StartupSquad - Zing

comScore now for better blogosphere tracking

Vivek — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:19:59 +0000

Web traffic analytics provider comScore has started working on offering better insights into blogosphere with the launch of it’s Blog Measurement Application. Since comScore was already tracking web stats, we don’t really understand how this new service differs. Maybe comScore is looking for blogosphere love to get talked about more where newer companies have taken the lead - like Quantcast

StyleFeeder gets 1 million bucks

Vivek — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:12:14 +0000

More recommendation apps are store for online shoppers. StyleFeeder is another startup offering recommendation technology to make choices easier. The startup today announced that it has raised $1 million in funding from Highland Capital Partners and Schooner Capital. Earlier….

And we are already liking ClayValet

Vivek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:27:16 +0000

ClayValet, the startup under works that we had written about earlier, sounds like a great idea - Help shoppers buy. Okay no automated bots helping you out. Instead humans looking at your requests and sending you a response in 24 hours. You get to ask 5 questions in 1 week. Sounds like Amazon Mechanical Turk, but can be something that we might end up using for real this time around. More coverage on the startup soon.

Mobio delivers V2.0 of Mobile Widgets

Vivek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:12:46 +0000

Mobio Networks(review), one of our favorite mobile startups today launched 2.0 release of their mobile app portal. After I talked with Mobio’s CEO Ramneek Bhasin earlier today, I realized there are bunch of improvements and things to talk about with this release . Will be writing about them on the main blog later today.

Vivisimo to make Enterprise Search Social

Vivek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:01:03 +0000

Since there is only so much you can do when competing with Google, companies in search space have learnt to throw in the social pitch every now and then. Latest is enterprise search software developer Vivisimo. The company today announced social search for the enterprise with the introduction of the Vivisimo Velocity 6.0. Users will get to vote, rate, tag, save, share, annotate ……(more promises) content within the search interface. Okay, launch is still 45 days away

Intel also Diggs

Vivek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:54:01 +0000

As if we didn’t have enough Digg clones out there, Intel has contributed another one - CoolSW. The app will basically enable users to rate/rank/discuss new up-and-coming applications or companies. Funny thing is that title of one of the apps listed is - Create a digg clone.

Podaddies: More video advertising funding

Vivek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:47:27 +0000

Just as any other day we have advertising funding news to share. San Francisco based online video advertising company Podaddies today announced that it has raised angel funding of just over $1 million from The Band of Angels and The Angels Forum, and some individual investors. The startup will be enabling advertisers to reach long tail of content consumes via delivering targeted ads that will play, get tracked and be payed for whenever and wherever the media is consumed. Tracking can take place even after video is downloaded, shared and distributed.

Another competitor for Jangl/Jaxtr: Ring-To Number

Vivek — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:35:45 +0000

Although we are not sure how hot Jangl and Jaxtr are with users, the idea does seems to fascinate increasing number of entrepreneurs. Newest to join in is WebPoint Communications. The startup has announced it’s new widget based service Ring-To Number that enables users to receive calls from anyone without ever disclosing their phone number. Ring-To Number widget will be launched as a free service that utilizes a shortcode.

Online Ads to grow 30%. Ready grab the bucks?

Vivek — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:04:07 +0000

These are not really the days for negative ad growth predictions, right? So to keep up with the trend, ZenithOptimedia is predicting that online video and local search will drive a 30% growth in worldwide Internet ad spending to $33.72 billion this year. According to the media agency reported - ”We now forecast 29.9% growth this year (up from 28.6% three months ago) and 85% growth between 2006 and 2009 (up from 82%). Online video and local search are the new, fast-growing segments, but display, classified and the rest of search are still growing rapidly as well. ”

Punchbowl raises angel round

Vivek — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:56:19 +0000

Even planning startup Punchbowl has now tasted venture money. The startup today announced the closing of a seed round of funding led by Intel Capital with participation from eCoast Angels. Additional angel investors from Silicon Valley and Boston also participated it the funding. The startup disclose the amount of funds raised. Launched early this year, their product is located MyPunchbowl.com that supposedly has a user-friendly interface as compared to crummy Evite.

Management Add @ Metacafe

Vivek — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 22:49:45 +0000

Video sharing site Metacafe has a management addon. The startup today announced that David Rice has joined the company as Vice President of Product. Rice most recently served as a vice president of products for Yahoo! International and before that he worked with MSN, AvantGo, and Boston Consulting Group. Metacafe claims to be the largest independent online video site(so does DailyMotion) with 27 million unique monthly viewers . {related}

Yahoo does mobile deal with Telefonica

Vivek — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:35:06 +0000

Big day for Yahoo mobile. Today the company announced partnership with Spanish telecom operator Telefonica that will deliver oneSearch, Yahoo Mail, and Flickr on additional 100M handsets. Get comments here.

iWon.com relaunch - Betting on social networking

PK — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:14:44 +0000

After Disney redesigned it’s website and successfully saw an increase in traffic, other sites are following suit. iWon.com, which provides social networking features like building personal profiles, chat, and widgets today relaunched the site with new games(aka casual gaming 2.0), prizes, and more. For a brief history - since 1999, IWON.com has given away over $70 million in cash and prizes to its users, hosting an annual $1 million giveaway.

CBS made a smart move creates “EyeLab”

PK — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 00:10:30 +0000

Ah! CBS finally understands in practical why YouTube is so successful. The media company has launched EyeLab that would create and distribute short clips from the popular shows. Seems like a good move and might get popular as this is what web users have - short attention span. {via}

IBM Labor Union Strike on SecondLife

PK — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:16:10 +0000

Things like labor unrest usually doesn’t happen in US, but in other parts of the world , it is very much a part of life. Now, all this happening in 3D is something new we have come across. According to news reports, IBM labor union upset over a paycut impacting Italian workers. Company refuses comment, strike leaders claim success, 1850 total attendance (including bananas and geometric dissenters). {via}

Classmates Media shows $570,000 operating profit

PK — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 23:00:29 +0000

Classmates media, company operates one of the popular site Classmates.com shows $570,000 operating profit vs $212,000 operating loss in the year-ago period and the $442,000 loss in the prior quarter. Its good comback for the company looking to go for an IPO and industry analysts watching it closely and if the IPO goes successfully then lot of social networking sites will follow. via

Steroids on MySpace

PK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:16:52 +0000

Officials arrested 120 people on Monday and charged 5 men for selling Steriods on the MySpace. All this happening in New Haven, CT, Tempe, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. More details at IHT

efans.com- Social network for sports lovers

PK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:07:25 +0000

As if we didn’t have enough, or we couldn’t create enough via Ning or KickApps, Efans.com has launched social networking site for sports lovers where they can network with sports fans, athelets and teams. Others in this space -Takkle(review), SportsVite(review), ArmchairGM.

linkedln users can now connect using Photos

PK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 22:02:26 +0000

Linkedin users can now associate the photo to their profile and also provided the feature to hide your photo incase if you do not want to show your picture to your connections. Eitherway, not sure what it took them so long.

Jaxtr growing faster than Skype

PK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:53:13 +0000

Jaxtr increased userbase to 100000 in just in a month . Jaxtr dosen’t require a download as opposed to Skype and can hook up your phone to the web and also can embed Jaxtr widget on social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook. Still, we would like to get comparison between Jangl and Jaxtr userbases. Press Release

Wi-Fi memory card is coming; Thanks Eye-Fi :)

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:46:22 +0000

Taking a small dip on the hardware side of things, Atheros Communications has announced that its single-chip AR6001GL ROCm(TM) (Radio-on-a-Chip) mobile WLAN solution was chosen to provide 802.11g connectivity in the world’s first wireless memory card for digital cameras designed by Eye-Fi. The Eye-Fi Card is expected to debut this fall — in time for the holiday season. The wireless memory card for digital cameras will capitalize on Wi-Fi, making it effortless for users to upload, save, share and print photos, thereby removing virtually all obstacles to instant photo sharing. Now I really need that it’s been months I moved photos and videos from my camera over to my PC to eventually print them out some day.

YouTubeVibes Sold

PK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:44:23 +0000

Nt Media acquired YouTubeVibes, where users can upload media and share with users. Press Release

ApnaCircle - Sabeer Bhatia’s SN venture

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:42:26 +0000

I guess more and more entrepreneurs are getting motivated by the $10 billion valuation that Facebook is getting. Newest to join the mad-mad race is Sabeer Bhatia, who made a fortune in 90s by selling Hotmail to Microsoft. Sabeer has teamed up with Yogesh Bansal to launch social networking site ApnaCircle(aka MyCircle) targeted at Indian users. I think it was about time India got an experienced pro to work on that, as compared to jackass teams spamming their users.

Social networking catching up in India

PK — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:35:05 +0000

According to NASSCOM by 2010 there will be 100 million Internet users compared to 40 million now. As the internet users increase the social networking going up. In a span of a month BigAdda.com has now half million users

Odnoklassniki.ru gets $1M: SN investment in Baltics

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:34:09 +0000

In a deal that happened in the far east, Forticom, a Baltic company owned by private equity funds Digital Sky Technologies and Tiger Global, acquired a 25% of Odnoklassinki.ru, a social network for classmates, for about $1 million. Odnoklassniki.ru has 4 million registered users and some 10% regular users.

Ringtones are still hot; MVisible raises $6.5 million

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:30:15 +0000

MVisible Technologies has gone for extension of it’ Series A round about which we had reported around the same but last year. The startup announced that it has raised $6.5 million in equity financing from Harris Preston & Partners, Morgenthau Venture Partners and New World Angels. From the product standpoint - mVisible technology enables independent musicians and artists to share and sell ringtones and wallpapers directly from their own websites or MySpace pages. Other smart upcoming ringtone players - Emotive(review), Vringo(review)

GlobalGrind - StartPage + Music; Gets funded

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:17:07 +0000

So, now niche personalized page apps are coming up. Newest on the block is GlobalGrind that is looking to link advertisers to urban music enthusiasts online. The startup is backed by Russell Simmons, Accel Partners. Press Release

Zude Public beta next week

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:10:24 +0000

Personalized webspace provider Zude is looking to go ahead with public beta next week. I have played around with the app but not really been able to figure out where it fits. Besides that, oversized ads taking up majority of my laptop screen, I am ……. More next week.

Waterfront Media raises big money

Vivek — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 20:58:38 +0000

Good days for blogs continue as diet and health blog network Waterfront Media becomes another publishing company to raise big round of money. Waterfront’s 4th round was worth $25 million, led by Scale Venture Partners and joined by Foundation Capital, Rho Ventures, Time Warner Ventures, BEV Capital and Neocarta Ventures. Not sure how diluting was the 4th round for the founders. {via}

Shutterfly partnered with Delta

PK — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:35:31 +0000

Delta Skymile members can now earn the bonous miles . You can earn 10 miles for every dollar spent on shutterfly.

Fotolog will be acquired by Hi-Media Group

PK — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:24:14 +0000

Fotolog one of the largest photo blogging site adding around 30,000 users perday has around 11 million users and 300 million potos will be acquired by France HI-Media group

Digg website upgraded with new features but, feedback from community is not positive

PK — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:05:42 +0000

Digg added more social networking features to its website and announced on the website about upcoming features on the website. The feedback from the user community about the revamped website is not positive

Web 2.0 - Dow Jones VentureOne And Ernst & Young Survey

PK — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:33:09 +0000

This global research study shows that investors have directed US$464.2 million into 101 deals worldwide in the 1st half of 2007, which is the highest 6 month total on record for the Web 2.0/Social Media industry. This is more than a 7 percent increase when compared to the first half of 2006. In the first half of 2006, there were 67 Web 2.0/Social Media deals and $357 million dollars US invested.

Source:internetfinancialnews.com

One Laptop Per Child is now $188, not $100

PK — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:04:21 +0000

Spokesman George Snell said a variety of factors were at play, including currency fluctuations and rising costs of such components as nickel and silicon. He said the project was committed to keeping the price from rising above $190.

Mash.com, Yahoo’s social networking site

PK — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:36:35 +0000

Yahoo is developing social networking site called Mash.com. The questions arise 1)whats the fate of yahoo 360?

2)when will google release the new orkut service? 3)Will it slow down growth of facbook and myspace?

Viacom’s Social networking and online video site

PK — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 09:28:40 +0000

Flux.com: Create profile and personalize pages by adding photos and content you like and the page will appear when login into any MTV or partner site.

VBS.tv: which debuted in March, is the video offshoot of Vice, a 13-year-old magazine company in Brooklyn known for its punk sensibility and eclectic coverage of international affairs and youth culture

Source:cnnmoney.com

Selfcast launch widget

PK — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:18:07 +0000

Broadcast live video and audio free on BLogs, MySpace and websites now by embeding Selfcast widgets

People have an average of 150 people in their social network

PK — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 23:39:06 +0000

While Facebook and MySpace may have allowed people to start collecting new friends like stamps, the average person actually only has five true online friends, according to a survey.

The rest of those who sign up to social networking profiles are simply "cyber acquaintances".

Source:telegraph.co.uk

Meebo File Transfer using Instant Messaging

PK — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:38:16 +0000

Meebo ,leveraging Amazon services provided Meebo users File Transfer feature .Now Meebo users can send files to their IM buddies regardless of the type of IM and no additional software download is required.

Fantasy Sports Ventures acquires Fantasy Football Site

PK — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:13:17 +0000

The Huddle.com, Fantasy footbal site acquired by firm Fantasy sports ventures. Recently Yahoo acquired Rivals.com .

GeoSentric Secures $13 Million Financing

PK — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 11:22:02 +0000

GeoSentric Oyi, the world’s leading developer of geo-social networking technology, today announced that it has secured $13.1 million (USD) in an oversubscribed round led by Horizon Group and Schroders Private Bank.

Adweek Media 2007 "Digital Hot List"

PK — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 02:13:02 +0000

The select top 10 were chosen according to substantial and consistent growth in key audience metrics, as well as buzz among media and marketing insiders.

1. Facebook.com 2. MySpace.com 3. YouTube 4. TMZ.com

5. Disney.com 6. Veoh.com 7. FunnyOrDie.com 8. Discovery.com

9. digg.com 10. imeem.com

Source: Nielsen Business Media

Minekey releases Widget gallery & OPML Support

PK — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:37:35 +0000

Minekey, content discovery service released new set of features widget gallery ,OPML support, track and showcase your widgets

General Motors 2.0 Social Media Newsroom

PK — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 19:25:23 +0000

gmeurope.info provide news for GM cars in Europe: Cadillac, Corvette, Saab, Hummer, Opel, Vauxhall & Chevrolet. Comment, republish news ,youtube videos, photos and tag the content provided by GM. Other automakers will follow GM soon.

Yahoo Hotjobs on Facebook

PK — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 18:43:30 +0000

Yahoo kickstarted the hotjobs on Facebook. Using Hotjobs app find where your friends work and help yourself and your friend dream job.

Hello world!

vp — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:22:14 +0000

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!