VentureBeat

Real Girls Media, a new San Francisco start-up that wants to publish content for women, has raised $6 million in a first round of funding.

We reported earlier how another company, Sugar, had raised $5 million, led by Silicon Valley high-profile venture firm Sequoia Capital, after that blog site for women showed considerable traction. So this effort by Real Girls comes is somewhat predictable: You have to raise more than your competitor to lure talent, and because Web 2.0 is bubbly right now, you can do it pretty easily.

The company hasn’t launched yet. Rather, it is constructed in the opposite way to Sugar: top down. This should be a great case study of two polar strategies: Sugar was launched with the grit of a founder’s own money; Real Girls is formed from the comfort of a venture capital firm’s arm-chair: It is founded by Kate Everett Thorp (pictured below), who was a venture partner at San Francisco venture firm Walden VC. Her job was to look for ideas, and so formed a vision on an entirely reasonable idea in this environment — of targeting women of all age groups, offering them ways to submit and publish their views and stories.

Thorp is accomplished, so we don’t want to judge this company until it launches next year. She comes from the advertising side. She launched and sold Lot21 Interactive Advertising Group for a profit — and so her project at Real Girls will likely be advertising driven, as opposed to content driven.

The backing comes from WaldenVC, and another firm, 3i.

The first Web site, DivineCaroline.com, is due to launch in early 2007, is targeted for women aged 25 to 54. Additional sites aimed at other age groups will follow in 2007, and so the multi-blog format is also similar to Sugar’s.

If you detect a note of skepticism here, it’s because we moderated a panel last night at the East Bay SVASE, in which some VCs expressed excitement about online advertising, even though we’ve seen so much activity in this area lately. Sure online ads are roaring, but the hype is causing a bevy of me-too start-ups. See the chart below (via Battelle) for why there’s something real going on. But remember, 1999 was real too.

Every day, new ad-based network start-ups are sprouting up. Did you see our piece on SeeSaw, of San Francisco, which wants to put ads in monitors in train stations? Maybe there really are people sitting around in train stations with nothing better to do than peer at ads.

Final tip to RGM: Might want to replace the grey/beige acronym logo.

(Updated with clarification from ePlanet)

Myspace loose with email confirmation — Did you know that someone can sign up as you on MySpace, using your email address?

If you’re not already using MySpace under the email account, then someone can come along and use it to create an account there, and assume your identity. Auren Hoffman, owner of online reputation company RapLeaf, demonstrates this, using the example of signing up ValleyWag’s Nick Douglas.

EPlanet Ventures raises $550 million venture capital fund — This is the global firm, run by Asad Jamal, which used to be affiliated with Draper Fisher Jurvetson. But the two firms split last year, after differences, mentioned here. (Clarification: EPlanet Ventures has since told us it has not fully finished raising the fund. It would not say how much it has already raised, or when it would make an announcement.)

Google acquires replica SpaceShipOne — The ship (pictured here) won the X Prize, and a copy is being installed at Google’s campus.

Chris Anderson, who penned “Long Tail” now pitching “Economy of Abundance” concept:

The basic idea is that incredible advances in technology have driven the cost of things like transistors, storage, bandwidth, to zero. And when the elements that make up a business are sufficiently abundant as to approach free, companies appropriately should view their businesses differently than when resources were scarce (the Economy of Scarcity). They should use those resources with abandon, without concern for waste.

(via David Hornik)

Demand Media, the company pursuing the audacious strategy of buying up a bunch of generic Web sites that have no staff generating real content of their own — to throw advertising on them — has raised another $100 million.

In May, we reported it raised its first $120 million. Lately, though, the company appears to be buying content as well, including acquring Hillclimb Media, a producer of niche web sites.

The chief executive is Richard Rosenblatt, the former chairman of the company that ran MySpace. No doubt he has grand expectations; nothing to lose from swinging for the fences. Among the half-dozen acquisitions in recent months, Demand Media also acquired eNom, which claims to be the second largest domain name registrar.

The financing was co-led by 3i, a London based public venture capital firm with offices in Silicon Valley, and Oak Investment Partners. Spectrum Equity Investors also participated in this round.

Rosenblatt is also chair of an Arizona search engine marketing company, called iCrossing. There too, he has received lots of cash ($15M) from Oak.

Brad Greenspan, a former chief executive of the company that ran MySpace, has been just as active, if not more so.