Next Net News

The Quest for the 3rd Generation Search Engine Continues!

2007-10-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

A few months ago New York Times probed a bunch of start-up search engines as possible way to go in beating Google's dominance on the search market. These days yet another influential media giant Newsweek seems to be going against Google. In a quest for the best search engine Newsweek, in a story titled "Searching For The Best Engine", claims a global effort is underway to invent a better way of finding things on the Web and asks the rhetorical question "Could Google be vulnerable?" .

Aside the French, German and Japan's governments pouring hundreds of millions in an effort to establish local search companies as well as the traditional Google rivals in the face of Microsoft, Yahoo and somehow Ask.com, Newsweek seems to be focused on the so called 3rd generation or alternative search engines emerging upon us with innovative ideas, concepts and technologies promising to deliver better results than Google in one way or another.

In 2005 and 2006, venture-capital firms invested $350 million into 79 search-related start-ups. Knight, the author of AltSearchEngines.com's blog tracks no fewer than 1,000 search contenders, mostly U.S.-based, that have something to recommend the old guys in the sector.

The story mentions a number of innovative and highly promising start-up search engines, technologies and approaches as follows:

Hakia – Relies on natural language processing.
Wikia - The one the Wikipedia's founder stays behind.
Naver* - a South Korean search veteran, has been around for pretty much the last decade.
Quintura – A visual engine started out by Russians but now said to be based in Virginia.
NosyJoe – A Social search engine that employs intelligent tagging technologies and runs on a semantic platform.
Mahalo - Hard to say search engine it more looks like a directory with quality content handpicked by editors. Jason Calacanis is the one behind the company.
ChaCha – Real humans try to help you in your quest for information, via chat.
Powerset – Still in closed beta, well over-hyped and seems to be also relying on understanding the natural language.
Clusty* - founded in 2000 by three Carnegie Mellon University scientists.
Ask.com* - Today's #4 search engine immediately after Google, Yahoo and MS.
Lexxe - Sydney based engine featuring natural language processing technologies.
Accoona – What's interesting for the company is that they have recently filed for an IPO in US planning to raise $80M from the public.
KartOO – A French initiative entirely done in a flash, visual meta search engine.
KoolTorch – Seems to be yet another visual search engine, it is said to be also French one. Weak point could be that they don't use their own index and seem to be using the Dmoz.org's results.
Squidoo – It has been started in October 2005 by Seth Godin and looks more like a wiki site, ala Wikia or Wikipedia where anyone creates articles on different topics.
Sproose – Appears to be also using third party search feeds; ranks the results based on the users' votes.
Trulia – A real estate search engine
Healthline - Enables you to plug in symptoms and track down possible causes and treatment, health search engines, a heavily competitive area where Microsoft is also playing a role in, among others
Globaspec – Searches for industrial information and is aimed at engineers.
Like.com – Product search engine.
Spock – Focuses on people information, people search engine, and there are other competitors in the sector.

* Note that Naver is not a start-up search engine; it has been around for quite long time and is the lading search engine in South Korea . Ask.com and Clusty.com are also among the old guys from the sector.

Very interesting fact is that right now all these underdog search engines are said to have a combined market share of less than 5 percent of all queries, which is an impressive number knowing that 1% of the search market is today valued at the staggering amount of more than $1B, according Don Dodge.

The story is scheduled to appear on the Nov 5, 2007 print issue of Newsweek.

Just like a few months ago when we covered the NYT's story today we again think that only the time will tell us who will be the big winner at the end of the day. On the other hand whatever the case is any of the above search engines may get acquired sooner or later for anything in the 8 digit range (excluding some of the major players from the list above which may hunt amounts down in the 9+ digit range), which, in our feeling, is the main goal of most of these start-ups.

On the contrary, many IT experts and professionals do believe that undermining Google is most likely a task that will not be accomplished by a search engine in our traditional understanding, but rather would come from a concept that is anything else but not a search engine. Such concepts, including but not limited to, are Wikipedia, Del.icio.us and LinkedWords. In other words finding information on web doesn't necessarily mean to search for it.

Some more information on the topic:

www.newsweek.com/id/62254/page/1
altsearchengines.com/2007/10/05/the-top-10-stealth-search-engines/
altsearchengines.com/2007/10/30/why-is-altsearchengines-in-newsweek-magazine/
userweb.port.ac.uk/~duke-wie/blog/2007/10/30/searching-....
www.nytimes.com/2007/06/24/business/yourmoney/24digi.html
dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing...

Review of the August 2007 Web 2.0 Deals

2007-10-12T09:28:00.000-07:00

LinkedIn Competitor Viadeo Raises €5 Million
Viadeo, a European social network for business contacts which is quite similar in idea and execution to LinkedIn, has raised a further €5 million in funding from its existing investors, AGF Private Equity and Ventech. The extra cash will be used to fuel the growth of Viadeo in Asia; so far, the network has been doing very well in Europe, with over 1.3 million members.

DailyMotion Raises $34 Million; Another Copyright Infringing Success Story
French social video site DailyMotion has raised a $34 million round from Advent Venture Partners LLP and AGF Private Equity, a division of Allianz AG. The new round comes on top of $9.5 million in previous financing from Atlas Ventures and Partech International. The round puts DailyMotion’s total financing beyond that of their competitors, even MetaCafe’s $45 million total financing. Dailymotion’s executive chairman, Mark Zaleski, said the new funds will ‘allow us to reach operating profitability‘.

VersionTracker Acquired by CNET VersionTracker, an online publication for software updates, has been acquired by CNET. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. With this integration deal, VersionTracker and its sister sites iPhone Atlas and MacFixIt will be incorporated into the CNET family as well. This gives VersionTracker a larger audience and access to more resources, while CNET expands its niche sites and grows its offerings of Mac information on the web.

Microsoft Acquires Enterprise Group Chat Company Parlano
Microsoft has announced that it has agreed to acquire Chicago-based Parlano, the maker of the enterprise group chat platform MindAlign. Microsoft said that it would use Parlano’s group chat functionality to improve Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Office Communicator.

SayNow Lands $7.5 Million Series A
SayNow, a service that enables ‘celebrities to connect to their audience over the phone’ will announce $7.5 million Series A funding September 12, in a round led by Shasta Partners. Tugboat Ventures’ Dave Whorton, a SayNow advisor since early 2006, also participated in the round as did Costella Kirsch. Rob Coneybeer, MD of Shasta Ventures will join the SayNow board of directors …

Zivity’s Model Contest Site Raises $1M in Funding
Zivity, the social network aiming to be a user-generated Playboy Magazine online, has received $1 million in funding in a Series A round of funding, from private investors. We mentioned Zivity yesterday and you can read about it here…

The New York Times to Acquire Freakanomics Blog, and More
The New York Times is acquiring the popular Freakanomics blog, which was launched as a sort of spin-off to the success of the book, keeping up with its momentum. This will be the first blog that the New York Times acquires and adds to its larger media family, but there’s word that the newspaper plans to acquire even more blogs in the not-too-distant future. Seems like blogs are getting acquired left and right these days, which is good for the creators, writers and publishers of these blogs, and good for the economics surrounding the blogosphere.

TheFind.com Acquires Glimpse
Shopping search engine startup TheFind has acquired the high-fashion shopping site Glimpse.com for an undisclosed amount. It’s an early deal for Glimpse, which just launched this year. TheFind is a comparison shopping search engine that crawls many shopping sites across the internet (190 million products at over 500,000 stores).

Maya’s Mom Acquired by BabyCenter
Maya’s Mom, the social networking site for mothers, has been acquired by BabyCenter, the mom-centric parenting network, making this its first acquisition. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. According to the deal, Maya’s Mom will remain a standalone product, and its back-end software will be utilized across BabyCenter’s network of global websites.

SeatSmart’s Ticket Search Funded in Angel Round
SeatSmart, the search engine dedicated to finding tickets for concerts, games and events, has raised a round of angel funding for an undisclosed amount. The company is a ticket search aggregator of sorts, perusing Stubhub, Razorgator, eBay, and other major ticket-selling sites to bring you a variety of search results.

Jaxtr Closes $10 Million Series A; Announces 1 Million Users
Jaxtr has raised a $10 million Series A round led by August Capital with Mayfield Fund, Draper Richards, Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Luxemburg-based Mangrove Capital participating. They’ve also doubled their registered user base over last month, totalling 1 million users. They plan on getting to a break even point on the investment and to total 20 million users by the end of next year.

SpiceWorks Raises $8 Million; Google Adsense Even Supports IT Software
IT software maker SpiceWorks just closed an $8 million in series B financing. The funding round was led by Shasta Ventures with participation from Spiceworks series A investor, Austin Ventures. Their series A was $5 million. Shasta Ventures co-founder and managing director, Ravi Mohan, and former Dell senior executive, John Hamlin, have joined the Spiceworks board of directors. The money will be used to support over 120,000 users as well as software development and sales and marketing.

Wis.dm Raises $5M for Bookmarking and Media-Sharing Site
Wis.dm, the social bookmarking and media-sharing site that’s relaunched with a Q&A slant, has received $5 million in funding. The funding was provided by North Bridge Venture Partners, with its Michael Skok joining the board.

MocoSpace Raises $3M for Mobile Network
MocoSpace, a mobile social network, has received $3 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by General Catalyst, and Pilot Group and Michael Daring, a former eBay executive, participated as well. The funding will be used to expand the company’s sales and marketing.

Fotolog Acquired by Hi Media, French Ad Network
EXCLUSIVE: We had previously speculated that New York-based Fotolog would be the next one to get acquired. And we were right. It has been acquired by Hi Media, a Paris-based interactive media company for roughly $90 million - a combination of cash and stock, according to well-placed sources. The announcement is likely to be made later today.

FM Raises Another $4.5M; Are They Having Difficulty Filling Inventory?
Reports from PEHub and Mashable indicate a new $4.5 million Series B round of funding for Federated Media. Congrats! Federated Media provides advertising for some of the world’s largest blogs including: TechCrunch (TC is in “open warfare” and looking for a replacement), Read/WriteWeb, GigaOm, Mashable, ArsTechnica, TechDirt and about 100 other blogs.

DivX Acquires Veatros to Create Enhanced Video Search & Discovery for the Home
DivX has acquired Veatros, creators of a video identification technology, for $4.25 million. The acquisition of Veatros will be used for DivX to create an improved video search and discovery service on the DivX Connected platform, incorporating metadata like cover art, information on videos’ directors and actors, and titles.

LendingClub To Close $10.26 Million Series A
Peer to peer lending service Lending Club will close a $10.26 million series A round of financing from Norwest Venture Partners and Canaan Partners tomorrow. This comes a few months after the company’s $2 million angel round. Coinciding with the investment, Jeff Crowe and Dan Ciporin (former ceo of shopping.com) are joining Lending Club’s board of directors.

Conduit Labs Closes $5.5 Million Series A Funding
Conduit Labs, a yet-to-launch gaming virtual world, just closed a $5.5 million series A round with Charles River Ventures and Prism Venture Works. In addition to the financing, CRV’s Susan Wu and Prism’s Will Kohler have joined the company’s Board of Directors.

SINOHUB Receives New RMB 23.5 Million Letter of Credit Line from Commercial Industrial Bank
SinoHub Technology Company, Ltd. today announced that it has successfully closed a RMB 23.5 Million Letter of Credit facility with the Commercial Industrial Bank . The company will use the funds to expand its electronic component procurement fulfillment business in China. Already a leading company in the rapidly growing field of electronic component supply chain management services in China (import, buffer inventory, procurement fulfillment, VMI, just-in-time delivery, export and other services), SinoHub will use these funds to propel itself into a dominant position in this field.

StreetBee Acquires JamJunky; Rebrands as GetYourGrooveOn
StreetBee has acquired JamJunky, a music composition review service. CN reviewed the service when it launched three months ago and JamJunky added a Facebook application in July. CN described JamJunky as, ‘Basically JamJunky is a way for you to upload your own authored music and get feedback from your friends and other song writers to help perfect your songs.’

Google reveals stake in Chinese social Web site
Google revealed on Monday that it had acquired a stake in Chinese community Web site Tianya.cn, indicating a foray by the global search leader into social networking in the world’s second-largest Internet market.

Global Grind’s Pageflakes Clone Raises $4.5M in Series A Round Global Grind, the niche start page for hip-hop news and information, has raised $4.5 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by Accel Ventures. New York-based Global Grind was founded by three creators of 360hiphop, which is a social network which was acquired by BET Interactive.
The Filter Brings Home $5M in Second Round of Funding
The Filter, a UK-based music recommendation company, has received $5 million in a second round of funding. Peter Gabriel has led the round, along with Eden Ventures, with both parties participating in the first round of funding, bringing the grand total to $6.8 million.

TripAdvisor Reportedly Acquires Where I’ve Been for $3 Million
In what is by far the largest Facebook application acquisition to date, travel company TripAdvisor has reportedly acquired Where I’ve Been from Craig Ulliott for $3 million. The acquisition marks the first major successful exit of a Facebook application since the Platform launched just under three months ago. With 2.3 million users, Where I’ve Been established itself as by far the biggest travel application on Facebook, leading #2 Cities I’ve Visited (also TripAdvisor owned) by over 1 million users.

Kongregate Closes $5 Million Series A For Casual Gaming
Casual gaming community Kongregate has closed a $5 million series A round led by Greylock today. This is on top of a $1 million angel round they raised from Reid Hoffman, Joe Kraus, Jeff Clavier and Richard Wolpert, among others. The casual gaming category consists of all those addictive online flash games that often distract you during your downtime (remember desktop tower defense?). James Slavet of Greylock pegs the casual game market at $500 million and expects it to grow even larger.

MTVN Acquires Another LGBT Network
MTV Networks has acquired DowneLink, a multicultural, LGBTQ (Lesbian / Gay / Bisexual / Transgender / Questioning) social networking site. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed. DowneLink has a reported 400,000 members, more than 72% of which are African-American, Asian or Latino, making it a good buy for MTVN, which seems to be broadening its scope of LGBT sites and demographics.

YFonGlobal Acquiring Splinternet Holdings
YFonGlobal, the turn key, white label solution for social networks and their necessary platforms, has begun the process of acquiring Splinternet Holdings, the developer of Internet telephony products and services. The financials of the deal were not disclosed, but the deal is scheduled to close within the next two months.

SocialMedia Raises $1M for Facebook App Network
SocialMedia, the aforementioned Facebook apps and MySpace widgets company that will combine hosting, promotion and an ad network, has raised $1 million in funding in a round led by CRV Ventures, SoftTech VC and the Hitforge seed fund.

Doppelganger Gets $11M in New Funding
Doppelgagner, the company that offers programmed virtual worlds for the teen demographic, has raised $11 million in funding, led by new investor ComVentures, and existing investors Draper Fisher Jurveston, Trident Capital, Draper Richards, KPG Ventures and Greycroft Partners. That brings the grand total to $25 million.

Diet Television Trims Name, Takes $2 Million
Later this week, weight loss community Diet Television will announce it’s shortened its name to DietTv.com and raised a $2 million series A. The round was led by MentorTech Ventures.

Kontera closes second round, faces competition by Vibrant Media and LinkedWords
Kontera, an Israel-based startup (officially headquartered in San Francisco), is raising $10.3 Million second round from Sequoia and other investors. It seems that the ad networks online are very hot these past months after the major acquisitions done by Google, Microsoft, AOL and others.

VOIP Startup Fring Raises $12 Million Series B
Israeli-based VOIP start-up Fring has closed an estimated $12 million second round, led by US VC fund North Bridge Venture Partners. VenFin and previous investors Pitango, Veritas and Yossi Vardi also participated. If the investment estimate is accurate, it would be one of the larger rounds for a VOIP company.

Technology Blog Xconomy Funded
Xconomy, a Boston-area-based technology and news blog, has received funding in a Series A round, led by CommonAngels. CommonAngels is an investment group in Lexington, MA, and it contributed funds from its investment pool as well as individual members. The financial terms were not disclosed.

CyclingTV Acquired by JumpTVJumpTV, an online video aggregator, has acquired CyclingTV for around $4.95 million, which is broken down into $2.21 million in cash, and $2.74 million in common stock, to be issued later this year.

The NBC and News Corp. joint venture Gets $100M in Funding
The NBC and News Corp. joint venture, which has been dubbed the YouTube Killer, has received $100 million in funding from Rhode Island-based investment firm Providence Equity Partners.

Pay Per Call Company VoiceStar Acquired by Marchex
Pay per call advertising service VoiceStar has been acquired by local advertising company Marchex. Marchex total anticipated investment to acquire VoiceStar will be $28 million, consisting of approximately $20 million in transaction consideration and $8 million in company investment.

Blockbuster Desperate To Do Something, Buys A Loser
Blockbuster announced the acquisition of movie download site Movielink this evening. The price is not being disclosed (meaning it isn’t ‘material’ to Blockbuster’s shareholders), although the Wall Street Journal says it was less than $20 million.

Pickle Purchased For $4.1 Million
Photo and video-sharing site Pickle.com has been purchased by Scripps Networks for a reported $4.1 million. Scripps is the company behind many lifestyles brands like DIY, the Food Network, HGTV, and Great American Country. This is their second web purchase after Recipezaar last month.

JS-Kit Closes $1.2 Million Seed Round
Web widget provider JS-Kit has been doing a lot of growing up since starting as a simple commenting widget, founder Lev Walkin’s pet project in his off hours. Since then, that single widget has grown into a company with the addition of CEO Kris Loux, 12 engineers from Filmloop, and today’s $1.2 million round of financing led by the Entrepreneur’s Fund III.

Scrybe Closes Series A
Scrybe, the online/offline calendar and organizer, has closed their series A round of financing from Adobe Systems Incorporated and LMKR. In what is becoming an annoying trend, the company is not disclosing the size of the round.

Kaboodle Acquired by Hearst Magazines
Kaboodle, the social shopping site that looked like a better fit for eBay than a media conglomerate, has been acquired by Hearst Corporation for an undisclosed amount. Kaboodle had taken $5 million in first round funding from 10 investors including Ron Conway.

Acquisition for Clipmarks
New York based Clipmarks, a del.icio.us-like social bookmarking service, may have been acquired by Forbes. We have no information on the size of the transaction, but my guess is that it was on the very low side. The service allows users to bookmark all or a portion of a web page and annotate it.

Amie Street Closes Series A Financing Led By Amazon.com
Social music marketplace Amie Street has closed a Series A round of financing led by Amazon.com, along with some new partnerships and a site redesign. The amount of Amazon’s investment and the terms are not disclosed.

Worldwide Biggies Funded by NBC and Hearst
Worldwide Biggies, a digital entertainment studio headed by former Nickelodeon and Spike TV President Albie Hecht, has closed a $9 million Series A round of funding. The round was led by NBC Universal and Platform Equity, also getting a large chunk of that change from Hearst Corporation, Alan Patricoft’s Greycroft Partners and Prism Venture works.

Insightful Corporation Sells InFactInsightful Corporation (NASDAQ: IFUL), announced today the sale of its InFact search technology and associated intellectual property rights to Hypertext Solutions Inc. for $3.65 million in cash. Hypertext is a Seattle-based startup company focused on making information on the web more ‘intelligent’. The transaction closed today.

College Boy Stalwart eBaum’s World Bought For $17.5M
Today San Francisco-based HandHeld Entertainment says it is acquiring Rochester, NY-based eBaum’s World. HandHeld said it will pay $17.5M for eBaum’s World ($15M in cash, $2.5M in stock, and $2.5M in stock with a one-year hold back.) The company also said that it may pay up to $32.5M in earnouts over three years to the owner’s of eBaum’s world.

Online Travel White Labeler EZRez Raises $15M
EzRez was founded in 2002 in Honolulu, Hawaii where it built a white label system for regional airlines, wholesalers, rental car companies, hotels, activity providers and more. Today the company raised $15M led by Canaan Partners with Azure Capital Partners and existing investors.

Content Personalization Widget Maker Minekey Raises First $3M
Sunnyvale, CA-based Minekey has raised $3M in Series A funding for their personalized news recommendation widget. The funding round was led by NEA IndoUS Ventures, which had previously invested $600K in a seed round.

Stealth Mode TuneUp Media Raises VC Funding To Help You Manage Your Music FilesGabe Adiv, who previously worked the biz dev levers at Gracenote, has a new startup in stealth mode called TuneUp Media, that he claims has raised VC funding. What problem will the startup address? Our digital music lives are too complex the company finds and needs a better system.

Associated Content Raises $10M For Crowd-sourced NewsNYC-based Associated Content has raised $10M in a 2nd round from Canaan Partners. The company is slightly controversial because of the backing of Google sales exec Tim Armstrong who invested in the company’s first $5.4M round and is back in at this round along with Softbank.

Streetline Funded For Smart Cities Tech
Streetline has completed pilot projects and studies for Los Angeles and San Francisco. The LA project has learned that despite two-hour time limits, the average driver stays parked for four hours. In San Francisco, Streetline learned that only 5.4% of parking violations in San Francisco receive tickets. Streetline has raised $250K+ so far from individual investors including Internet pioneer Gordon Bell and it is planning a Series A round. They indicate on job postings that they have raised venture capital so that round may be closed but the company has not responded to confirm.

DecisionView Announces $7 Million in Series C Investment
DecisionView, Inc., the leading provider of business performance optimization applications for the Life Sciences industry, today announced the close of a $7 million Series C round of funding led by new investor, firstVentury, as well as existing investors Partech International and Granite Ventures.

Accoona Files for IPO
Internet company Accoona Corp. filed Friday for an initial public offering of its common stock. The Jersey City, N.J.-based company said it expects to use proceeds from the offering for research and development, business expansion and general corporate purposes. Accoona may also use a portion of the proceeds to acquire or invest in complementary companies and technologies.

SEM Firm iCrossing Buys Web Builder Proxicom
Arizona-based SEM giant iCrossing has acquired Proxicom for an un-disclosed amount from Gores Technology. The deal was financed by a funding round last week by iCrossing where it raised $62M from Goldman Sachs and some VC firms.

Compete Ups Ante With $10M In Funding
Today Compete has raised another round of funding at $10M in Series III funding from return backers Charles River Ventures, idealab, Split Rock Partners and William Blair Capital Partners. Compete has raised $43M since 2000.

Disney Acquires Club Penguin For Up To $700 million
Club Penguin, a social network / virtual world that has been on the market for some time, was acquired by The Walt Disney Company and announced today. An earlier deal with Sony fell apart over valuation and Club Penguin’s policy of donating a substantial portion of profits to charity. The company, which launched in October 2005, has 700,000 current paid subscribers and 12 million activated users, primarily in the U.S. and Canada.

Discovery Acquires TreeHugger.com For $10millionDiscovery Communications has announced the acquisition of TreeHugger.com for what is believed to be $10 million. TreeHugger.com started as an environmentally focused blog in 2004 and grew to include forums, green guides and other related features. The site sits in the Top 20 blogs worldwide according to Technorati and is said to have 1.4 million unique visitors a month. Alexa ranks the site at 5,395.

PayScale Gets $10.3M in Series C Round of Funding
PayScale is an online service that lets you know how you compare to others that do the same job as you. It’s just raised another $1.5 million in a Series C round of funding, led by SAP Ventures. This closes the round at $10.3 million. Previous investors include Allen & Co., Corporate Executive Board, Trinity Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, Fluke Venture Partners and Buerk Dale Victor.

Vringo Raises $12M in Series B Funding
Vringo, the video ringtone provider, has closed on a $12 million Series B round of venture capital funding. The round was led by Warburg Pincus, a global equity firm. The funding will be used to take Vringo around the world, as it expands markets in the US, Europe and Asia.
Curse Raises $5M in Series A for MMOG Network Curse, the gaming portal, has received $5 million in a Series A round of funding. The round was led by a French venture capital firm AGF Private Equity, and some angel investors participated as well. The MMOG company already raised about $800,000 in funding from angel investors prior to this Series A round.

Via EPR Network Blog

Is NosyJoe.com the next Clusty.com?

2007-09-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

Clusty.com is a well known search engine project basically a spin off from Vivisimo. Vivisimo on the other hand was founded in 2000 by three Carnegie Mellon University scientists who decided to tackle the problem of information overload in web search. Rather than focusing just on search engine result ranking, they thought that grouping results into topics, or "clustering," made for better search and discovery.

Clusty in general is a word derived from clustering, in our best guess, and the search engine itself became popular with its function to cluster the web, basically explained. Yet it is know that Clusty queries several top search engines which in its basic means a metasearch, i.e. no own index.

Initially planned to take on Google (Carnegie Mellon University vs. Stanford) Clusty seems did not make it at all and failed to gain the basic popularity necessary to rank among the first 10 search engines in terms of market share. The latest phrase seen in the public about Clusty is: “It (Vivisimo) also has a consumer search engine, Clusty, that allows Web browsers to query several search engines at once.”

On the other hand their clustering technology is considered pretty good one but seemingly other start ups are working on similar ideas, one of them, is NosyJoe -- a small start up search engine -- that is taking the content clustering to the next level.

NosyJoe is still in private beta, however, it was mentioned in NYT this last June and since then the project gained some traction among the search experts on web.

Basically NosyJoe extracts the meaningful sentences, phrases and keywords from the content submitted by the users. It then makes the information pretty much meaningfully searchable, web visible and findable and also clusters it into contextual channels and tags and applies a set of algorithms and user patterns to further ranking, mashing and sharing.

From our quick tests on the site the search results returned were presented in form of meaningful sentences and contextual phrasal tags (as an option), which turns their search results into -- something I have never seen on web so far -- neat content components, readable and easily understandable sentences as search results unlike what we are all used to, some excerpts from the content where the keyword is found in. When compared to other search engines’ results NosyJoe.com’s ones appear truly meaningful. You can check it out for yourself, we have submitted the about page of Clusty to NosyJoe and here is what the site shows it has for the Clusty.com’s domain: http://www.nosyjoe.com/website/www.clusty.com

Another search query done in NosyJoe for Clusty yielded pretty good meaningful results too:
http://www.nosyjoe.com/search.php?q=clusty

Another start up search engine known to be playing in the clustering arena is Quintura, a US based company started out by Russians.

So is NosyJoe.com really the next clustering engine or it is yet another social search experiment.

Hot end of July on the web 2.0 scene

2007-08-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

Action Engine Raises $20 Million
Mobile applications developer Action Engine has raised $20 million in new round led by Baker Capital. Previous investors Northwest Venture Associates and The Spangler Group also participated in the round. The company develops mobile device software that allows media companies and mobile operators to provide music , video and other content on mobiles.

Alibaba confirms IPO
China’s biggest e-commerce company Alibaba has submitted its first initial public offering (IPO) application to the listing committee of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and may become the largest high-tech share on the Hong Kong bourse. Alibaba’s Chairman Jack Ma confirmed the news in the company’s annual meeting over the weekend. Tao Ran, a company spokesman, said there was no timetable for the market listing and also declined to disclose any details of the IPO.

Scribd Competitor Gets Angel Funding
Docstoc , the online document exchange community, has reportedly raised an undisclosed amount of angel funding , and may prove to be a Scribd competitor. The site is still in private beta. With Docstoc, you can share any document type, from Word, to PDF and Illustrator.

Boo-box Gets $300K for Contextual Ads Service
Boo-box , the contextual marketing company, has raised $300,000 in a round of seed funding , led by Monashees Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm. The funds will be used for product development and expansion of the Brazil-based company.

Big Hedge Fund Investment in Zazzle
Silicon valley based Zazzle will be closing a second round of financing in the $30 million range, at a $300+ million pre-money valuation. The round is expected to be led by an as-yet-unnamed hedge fund.

Reid Hoffman invests in Care.com
The company which has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding from Matrix Partners, is also the latest investment by Reid Hoffman, godfather of Web 2.0 start-ups , and also co-founder of LinkedIn. Care.com, a Waltham, MA.-based outfit that connects families to ‘qualified care givers with a national network of trusted providers.’

NowPublic Gets $10.6 Million For Crowd Sourced News
‘Crowd sourced’ news network NowPublic.com has closed a $10.6 milion series A round of financing led by Rho Ventures with seed investors Brightspark and the Working Opportunity Fund participating. Crowd sourcing is part of the widely expanding ‘ citizen journalism ‘ category, which encompasses all the new ways non-professionals can participate in the news reporting process.

BuddyTV Gets $2.8M for Fan Site
BuddyTV , the online television informational community, has raised about $2.8 million in a Series A round of funding , with Gemstar-TV Guide International leading the round. The site lets you create a profile listing your favorite shows and actors.

CoolIris Gets $1M of its $3M Series A Round
CoolIris , the link preview service , has secured about $1 million of a $3.05 million Series A round of funding . The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufiled & Byers. Randy Komisar, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, has also taken a seat on CoolIris’ board.

3Jam Nabs $4M in Series B Funding
3Jam , the text messaging service, has raised $4 million in a Series B round of funding . The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners, and return investors New Enterprise Associates and NetService Ventures also participated.

MediaWhiz Buys AuctionAds
Performance marketing company MediaWhiz has snatched up eBay affiliate marketing service AuctionAds , which launched back in March. The price was not disclosed. AuctionAds is an advertising widget that serves contextually relevant eBay auctions based on tags supplied by the publisher.

Wikia Acquires Grub from Looksmart
As part of their ongoing quest to create an open, people-powered search platform, Wikia has acquired Grub, a ditributed web crawling technology , from Looksmart, Wikia co-founder Jimmy Wales announced this morning during his keynote address at the at the O’Reilly Open Source Convention in Portland, Oregon.

Microsoft Acquires Advertising Exchange Platform AdECN
Microsoft announced today that it had agreed to acquire AdECN , an advertising exchange platform company based near Santa Barbara. AdECN offers a real-time, auction-based, neutral exchange for online display advertising that works in a similar way to stock exchanges. A member of the AdECN exchange buys on the exchange for its advertisers and sells on the exchange for its publishers.

Twitter Gets Their Venture Round
Twitter has raised a round of financing , led by Union Square Ventures. The size of the round has not been disclosed (yet), but additional investors include Charles River Ventures, Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, and Naval Ravikant. The service, which has around 300,000 users, has grown rapidly in recent months. Pownce, Kyte and others are competitors.

Family-friendly social networking start-up lands VC, will hire 4
CircleBuilder , a family-friendly church-oriented social networking site , has raised $800,000 from Great Lakes Angels and other venture capital organizations. CEO and co-founder Howard Brown currently runs the start-up from his Franklin home, having relocated to the area from Silicon Valley to be closer to family.

Business.com Sells for $350 Million
Business.com has closed another chapter in its long journey from a $7.5 million million domain name bought on a hope and a prayer, selling to RH Donnelley for $350 million ( WSJ reporting up to $360 million). RH Donnelley beat out Dow Jones and the New York Times during the bidding .

Going.com Lands $5 million
Event based social network Going.com has taken an additional $5 million in funding , in a round led by the sites original investors General Catalyst Partners and Highland Capital Partners.

Grockit Raises Cash, Prepares ‘Massive Multiplayer Online Learning’ Product.
When we last wrote about San Francisco based Grockit , in late 2006, they were unfunded. Their business idea of holding low-cost GMAT prep courses over Webex was just getting off the ground. Now they are funded - $2.7 million total ($2.3 million from Benchmark, $400k from angel investors Mark Pincus, Rob Lord, Reid Hoffman Thomas Ryan and others) in a Series A round was closed last month. And they are changing their model completely.

Respectance Gets $1.5 Million
Respectance , which is unique among social networks since it’s dedicated to remembering those who have died, has taken $1.5 million in a series A funding in a round led by Solid Ventures and Big Bang Ventures. The site also launches officially today, and says it has taken funding at a ‘pre-user’ stage.

GuildCafe Raises Funding for MMORPG Network
GuildCafe has raised an undisclosed amount of venture capital funding from IDG Ventures Boston. The service that enables groups to build websites for gamers to find friends and new game content launched late last year, and has done well to create a hub for people that are heavily involved with MMORPGs like World of Warecraft, Guild Wars and Lord of the Rings Online. Users can connect with each other through their gaming avatars and form groups (guilds) that can move between virtual worlds together.

AOL Gets Its Ad Network
We hear that AOL will announce the acquisition of New York-based Tacoda this morning, a behavior targeting advertising company that was founded in 2001. The deal size, which we haven’t had confirmed, is likely far smaller than Microsoft’s $6 billion for aQuantive , Yahoo’s $680 million for RightMedia , or Google’s $3.1 billion for DoubleClick . The price might be low enough that it isn’t being disclosed at all.

UGO Acquired By Hearst, Should Be Announced Today
We got a tip earlier this evening that Hearst acquired New-York based UGO and will announce the deal tomorrow. It sounds like Forbes got a tip as well, and a better one: they’re saying the price should be around $100 million . UGO is a popular new media site that was founded in 1997 and, according to Forbes, is generating around $30 million/year in revenue.

Nokia acquires Twango
Nokia and Twango today announced that Nokia has acquired substantially all assets of Twango ( http://www.twango.com/). Twango provides a comprehensive media sharing solution for organizing and sharing photos, videos and other personal media. By acquiring Twango, Nokia will be able to offer people an easy way to share multimedia content through their desktop and mobile devices.

HP Acquires Opsware For $1.6 billion
HP has acquired IT Automation company Opsware for $1.6 billion. Whilst any acquisition of this size is interesting in itself, the back story to Opsware is even more so; Opsware was originally LoudCloud, a Web 1.0 company that took $350 million in funding during the Web 1.0 boom.

Cfares Raises $4.5M & Offers New Comparison Tools
Cfares , the airfare search tool, has announced a round $4.5 million of venture capital and has appointed a few new members to its team. The round was led by Claremont Creek Ventures, with previous investor Garage Technology Ventures partnering as well.

Google Acquires Image America for Aerial Imaging Tech
Google’s acquisition spree continued today with the announcement that they’ve purchased Image America , a company that builds ‘high resolution cameras for the collection of aerial imagery ‘. The Clayton, MO-based company provided high resolution black and white imagery of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and supplied imagery to Google Maps and Google Earth.

hi5 Takes $20 Million Funding
San Francisco-based social network hi5 has taken $20 million in funding in a round led by Mohr Davidow Ventures. The site reports 30 million members and 200 million pageviews/day, making it one of the largest players. So why the lack of hype?

FaceBook’s First Acquisition: Parakey
Their first acquisition : Facebook has bought Parakey , the yet-to-launch ‘ web operating system ‘ created by Firefox co-founders Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. The price isn’t being disclosed, but Facebook should be issuing a press release this afternoon.

Loopt Calls Down $2.25M of a $12M Series B Round of Funding
Loopt , the service that lets you geo-locate friends with mobile phones, has called down $2.25 million of a $12 million Series B round of financing . This means that while Loopt has raised $12 million, its requested access to $2.25 of this larger amount, possibly to increase its working capital costs.

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for the first half of July

2007-07-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

$15 Million For Shopping Search TheFind
Mountain View based shopping search site TheFind has raised another $15 million in a third round of venture capital , bringing their total capital raised to $26 million. Bain Capital Ventures led the round.

Redfin Takes $12 Million Series C Financing Amid Realtor War
Seattle-based Redfin, a real estate website that allows users to bypass most of the fees associated with using real estate brokers, has closed a $12 million Series C round of financing . This is on top of the approximately $8 million they raised in their previous two rounds. The round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Previous investors Madrona Venture Group, Vulcan Capital, BEV Capital and The Hillman Company also participated

TVtrip’s Multimedia Hotel Directory Gets $4.8 Million
A month after launch, TVtrip has secured another round of financing from Benchmark’s European Branch, Balderton, and Partech, which will be announced tomorrow. Along with the financing they’ve also expanded their directory of hotel videos and added some more travel executives to their board.

Jupitermedia Corporation buys Mediabistro.com
Laurel Touby turned her popular cocktail parties into a high-traffic Web site for job-seeking media and creative professionals. Yesterday, she sold Mediabistro.com, the company that sprang from those mixers, for $23 million. The Jupitermedia Corporation, an Internet research company that also sells photos and art, agreed to pay $20 million in cash and an additional $3 million over two years for the company, which is based in New York City.

Google to Buy Web Security Company for $625M
Google on Monday acquired e-mail security company Postini for $625 million, a move intended to attract more large businesses to Google Apps. More than 1,000 small businesses and universities currently use Google Apps, but ‘there has been a significant amount of interest from large businesses,’ Dave Girouard, vice president and general manager of Google Enterprise, said in a Monday teleconference.

Jamendo Gets Cash for Creative Commons Music
Online music has been one of the most tumultuous categories online. Ever since Napster launched in the late 90’s, the music industry has been scrambling for a new model. DRM was once thought the industry’s saving grace, but consumer frustrations and movements from big players like Apple have reversed the trend. Some are even streaming it for free. They just closed their series A round of funding from Mangrove Capital Partners today for an undisclosed sum.

ValueClick Acquires Comparison Shopping Operator MeziMedia For Up To $352million
ValueClick has acquired MeziMedia for up to $352 million, in a deal consisting of $100million in upfront in cash, with an additional sum of up to $252 million to be paid depending on MeziMedia’s revenue and earnings performance through to 2009.

Answers.com has purchased Dictionary.com
Question and answer reference site Answers.com has acquired Dictionary.com’s parent company, Lexico Publishing, for $100 million in cash. Lexico can really serve all your lexical needs because it also owns Thesaurus.com and Reference.com. The deal is expected to close later this fall.

Connectbeam Lands $3.5million Series A
Social networking for the enterprise startup Connectbeam has closed a $3.5million Series A round lead by Gabriel Ventures and Startup Capital Ventures. Connectbeam social software for business provides a corporate focused product that includes support for social bookmarking , social networking, live profiles, project spaces and intranet search integration.

Healthline Get’s $21 Million and Some New Friends
Healthline has dipped it’s hand into a $21 million series B financing led by GE/NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund, a joint venture between GE Commercial Finance’s Media, Communications & Entertainment business and NBC Universal. This is on top of their $14 million round last January. The round also includes smaller investments from Aetna Ventures, LLC, Kaiser Permanente Ventures, U.S. News and World Report, and previous investors VantagePoint Venture Partners and Reed Elsevier Ventures.

Promising start-up search engines according to NYT

2007-06-25T10:05:00.000-07:00

NYT has just published a comprehensive article focused on a dozen of innovative and promising start up search engines that may loosen Google’s grip.

According New York Times the next Google could probably raise from the names listed below:

We think that only the time will tell us who will be the big winner at the end of the day, but whatever the case is any of the above search engines may get acquired soon or later for at least $100M, which, in our feeling, is the main goal of these start ups. NYT also mentions that just 1% share of today’s search market does worth around $1B, which somehow justifies the price tag set forth above. In our view with best chances for the crown are any of the above start-ups, yet hakia.com and NosyJoe.com sound most appealing to us.

Read more…

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for June 5 - 13

2007-06-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

Lijit to Close on $3.3M in Second Round of Funding
Lijit , the personal network search tool, reportedly has plans to close on a $3.3 million venture round this month. The company had already raised $900,000 in venture capital and angel funds earlier this year (covered here ), with investors including Colorado Fund, Brad Feld, Seth Goldstein and Paul Berberian. It also landed a partnership with Feedburner to provide search services for Feedburner’s network.

Kyte Gets Investment from Nokia
Kyte , the video-sharing and distribution site, has received investment from Nokia Growth Partners for an undisclosed amount. See our initial review of Kyte here . The deal hits at an upcoming mobile distribution strategy for the video content, which is designed to offer more control from the user and a way of broadcasting multimedia content across the web.

PodZinger, Now EveryZing, Raises $10M in Funding
PodZinger, the search engine for podcasts and videos, has been renamed EveryZing, and has raised $10 million in funding led by Fairhavent Capital, Accel and General Catalyst, bringing the company’s total funding amount to $15 million.

Rifftrax Acquires Cuts
About four months since launch , web video editor Cuts.com has been acquired by Rifftrax, a site featuring DVD commentary by Michael J. Nelson of MST3K . No word on the price. The online video editing space has become increasingly competitive. Click.tv recently joined the deadpool , with plans to reorganize.

Openads Opensource project Raises $5 million
Openads , the developer of a popular seven year old opensource ad server , have spun out of London based ad network Unanimis and raised $5 million in capital to fund their business. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. Index Ventures’ Saul Klein joined the company’s board of directors. Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital also mentioned their investment it on his personal blog.

Team and Concepts Raises $1.25million Series A
Team and Concepts Limited , the Hong Kong based company behind online spreadsheet service EditGrid , has announced a $1.25 million Series A investment from the WI Harper Group . WI Harper’s previous investments include Laszlo Systems and Maxthon.

Me.dium Lands $15M in Funding
Me.dium , the social browser add-on, has raised $15 million in a second round of funding , bringing its funding to total $20 million, and coming from Commonwealth Capital Ventures, Spark Capital, Appian Ventures, Brad Feld and Elon Musk. Read here for our initial review.

ESPN acquires Cricinfo website
Leading cricket website Cricinfo has been acquired by ESPN as part of the US broadcaster’s push to grow its global presence in online sports reporting. The site, much loved by statistics-obsessed cricket fans across the world, has been bought from The Wisden Group, publishers of the sport’s ‘bible’ the annual Wisden Cricketers Almanac, for an undisclosed fee.

PayPerPost Raises $7 million More
Controversial pay-per-post startup PayPerPost has raised $7 million in a second round of financing , bringing their total raised capital to just over $10 million. Like their previous round from last October the financing was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, with participation from Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures. New investor DFJ Gotham, a fund affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also participated.

PermissionTV Gets $9M in Third Round of Funding
PermissionTV , an online video platform for creating branded Internet television channels, has closed on its third round of funding for $9 million. The round was led by Castile Ventures and Point Judith Capital. Existing investors include Common Angels, CramerOnline, inflection Point Investors, the Massachusetts Technology Development Corp., SAS Investors and the Venture Capital Fund of New England, bringing the total amount raised for PermissionTV to $18 million.

CBS Invests in TicketReserve, Plans to Integrate On and Offline
CBS has announced its investment in TicketReserve , the online marketplace offering consumers the option to purchase advanced tickets to events at face value. TicketReserve lets you buy tickets for a specific team, artist or event, guaranteeing them the ability to get tickets at face-value, with a FanForward reservation.

ThisNext Raises Round of Venture Debt
ThisNext , the shopping and discovery website, has raised a round of venture debt for an undisclosed amount. The round was backed by Western Technology, Inc. See our initial review of ThisNext here . This round of funding will go directly towards an extension prior to the company’s Series B funding in the fall, giving ThisNext a better position to boost valuation in preparation of raising additional funds.

MeetMoi Gets $1.5M in Funding
MeetMoi , the mobile dating site , has raised $1.5 million in funding in its first round of financing .The funding was provided by Acadia Woods Partners. MeetMoi is a service that operates in a similar manner to Dodgeball or Rabble , where you can find someone in your local proximity to meet up with you right now. But with MeetMoi, you can find a date, not just an existing friend.

Amazon May Be Looking To Acquire Netflix
Netflix stock jumped up 5.66% today on rumors that the company may be in acquisition talks with by Amazon. The funny thing about public company rumors: when they affect stock prices, it becomes AP-reported news…

FameCast Raises $4.5M in Funding
FameCast , the online talent show , has raised $4.5 million in funding from Austin Ventures. FameCast hands out $10,000 in cash prizes to the winner of each of its twelve ’stage’ contests, spanning art genres such as spoken word, animation, and stand-up comedy, along with the expected music categories for Pop, Country , R&B, etc. Contestants submit videos of their work to their respected ’stage’. Users vote for who they like best, and the contests last for an entire ’season’. FameCast’s recent funding will go towards expanding its marketing efforts in the U.S. and around the world.

PeakStream Trail Leads To Google
Google’s acquisitions are usually pretty smooth deals; at most, a ‘welcome, Google!’ statement shows up on the lucky company’s homepage. Now, a report indicates that PeakStream has been bought by Google, yet the company no longer even has a front page - the whole site is gone.

Scribd Banks $3.5 Million from Redpoint
Scribd , dubbed the ‘YouTube for Documents’, was the dark horse of their Y Combinator class, but the social document sharing site now gives its critics pause to think. Since launching, traffic to the site scaled quickly to 75-100,000 uniques per day with a little help from popular link aggregation sites like Digg. This past month they logged 1.73 million unique visitors. Today Kinsey Hills is back, investing another $210,000 alongside $3.5 million from Redpoint, with Geoffrey Yang joining the company’s board.

VCs re-up SocialText
SocialText, a startup that makes collaborative wiki platforms for enterprises, has raised $3 million toward a $6.5 million Series C venture financing , according to a regulatory filing. The company is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP and the Omidiyar Network, from which it has already raised $3 million in its Series B. Other backers include tech executives Mark Pincus, CEO of Tribe.net which sold the majority of its assets to Cisco earlier this year, Reid Hoffman, the Chairman of LinkedIn.

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for May 17 - 23

2007-05-22T11:19:00.000-07:00

Clupedia gets $1.3 million
Santa Ana, CA, based startup Clupedia announced that it has raised $1.3 million in funding from Tech Coast Angels, a group of 270 investors in Orange County. Clupedia’s founder David Saad claims that he has put down $2.3 million of his own money into startup. David Saad is a serial entrepreneur who had previously founded Braintec that was sold to Technisource. To add weight to the startup’s story, Johannes Larcher sits on Clupedia’s board. James had served as VP of Friendster and prior to that he was the chief of staff at Overture, which Yahoo bought in 2003 for nearly $2 billion.

Confirmed: CBS Acquires Wallstrip
Wallstrip founder Howard Lindzon confirmed the deal on his blog on Monday - presenter Lindsay Campbell and producers Adam Elend and Jeff Marks will become full-time employees of CBS, says Gigaom . The show had raised $600,000 from angels and friends, including Fred Wilson and Brad Feld. It’s a great exit for Wallstrip, and may give hope to other videoblogs that want to make the leap.

Second Life Acquires Winward Mark for More Realistic Game Play
Linden Lab, parent company of Second Life , announced today its acquisition of graphics technology from Windward Mark Interactive, for an undisclosed amount. From the deal, Linden Lab will acquire WindLight, an atmospheric-rendering technology , Nimble, a 3D cloud simulator , and associated intellectual property and interests.

The Travel Channel Acquires Travel Blog for Editorial Content
The online component for the Travel Channel announces today that it has acquired World Hum , an online travel magazine blog, for an undisclosed amount. As part of the deal, Travel Channel visitors will be able to access exclusive content from World Hum’s editors and contributors. Internet giant Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., a pioneer in online services for businesses, are discussing an alliance that could help them compete more effectively with Microsoft Corp., according to people familiar with the matter.

Yahoo’s Rumored $1 billion Talks With Bebo
Rumors about social networking site Bebo being for sale come up every few months. First it was British Telecom for $550 million in July 2006 (we started that one), then the Financial Times reported they were in talks with Viacom a month later.

Naturally Curly Raises $600,000 in Funding
Naturally Curly , the online community for people with curly hair founded in 1998, has raised $600,000 in a round of funding led by James Treybig, founder of Tandem Computers, a computer manufacturer which was bought by Compaq in 1997.

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for May 17 - 18

2007-05-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Rumour: Google to buy Feedburner
I have just heard from a VERY trusted source that Google is buying Feedburner in order to get into the rapidly evolving RSS Ad market. The delay in announcing the acquisition deal, I am told is solely due to the delay in closing out the DoubleClick deal. If true this deal makes a lot of sense for both parties. Today many of us predominately read blogs via our RSS readers and thus never actually visit the original blog source and/or see the sites supporting adverts.

Microsoft to buy Web ad firm aQuantive for $6 bln
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Friday it would acquire aQuantive Inc. for about $6 billion, or $66.50 a share, an 85 percent premium to the online advertising company’s closing price on Thursday. Shares of aQuantive shot to $63.95 in pre-opening trade, following news of the deal. The all-cash deal tops a dramatic one-month consolidation spree across the online advertising market sparked when Google Inc. agreed to buy DoubleClick for $3.1 billion.

Calacanis, who is starting a new company called Kokua (scroll down) , has gotten funding from Sequoia
The Insider has learned that Jason Calcanis’ stealth start-up backed by Sequoia Capital has closed on a round of funding from Sequoia, News Corporation and CBS. The undisclosed funding is interesting. Two strategic investors and the hottest Silly-con valley VC.

Fabrik raises $24.9M more for file storage and sharing
Fabrik , a company that offer online storage and easy sharing of big files, has just closed a $24.9 million funding deal and added Ross Levinsohn, former President of Fox Interactive Media, to the board. Its financing came primarily from 3i , with a small chunk from ComVentures.

Club Penguin In Acquisition Talks With Sony For $500+ million
It’s been rumored for a while that Montgomery & Co. is representing virtual world Club Penguin in a sale transaction. It looks like the company is locked in talks, possibly exclusive, with Sony, and the price is ‘at least half a billion’ says a source close to the deal. AOL Acquires ADTECH AG
AOL announced today that it has acquired a controlling interest in ADTECH AG, a leading international online ad-serving company based in Frankfurt, Germany. The acquisition provides AOL with an advanced ad-serving platform that includes an array of ad management and delivery applications enabling website publishers to manage, traffic and report on their online advertising campaigns.

mTracks Gets Funded, Launches Beta Site
mTraks, the online music community and digital music marketplace, announces its public beta launch and the $550,000 it has raised in angel funding represented by Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich and Rosati.

Veotag Gets $750K in Angel Funding
Veotag, the video tagging service, has raised $750,000 from professional angel investors . See our initial review of Veotag here . Veotag’s deep tagging service lets you create an interactive table of contents for your video clips, perfect for finding the exact portion of the video you’re looking for.

WPP Acquires 24/7 Real Media for $649mOnline advertising services firm 24/7 Real Media is to be acquired by the WPP group for $649 million. The old time internet advertising firm had its origins serving ads for Yahoo! and Netscape in 1994 and was formerly founded the following year as Real Media. After numerous acquisitions it took its current name and grew to have 20 offices in 12 countries, serving over 200 billion advertising impressions every month.

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for May 16

2007-05-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

MySpace To Acquire Flektor
MySpace will acquire Flektor , a just-launched service that allows users to create widgets from photos, video and text, according to two sources with knowledge of the deal. This comes right after the news of MySpace’s pending acquisition of Photobucket last week for $250-$300 million. This will be a much smaller deal, in the $10-$20 million range, possibly with an earnout.

Stockalicious raises $50k in funding
5 months old Singapore based startup Stockalicious is claiming that it has raised $50K in funding from angel investors . The startup enables users to keep track stocks, create portfolio, compare their portfolio performance against the market, and provides a embed code for portfolio to bring it up blogs and websites. Stockalicious currently supports Nasdaq , NYSE , AMEX and OTCBB .

Deals within the Web 2.0 sector from May 15

2007-05-15T12:15:00.000-07:00

Kyte Gets More Funding from Swiss Telecom Provider
Kyte , the online video-sharing and broadcasting website, has just announced new investors, telecommunications provider Swisscom and Holtzbrinck Ventures, which have invested in Kyte for an undisclosed amount. Swisscom and Holtzbrink Ventures is the venture capital arm of one of Germany’s most influential media companies.

IMified Acquires Real-Time Feed Alerts Leader Feedcrier.com
We’re very happy to finally announce the acquisition of Feedcrier.com , the leading provider of IM based feed alerts . This one has been in the making for some time now, and we officially welcome Adam Kalsey and the Feedcrier community to IMified.

Cork’d Acquired by Wine Library Vlogger
Cork’d , the social networking site for wine lovers, is being acquired by a team led by Gary Vaynerchuck of Wine Library , and includes Erik Kastner of Rails, for an undisclosed amount. Cork’d has a reported 20,000 members, and provides a space for you to rate and review wines you’ve tasted. You can make a wine wish list of sorts, and track those you’d like to try as well as purchase.

Swedish Game Site Power Challenge Raises $8 Million From Benchmark Capital
Benchmark Capital put $8 million to work with Swedish game site Power Challenge , the company will announce today. Power Challenge is a rich Internet application - a game that runs in java and plays very much like a video game . Users build and customize their teams and play against others for points and status. The quality of game play is high and is designed to push the boundaries between traditional PC gaming and online gaming.

Amazon Acquires dpreview.com
Amazon have announced the acquisition of the digital camera information and review site dpreview.com . UK based dpreview.com was founded in 1998 by Phil Askey as a site that publishes ‘unbiased reviews and original content regarding the latest in digital cameras , and offers a host of features and forums designed to make it easy for consumers to find the camera that’s right for them’.

Deals within the web 2.0 sector for May 9 - 14

2007-05-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

CBS Acquires WallStrip for $5 million
Jossip is reporting that corporate focused video blog WallStrip has been acquired by CBS News for $5 million. The report states that an announcement is expected early this week and involves WallStrip host Lindsay Campbell being the next Amanda Congdon for CBS, fronting online shows. I spoke to some one close to the deal who confirmed Jossip’s story. He told me that New York based Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson , who had previously invested $500,000 in WallStrip, negotiated and sealed the deal. The deal is said to be focused on signing Lindsay Campbell. CBS was keen to have Campbell on board and a cast iron contract meant that acquiring WallStrip was the only way they could get to her.

Mogulus Gets $1.2M in Angel Funding
Mogulus , the online video company aiming to make you all the next Justin.tv rock star, has raised $1.2 in angel funding , including $1 million from a New York-based Swiss private investor. The video broadcasting site is currently in private beta, and their differentiating factor is their ability to mix videos in real time for the creation of your own live broadcast.

JAJAH Lands $20 million Series C Funding From Intel
VOIP provider JAJAH closes Series C funding of $20 million today, with the lead investment coming from Intel Capital , the venture capital arm of Intel. Previous TechCrunch coverage here . As part of the deal Intel will provide JAJAH access to their community of product dealers, OEM customers and developers, as well as access to Intel’s range of VOIP patents.

videoNEXT Secures $5.4M in Series B Financing
CHANTILLY, Va., May 8 /PRNewswire/ — videoNEXT Network Solutions, Inc., a developer of innovative security management solutions , today announced that it has closed $5.4 million in series B financing and has appointed Joseph Costa as its president and chief executive officer. Christopher Gettings will continue in the role of chairman and assume responsibilities for business development for federal customers and strategic partners.

Encyclopedia of Life: Better Than Wikipedia? Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million
Formally announced during the week with funding of $12.5 million, Encyclopedia of Life aims to be an online reference source and database for every one of the 1.8 million species that are named and known on earth. Encyclopedia of Life is a collaborative effort. Tens of thousands of citizen scientists with expertise around the world are responsible for the creation of content.

Source

Minglebox Gets $7M from Sequoia

2007-05-03T05:46:00.000-07:00

Minglebox, the India-based social network for college campuses, raised $7 million in funding, backed by Sequoia Capital India. Minglebox started with a concept similar to facebook (though less elitist), and Ning, creating customized networks for people on college campuses. The goal is for each network to be a close knit community, working like a college intranet. As with many other social networking sites, you can share videos, music, blogs, photos and events with friends and the group at large.

Axis Open Source and Kaboodle Team Up

2007-04-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona, March 8, 2007 – Axis Open Source, a leading developer of Linux, PHP and MySql solutions and Kaboodle Ventures LLC a Web Technologies holding company announced today a partnership to develop, market and distribute a new series of Web 3.0 consumer driven media applications in the B2C, B2B and C2C market space.

“As what’s been deemed Web 2.0 applications like social networking, video, audio, podcasting, user-generated content, blogs and what have you continue to rapidly gain mass acceptance we’re excited about partnering with Axis Open Source to develop the next generation of web based applications…ones that actually generate revenue and create ease of use for both businesses and consumers,” stated Christopher Conlan, CEO of Kaboodle Ventures.

“The Axis OS and Kaboodle Ventures partnership enables our companies to leverage our strengths on the programming and development side with Kaboodle Ventures experience and team on the content development, media and marketing side to really exploit the ever growing business and consumer demand for user-friendly, search engine enabled cross-media destinations that fill broad and niche market requirements,” commented Dr. John Horn, CEO of Axis Open Source.

Read More

Google Spends 3.1B Cash for DoubleClick

2007-04-14T02:51:00.000-07:00

NYT: Google Buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion
Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.

Yahoo Biz: Google to Acquire DoubleClick
Combination Will Significantly Expand Opportunities for Advertisers, Agencies and Publishers and Improve Users’ Online Experience. MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG - News) announced today a definitive agreement to acquire DoubleClick Inc., a global leader in digital marketing technology and services, for $3.1 billion in cash from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity and management. The acquisition will combine DoubleClick’s expertise in ad management technology for media buyers and sellers with Google’s leading advertising platform and publisher monetization services.

GoogleBlog: The next step in Google advertising
At Google, we are constantly looking for new, innovative ways to make the information you want more accessible and more relevant—and to deliver it as fast as possible. Since Google’s inception, it has always been our intention to present users with highly targeted, useful advertisements when appropriate—ads that unobtrusively complement users experience. We have always believed in, and tirelessly pursued, the idea that serving relevant, unintrusive ads would best serve our advertisers in the long term.

Twitter's Buzz

2007-04-12T11:31:00.000-07:00

If you ever fancied yourself a blogger but didn't have the time or energy to post thoughtful or silly missives at regular intervals, a new service called Twitter could set your inner blogger free. While some people call it microblogging or moblogging, I like to think of Twitter simply as blogging for regular people.

Maybe you're really busy. Maybe you don't have much to say. Or maybe you're just lazy. Not a problem. This free service works by letting you broadcast a group text message to your friends' mobile phones from either your own phone, an instant message or an online form at twitter.com. All your notes are then stored and displayed on your personal profile page on the site, which includes links to your friends' Twitter pages, a thumbnail picture of your choice, and a short bio. You can even send text updates directly to your MySpace page. Just remember to keep it short: posts are limited to 140 characters, and the topic is, invariably, "what are you doing?"

Read more...

DoubleClick to kill Right Media

2007-04-05T07:07:00.000-07:00

The New York Times reported this morning that DoubleClick plans to launch an exchange for online advertisements. The system is described as follows:

"DoubleClick, based in New York, views the exchange as the centerpiece of a growth plan and may derive the majority of revenue from the new service within five years, said David Rosenblatt, the company’s chief executive, said in an interview yesterday. “We already have the largest sellers and the largest buyers,” he said. “This will link them for the first time.”

He described the exchange as a mix of eBay and Sabre, the airline reservations system that travel agents use. The service will let advertisers see information about what competitors bid for particular ads, in the same way that eBay shows visitors past bids. And it will let publishers try to ensure that they sell their ad spots at the highest possible price, the way that airlines try to do with the seats they sell."

The most important player in the advertising exchange space is known to be the New York based Right Media. In October of 2006, they closed a $45 million round that was lead by Yahoo. Especially interesting in the context of today's announcement was the following quote:

"Right Media helps match display advertisers with Web-site publishers, and it hopes to do for display ads what Google has done for search ads. It's an idea Walrath [Right Media's CEO] began exploring while working as director of direct marketing and senior vice-president of strategy and development at DoubleClick, the maker of online-advertising and media-management tools."

So the question here is how DoubleClick's plans relate to and affect the RightMedia's core business?

Only the time will tell...

Synapse Life Sold for $60K

2007-04-02T08:21:00.000-07:00

Synapse Life got acquired for $60,000 on ebay, yet another web 2.0 company sold on auction, the most famous sale on ebay was kiko.com.

The latest eBayquisition: SynapseLife, a suite of web-based applications that are available on your mobile phone, sold for $60K on eBay in the last few hours. The founders are now switching their focus to Down2Night, a much sexier social app that will soon have integration with MySpace.

SynapseLife was well-made, but a little dull - we’re looking forward to what they’ll serve up now they’re thinking about the social space.

Source

Zopria was deleted from Wikipedia

2007-03-26T04:41:00.000-07:00

Zopria was deleted from Wikipedia’s entry list sparking protest from Zorpia members. Press Release Body = Wikipedia have removed the entry ‘Zorpia’ from their site recently, sparking protest reactions from thousands of Zorpia.com members. Zorpia.com, a Social Networking Site with 5 million global members, had been included in the famous online encyclopedia for approximately one year, but has recently been removed.

Wikipedia editors stated ‘lack of notability’ and a ‘lack of reliable sources of notability’, as the main reasons for removal. “Whilst we ultimately respect Wikipedia’s decision, and support their quest for quality content, we do feel that our company’s ongoing growth deserves a mention in the history of the SNS phenomena” said Jeffrey Ng, CEO and founder of Zorpia Co. Ltd “It is also confusing to us that so many other less notable sites, manage to retain their place in Wikipedia content”. Wikipedia guidelines however, do not allow for the existence of one entry, to support the existence of another. In a show of support, members of Zorpia have attempted to make themselves more visible to the rest of the web by creating pictures of themselves with Zorpia slogans, and posting videos on sites such as YouTube.

EPR Network Blog

EPR Network PR

YouTube lawsuit may help rivals

2007-03-20T11:51:00.000-07:00

Viacom's billion-dollar legal gambit against Google could lead to more media industry lawsuits and give a boost to rival online video services in the emerging marketplace.

Media executives and analysts are awaiting the outcome of the lawsuit against Google and its video-sharing site YouTube, which Viacom said is intended to defend the notion of intellectual property and the concept of the Internet media marketplace.

Viacom, owner of MTV Networks and Comedy Central, demanded in February that YouTube pull more than 100,000 video clips uploaded by users on to the online video-sharing service. Google and Viacom had tried and failed to negotiate a deal to allow some of Viacom's content on to YouTube and split the advertising revenues.

More...

Viacom vs. YouTube

2007-03-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Reuters
Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said on Tuesday it filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google Inc. and its Internet video sharing site YouTube over unauthorized use of its copyrighted entertainment.The suit accuses Web search leader Google and YouTube of "massive intentional copyright infringement" of Viacom's entertainment assets and seeks an injunction against further violations.Viacom contends that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming have been uploaded onto YouTube's site and viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Techcrunch
They said that Google’s acquisition of YouTube would be the act that saved it from the fate of Napster - lawsuit oblivion.And they may have been wrong, if today’s $1 billion lawsuit is a sign of things to come. Viacom, the plaintiff, has been on a warpath against YouTube lately. Unlike Fox’s behind the scenes chats with the Wall Street Journal to get the message across that they were displeased with the Google/YouTube, Viacom has chosen the frontal assault: Massive takedown notices and now the simple request for $1 billion in damages.

Top Free Press Release Sites

2007-03-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

We have always been thinking that aside the well known web 2.0 influencers, web 2.0 start ups can also use free press release sites to get the word out for their innovations and technologies…
Here we list some of the top and free press release distribution sites that are known to bring some good results on making your web site more visible on web.

Our top selection:

-- PRWeb (http://www.prweb.com/) -Perhaps the oldest one
-- EPR Network (http://www.express-press-release.com) -A Network of 14 PR sites across the states (on our tests it ranked higher on the search engines, mostly Google)
-- PRLeap (http://www.prleap.com/) -Very clean and neat PR site

Aside the above sites, the top ones according us, below you will find more press release sites you can use to get the word out for your web 2.0 site.

http://marketwire.com
http://businesswire.com
http://www.1888pressrelease.com/
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com
http://www.addpr.com/
http://www.california-press-release.com
http://www.click2newsites.com/
http://www.clickpress.com/
http://www.e-xl.com
http://www.ereleases.com
http://www.florida-press-release.com
http://www.free-news-release.com/
http://www.free-press-release.com
http://www.freepressreleases.co.uk/
http://www.georgia-press-release.com
http://www.i-newswire.com/
http://www.illinois-press-release.com
http://www.maryland-press-release.com
http://www.massachusetts-press-release.com
http://www.media-press-release.com/
http://www.newyork-press-release.com
http://www.ohio-press-release.com
http://www.pr.com/
http://www.pr9.net/
http://www.prbot.com
http://www.press-base.com/
http://www.press-service.net/
http://www.press-world.com/add
http://www.pressbox.co.uk/
http://www.prfree.com/
http://www.PRnewswire.com
http://www.texas-press-release.com
http://www.theopenpress.com/
http://www.virginia-press-release.com

Become a partner in a huge web 2.0 site

2007-03-09T08:12:00.000-08:00

The huge contextual platform LinkedWords, we are covering and using since its launch back in July 2006, went out this Saturday (March the 10th) with an ad in the The Economist looking for investors!

Below is an extraction from the page as found over here: http://linkedwords.com/admin/investors.html

LinkedWords.com™ is a unique and innovative concept built upon massive web 2.0 contextual platform. With 38 Million English words, phrases and whole sentences built-in, which web sites use to get contextually linked with, it aims to maximize the contextual linking on web.

Currently the platform is rapidly growing** and reshaping the way web sites do links on web by shifting the focus from off-text links (links outside the content / simple links) to in-text links (links in the context / contextual links). By linking strategic words in the text, web sites connect in a contextual way to LinkedWords.com's platform and to other sites with the same content, which results in dramatically increased web visibility and precisely targeted visitors for the sites involved. Our ambitious vision for the future is to start helping the common web users find information in the context of the subject they are reading by clicking on the same contextually... linked words.

We launched in July 2006 and since then the site had tremendous growth and the last month (February '07) it ended up with:

More than 38 Million static pages;
More than 5 Million+ page views;
1 Million+ visits;
200,000+ unique visitors;
226,000+ back links according to Yahoo!;
30,000+ contextual links (in-text linked words);
6/10 Google PageRank™;
300,000+ indexed pages;
Alexa Ranking in the range of 8,000/16,000, the highest so far was 4,888;
Quantcast measured traffic ~270,000 uniques/month.

The company has its own well-established back-end IT firm based in the European Union
Interested?

We are looking for one or two more private investors*** or partners*** to accelerate our growth further.

Email them at: info@linkedwords.com

*38,000,000 and counting web pages

**More than 5 Million+ page views (February '07)

***Only serious investors will be considered and replied further

Geni raised a $10 million

2007-03-06T07:46:00.000-08:00

Seven week old Geni raised a $10 million second round of financing last week, led by Charles River Ventures with a post-money valuation of $100 million. George Zachary from CRV is joining the Geni board of directors.
This is a 10x increase in valuation for Geni. The company’s first round of financing, led by Founders Fund, was $1.5 million, at a $10 million post-money valuation.

Geni is a unique approach to solving the problem of genealogy, which is the question of how everyone is related. Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. When you add a relative's email address, he or she will be invited to join your tree. That relative can then add other relatives, and so on. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives. more...

Colin Dowling has commented on:

This information is easy to monetize, even without repeat users. Need to send out wedding invitations or birth announcements? Pull the addresses from Genie. Putting together a family reunion? Pull the family info from Genie. Want to send an e-birthday card to your mom’s 2nd cousins daughter but don’t want to have to remember? Set Genie to do it for you.

Now, imagine if Genie had affiliates printing the wedding invites or birth announcements and mailing them out for you? Affiliates for making T-shirts for the family reunion. Affiliates for buying Christmas gifts and having them sent automatically…on and on and on.

Data about relationships between people is perhaps the most valuable kind of data there is simply because “relationships” lead to transactions, which can cost money. Genie is compiling a network of the most valuable of those relationships: family.

With that kind of early growth, they are going to really have to screw up not to be a nice, viable, profitable site. On the other hand, if they just cover it with Google Ads (LAZY), I’ll be the first to pile on.

On the other hand many other people and experts pointed out that there are other competitors in the field such as myfamily.com, ancestry.com, or CMGI and geni is not different from them aside the fact it uses flash, which makes it not better.

WorldFriends Networks Gets Funded

2007-03-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

Shanghai-based Meta4 Group Ltd., which operates WorldFriends Networks, the world’s leading provider of private label multi-lingual online personals announced US$2.5 million in venture capital funding from industry veterans including the co-founders of leading Internet dating service Lavalife.com.

WorldFriends Networks will use this capital infusion to greatly accelerate its rate of growth in parallel with the rapidly expanding Internet socializing and advertising markets, particularly in North Asia. WorldFriends Networks currently serves over 200 website partners and 1,000,000 registered members.

More...