VentureBeat

White label social networking platforms is a crowded field. Already out there is Wetpaint, Grou.ps and of course, the $560 million-valued Ning, among others. That’s not deterring a new entry, Soceeo, from launching a vertical-driven network creation tool. In fact, the company openly acknowledges its competitors but believes there is more than enough room for one more player.

Soceeo, which is a play on the word “socio” (as in socio-economic), aims to be a social network creation tool that is so easy to set up and use that “my grandma could do it,” says co-founder Emile Cambry Jr. Cambry, along with fellow co-founder Joseph Curralli Jr. believe tight integration, along with simple customization and management will help their product stand out.

With this alpha release of the product, Soceeo will give users one gigabyte of storage space and the ability to make public or private networks. Within these networks, users will have the ability to share files, send e-mails (both inside and outside the network), use discussion boards and create robust profiles with adjustable privacy settings.

Network operators will also be able to run there own banner ads while keeping 100 percent of the money made off of them. In the next iteration the plan is to allow any network creator to charge users to create accounts if they wish to go that route to make money as well.

In testing out the alpha version of Soceeo, its strengths are speed and straight-forwardness. The banner along the top is clearly labeled with sections for “My Profile”, “Media”, “Calendar” and “Blogs” along with other sections which can be customized. These make it very easy to find what you’re looking for. The user interface isn’t going to “wow” anyone, but this is still an alpha release.

As with most of these white label social network creators, the goal is to make it easy to create a community for just about anything by anyone. Say I wanted to create a Colin Farrell community (as in the screenshot below), I could set one up in a matter of minutes.

The same is true for some of its competitors, which is why Soceeo is pointing to more advanced capabilities that will be available in its next iteration such as an API platform that will allow for even more customization and flexibility. There will also be more applications specifically tailored to specific verticals such as the ability to sell ringtones, apparel and mp3s for musicians for example.

Soceeo is based of out Chicago, IL and is entirely self-funded for the time-being.

update: Be sure to check out Cambry’s video comment in the comments section as well. He explains a bit more of his thoughts and plans for the service. A great use of a video comment.

updated

Since its launch in 2006, software from a Seattle startup called Wetpaint has been used to build nearly a million wikis where a company’s customers and fans create the content. That’s pretty impressive, but Wetpaint chief executive Ben Elowitz says some companies weren’t satisfied — it would be even better if they didn’t have to create the wiki on a separate site.

Wetpaint addresses that need with its new release, dubbed Wetpaint Injected, which does exactly what the name says — it injects wiki functionality into any webpage. So rather than creating a separate page for, say, a VentureBeat fan community (hey, it could happen), we could allow our readers to update our stories by adding wiki-style entries to the main page. And that, Elowitz says, improves traffic and search engine optimization to our main site, rather than pulling users to another page. (See screenshot of Wetpaint Injected at the game site IGN, below.)

When we wrote about Wetpaint more than a year ago, we were most impressed with its convenience — it was just really easy to set up a new wiki. The company has carried that approach over to its new product; Elowitz says the new functions can be added by just pasting a short snippet of code to a webpage. At the same time, the user-generated content’s look and format is customizable and should blend in with the rest of the page.

This is a smart move, and should further help Wetpaint stand out from competitors like PBWiki. As more and more sites add features — wikis, comments, polls — that allow them to interact with their readers, it makes sense to integrate those features as directly into the main browsing experience as possible. And the ability to add wiki capabilities to any page with just a few lines of code is totally unique, Elowitz says.

Companies should also be attracted by the fact that the feature is free for up to 100,000 impressions per month, and then charges based on a revenue-sharing model.

Elowitz says Wetpaint’s approach has already started paying off, with 925,000 websites built on the company’s platform and 20 percent growth in recent months. But he also says it’s time for the company to start growing more aggressively, which is why he’s raised a $25 million third round of funding, bringing Wetpaint’s total financing to $40 million. That’s a hefty sum, particularly when you recall that we were already startled by the size of Wetpaint’s $9.5 million second round. But Elowitz says the funding matches the company’s ambitious plans to “wikify” every page on the web.

The round was led by DAG Ventures and an undisclosed investor, with participation from existing backers Accel Partners, Trinity Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures.

Update: Kara Swisher reports on yet another investor, Fidelity Investments (perhaps that “undisclosed” lead investor that Wetpaint mentioned?). Fidelity is the same major institutional backer that invested big bucks into Slide. And in the comments below, PBWiki’s Chris Yeh notes that his startup offers a similar feature, but hasn’t emphasized it.

Wetpaint, the Seattle start-up that lets people build Wikis — or sites where multiple people can edit the same pages — has raised $9.5 million to grab more market share.

The move comes after Google bought popular Wiki site, Jotspot, last year and closed that company to new users. VentureBeat tried out various Wikis last year, and found Jotspot the most intuitive. Wetpaint is easy to use, but we didn’t like the loud advertising present on the site — so passed on using it. But with Jotspot gone for now (presumably, Google will relaunch it in some fashion), and players like Socialtext increasingly focused on selling its wiki software to company users, Wetpaint is among the more convenient Wiki softwares for individual projects.

The question is whether $9.5 million is really necessary for a software that is so cheap to make and distribute. It had already raised $5.25 million (past coverage here).

Wetpaint told VentureBeat its users have generated more than 150,000 Wikis in six months, and that the company has struck partnerships with big media companies. AOL, ABC, CBS, American Express Publishing, T-Mobile and HTC have created community sites for their active users, though it’s uncertain how lucrative these deals will be.

Accel Partners, backers of Facebook and Glam, two other sites that rely on advertising for their business model, led the new investment. Existing investors Trinity Ventures and Frazier Technology Ventures joined the investment.