Yoono pulls in $4M to shoot down Flock, misses the mark
Ever find yourself surfing the web and wishing you could update your Twitter or Facebook status, keep tabs on FriendFeed, chat with your buddies over any instant-messenger and spontaneously discover and share an endless stream of new videos, photos, and websites — all from a sidebar on your browser?
If the answer is yes and you’re not already using Flock, the “social web browser,” or a similar service called Digsby, perhaps you might consider Yoono, a… Continue Reading
A roundup of scenery from the Web 2.0 Expo: an annotated photo gallery
I spent four days this week at the Web 2.0 Expo at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Here is a summary of the scene, including photos and my impressions of the show.
I attended the RockYou/Clearspring/Mixercast reception on Tuesday night at Bong Su, a trendy new Vietnamese restaurant. Three companies sponsored the party and so it made the Web 2.0 froth seem a little less excessive, since they can split the bill. There… Continue Reading
Yoono takes aim at Clipmarks
(updated version)
Yoono is the latest start-up to offer a “web clipping” feature to let you manage your reading and collaborate with others.
For those who’ve never heard of Yoono, it is a French company that offers a social search engine. It gives you downloadable toolbar that, with varying degrees of accuracy, displays websites, blogs, and news articles related to the Web site you’re visiting at the time. When we last wrote about them, in early December,… Continue Reading
Wikia to launch social search engine — amid a sea of others
Wikia, the San Mateo start-up founded by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, is working on a search engine that will use the same strategy as Wikipedia’s user-reliant encyclopedia.
The project is secretive, but has a preliminary launch date of the first quarter of 2007, the Times of London reports.
Wales says Google’s flaws have become more apparent:
Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try… 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
Two-timing, YouTube ruckus, French connection, the Friendster patents & more
Roundup:
Entrepreneurs who have two companies – The Mercury News has a story summarizing the exploits of the guys with two start-ups, Kevin Rose & Jay Adelson (Digg, Revision3), Scott Rafer (MyBlogLog, Mashery) and Evan Williams (Odeo, Twitter). The idea that one is not enough, because you want to hedge your bets.
Venture capitalist George Zachary, who backed Odeo, doesn’t seem impressed: “As an investor, I like to see someone who is 100 percent committed to one… Continue Reading
Updates: Employees paying price of VC; MojoPac’s problems
Turns out, employees are getting the short end of the stick lately at venture-backed companies.
Check out this report from Cooley Godward, a big Silicon Valley law firm, which shows the “rule of three” is being discarded. In former years, venture capitalists got about one-third of the company, the founders held on to a third, and another third was set aside for employee stock options. Today, investors get about 40 percent, founders get about 40… Continue Reading