Visual search engine Ziipa lets you stumble with your eyes
Editor’s note: This is part of VentureBeat’s series “Startup Spotlight.” Every week, we’ll sift through the scores of companies applying to be promoted and profile the best one. Companies can sign up here at the Entrepreneur Corner, which is currently sponsored by Microsoft. (Of course, we’re still interested in covering startup news and innovation in our day-to-day coverage.) Today, we continue the series with Ziipa, below.
Ziipa is a rare combination of semantic search, crowdsourcing,… Continue Reading
StumbleUpon adds Facebook, comments to its web-based recommendations
StumbleUpon, an application for discovering and rating web content, is fine tuning its web experience. As part of the app’s growth outside of its proprietary toolbar, StumbleUpon is announcing updates to its web-based interface, like Facebook compatibility and new content sharing tools.
In general, StumbleUpon works as a recommendation engine for web pages. Previously, users had to install a toolbar to rate sites (either with a thumbs up or down), or recommend them to other StumbleUpon… Continue Reading
StumbleUpon leaves eBay, starting up again on own two feet
Social news discovery site StumbleUpon can be a great way to find interesting stories, which is why some of us wondered why auction site eBay bought it for $75 million in late 2007. Perhaps it was going to offer ways for news readers to buy eBay products? Apparently things never ended up fitting. StumbleUpon has spun itself out of eBay and is once again a startup, it announced today. This follows rumors last fall that… Continue Reading
Roundup: FriendFinder sued for risky business, Digg toolbar sighted, Nokia looks to laptops and more
Here’s the latest action:
Pirate Bay takes fascist funds — The large bittorrent tracker’s major financier, Carl Lundstrom, has been connected with neo-nazi groups and political parties.
Nortel lays off 3,200 more — The telecom company will cut its global workforce by 10 percent over the next several months as it tries to bounce back from bankruptcy.
FriendFinder called out for risky business — The adult web site’s former human resources director is suing over scandalous behavior and violation of labor… Continue Reading
Mozilla wants to bring add-ons to a mainstream audience
With the launch of a new site called Fashion Your Firefox, Mozilla is pushing to make normal users more aware of the add-ons available for its Firefox web browser.
There are already plenty of ways to find new add-ons (software you install to add features to your browser, such as a mini map sidebar or a space to get twitter updates). There’s a semi-comprehensive listing of add-ons on the Mozilla web site, as well as a… Continue Reading
StumbleUpon tears down the plug-in wall, lets in the masses
Using the web site discovery service StumbleUpon right now is kind of like driving a hot convertible with the top up. It’s a cool car, and having the top on gives you better performance, but it’s just not quite as sexy. That top is akin to StumbleUpon’s toolbar web browser plug-in, which you currently must use to use the service. But tonight, StumbleUpon is dropping the top and letting the sun in.
The new version of… Continue Reading
Roundup: Brin’s blog, O’Reilly gets serious, Joost’s browser version goes live and more
Here’s the latest action:
Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin starts his own blog — Dubbed “too“, Brin starts off by detailing his fears of getting Parkinson’s disease since it runs in his family. Compelling stuff. Too bad it’s nearly impossible to read with his choice of light blue text on a black background. CNET has more.
O’Reilly gets serious — Tim O’Reilly, founder of O’Reilly Media, used his keynote address at the Web 2.0 Expo in Las Vegas to call… Continue Reading
There’s a method behind StumbleUpon’s madness
StumbleUpon is all about site discovery. I used to click on the “Stumble!” button and figured it would return me some random site based on the categories I said I was interested in. But then I noticed that the more I used it, better sites were being sent my way. This is because it’s not actually random, but rather sites are served up based on a series of processes that go on within the StumbleUpon… Continue Reading
Roundup: Mashups at Web 2.0, Linden Lab gets new executive and more
Here’s the latest action:
Mashup companies take over Web 2.0 — InfoWorld profiles three companies making announcements at this week’s conference: Serena, which is launching an online marketplace for business mashups; JackBe, which has a new version of its enterprise mashup platform; and Kapow, which provides a hosted service to build mashups that provide web intelligence. We’ll also be writing more about Rearden Commerce and Zude in the next few days. And we just covered SnapLogic,… Continue Reading
Diigo releases new version, promising that social bookmarking ain’t dead yet
Social bookmarking was one of those hot areas for a while back in 2006, as Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon exploded into popularity. Clones began to pop up everywhere, but few have managed to gain much ground.
That makes Diigo, a newer social bookmarker aimed toward information gathering that I reviewed last year, sound like something of a throwback. However, Diigo is releasing a new version today, and says it has a small but growing group of devotees.
Diigo… Continue Reading
Ebay acquires StumbleUpon for $75M
updated
Auction giant eBay has acquired StumbleUpon, an San Francisco company that helps people “stumble upon” and share new sites related to their interests, for about $75 million.
In a statement this afternoon, eBay said the acquisition will give it “exposure to a fast-growing community-based service” that has around 2.3 million users, and that StumbleUpon is attractive because it shares similarities with eBay’s concept of community.
The deal size is not large relative to other deals we’ve… Continue Reading
Roundup: Google’s StumbleUpon clone, Froogle gone, Google phone, more
Here’s the latest action:
Google’s fireworks — This has been an impressive week for Google, and it shows in the 4 percent-plus jump in Google’s stock price earlier this morning (though it has tapered in the past hour). The main driver was its stellar earnings report. But here are the side-shows:
Video: It announced a video-conferencing product acquisition this morning (see our story).
StumbleUpon lookalike: Google also released a tool that looks a lot of like StumbleUpon, the site… Continue Reading
Roundup: FunnyOrDie, StumbleUpon sale?, Google’s latest and more
Latest action:
VC firm Sequoia Capital backs Will Ferrell and Adam McKay comedy video site — Called FunnyOrDie.com, the site features a two-minute clip that won a reported 1.5 million page views in less than a week.
StumbleUpon to be acquired? — Several folks (Techcrunch/GigaOm) are reporting that San Francisco social Web site StumbleUpon is in talks to being acquired by AOL, Google or eBay, for a rumored $40 million to $75 million. That’s not very high for… Continue Reading
Stumble Video, Seven, Panama, Skype 3.0, Venice Project & more
Here’s the latest round-up of Silicon Valley tech news:
Video launch of the day: Stumble Video — StumbleUpon, the site that lets you “stumble upon” other sites by offering up recommendations based on your perceived interests, has reportedly seen a spike in popularity. So it has launched a video version, Stumble Video. You stay on its home page, and it plays videos for you. You give thumbs up and thumbs down, letting it figure out your tastes…. Continue Reading
Yoono, a social search engine — without tagging
Yoono is a tool that finds pages relevant to the one you are surfing on, and locates people who are also interested in that site.
This company is notable because similar players like StumbleUpon have become popular lately.
France-based Yoono relies on the goodwill of other users, however, requiring them 1) to download Yoono’s toolbar (and some users are now overwhelmed by toolbars) and then 2) give Yoono permission to search their bookmarks, which it then stores… Continue Reading
Web 2.0 week: IM-email integration trend, Google GPS, Google Ventures, Reality Digital & more
Roundup of a busy week:
Instant messaging and email are merging, Yahoo kicks it off — Yahoo will be integrating IM through its email, Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse revealed during the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In retrospect, we’re wondering why this trend hasn’t happened earlier.
Email is limiting, providing no way to see whether the person on the other end is present or not (that person may not want to show you they are present,… Continue Reading