Here’s a roundup of recent stories on TechCrunch Europe:

— Internet publishing company Populis is expanding its network operations to South America with the acquisition of Cidade Internet, a popular Brazilian Web portal. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

— Moscow-based Heverest.ru, an online retailer of sportswear, leisure and travel goods, has scored $4.3 million in financing from an unnamed “large” Russian investment fund and previous backer eVenture Capital Partners, bringing its total raised to $6.7 million.

— Fits.me, the Estonian “biorobotics virtual fitting room” startup for e-commerce clothing retailers and shoppers, has been around for a while. We first covered them in 2010 when they secured €1.3 million, taking their total cash to €2.6 million.

They’ve now taken another €1.5 million, taking their funding to €4.1 million. Fits.me lets customers “try on” clothing before buying from online clothes retailers.

— Israeli startup Appoxee has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from early-stage investment firm Cyhawk Ventures, and has opened its gates to all.

Israeli startup Appoxee has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from early-stage investment firm Cyhawk Ventures.

The company offers a service that helps app developers and publishers increase user engagement through rich push notifications and helps them with things like audience segmentation, targeting, analytics and reporting.

Read more over at TechCrunch Europe.

Online video service Brightcove will price its IPO between $10 and $12 per share, according to a new filing with the SEC.

The company first filed for the IPO back in August of last year, saying it wanted to raise up to $50 million. Now, $50 million is at the lower end of its price range. If Brightcove sells the maximum number of shares (it’s set to sell 5 million shares, plus an extra 750,000 if demand is high) at $12, it could raise up to $69 million.

The filing also updates Brightcove’s key metrics through the end of 2011. The company, which sells online video publishing and distribution services, says it had 3,872 customers as of Dec 31. Its revenue grew last year to $63.6 million (from $43.7 million in 2010), but it still showed a loss of $17.8 million. Thanks to plans to “continue to invest in the growth of our business and operations,” Brightcove says it expects to see losses until the end of this year at least.

Brightcove also revealed ambitions beyond video when it announced its App Cloud last year, with its first commercial sale in September and general availability in November, according to the filing.

Mobeam, the San Francisco-based startup whose technology enables mobile phones to interact with laser scanners at the point of sale, has added another $1.5 million to its Series A round. The company had previously raised $4.9 million in October 2011.

The round includes new investor DFJ Athena, a Korea-focused venture fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and brings in new funds from existing investor and board chairman, Ben DuPont.

Also announced today, DFJ Athena’s founder and managing director, Perry Ha, will join Mobeam’s board of directors.

The funding follows the company’s announcement in December of a partnership with Procter & Gamble for a pilot program which brings a fully mobile couponing system to U.S. consumers. The technology developed by Mobeam involves a patented way to beam barcodes from a phone’s screen which can be read by normal laser scanners like those found at the point-of-sale.

Due to the way mobile handset screens are constructed, they can’t be read by the commonly used scanners found at checkout. Mobeam’s technology instead uses the LEDs already present on many mobile handsets to transform barcodes into beams of light that any laser scanner can read.

Mobeam says it’s using the new funding to help establish its technology, called light-based communications (LBC), as a new industry standard. It’s also planning to advance its business development efforts with major retail and consumers brands for mobile couponing and other initiatives.

In an effort to expand its reach into the e-learning market, Kenexa, a publicly listed provider of business solutions for HR, has agreed to acquire Boston-based OutStart.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

OutStart offers SaaS-based social and mobile learning solutions and will help Kenexa bolster its suite of talent management products, the latter company said in a statement.

OutStart is said to have more than 300 customers, ranging from large global organizations to mid-size companies and government agencies.

Kenexa says it expects to fund the acquisition of the privately-held software company with its existing cash balance. The company also expects the transaction to be at least neutral to non-GAAP net income available to common shareholders on a per share basis for 2012.

Also read: Kenexa To Acquire Salary.com In $80 Million Deal

All the major map apps like Google Maps, Bing Maps, and Mapquest have walking directions as a standard feature, but the folks at Lumatic don’t think they are good enough. It is creating mobile maps designed for pedestrians, cyclists, and people who use public transit. Originally a TechStars company called Omniar, serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Lookery, Mashery) joined as CEO a year ago.

He recently raised a seed round of $800,000 from Joi Ito’s Neoteny Labs, 500 Startups, Chamath Palihapitiya, Allen Morgan, Ted Rheingold, and other angels.

Lumatic has an Android app which works right now only in San Francisco. When it gives you directions, it chooses routes which are optimal for walking, cycling or public transport. As you walk through the streets, the app displays a street-view with photos and arrows pointing in the right direction.

The app is built on top of Open Street Map , but the user experience is centered heavily on using photography, landmarks, and visual cues to help people navigate cities. Fighting Google Maps in this category is going to be a tough slog, but if the app can gain a following there plenty of money in local commerce and advertising to make it a worthwhile pursuit.

Online accounting software maker Xero has raised $16.6 million in new funding from existing investors — including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, whose most famous investment, Facebook, just filed for an IPO,

Thiel first invested $3 million in New Zealand-founded Xero back in 2010, with the aim of fueling expansion in the United States. The company says that’s also the reason for the latest round. This time, Xero also notes that it recently doubled its US team, from three employees to six, and hired Jamie Sutherland (formerly vice president and general manager at Sage Software) as the president of US operations.

Other investors in the round include Sam Morgan and MYOB co-founder Craig Winkler. The company says it has 60,000 paying customers and 240,000 users. It partners with Yodlee to bring automatic bank feeds into the service, with 5,000 feeds in the US.

“Xero transforms the way small businesses handle their accounting,” Thiel said in the press release. “Where conventional accounting software is cluttered, slow, and anchored to a desktop, Xero’s cloud-based services and intuitive design simplify an impressive suite of financial tasks. We’re excited to see Xero grow throughout the U.S.”

Leads360, a consumer sales automation and telephony platform, announced today it has completed a $15 million round of new funding. The round was led by Volition Capital and saw participation from existing Leads360 investor Rustic Canyon Partners.

The company plans to use the funding to expand its product lineup, pursue strategic relationships and raise awareness about its platform.

Despite how the name sounds, the company doesn’t actually sell leads – it sells software and services to manage the leads an organization already has. Founded in 2004, the L.A.-based startup has now managed over 40 million prospects for over 2,000 clients, including many among the Fortune 1000.

Over the past three years, Leads360 reports seeing 40% to 50% revenue growth, and claims to do a better job than CRM systems with specialized customizations at managing consumer sales. With the Leads360 software, businesses can set follow-up reminders, track appointments, manage new leads alerts, prioritize quality leads, and track key performance metrics in order to calculate ROI by lead source.

In addition to its standalone software, Leads360 also offers Leads360 for Salesforce, which integrates into Salesforce’s existing CRM system, and Leads360 for iPhone, which lets you manage leads in real-time, while on the go.

Make no mistake about Facebook’s ambitions. “There are more than two billion global Internet users,” its S-1 filing states, “…and we aim to connect all of them.” As evidence of its ability to reach this goal, the company says that it already has some countries with above 80% penetration rates among users.

The problem, as the filing also notes, is that “our rates of user and revenue growth will decline over time.” A quick analysis of the worldwide monthly and daily active user counts in the document shows this phenomenon is already in full effect. From quarterly gains of above 20% for much of 2009, both monthly and daily increases fell to above 10% in 2010, and then to the single digits in 2011.

The good news for Facebook is that the numerical gains don’t show as clear of a decline. While the last quarter of 2011 ended a little lower than many previous ones, at 45 million new MAU and 26 million new DAU, that has yet to be a trend. Growth rates inherently decline as size increases, so Facebook could eventually get much bigger than its current 845 million MAU and 483 million DAU if it continues to grow month over month, even if the rate of growth declines further.

Facebook’s filing, meanwhile, shares a little more about how it’s going to get bigger — basically, by continuing to grow in populated countries where it is still small, as you can read between the lines here:

We have achieved varying levels of penetration within the population of Internet users in different countries. For example, in countries such as Chile, Turkey, and Venezuela we estimate that we have penetration rates of greater than 80% of Internet users; in countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States we estimate that we have penetration rates of approximately 60%; in countries such as Brazil, Germany, and India we estimate that we have penetration rates o approximately 20-30%; in countries such as Japan, Russia, and South Korea we estimate that we have penetration rates of less than 15%; and in China, where Facebook access is restricted, we have near 0% penetration.

The company goes on to say that it expects its monthly active user counts to continue growing as more and more of the 6.8 billion people in the world get broadband and mobile internet access, particularly in developing markets. “Growth in MAUs depends on our ability to retain our current users, re-engage with inactive users, and add new users, including by extending our reach across mobile platforms.”

But the filing also includes a word of warning about further growth rate declines:

We believe that our rates of user and revenue growth will decline over time. For example, our annual revenue grew 154% from 2009 to 2010 and 88% from 2010 to 2011. Historically, our user growth has been a primary driver of growth in our revenue. Our user growth and revenue growth rates will inevitably slow as we achieve higher market penetration rates, as our revenue increases to higher levels, and as we experience increased competition. As our growth rates decline, investors’ perceptions of our business may be adversely affected and the market price of our Class A common stock could decline.

[Top image via NASA]

IP phone company ShoreTel has today announced that it is beefing up its offerings by acquiring unified communications company M5 Networks in a deal that is valued up to $146 million in cash and stock.

ShoreTel’s motivation for snatching up M5 was an effort to be able to offer its customers a choice of either on-premise or hosted solutions, enabling the company to reach a larger and growing market of users looking to deploy unified communications solutions. Gartner predicts that the “Voice as a Service” market is expected to show a 36 percent compounded annual growth rate in North America before 2015 — to $2.2 billion.

ShoreTel acquired enterprise mobility leader Agito Networks in October 2010 to extend the unified communications technology to mobile devices, enabling them to solve the bring-your-own-device problems that are changing the enterprise market.

M5 Networks, too, has made a couple of acquisitions lately, including Callfinity last year and Geckotech the year prior. The cloud communications company, which was founded in 2000, provides phone systems, applications, and cloud communications for businesses, and claims to be one of the country’s largest specialized VoIP providers.

Under the terms of the deal, M5 shareholders will receive approximately $84 million in cash and 9.5 million shares of ShoreTel stock, for a total of about $146.3 million in “initial consideration based on ShoreTel’s average stock price over the prior 30 days of trading.” Furthermore, M5 shareholders could receive additional consideration of up to $13.7, according to the company’s statement.

ShoreTel announced its Q2 earnings today, with revenue coming in at $58.0 million, up 8 percent sequentially from the first quarter of fiscal 2012 and up 22 percent from the second quarter of fiscal year 2011. Despite GAAP net loss for the quarter being $2.5 million, or $0.05 per share, ShoreTel had some highlights over the last six months, forging a distribution relationship with Ingram Micro in October, an expanded distribution agreement with Windstream, a North American communications service provider, along with expanding its relationship with Hewlett Packard, which will become a reseller of ShoreTel’s “Mobility solution.”

According to the statement, following the close of the acquisition, M5 will be operated as a ShoreTel business unit, which will be led by M5 CEO Dan Hoffman, while engineering teams will remain separate.

For more, see ShorTel’s announcement of the acquisition here and the announcement of its Q2 earnings here.

Check out our prior coverage of M5 Networks here.