Academic research into behavioual science informs new wave of service entrepreneurs.

The new world order aspect comes from how corporate connections are powered.

The deal would be valued at more than $800m compared to the about $85m raised by Buddy since its launch in 2007, according to news provider All Things D.

Separately, Mixpanel, a US-based analytics platform for mobile and web, has raised $10m in its series A round from a consortium including Salesforce's founder and chief executive, Marc Benioff.

True Ventures joins engineering service and research provider S&K Technologies and geospatial analysis company GCS Research backing the real-time security software developer.

Innovacorp's Greg Phipps said the graduate job hunter-targeted site bridges a gap between the professional networking of LinkedIn and the "purely social networking of Facebook".

Drumbi, which the accelerator backed in August last year, has secured a $2m A round.

Paul Musselman, formerly of Intel Capital and IBM's corporate development team, takes the top role at the language learning start-up, which spun off from Carnegie Mellon University.

The US-based analytics software company was the first spin-out from Germany-based software company SAP and has the backing of its corporate venturing unit.

Paul Musselman, formerly of Intel Capital and IBM's corporate development team, takes the top role at the language learning start-up.