FUTURE SHOPPING BAZAR

We’ve been keeping an eye on the mobile social networking world covering companies such as Zyb, Mocospace, Aka-aki, imity, meetmoi, mobiluck. See our roundup post here. Most of the innovation is occurring outside of the U.S., particularly in Europe. That’s why it’s no surprise to see yet another success story, Mig33, originate outside of the U.S. (the company was founded in Australia). The company has over seven million registered users, nearly all outside of the U.S. Today, however, the company is launching their service in the U.S. They’ve also moved the company here - it’s now based in San Francisco.

Migg33 is a mobile application that lets you chat (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and send instant messages and emails, make cheaper international phone calls, share photos, connect with friends. The key selling point is that they now offer all of this functionality through the WAP browser (wap.mig33.com) currently available on most mobile phones, which has the added advantage of being accessible on your computer too. However, the WAP interface is rather spartan and chatting on a webpage is time consuming. The downloaded J2ME version makes for a richer experience.

The U.S. launch also includes a new free hosted email feature, allowing U.S. subscribers to send and receive e-mail on their mobile phones. This adds to the photo sharing, chat integration, and cheap calling rates by connecting over VOIP lines of the original application.

It will be interesting to how popular the service in the U.S. considering the differences between European and American cell phone use. Europeans have been more likely than Americans to use cellphones for the internet. Cellphones have continually been more a part of people’s lifestyles outside of the U.S.

Labels: $, FutureBazarOnline.com, Gmail, Google, Mig33 Moves, The, To, U.S.

Well this was inevitable I guess. mEgo has been booted out of the DEMO conference. The reason? They showed their stuff at TechCrunch40 last week. Our coverage of them is here.

That’s a bit rough on the company, since many of the presenting startups at DEMO are already launched and have tons of press out there about them. In this case, mEgo may have simply been the sacrificial lamb in DEMO’s desire to prove a point.

The worst part about the whole ordeal is that mEgo has been told they won’t get the $18,000 back that they paid to participate in DEMO. mEgo says that while DEMO has the right to kick them out of the conference, they don’t have the right to keep the $18k under the contract.

Frankly, this is probably good news for mEgo, who’ll now get far more attention than they would have if they had actually gotten on stage. But it’s also a warning to other startups: Don’t screw with DEMO - they hit back.

Just an aside - mEgo was one of my personal favorites at TechCrunch40. Make sure to check out the service.

Labels: $, Conference, Demo, Gets, Gmail, Google, Kicked, Of, Ouch…mEgo, Out

DocuSign, an eSignature service, has raised a $12.4 million series C led by new investor WestRiver Capital, LLC and their existing investors Ignition Partners, Frazier Technology Ventures and Sigma Partners. It follows a Series B investment of $10 million in April 2006 from Frazier, Ignition, and Sigma. DocuSign, which has been around since 2003, enables companies to get legally binding signatures quickly over the internet instead of over the fax or mail. The whole digital signature business was really opened up during the turn of the century with that passing of the UETA and ESIGN acts, which clarified the legal grounds for electronic signatures nationwide.

docusign_screen.pngDocuSign certifies digital signatures completely over the web, acting as a intermediary who holds the documents and verifies the identity of the signature. To get a document digitally signed, you upload the documents to DocuSign (works with any document you can print), select the parts needing a signature, and create an authentication code for the transaction. DocuSign then sends an email to the recipient with a link to the documents where the signer can log in to their DocuSign account, enter the authentication code, and simply click the signature points to sign the documents. The person’s eSignature (example right) and ID number are then posted in those points of the document, and the signed documents sent back to the sender. There are more details breaking down the transaction on their product page.

Competitors include EchoSign, VeriSign, Entrust and others.

If you have doubts that people are using eSignatures, you should know that, to date, DocuSign has completed over 5 million of them. Their clients currently include Expedia, Land America, RE/MAX, AMICA, Worldspan, Sony, Weyerhaeuser, Yamaha, Tektronix, and Fidelity National

Labels: $, 12.4, Credibility, Docstoc, Docu, Exclusive: Podango Juices Podcast, FutureBazarOnline.com, Google, million, Sign Raises

Podcast network and hosting service Podango is beefing up its service with the purchase of podcast publishing software from GigaVox Media. The content-management system, called GigaVox Audio Lite, allows podcasters to automagically manage the different parts that make up an audio or video podcast, including ads, intros, promotions, and other program material.

Podango, which is based in Bountiful, Utah, hosts 1,300 podcasters across 250 different stations, including Mommycast, Duct Tape Marketing, and the Apple Phone Show (which Podango produces itself). Later this week, it will launch Girls Gone Geek, which CEO Lee Gibbons describes as a “cross between the View and Motorcycle Maintenance.” Something tells me it’s going to do okay. All told, says Gibbons, Podango-hosted shows are downloaded two million times per month, which is up from a mere 20,000 downloads six months ago. He is shooting for 10 million downloads a month by next March. And you thought podcasts were dead.

GigaVox Podcast Management System

* Sphere It
*
AddThis Social Bookmark Widget
* Print Posts

Posted in Company & Product Profiles |

Labels: $, Exclusive: Podango Juices Podcast, From, Giga, Gmail, Google, GPRS, Media, Network, Software, Vox, With

It may have taken Amazon a few years, but they got it right: their new music store is DRM free and songs, starting at $0.89/track, are cheaper than at Apple’s iTunes. The top 100 best-selling albums are priced no higher than $8.99.

Songs are delivered in MP3 format, meaning they’ll work on any music player, including the iPod. The store opens with 2 million songs from 80,000 artists represented by 20,000 labels. EMI and Universal are on board. The other major labels have no real choice at this point but to follow, and soon.

A software download is required to actually get songs to your hard drive, but it’s available for both Windows and Mac (with Linux coming). That’s good news - DRM requirements forced Amazon to make their movie download service work only with Windows machines.

Average quality is very high - 256 kbps, which is what iTunes uses for non-DRM songs as well.

Labels: $, Alternative, Game On: A, Gmail, Google, iTunes, Real, To

San Francisco based Sugar Publishing, a social network and group of women-focused blogs that we’ve covered since late 2006, is announcing the acquisition of ShopStyle, an ecommerce site, this evening. The price is not being disclosed.

Sugar says they will integrate shopping into editorial via widgets that allow readers to buy items directly. Combined, the company’s claim 5 million unique monthly visitors.

Sugar Publishing is also changing its name to Sugar Inc. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital and NBC Universal. See our recent coverage of Glam, a competitor.

Labels: $, FutureBazarOnline.com, Gmail, Google, integrated handsfree speaker, r Publishing Acquires, Shop, Style, Suga

Casual gamers - moms, dads and senior citizens - are the mainstream of the gaming world. So it’s interesting that RealNetworks could be looking to foster community around its RealArcade property, following reports today that it is acquiring NYC-based online casual gaming site Gametrust for somewhere in the region of $50 million. The company, which has already raised nearly $20 million in three rounds, powers some big gaming portals including MiniClip.com and Shockwave.com with its Game Frame platform. The five year-old GameTrust counts TWJ Capital, NJTC Venture Fund, Patriot Capital, CSK Ventures, Topspin Partners, Silicon Alley Venture Partners, Draper Associates and Elon Musk among its investors.

Labels: $, around, develop, games?, Google, integrated handsfree speaker, Networks, Real, socnet, To

Just one week to go until TechCrunch40 conference. Forty new products will launch over two days, with a $50,000 cash prize going to the “best-in-show” product as selected by the panel of experts.

But the entrepreneurial spirit isn’t just alive and kicking in the startups. The big guys have some stuff to show, too. Yahoo and AOL will both launch new products next week at TechCrunch40. And it’s likely we’ll add one more “BigCo” product to the mix as well later this week. The Yahoo and AOL products are being launched outside of the core 40 new launches, and will not be eligible for the $50,000 prize. But they will launch it in front of the main crowd, and audience comments and questions will be part of the show.

More announcements coming this week. The conference is now virtually sold out - there are a handful of tickets remaining. Register here.

Labels: $, AOL, At, Crunch40 Tickets, Google, New, o Launch, Products, TechCrunch40, Yahoo

SixApart have announced an iPhone interface for their popular hosted blogging solution TypePad.

The new interface is automatically presented when an iPhone or iPod Touch is detected and allows users to create and edit posts, manage comments, configure mobile settings for posting photos directly from an iPhone, and view a published blog, all from an iPhone friendly layout.

Proving what good corporate leadership can provide for (soon to be) open sourced tools, the interface has been ported to the MovableType platform and is available for download as a completely open source plugin.

Movable Type’s Byrne Reese claims that the release of the MT plugin gives bloggers another reason to buy an iPhone, but in the cut throat blogging CMS business it may well give users a greater incentive to switch back to MovableType.

Labels: $, cartridges. It has a USB Port and is compatible with Windows, Google, Heads, iPhone Interfaces, Launched, Movable, or, Type And TypePad

Los Angeles based startup Listphile is aiming to bring list making into the Wiki and Mahalo space.

Listphile is a free collaborative list building tool that offers the openness of a wiki with the structure of a database. The company aims to create a vast and easy to use online platform that people will utilize for learning, working together, and socializing.

Lists can include Google Map Mashups, video and images, and users are able to create database pages for specific topics as well.

listphilepic.jpgExamples include the The Open Surf Atlas: an open atlas of surf spots on the planet, with video, images, maps and data specific to each spot, Earth Friendly Tips for the Home, Yoda Quotes (with video) and Oyster Varieties - a list of oyster types commonly eaten and cultivated, with photos.

To be honest, when I first saw the word “lists” I was initially skeptical as to what ListPhile might offer, but having spent some time on the site I was pleasantly surprised. It looks and feels like a Maholo style consumer play; the information available isn’t as thorough as Wikipedia but it’s feels more friendly. I’d think it would be an appealing offering to the non-geek set, although having said there is nothing stopping the site from appealing to everyone.

ListPhile has some experienced people behind it; Caterina Fake (Flickr) is on the advisory board and founder Steve de Brun has worked with a variety of startups and also worked with News Corp. A startup to watch.

Labels: $, Combinator, Google, Google Reverses, Listphile: Lists, on, Speed

We haven’t heard much about Bejing-based startup Mojiti before this week. They popped up in the TechCrunch Forums in January and are notable because the founder, Eric Feng, was previously at Microsoft Research Asia. Nothing other than that, and they do not appear to have many users.

But they sure are in the spotlight now: a source with knowledge of the deal indicates that the $1 billion News Corp./NBC online video joint venture Hulu has acquired the company and is using its platform for the basis of the upcoming Hulu service.

Mojiti is a basic online video platform that also allows users to annotate videos at specific time points. The annotation feature is somewhat similar to another startup, click.tv, which is rumored to have been acquired by Cisco.

The deal may have originally leaked via an overheard airport conversation as the Mojiti execs flew back to Asia after meetings with Hulu in the U.S. Neither company has officially confirmed the deal. Rumored price is in the $10 million range.

It is surprising that Hulu would use a third party platform for their service rather than build it themselves from the ground up. They’ve already missed their promised Summer 2007 launch date, however, and probably think the acquisition will get them to market faster.

Labels: $, Backbone, Form, Gmail, Google, GPRS, Hulu Makes First Acquisition; Chinese Video, integrated handsfree speaker, New, Of, Service, Startup, To

Just five days until TechCrunch40 next week in San Francisco. As of right now we have 27 tickets remaining, which means it should sell out sometime tomorrow afternoon and registrations will be cut off. There will be approximately 900 people at the conference, which is about double what we had originally planned (and hoped for).

Forty companies are preparing to launch products (actually, 39, but more on that below) in front of the full audience and panel of experts, and will compete for the $50,000 prize. An additional hundred startups will be showing their products in the demo stations. On top of that, Yahoo and AOL will be launching products at the event, and we have keynote sessions with Marc Andreessen, David Filo, Chad Hurley, Michael Moritz and Mark Zuckerberg. Jason Calacanis has been coaching startups at Sequoia Capital over the last few days to perfect the demos.

As I said above, we actually only have 39 startup launches planned. The last spot on stage on the last day will go the audience choice from the demo pit companies. Each attendee will be given two tokens (one for each day) to give to the demo pit companies they like best. Whoever gets the most tokens gets a spot on stage and is fully eligible to win the $50,000 prize.

I am really looking forward to the event, and I am absolutely humbled by the outpouring of enthusiasm we are receiving from companies and attendees . I’ve never been associated with a production of this size - there are literally thousands of moving pieces and any number of things can go wrong. There will undoubtedly be a hiccup or two during the conference, but with any luck all of the planning and hard work will pay off, forty startups will get the launch event they deserve and another hundred will get to show their stuff to nearly 1,000 people.

See you Monday! If you are attending, look for additional logistical details and announcements on the TechCrunch40 blog.

Labels: $, Crunch40 Tickets, Gmail, Google, inbuilt Dictaphone, Sell Out; More News, Tech, To

Lending Club, the Facebook exclusive person-to-person lending service has passed the $1 million mark in loans to Facebook users. It’s similar to other P2P lending sites Prosper, Zopa, and Kiva.

The milestone comes just short of 3 months since the the site hit the $100,000 mark, and 3 1/2 months since going live as an original Facebook Platform partner.

Lending Club will also announce today that it is expanding beyond Facebook and will now offer similar ways to connect borrowers and lenders through thousands of alumni associations and professional organizations.

The new site includes tools for building diversified loan portfolios composed of pieces of 20 to 30 individual loans, hosts a forum for financial experts to share their knowledge with the Lending Club community, and “Better Rates Together,” a blog community that features expert advice on P2P lending and personal finance.

Lending Club recently secured $10.26 million in Series A financing led by Canaan Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.

Labels: $, $1 Million, Breaks, Club, Expanding, Google, GPRS, Lending

It turns out the rumors of a Viacom investment and partnership with social network Tagworld were accurate. Viacom invested a reported $40 million in the company for a minority stake (Tagworld was previously funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson) and the two companies began working on new social networking products. Tagworld’s parent company has been renamed Social Project.

Tomorrow morning they are launching the fruit of that partnership - an ambitious new disaggregated social network around Viacom’s MTV, Comedy Central and other brands and associated websites called Flux.

Tagworld/Social Project cofounder Evan Rifkin and Mika Salmi, the president of Global Digital Media for MTV, walked me through the product earlier this afternoon. A screen shot of the unlaunched service is below.

The new service takes technology developed by Tagworld and Viacom’s existing Flux brand and creates distinct social network properties for each of the brands (some are launching now, hundreds are launching throughout the rest of the year). Like Ning, users who sign up for any network (say, Comedy Central’s) can join other networks (like MTV’s) with a single click.

As users add additional communities to their profile, they bring their content and friends with them. Flux is simultaneously a single brand as well as hundreds of distinct, branded social networks.

Not Just About Viacom Brands

Flux is opening up to companies and brands outside of the Viacom family. Twenty non-Viacom sites have been quietly testing the service for some time. See, for example, Vinyl Pulse and 50Cent. Both have integrated social networks built by Tagworld. They’re not yet co-branded under the Flux service, but will be now that the service is officially launching. New third party sites will soon be able to apply to join the Flux network; in the future there an API and other tools will become available that will let anyone join.

As I said above, comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Ning and white label social networks (see our overview of various white label services here and here).

But Flux really is a network of networks. While it is most like Ning, the walls between the Flux networks are very porous - uses drag content (photos, videos, etc.) between sites, perhaps grabbing a video from the 50Cent site and presenting it on their profile at the MTV site. While each community has distinct branding, the individual users see groupings of brands that they enjoy under a single profile.

What Happens To Taworld?

The existing Tagworld site remains as is, although the company is turning off new registrations for now and focusing entirely on Flux.

Labels: $, Broad, Called, Decentralized, Flux, Google, Social Network, Viacom And Social Project Launch

I criticized Los Angeles based startup Docstoc in a post last month for pre-announcing a financing that hadn’t actually closed yet.

At the time of that post, where I suggested that they may be counting their chickens before they hatched, they said:

We are about to close another substantial round of financing from at least one, if not all, of the following investors 1) one of the co-founders of myspace 2) the angel investors in www.baidu.com and the head of mp3.com that lead the company to its 400M acquisition – at least one of these players will lead our next round, and all three parties may participate. Financing is expected to close by the end of the month.

Well, their gamble paid off. They raised a first round of financing from Scott Walchek (investor in Baidu), Brett Brewer (co-founder of MySpace parent Intermix Media) and Robin Richards, the former president of MP3.com. They won’t disclose the size of the financing to me, but they certainly closed on the investors they said they would.

The startup itself remains unlaunched for now, but I’ve seen a demo and its got potential. Like Scribd, Docstoc is a sort of YouTube for documents - users can upload just about any document type (MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, and PDF) and display via a Flash interface on any website. But there are key differences, too. Our first post on the company is here.

Labels: $, Church, Comes, Docstoc, fashion, Financing, Google, on, That, Through

A little more than two months after we first reported rumors about Yahoo’s new social network Mosh, the company has given us a preview of a social network with a slightly different name: Mash.

The service includes features common to Facebook, MySpace, and My Yahoo. You can load a set of modules onto your profile page and move them around drag-and-drop style. The modules include Flickr RSS, Ego Boost, Common Friends, MyMoshLog2, Blog Module (RSS 2.0), Asteroids, Astrology, PimpMyPet, Hover, Kaleidescope, Guestbook, and My Stuff.

The modules gallery also states that “in the coming months we’re going to open up our module development platform to 3rd party developers,” which suggests that Mash will be following in Facebook’s footsteps at least to some extent (it will be interesting to see whether there will be canvas-like pages, too).

Users are encouraged to edit each other’s pages. Each time we visit our profile page, we are seeing new modules that others have loaded for us. This capability certainly adds to the “mashing” aspect of the social network. It is also appears as though Yahoo intends for users to mash their information together from across the company’s various properties, perhaps making Mash the main hub for Yahoo users.

While profile pages appear to have a pretty consistent structural layout (like Facebook), users can customize the design of their pages by changing colors and inserting background images (like MySpace).

Mash also has something called Pulse, which is very similar to Facebook’s news feed. The Pulse page shows “updates from your friends” that are basically Twitter-like messages reporting all of your friends’ activity on Mash.

Unfortunately, it looks like Mash lacks a vital feature of Facebook: search. In the top right of every Mash page there is a search box for regular Yahoo search, but that appears to be it.

Yahoo is calling Mash the next generation of profiles and has plans to roll it out quietly. Mash users can invite their friends into the network, so we’ll be getting a section for Mash up on InviteShare shortly (Update: We have set up an InviteShare page for Mash here). When you invite a friend into Mash, you can create a profile for them that they can choose to adopt or not.

Mash appears to be Yahoo!’s way of saying adieu to its existing social network, Yahoo! 360, but no word yet on whether the company will actually be shutting down 360.

Mash’s blog can be found here.

Additional screen shots:

Labels: $, Gmail, Google, Its .New. Social .Network., Latest, Lithium, Yahoo .Invites. Us. Into. Mash

MyStrands, provider of a music recommendation service, has launched a slick new website at MyStrands.tv for finding music videos hosted on YouTube.

Users can browse music videos by artist or genre and play them in a large player. The system also recommends videos based on your viewing habits and input.

A social network of sorts is integrated into the service. You can view friends’ favorite videos and artists and set up your own personalized channels. There is also a stumbling feature in which you can view another video based on the artist of the video you are currently watching.

Similar music video discovery services include Middio, MOG, and iLike. Of course, you can always just browse music videos on YouTube itself, many of them legal.

It certainly makes sense to build services that exploit the music videos hosted on YouTube, as the majority of the top 10 videos on YouTube are music-related.

MyStrands recently raised $25 million in Series B funding.

Labels: $, Discovery, Google, Music Video, MyStrands Launches, MyStrands.tv, Service

Todd Teresi has announced over at Yodel Anecdotal that Yahoo! will acquire online global ad network BlueLithium for about $300 million in cash.

According to the announcement, BlueLithium is the fifth largest ad network in the United States and the second largest in the United Kingdom with 145 million unique visitors per month.

Teresi describes the acquisition of this company with over 100 employees as important for making Yahoo! “one of the world’s leading online display ad networks.” Apparently, Yahoo! believes that BlueLithium’s data analytics and behavioral targeting tools will help them get there.

Yahoo!’s acquisition of the company comes less than 5 months after Google acquired DoubleClick and less than 4 months after Microsoft acquired aQuantive, albeit for much larger sums ($3.1 and $6 billion respectively).

BlueLithium was founded in 2004 and named 2006 Innovator of the Year by AlwaysOn. Details are available in Yahoo!’s official press release.

Labels: $, Acquires, Ad, Blue, Chairman, Coming, Google, Lithium, Network, Yahoo

Microsoft has officially launched its Flash rival Silverlight .

Silverlight 1.0 provides cross browser support under both Windows and OS X, and in a partnership with Novell will also be available for Linux.

Silverlight was initially released to rave reviews in late April, with Michael Arrington saying that it would become “the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications.”

Microsoft has rolled out a number of Silverlight powered applications since then, including Live Station, Popfly and Tafiti.

Microsoft has also announced that a number of content providers will be providing Silverlight enabled content online, including Entertainment Tonight, HSN and World Wrestling Entertainment.

For a full explanation of what Silverlight does read here.

(via Beet.tv)

Labels: $, calendar, fashion, Google, Launches, Microsoft, Officially, Silverlight

Last week we began talking with a independent programmer who ran into a bit of trouble with Facebook over a snippet of code he developed and published that allowed users to update their Facebook status without visiting the site.

Christian Flickinger, who runs the blog Technologist for Hire, posted some PHP code here last April that took advantage of Facebook’s mobile service to perform this simple task. While Facebook offers an RSS feed to export status updates, unlike Twitter it fails to provide a way to import status updates. Christian’s code was meant to fix this shortcoming and consequently help others innovate with the way Facebook status updates are handled. He did not use the code to create a website for updating Facebook statuses; he simply made it available for others to modify or run as is on their own servers.

One such way to use Christian’s code was to incorporate it into a program that takes status updates and pushes them out to multiple status handlers such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Adium, and Quicksilver. Another use could be to take information from a music player, instant messaging program, or blogging platform and automatically make Facebook status updates from any activity (such as newly played songs, away messages, or post headlines). After publishing the code, Christian indeed found that several other developers used his code to create programs around the idea of “federated status”.

This past Thursday, however, Christian received an email from a Facebook engineer that requested he take down the code from his blog. While recognizing that Christian was simply trying to provide something useful, the engineer insisted that the code was, and had always been, against Facebook’s terms of service (see “User Conduct” section, bullet #3). As a way of explanation, he suggested that allowing people to automate against Facebook from outside of the site would create a “slippery slope”. The engineer backed up his request by insinuating that he would disable Christian’s Facebook account and/or take legal action if he refused to remove the code.

After Christian stood by his post, Facebook demonstrated on September 4th that it wasn’t bluffing and shut down his account. Christian soon realized that Facebook meant more to him than fighting this out and took down the code; Facebook has since reactivated his account. Several others who had used his code also caved and took down their enhancements.

While Facebook certainly has the right to contact users about violations of their terms of service, I must ask myself “what is Facebook so worried about?”. The company has made great strides in opening up the network with the developer platform, data feeds, and people search. These developments suggest that Facebook wants to make the components of the Social Graph available for wider consumption and utilization.

And yet, it has quite aggressively quelled certain developers that have built Facebook-integrated services. Last fall, the same Facebook engineer involved in this case sent the creator of UnFaced, a compatibility calculator, a similar cease and desist request. Facebook declined to provide a substantive reason for their actions in either of these cases.

Changes to Facebook’s terms of service over the last half year may also suggest that the company has become increasingly cautious about how and when they open things up. Their terms currently prohibit the “use [of] automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Service or the Site.” However, archives show that this line was added sometime after February 10, 2007. So, instead of slackening their policies for independent developers, they seem to be tightening them.

What do you think? Was Facebook overbearing or reasonable in the way it handled Christian’s code? Generally speaking, is Facebook “developer-friendly”? If you have developed for Facebook, please share your experiences below.

Labels: $, But, Facebook:, Gaming, Google, GPRS, Its, on, Opening, Own, Terms, Up