steam.

Oh wow! The cat is starting to get out of the bag! youtube.com/watch?v=tdTZOF… (cc @mysterycoconut)

— Noel Llopis (@noel_llopis) May 9, 2012

Before rumors start flying, Rovio is a perfect gentleman. Not a Zynga at all. Don’t worry, all is well :-)

— Noel Llopis (@noel_llopis) May 9, 2012

But at least it does point to diversficiation – something that investors will demand if Rovio’s IPO bird ever gets off the ground.

“Disney (NYSE: DIS) is worth around $60 billion. That is our goal and there is no reason why we could not build a company that size,” Rovio marketer Peter Vesterbacka told business paper Tekniikka&Talous in Rovio’s native Finland in December.

Rovio’s “archived games” web page lists almost 30 titles it tried making a splash with before Angry Birds.

Norwegian Aspiro operates WiMP, a subscription unlimited music service with 350,000 paying customers in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Portugal. Three quarters of the outfit was bought by Scandinavian newspaper publisher Schibsted  in January.

“Aspiro is planning alternative business models in music, which will imply a funding requirement in 2012,” the company said on Thursday, without elaborating.

“Aspiro will launch new music services in Germany, the Netherlands, at least two more European countries and at least one country outside Europe in 2012.”

The company saw Q1 music sales grow 177 percent from last year to 49.3 million SEK ($7.1 million), and is targeting 2012 growth of 80 percent. But Q1 2012 losses almost doubled from last year to 10.7 million SEK ($1.5 million).

Its plans come as larger rivals like Spotify, Deezer and Rdio rapidly launch in to new global markets, and as other competitors like Mog and mSpot become acquisition targets for consumer electronics firms like HP and Samsung.

WiMP is already having the Portugal rug pulled from under it. Portugal Telecom, the telco which provides the service, is ending its relationship, meaning the loss of 40,000 customers.

“We want to focus even more strongly on our own brand WiMP and become less dependent on partners,” a spokesperson tells paidContent.

Some 200,000 of Norway’s 700,000 Canal Digital TV subscribers have activated a bundled subscription to WiMP.

Spotify leads the on-demand music subscription market with three million paying customers from over 10 million active users.

Release.

A Scandinavian pitch contest jury has named iZettle, a Square-like mobile payment gadget, the region’s Digital Champion and given Klarna, a pay-after-delivery facilitator, a Billion Dollar Company award.

The contest was held by tech M&A advisory house GP Bullhound, which judged along with VCs and entrepeneurs, at Stockholm’s Riskkapital 2012 VC event on Thursday.

The call was put out to pitchers earlier this year. The programme named the following as the 25 most interesting companies in the Nordics’ digital economy…

1. Artificial Solutions (natural language interaction)
2. Avito
3. Bambuser (live mobile video capture)
4. Betsson (online gaming)
5. Blocket (classified ads)
6. Brandos (shoe retail)
7. Burt
8. Cint
9. Digital Route (data management)
10. EPiServer (website builder)
11. Garagekoll (parking space rental)
12. Guldbrev (scrap gold buyer)
13. iZettle (mobile payment gadget)
14. Klarna (buy now, pay later facilitator)
15. Livebookings (restaurant booking)
16. Mathem.se (groceries)
17. Neonode (multi-sense interface recognition)
18. Nordnet (savings bank)
19. Orthocone Innovation Technologies (LCD technology)
20. Qliktech (data exploration)
21. Seamless (mobile payments)
22. Soundcloud (audio sharing)
23. Spotify (music access)
24. TocaBoca (mobile learning games)
25. Wrapp (Facebook gift cards)

The news has not been officially announced by either company. It was first reported in the Irish Times and then confirmed by AllThingsD.

NewBay counts a number of mobile operators as customers, including T-Mobile, Everything Everwhere (the JV between France Telecom’s Orange and T-Mobile in the UK), AT&T (NYSE: T), Verizon Wireless (NYSE: VZ) and U.S. Cellular, where it provides technology for the carriers’ mobile social networking services and cloud-based storage services. In February, the company announced a global licensing deal with LG to power social networking services in its consumer devices.

It is not clear at this point how RIM’s purchase of New Bay will impact those pre-existing deals, particularly those with other device makers. (We have reached out to NewBay and RIM for comment and will update this post as we learn more.)

It’s not clear, either, what RIM intends to do with its newest acquisition. NewBay’s product offerings, mobile social networking services and “smart” address books, are two other areas that could potentially also be useful to the company. But perhaps more key to the acquisition is New Bay’s expertise and business in cloud-based media services, which it offers via products like its LifeCache Digital Vault.

That is something that RIM currently lacks as a product offering to compete against the likes of Apple’s iCloud or Amazon’s Cloud Drive. Yes, RIM already offers some cloud-based media services — for example, RIM’s BBM Music service, which it offers in partnership with the music streaming company Omnifone — but no centralized home for these products.

If you based RIM’s progress on its acquisitions alone, you can see the forming of a potentially interesting offering from the company. Back in April, the company made another acquisition to further its cloud strategy, the calendar startup Tungle. In December 2010, the company bought a company bought Scandinavian user experience and interface specialists The Astonishing Tribe.

The Irish Times says that RIM intends to keep NewBay’s R&D center in Dublin. It currently employs 200 people.

Investors in NewBay prior to the acquisition include Balderton Capital and Fidelity Ventures.

Irish Times points out that according to the most recent filed accounts for the company, in 2009, NewBay made revenues of €18 million compared to €15.8 million in 2008; net losses were €2.7 million compared to €1.9 million in 2008.