VentureBeat

Report: YouTube still trying to figure out how to make money — Lots of people have been wondering if the online video site has somehow figured out how to make big money from its huge amounts of web traffic. The answer, according to a Wall Street Journal article (sub required) is, as we’ve been hearing: Nothing mind-blowing is happening yet. Two sources say YouTube will make around $200 million this year, which is short of Google’s hopes. Watch the video to learn more about future monetization plans. However, the article includes some other interesting information about monetization plans. Like the fact that the company is looking to introduce user-hated pre-roll and post-roll ads that run before and after videos.

Mass. governor signs onto ambitious clean energy bill — Among other things, homeowners and business will be able to rent solar panels from utility companies to avoid paying high purchase costs, as well as sell excess energy from the panels and wind turbines.

Vivaty’s virtual world launches in public beta — The company lets social network and instant mssage users go into three dimensional virtual rooms and chat, and do things like choose the room’s decor — decor that can include their photos and other info from social networks. Google also launched a for-now-less-complete 3D chat service today, called Lively, that aims to do much of the same. Maybe, as Allen Stern at Centernetworks says, Vivaty can out-innovate Google on the 3D IM chat room market.

Ocean fertilizer startup Planktos is back, “with science” — The company wanted to fertilize every ocean with iron to produce phytoplankton blooms and there by reduce carbon emissions. We’ve previously mentioned its re-opening; Earth2Tech has more details but wasn’t impressed with many aspects of the company’s return, including its new name, Planktos Science.

mio knight rider gps from knight rider online on Vimeo.
The Knight Rider GPS system, by Mio, now has the voice of the robot car, KITT, inside — At some point when Knight Rider was a popular television show, somebody must have predicted that one day everyone would have a car that could give them directions, just like KITT. The show’s still-active fan site, Knight Rider Online, was suitably given the KITT-voice scoop. See video for more.

Rosetta Stone sues smaller competitor for infringing on its search results– The smaller competitor, Rocket Dog Languages, allegedly bought Google search ads that negatively described the company. The Wall Street Journal has more (sub required).

Make’n Movies launches movie script idea review site — Submit up 300-500 words, post it on the site’s database, and see what other people think.

Xiaonei, the Facebook clone of China, launches its own developer platform — Built from scratch, not using the OpenSocial platform standard nor Facebook’s licensable platform, the Xiaonei “Open Platform” will compete against the planned platform of rival Chinese network 51.com. Silicon Valley venture firm DCM is creating a fund to support third party developers on the platform, similar to the fund created by Accel, the Founders Fund and Facebook itself for Facebook’s platform.

MyYahoo launches developer platform — Everyone likes to launch developer platforms these days, including Yahoo, which now has one for its start page web service, MyYahoo. ReadWriteWeb has a good review of it, here.

Aircell, aviation broadband technology company, closes third phase of $265 million financing — The company promises to offer mobile internet and phone access on planes, as you can tell from this picture on its web site.

Shareholders approve $18.9 billion Activition-Vivendi Games merger — The combined entity is now the world’s largest gaming company. Gamespot has more.

MIT researchers announce nanoscale lithographic technology, to create more advanced chips — The results promise improvements in a wide ranges of chips from those used in computer memory systems, to integrated circuits, to solar cells and other devices. The report here.

Game startup Trion World Network is today revealing how it is designing massively multiplayer online games with high graphics fidelity that will run across video game platforms — such as consoles, PC, mobile, and set-top boxes — a feat that no other video game company has yet pulled off.

The bold scheme will let the startup launch multiple games at once on what it calls the “Trion Platform,” which consists of software that runs on a bunch of game devices and exists on a network run by Hewlett-Packard. The games are cross platform because they run on servers in contrast to most desktop-based or console-based games.

“For decades, games have run on the clients, but we’re transforming them so they are completely server based,” said Lars Buttler, chief executive of Trion in Redwood City, Calif. “We think that will disrupt the industry.”

I’ll talk about the significance of shifting from client to server games below, but it’s a bit like how Salesforce.com disrupted traditional business software companies with its software-as-a-service, or how delivering software over the web has disrupted delivery through traditional means.

Trion may have amibitious goals, but it’s done some heavy lifting in just a couple of years: signing up partners and investors, building game design teams and creating a fundamental technology infrastructure. While most start-ups take on an innovation in just one part of the value chain, Trion is trying to create most of that value chain itself.

“It’s like Apple designing everything it needs,” he said. “It’s very risky, but highly profitable if it works. We’re not just doing a little piece. We’re bringing it all together.”

The first major partner being announced today is the Sci Fi Channel, but Trion plans to have a whole portfolio of online game worlds. I’m duly skeptical until I see how good these games look and how fast they play. Server-based games aren’t new as a concept. Typically, they have lousy graphics quality and suffer from time lags because of bandwidth limits, said Billy Pidgeon, a game analyst at International Data Corp.

Coordinating fast-action games is so tough that they usually have to be limited to 16 to 64 online players in a single game. Trion wants to allow thousands of players in the same game arenas. Others who try to build massive game worlds with thousands of players always run into some trade-off that compromises the quality of the experience.

Buttler can see the company he wants to disrupt outside of his company’s window, since Trion’s home is within view of Electronic Arts‘ headquarters. The more focused target, however, is Blizzard’s “World of Warcraft,” which has 10 million subscribers worldwide and is the No. 1 online game. Read the rest of this entry »

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RockYou, the Silicon Valley that lets people post photo slide-shows on Web sites, has raised $1 million to tide it over while it decides whether to proceed with a larger financing round or to sell.

The San Mateo, Calif. company is navigating some stormy changes in the market recently, where investors are more cautious about investing in social media start-ups that may not grow as quickly going forward as they have been.

VentureBeat first reported last week that RockYou recently changed its fundraising plans: While RockYou had wanted to raise up to $70 million at a whopping valuation of $400 million, we learned it was having trouble doing so on terms it was comfortable with. The company signaled to me that it had changed its plans, but chief executive Lance Tokuda (pictured left, with co-founder Jia Shen, right) wouldn’t elaborate.

VentureBeat has since learned the company this week raised $1 million from Doll Capital Management (DCM), a Silicon Valley venture firm. I’ve asked the company for comment.

DCM, a firm co-led by partner David Chao (pictured below), has invested strategically in Internet companies, sometimes later in their development cycle. I don’t know what the valuation of the RockYou round was, but it was very likely between $200 million and $400 million, where offers to Rockyou came in over the past two months. DCM may have wanted to invest in the company at a high valuation for opportunistic reasons: If RockYou ever goes public or gets sold, DCM can point to RockYou as an example of a successful company in its portfolio, even if the profit DCM eventually gets from the deal may not be all that great.

Venture firms typically like a return of about two or three times their money when they invest in a late-stage company like RockYou. However, RockYou is increasingly unlikely to produce such a return, at least if a deal happens at a very high valuation of say, $400 million. At least, many investors don’t think RockYou will produce such a return in the short run, which I’ll explain below. On the other hand, $1 million is such a small amount of money for a firm like DCM to invest (DCM has a $500 million fund), the deal may be worth it for publicity reasons.

DCM made a similar late-stage investment with SMIC, a Chinese semiconductor company that went public in China several years ago, but which had a rocky ride afterward — though DCM’s investment of double-digit millions into SMIC was part a classic “mezzanine” strategy that many VC firms practice, and can make good sense. I’ve reached out to DCM for comment, but haven’t heard back.

Here’s what’s happening in the market right now, based on some interviews I’ve had with venture capitalists: They say the market is suffering from a social media hangover. Glam and Slide were valued in the $500M range, because the assumption was their growth would continue. But sentiment has changed, and increasingly investors are negotiating deals based on what happens to a company if its traffic is leveling off. That’s why RockYou won’t be supported at the $500 million level or more, according to some investors I’ve talked with, even if RockYou’s growth has continued so far (traffic directly to its site has stagnated, according to Compete, but its global network growth is growing, according to Quantcast. The network includes traffic to sites where RockYou’s products are featured, but which aren’t directly owned by RockYou).

Sure, Facebook is an anomaly, and was able to command a stratospheric $15 billion valuation (keep in mind that Microsoft got an exclusive ad deal in return for its investment in Facebook, which helped push up the value Microsoft was willing to give Facebook). And Google bought YouTube for $1.5 billion, but that was buoyant Google. Otherwise, there’s no evidence of social media companies deserving a value of more than $1 billion. Club Penguin was sold for $700M, and Bebo at $850M, but those sales were part of the euphoric era.

There’s a realization that the big, industry sweeping “platform” companies like Facebook and YouTube really are exceptions. The Slides, the RockYous, the Gaias and Hi5’s of the world may not be able to compete at the platform level. They’ll still get good traffic, but these companies are looking at exits of between $400 and $600 million at the high end. Investors are willing to take a two or three-fold return at the mid- to late-stage of a company’s growth, which means they’ll invest at a much lower valuation.

In some ways you can draw an analogy to the old TV era. You had three networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, and entrants such as FOX and CNN as a viable competitive platforms. However, there wasn’t much more room for more. Animal Planet and History Channel could get niche audiences, but weren’t able to expand too much beyond it.

On measures like overall user traffic, RockYou is still neck-and-neck with Slide (indeed, faring better than Slide, if you believe Quantcast; see chart below), but RockYou has been a step behind in its fund-raising. RockYou raised $11 million last year, at the same valuation of Slide did a bit before — around $50 million. Before that, RockYou raised $1.5 million from Sequoia. It has now raised a total of $13.5 million.

Of course, there’s always the chance of a wild-card investor, which RockYou is probably hoping for. Here’s an outline of what investors are thinking about Internet valuations. While most venture investors have sobered, some big public market players are still willing to take big risks, borne out by Meebo’s raise of $25 million on a valuation of $200 million.

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Four venture capital personnel moves:

Robert Theis, a venture capitalist who left Silicon Valley firm DCM last year after serving for eight years, has joined Scale Venture Partners, also in Silicon Valley, as managing director. Thies will focus on investment in “technology infrastructure and applications.” At DCM, Theis invested in companies PGP, Roamware, NeoPath (acquired by Cisco) and the now-public VanceInfo. We’re not certain why things didn’t work out at DCM (all sides say something different), but it’s true that DCM has focused more on investments in Asia of late, and a refitting was needed. Previously, Theis was an executive at New Era of Networks (NEON), and before that spent a decade at Sun Microsystems.

Erika Brown, a long-time reporter at Forbes covering venture capital, is leaving to join venture capital firm Matrix Partners‘ office in Silicon Valley, where she will be director of marketing and business development (see her Facebook message). She told me she’ll serve the firm in a number of roles, for example helping market portfolio companies, but also providing research on what companies to invest in, including due diligence. Brown, you’ll recall, is the reporter who puts together the Forbes Midas list of the top 100 investors (see most recent Midas List). Now the question is, who takes over her role? Who will draw the ire of the VCs who are left of the list, those who complained so vociferously each year to Brown.

Separately, Bob Lisbonne, a partner at Matrix, who was a key product manager during Netscape’s early days, is leaving the firm. Too bad to see one of the more geek-friendly VCs leaving the field. He’s known to still code occasionally. Among Lisbonne’s board positions are Blue Lane Technologies, Consera Software (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), Euclid Media, LucidEra, PostPath, Renkoo, TeaLeaf Technology and Xign. In a statement, he said: I intend to explore some new ideas, have fun writing software, and ultimately pursue one or more entrepreneurial endeavors. I’ll continue to work out of my office at Matrix, so all my contact info remains the same.

Christopher “Woody” Marshall, has left Trident Capital to joined Technology Crossover Ventures as a general partner in Palo Alto, Calif. Among the investments he managed at Trident were AccountNow, Advanced Payment Solutions, Bytemobile Inc., Merchant e-Solutions, MapQuest, SideStep and Xata. TCV is investing a huge $3 billion fund, raised last year.

Update: This just in, courtesy of PEHub: Cynthia Ringo has left VantagePoint Venture Partners, and is partner at JP Morgan spinout DBL Investors , which is raising its second fund. This becomes her third VC gig. Ringo has moved around a lot. Previously, she was CEO of CopperCoom. She led the failed Pluris. She was also executive at Madge Networks and Red Brick Systems. Before VantagePoint, she was at BluePrint Ventures.

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Xiaonei, the company that likes to call itself the “Facebook of China” has raised a whopping $430 million from financial backers, VentureBeat has learned from the company’s investors.

The backing gives it a larger financial warchest than Facebook itself, and sets the scene for a showdown with the American company. Facebook has just started to get serious about entering the huge, fast-growing Chinese market.

The backing of Xiaonei could be a statement that the company intends to fend off China from Facebook’s advances. Xiaonei’s site sports the soothing blue border colors almost identical to Facebook’s; its thus not entirely surprising that Xiaonei would also copy Facebook’s ambitious fundraising strategy.

Recently, Facebook took $100 million (in two tranches) from Hong Kong business mogul Li Ka-Shing, in what is widely considered a strategic move to get help to enter that market. Facebook hasn’t entered China yet. But Ka-Shing’s company, Hutchison Whampoa Ltd, runs everything from major port facilities to mobile, location-based 3G services in China and other countries — all of which could be attractive to Facebook in China’s vibrant mobile market.

Xiaonei is owned by Oak Pacific Interactive (OPI), a holding company with a number of online communities.

The lead investor in this latest round is SOFTBANK Corp.

The huge investment in OPI translates into about 35 percent of the company, according to its investors, meaning the overall company is now worth more than $1 billion on paper. But that’s still far less than Facebook’s value — which is $15 billion, at least based on the value Microsoft gave it when the giant backed Facebook last year.

Facebook has raised $378 million in total over several rounds, including from venture firm Accel Partners, which has also invested in OPI.

While the investment was made into OPI, the money will mainly be used to helping expand Xiaonei.com, the company said. Xiaonei is China’s largest social-networking site. Two other groups, SBI and JOHO Capital, participated in the funding.

Xiaonei.com’s features include include multiplayer gaming and wireless services for mobile users. In the college market, Xiaonei.com claims a dominant market share, but hasn’t released any specific user data [update: Xiaonei had "22 million registered users and 12.7 million daily users by March," reports Communication Information, cited via Pacific Epoch. Xiaonei had 280 million page views in March, according to the report. Thanks to Christian, from comments.]

It’s true, though, that in China, there are few Facebook-like sites. Most social sites are like MySpace, where people are freer to use false identities. OPI also owns and operates Mop.com, the largest entertainment portal, and Donews.com, one of the leading IT blogging services in China.

Oak Pacific also announced that Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SOFTBANK Corp. will join the board.

Existing investors of OPI include General Atlantic, DCM, Technology Crossover Ventures, and Legend Capital. OPI had already raised $48 million from those investors two years ago.

Update: I just talked with David Chao, a partner at venture firm DCM and early investor in OPI, and one of its six board members. When I asked him about the Facebook clone-like blue color, Chao said he thinks the blue “looks like IBM to me.” He added that most sites these days are either blue, green or orange.

Chao was on the board two years ago when it decided to acquire Xiaonei, at the time a small startup. OPI invested heavily into the company, to make it a Facebook-like site. When combined with the traffic of OPI’s other property, Mop (which is more like a MySpace), they make up China’s fourth most visited site in China.

Notably, Chao said the company is cash flow-positive, meaning it didn’t really need to raise money. But Chao said that, after some debate, the company decided to “put the pedal to the metal, and really dominate the market,” he said.

As for Facebook, Chao said he doesn’t see the companies competing closely short-term, because Facebook isn’t even present in China. He noted most strong Chinese companies are home grown, from Alibaba, to 51Job, Baidu, Ctrip and Sina. “There might be an exception, but history tells us there’s not going to be too much to worry about an outside, non-Chinese born company taking a big chunk of the Chinese market.”

Update II: Reuters and WSJ are reporting the investment was only $96 million, but they seem to have gotten it wrong. There was also a reference to warrants, which is also wrong. Here’s what I think happened: They must have taken an Nikkei article about the investment (which referred to yen) and converted to dollars mistakenly. The Nikkei article refers the company’s draw of $100 million, as the first tranche of the total round. But the $100 million was assumed a 100 yen rate - so it ended up as 100 oku yen in the Nikkei article then it got recalculated at 105 yen to a dollar and ended up with 96 million. In the same article it clearly states total round will be 400 mil (oku) - so it got converted twice wrongly.

ソフトバンク、中国ネット大手を傘下に――最大市場に攻勢

ソフトバンクは中国のインターネット大手、オーク・パシフィック・インタラクティブ（ＯＰＩ、北京市）を傘下に収めることで同社と合意した。約400億円で株式の40％を取得、経営権を握る。急成長する中国ネット市場で携帯電話経由の情報提供など新サービスの拠点とする。中国のネット人口は今年、2億2000万人超と米国を抜き世界最大に浮上する。国内大手のミクシィや米グーグルなど米国勢も事業展開を加速しており、巨大市場を巡る攻防が激化する。

ソフトバンクはＯＰＩ株式の約14％を約100億円で取得。20数％分の新株予約権も得た。最終的に総額400億円を投じて出資比率を約40％に高める。同社創業者のジョー・チェン最高経営責任者（ＣＥＯ）を上回る筆頭株主となり、孫正義ソフトバンク社長は取締役に就任する見通し。

[4月30日/日本経済新聞　朝刊]

Update III. Furthermore, there were no warrants, as discussed by some sources. Next, the amount discussed in Nikkei article was $400 million, but that’s just the Softbank portion. It didn’t count the $30 million contributed by Joho and SBI.

Finally, there are no milestones - the pulling down of the first $100 million (instead of the full amount of $430M) is just cash timing that is best for both sides - nothing to read between the lines.

UStream.TV, a live video-streaming application, has raised $11.1 million in a first round of funding from venture capital firm DCM, as well as previous investors Labrador Ventures and The Band of Angels.

Since its launch in March of last year, the broadcasting platform says it has had more than 260,000 broadcasters, 2 million viewer hours per month, 2.2 million unique visitors per month, and 400-600 streams at any given moment. It claims to have grown 325 percent over the course of the last six months

Users with a web-cam and an internet connection can stream via browser to any user across the web, including an embeddable widget for personal blogs, websites, and social networking accounts. Ustream, like some of its competitors, lets users download files in a variety of video formats, like .FLV, .WMV, .MP4 and .MOV. This way, users can upload syndicate their videos on the many video-sharing sites out there. Check out the sample, above.

The Los-Altos, Cali.-based company has had a wide range of celebrities and politicians use its services from Senators Obama and McCain, to artists Chris Brown and The Plain White T’s, and counts Bebo, Veoh, Digg, Meebo, Sun, and the Republication National Convention as past and current partners.

The video-streaming market is heating up, as competitor Qik’s parent company Visivo Communications raised $3 million to expand the mobile streaming app, and Yahoo announced its own video-streaming service.

And with more than 14 competitors ranging from Justin.tv to Kyte and Mogulus to Flixwagon, it is far from clear which company will emerge as the dominant leader in video-streaming, but UStream.Tv now has a significant cash advantage over its rivals.

In early February, rumors swirled that UStream.Tv was facing acquisition talks with Microsoft, but were never confirmed or denied as the company chose to raise money instead.

BridgeLux has secured a hefty $40 million round to use for product development and expansion, despite facing ongoing patent litigation from giant LED maker Cree.

BridgeLux, like Cree, makes the chip that is the light-emitting part of LEDs, which it then sells to other firms. The company’s chips are predominantly in electronics and automotive applications, but are also being delivered for use in general lighting for homes and businesses.

The funding is notable because it’s one of the larger LED investments to date. BridgeLux is one of a generation of startups that is working toward the point, likely only a couple years off now, that LED lighting becomes widespread in the consumer lighting market.

In the United States alone, that market is estimated to be worth $1 billion by 2011, growing at about 37 percent each year. Other segments of the LED market will also grow significantly, if not quite as quickly. Adoption should be driven by the higher efficiency, reliability and safety of LEDs over other forms of lighting.

Some other LED companies that have taken funding within the last month including Illumitex, with $5.25 million; Optoelectronix, which took $6 million; and Luminus Devices, which grabbed a whopper round of $72 million in early March.

BridgeLux, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., also took $23 million last August; its total funding is now at $71 million. The lead investor for this round was VentureTech Alliance, which was joined by DCM, El Dorado Ventures, VantagePoint Venture Partners, Chrysalix Energy and Harris & Harris Group.

Outspark, a rapidly growing community games publisher with one million users in just five months, is out to change the online game market.

Based in both San Fransisco and Seoul, Korea, Outspark wants to challenge the subscription-based model of Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games that’s predominant in the U.S. by offering games for free and getting revenue from the sale of virtual goods instead of subscriptions.

It’s a model borrowed from the highly successful Korean and Chinese online gaming markets. Users trade real money for virtual money (in this case “sparkcash,” the Outspark currency) and purchase virtual goods related to the games they play.

The company has published two games to date — Fiesta (screenshot below) and Secret of the Solstice (screenshot above), which is still in final beta — and announced today that it’s raised $11 million in a second round of funding.

Tencent Holdings, which operates QQ.com — China’s leading internet portal and instant messaging company that has 289 million active users — is leading the round along with existing investors Altos Ventures and DCM, who invested a combined $4 million in April of last year.

CEO Susan Choe, who has worked in investments and global operations for several internet companies, including Yahoo, said she wants to build a “virtual playground sorta like Disneyland.”

Outspark will offer casual to mid-casual games in all types of genres so that users can select different games based on mood, the same way they watch TV, she said.

Outspark plans to personalize the Asian-gaming model by weaving a social community into the fabric of their games, Choe said. Users get a single ID and use the same currency across all of Outspark’s games, so they don’t need to sign up multiple times for the same services. The idea is to encourage Outspark users to connect through common interests, not just through the games they play together.

Each Outspark game acts as an independent sort of “ride” (hence the Disneyland reference), where each game developer/producer can throw events, such as a virtual costume ball, or group dances.

The market for these games has expanded since 2003 when North Americans broadband usage started to increase, Choe said. She attributed the lack of competitors (they don’t consider Second Life a competitor) to the fact that game companies are only just realizing that digital assets can generate so much money.

According to Han Kim, co-founder and general partner of investor Altos Ventures, three to four out of every 10 players buy virtual goods in Outspark’s Fiesta, their first live game, and the amount of money they’re spending is growing.

In Korea, Kim said, game publisher Nexon generated $200 million a year from a game called “KartRider,” which was little more than an online cart racing game. Users bought upgrades from the virtual store, like a new set of tires or designs for their carts.

Outspark said it plans to release a flash-based game this month and to double users by year’s end. According to Choe, they have a leg up on potential competitors because of they’ve got both Korean and U.S. game developers and producers on their team. But she says she’s interested in partnership — with a company like Yahoo, or even Electronic Arts. Time Warner has expressed interest in having Outspark create a virtual world on an outsourced basis

In fact, the company’s team of 40 is largely drawn from media and gaming companies such as Yahoo, Electronic Arts, Blizzard, Nexon, and Dreamworks and will be competing against companies like Red 5 studios, which has nine people on its team who were also behind the launch of uber-popular game World of Warcraft.

Kim said the company’s “cross-cultural” relationship with Korean game developers will enable them to publish games for the U.S. market that are novel and innovative. They also expect to release constant updates and upgrades, where console game companies don’t upgrade after a game has shipped.

Choe said the company’s real strength will be its open APIs, on which game developers and gamers can develop their own Outspark games. The company also plans to offer APIs, games and communities in other languages, she said.

Catalyst Mobile, a startup that delivers mobile music and entertainment for large partners like China Mobile, has raised $10 million in funding.

The Emeryville, Calif., company provides a panoply of mobile services, essentially trying to do everything mobile for big companies: Foremost, it offers music download technology, with digital rights management. It offers this directly, but also offers the download technology to companies like Warner Music Japan’s Rhino mobile (see screenshot).

But it also offers playlist recommendations, search and advertising. It supports applications in Flash (some of the company’s founders came from Macromedia) as well as SMS, MMS and Java.

The company has already secured a solid foothold in both Japan and China, having landed numerous partnerships with major handset manufacturers, mobile carriers and content providers in both countries.

Japan is one of the world’s most technologically advanced mobile markets, while China is the world’s largest, with more than half a billion mobile subscribers. Among Catalyst’s other plans, the company tells, is providing mobile services for the Beijing Olympics.Such local partnerships are key to gaining traction in these countries. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, among other companies, are pursuing the same strategy.

Catalyst will use the funding to expand into other parts of Asia and Europe where mobile carriers give independent companies wide-ranging access to their networks.

Sofinnova Ventures and DCM participated in the round.

(Screenshot via 3G.)

Wikinvest, a site that allows investors to collaborate by editing pages about stocks and other opportunities, has raised $2.5 million in a first round of capital.

The San Francisco company launched two months ago. The investment was made by Silicon Valley venture firm DCM.

It’s not clear how this company can distinguish itself, given the large number of other Web 2.0 investment sites (i.e., CakeFinancial, Stockpickr, SocialPicks) and financial news sites (i.e., Seeking Alpha, Monitor110) that have launched recently. It relies on people to contribute to the site, but providing incentives to insightful people to take the time to participate may be tough. The company lets users type in a company name to get information about a company, but they can also start with an idea like the rising price of oil, the crisis in subprime lending or the iPhone. Moderated wiki companies already exist, from non-profit Wikipedia, to for-profit Wikia.

Wikinvest divides company coverage into “neutral”, “bull,” and “bear” perspectives so that investors can understand the range of arguments for and against investing in a particular stock. In addition, the site lets users add insights about movements in stock prices, including letting them annotate WikiCharts, or stock charts open to outside editing.

(Update: Turns out, Care.com, a very similarly named site, has just raised $2M. More below.)

Caring.com, a Silicon Valley web site aimed to help people care for aging parents, plans to launch its Web site Friday, and has raised $6 million in a first round of venture funding.

Split Rock Partners led the round. DCM, which previously backed the Palo Alto, Calif. company with $750,000 in seed capital, also participated according to VentureWire (subscription required).

Founder Andy Cohen conceived the idea last year after he had trouble finding information about how to care for his mother, who was sick with lung cancer.

Since that time, several health-related start-ups have launched or raised funding, including DailyStrength (see coverage ) and PatientsLikeMe, many of them including offering information about diseases and the symptoms people are feeling — and ways for people and relatives to share information and experiences about these diseases. Separately, regulatory filings show that Care.com (note the name is slightly different from Carling.com), a company that helps you search for caregivers, has just raised $2 million in another round led by Matrix Partners (adding to $3.5M already raised; see our coverage).

Caring.com, however, will offer specific information for the caretakers of people suffering from diseases — including not only information about diseases but practical information about care housing and legal tips (how to draw up a will) and sharing features.

“This will allow us to make sure we have the best content available to be able to market the site,” Cohen said of the Series A round. “Everybody needs this, but we want to make sure they know about it when they need it.”

BridgeLux, maker of chips for “light emitting diodes” that are environmentally cleaner lighting sources than standard lightbulbs, has raised a $23 million third round of funding, according to VentureWire (subscription required).

It joins the rush of other LED companies, including D.lightdesign (coverage), Quanlight (coverage), Intematix (raised $25 million from DFJ and Crosslink), Group IV Semiconductor ($8.2M from Khosla Ventures and BDC Capital). Yet another company, publicly traded Cree, has sued BridgeLux for patent infringement.

The BridgeLux round was led by new investor Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, and included DCM, El Dorado Ventures, Harris & Harris Group. New investor VantagePoint Venture Partners also participated. It adds to the $8 million already raised by the company. The company’s LED chips provide light in devices such as mobile phones, camera flashes and automobiles.

Meanwhile, Ottawa-based Group IV also raised another round from Garage Technology Ventures Canada, Applied Materials and existing backers.

Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. estimates that the market for LEDs used for illumination and display will grow to $4 billion in 2001 from less than $1 billion in revenue last year, VentureWire noted.

Adspace Networks, of New York, has raised $30 million to bring its media screens and advertisements to U.S. shopping malls, just the latest in a crowd of companies pushing a similar strategy.

There’s NearbyNow, backed with $7.5 million from DFJ and Draper Richards (see our coverage), that focuses on search for malls, along with advertising. There’s RippleTV (see coverage), which has raised $15 million, also backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, along with Trinity Ventures. DFJ and Trinity also backed China’s Focus Media, which puts monitors in public places in China, and had a successful IPO. There’s Reactrix Systems, which places interactive screens in malls, and has raised more than $75 million (see our coverage).

Investors in AdSpace include the Walnut Group and the Hauser Davis & Tysoe Group, as well as existing bakers AIG Global Sports & Entertainment Fund, Steelpoint Capital, DCM and GIC Special Investments. The round included $10 million in debt — supplied by Comerica Bank. The company has raised $67 million in total.

The company’s research finds that shoppers view screens an average of 3.3 times per visit, with an average total viewing time of 1.9 minutes (that seems high to us; it suggests there’s lots of bored people going to malls). The company predicts it will be profitable by year’s end, on $20 million in revenue.

Why not let Internet junkies do your marketing for you?

Brickfish, a San Diego company, lets you do that by tapping into the creative energies of Internet users — getting them to work for free, essentially, to generate marketing ideas for you.

The music band Incubus tried it out. Take a look at the 150 marketing ideas generated (or see samples at left) when the band asked for ideas on an album cover. It offered the winning designer a signed lithograph and a CD catalog.

Customers like Incubus pay Brickfish anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 per campaign, depending on the number of ideas that users submit, and the number of times the ideas are viewed, reviewed or voted on. However, the users who generate content, they get paid $0. Unless, of course, they win, and get the prize.

Ah, the wonders of user generated content (UCG, as it has become known in industry jargon)!

Investors, too, apparently think it is a no-brainer idea. Brickfish will announce to tomorrow that it has raised $11.2 million in a first round of funding from DCM, a Silicon Valley venture firm. Other investors include Draper Richards, Draper Associates, Mangrove Capital and OCA Ventures.

Chief executive Shahi Ghanem, former president of Nasdaq, said advertisers seeking to build brands through banner ads, pop-ups and other ways are getting frustrated. Those avenues are increasingly ineffective, he said.

Brickfish launched in January, and claims about 40,000 members. It’s way early to say whether the company will succeed or not. The trick is whether Brickfish can get users to take this one extra step. Once users submit their ideas, will they be proud enough of them to put them on widgets in their blogs, to share with still more users — again, all for free? Well, that is the $11 million question. It would be viral marketing that big advertisers like Pepsi could only dream of.