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Teen social network myYearbook has raised $13 million, confirming rumors we were hearing last month. The company has managed to grow in the face of more established competitors, like MySpace, within the pre-college market, according to third-party web measurement firms. Hitwise says myYearbook had 1.54 percent of the overall US social network market share behind MySpace’s 71.92 percent and Facebook’s 16.91 percent in June. ComScore, meanwhile, says myYearbook had more than 4.5 million monthly unique visitors in June, versus MySpace’s 70.5 million and Facebook’s nearly 49 million.

Sure, Hitwise and comScore have varying means of measuring and quantifying traffic, and neither are entirely accurate. But they are worth cross-examining. The positive story that sticks out for myYearbook is that, according to Hitwise, it has grown 384 over its market share in May of 2007, making it the third largest U.S. social network. ComScore numbers are also quite positive: The firm counts myYearbook as a “teen” site and not a “social network,” and ranks it as the number one teen site in the U.S. MyYearbook claims to be popular with its users, getting them to log on eight times per month and spend 30 minutes on the site per visit on average.

For more on myYearbook versus various other types of teen sites, including full-blown virtual worlds for younger teens and other random and relatively small sites, take a look at the Hitwise graph above. (Note the numbers discrepancy due to graph being based on weekly estimates through July, versus the Hitwise numbers from June).

Can myYearbook grow up?

So, New Hope, Pennsylvania-based MyYearbook is a fast-growing, well-used niche site for teens. But it has broader ambitions. As the company says about its founders’ vision, on its site (and I quote verbatim):

Let’s face it, friendster gets boring, myspace is creepy, and classmates is a rip off. myYearbook would be the only community of people worth going to. It would have every high school, every college, every graduate school, every summer program, every employer, everyone.

Sure, MySpace’s growth has slowed, according to both Hitwise and comScore, but let’s not forget the company that myYearbook seems to have forgotten in the line above: Facebook. That company grew 30 percent in June versus the previous June, from nearly 28 million users to more than 37 million, according to comScore. Granted, I’m not sure how much of Facebook’s growth is coming from U.S. teens versus other age groups, I just doubt myYearbook is going to see much growth from those college-age and up, even if it can take more of MySpace’s teenage users.

That’s the thing. Facebook owns US college campuses and it’s leading innovation in the industry through features like its news feeds, developer platform, mobile applications and Facebook Connect. Also, Facebook is growing fast around the world.

Lest I get too down on the company’s potential, it has also been monetizing relatively well for a social network, it claims, by selling advertising packages to brands that let them reach users in certain parts of the site. I’m looking forward to hearing more about that. It also has done a nice job of integrating ways for users to decorate their profiles through its “pimp.myyearbook” section (see below). That may be a strange name for a site that has a lot of teenage users (kids these days!), but free virtual possessions such as profile flair could be a good place for the company to incorporate virtual goods that cost money. Virtual goods appear to be gaining ground among social network users, or at least they are for Facebook application developers.

This investment round was led by Norwest Venture Partners with existing investors US Venture Partners and First Round Capital participating. The company says it will use the money to create new services and make more money.

GumGum is raising $1.2 million in a first round so that it can expand its business of licensing and distributing online content. The Santa Monica, Calif. company has developed a platform to monetize media, starting with photos, that are often pirated online.

Users upload their photos to GumGum. Then users who want to purchase the content can do so at the GumGum site, and the company handles the payment, tracks every time the content is viewed, and protects the content with its proprietary authentication technology, distribution wrapper, and watermarks. Publishers who use the content can pay on a per-use basis, or when it’s viewed, or they can subsidize the usage via ads.

The company uses Flash objects to track impressions and bill them. GumGum, founded by Ophir Tanz and Ari Mir, says that works much better than licensing a photo on a flat fee, which is the industry norm.

You can see GumGum’s wrapper on Internet photos with the tagline, “Photo licensing by GumGum.” GumGum keeps a small percentage of the amount that publishers pay the content owners. Providers of stock photography, such as Fotosearch, Moodboard, and Getty Images, compete with GumGum. So does Redwood City, Calif.-based startup Attributor, which also tracks intellectual property.

Investors in the current round include First Round Capital of West Conshohocken, Penn.

Mashery, to put it simply, helps companies to more easily share their data with outside developers. By making this data more accessible, a company can let other developers use their own creativity to put the information to work.

This technology, called application programming interfaces (or APIs), has been around for years, and has assumed new relevance as more web-connected services look to grow. Auction site eBay has let developers build auction services using its auction data for many years, for example. But APIs are buzzwords these days, and exemplified to consumers by social networks such as Facebook, MySpace and rivals, that let third party developers build applications that access their user information and build applications that integrate into their sites.

You’ll find many web start-ups touting the fact that they have an API. But the real value for an outside developer is using others’ data for their own ends, the promise of more established companies with more established data means more opportunity. That’s where Mashery comes in. It provides support, helping software developers at a company to create APIs for accessing company data in easy ways. It helps a company figure out technical specifications for its APIs, based on the company’s business decisions about what data it does or doesn’t want to share.

San Francisco-based Mashery already has some interesting clients, including international news service Reuters, online real estate site Trulia, online directory Whitepages.com and other corporate clients.

We’ve recently learned that Mashery raised a $2 million round from .406 Ventures, First Round Capital, Formative Ventures Emerging Technologies Fund and angel investor Mark Benioff, who is also the chief executive of online business software company Salesforce.com.

The Benioff investment is particularly interesting, because Salesforce has been busy working with Google and many other companies to let its client companies share their data through its software to others. In other words, Benioff must know that many of Salesforce’s clients have valuable data to share and also want to share it. Mashery is in a niche that serves that need.

Of course, eBay, Google, Facebook and many other tech companies build their own APIs. But as more traditional companies with lots of data develop web properties, look for Mashery’s market opportunities to keep on expanding.

TechForward, one of several companies that sees opportunity in the market for reused consumer electronics, believes its guaranteed buyback plans are just the thing for people always lusting after the latest in high tech consumer electronics.

Like fellow startups Flipswap, Turtle Wings and Second Rotation, TechForward is touting the concept of “Ownership 2.0″ — the idea that you should be able to donate, sell or trade-in a gadget you no longer want. Unlike its rivals, however, the Los Angeles, Calif.-based firm will lock in a future trade-in value for your device at the point of purchase. The firm uses in house research and comparison tools, in addition to information from primary and secondary markets, to determine the value of the gadgets.

A common complaint heard about companies like this is that the customer often gets a lot less for his device than he could’ve had he sold it through a secondary market like eBay or craigslist. Not true, say Jade Van Doren and Marc Lebovitz, TechForward’s co-founders, who argue that comparing their service to eBay is unfair since only about 1 percent of users actually sell goods. Moreover, only Power Sellers, the highest rated sellers, are able to sell their used products at competitive prices, they say. The comparison also discounts the time and fees associated with using secondary markets.

Under a typical scenario, a customer will pay a one-time service fee to purchase a buyback plan, which gives him the option to return the device anytime during the next two years. Returning it earlier or in mint condition will earn a higher amount, paid out either as a check or gift card depending on where the plan was purchased, though the customer can also choose to keep the device. TechForward will then resell or recycle your device, following the highest environmental standards.

Despite what many consider a similar business model, Van Doren and Lebovitz believe their company, unlike other startups that provide extended warranties or trade-in agreements, has carved out a unique market niche with its buyback plan platform. They see themselves as more of a lifestyle company — one that, like subscription service firms Netflix and BabyPlays, embraces the “ownership cycle” model.

It remains to be seen to what extent this concept catches on. Many are unwilling to accept a sometimes steep cut in the value of their device, even if that means they’ll be guaranteed the money. On top of having to pay a one-time, unrefundable service fee, even the most ardent tech fans may think twice before committing to such a program. Given the recent proliferation of other reused electronics startups, however, it’s clear this concept is gaining currency alongside traditional warranty options.

Now that it has gotten its name out there, TechForward’s next objective is to break into national retail chains, particularly consumer electronics retailers like Best Buy or Circuit City. It just announced a new partnership with W3 Solutions, a major extended service plan provider, with which it will offer buyback plans bundled with extended warranties — allowing it to pursue a two-part distribution strategy.

When I asked Van Doren and Lebovitz whether they planned on eventually accepting a greater variety of consumer goods, they told me they would stay focused on consumer electronics for now though they remain opened to new opportunities. TechForward’s goal over the coming year is to ensure its buyback program is offered everywhere consumer electronics are sold and to expand its operations throughout North America and Europe.

The company’s investors include First Round Capital and New Enterprise Associates, with whose help it has raised a first round of funding. It plans on raising a second round beginning in the fall or winter of this year.

Where is technology headed?

The Churchill Club of Silicon Valley just wrapped up one of its most anticipated events: the Annual Top Ten Tech Trends Debate. Five well-known and opinionated venture capitalists weighed in on what trends will take flight and what trends will fizzle out in the months ahead.

(The VCs are pictured, from left to right: Steve Jurvetson, Vinod Khosla, Josh Kopelman, Roger McNamee, Joe Schoendorf.)

The audience of around 300 people was asked whether it agreed or disagreed with the VCs’ predictions. I’ve ranked them below, according to how well they were accepted by the audience.

Last year’s predicted trends included a shakeout of Web 2.0 companies and the rising economic power of Brazil, Russia, India and China.

Trend 1: Customer data stored by different service providers will be combined to create more intelligent services. Josh Kopelman, managing partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture fund, who founded online retailer Half.com (sold to eBay after a year for $300 million) said such customer data includes your financial records, dinner reservations, preferences in the iTunes store, random searches on Google and much more. In this way the Internet goes from satisfying explicit user needs (like searching for a friend to add on Facebook) to satisfying implicit needs (like telling who you should add and why adding them would be helpful to you).
Audience: 95 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 2: Oil will have increasing difficulty competing with biofuels made from cheap non-food crops for transportation. Vinod Khosla (pictured left below, beside Kopelman), founder of Khosla Ventures, which focuses on alternative fuels and green technologies, said coal will become less competitive compared to reliable solar thermal and other alternative energy sources.
Audience: 90 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 3: Water technology will replace abating global warming as a global priority. Joe Schoendorf, partner at Accel Partners, previously vice president of marketing for Apple, said the world is running out of usable water and this will kill millions more people in our lifetime than global warming.
Audience: 80 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 4: The mobile device industry’s migration to smart phones will produce great disruption for big industry players. Roger McNamee, co-founder of Elevation Partners together with U2 lead singer Bono, and early private equity investor in technology, said the disruption will exceed what the PC industry experienced as it moved from character mode to graphical interfaces. Shifts in the competitive balance will hurt Motorola, Microsoft and probably LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Apple, Nokia, Palm and RIM will do better. [McNamee's firm is an investor in Palm]
Audience: 75 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 5: Booming market for healthy aging technologies Steve Jurvetson, managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson and well-known for his founding investment in Hotmail, said a booming market in such technologies will allow people in their 60s and beyond to continue working and living a good life. Every 11 seconds, a baby boomer from the 1940s turns 60. These people have time and money and are Internet-savvy, so they represent an enormous market for services like mental exercise programs and online education in various topics. It fits into a larger vision that could also include an eBay for information services that exceeds the market for physical goods.
Audience: 70 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 6: Four-fifths of the world population will carry mobile Internet devices within five to 10 years. Schoendorf said mobile Internet devices are rapidly becoming the leading device category.
Audience: 50 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 7: Algorithms will be constructed to develop new industrial chemicals, new biofuels and eventually artificial intelligence. This was Jurveston’s prediction.
Audience: 50 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 8: The mobile phone is your most important device. This prediction by Khosla is similar to Trend 6, but he predicted an even more intimate connection with the phone: Mobile phone applications will extend beyond e-mailing to include a virtual credit card, your ID, access to location systems and personal information filing systems. If you lose your phone, your data on it will all be backed up on a network so that you can load it all on to a new phone. Ten years ago people thought it would be ridiculous to have a camera in your cell phone, in two years you will have two cameras per phone – one for taking photos of yourself, and one for taking photos of others.
Audience: 40 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 9: There is going to be a venture capital shakeout. Lower costs and barriers to entry for startups will have a dramatic impact on the venture capital industry and lower returns. This was Kopelman’s prediction.
Audience: 40 percent voted “Yes”.

Trend 10: Within five years everything that matters to you will be available on a device that fits on your belt or in your purse. This was McNamee’s prediction, and it’s similar to Trend 8. This will cause a massive shift in Internet traffic from PCs to smaller devices.
Audience: 30 percent voted “Yes”.

[Photos by Cecilia Aronsson]

Gigya, the Silicon Valley company that lets companies including RockYou track how advertising performs on their widgets across the Web, has raised $9.5 million in a second round of funding from Mayfield Fund and existing investors Benchmark Capital and First Round Capital.

Gigya, based in Palo Alto, Calif., offers ad-monitoring technology among a number of other tools it supplies to widget-makers like RockYou. Gigya helps companies make widgets, but its real focus is on helping those companies — clients include Toyota, Sprint and MTV — spread the widgets across the web and track their performance.

Among other things, it provides drop-down menus that lets users select which social networks they want the widget on (see image at the bottom of the page). This lets widget owners make, say, Orkut the first choice, if the owner wants to market the widget among Brazilian users, or Facebook the first choice if the owner want to market to Canada 20-somethings.

Gigya’s technology is used to install hundreds of thousands of widgets per day, the company says. It tracks more than three billion widget impressions per month. It says it is the largest widget distribution network (for proof, check out the logo-cloud above, which shows the companies it serves).

However, large widget companies like Slide use their own internal technology for distribution and tracking advertising impressions. Clearspring is another competing company, but Clearspring hosts widgets on its own servers, and so maintains more control over the widget making and distribution process. Gigya, by contrast, simply provides a code that is inserted into widgets, and customers like Toyota can choose to run the widgets from their own servers.

Gigya hasn’t focused too much on making money too date, instead it seeking to become the distribution standard on the Web. But it does plan to make money from revenue shares, for example from a company like Toyota, which might pay Gigya a fee for help in distributing its widget to third-party sites.

Co-founder Rooly Eliezerov told me he hopes the company will reach break-even within the next year and a half.

Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha joins Benchmark’s Michael Eisenberg on Gigya’s board.

The online advertising world continues to get shaken up.

OpenAds, a company based in London, is the latest to drive change, undercutting the old guard with a low-cost offering. It offers Web site owners something called an “ad server,” a device lets them take control of their online advertising management. It provides the technology needed by Web sites to control advertising creative, insert into the right place on a Web site at the right time, and then monitor how the advertising performs.

Today, OpenAds announced it is offering a free hosted version, letting Web companies avoid the need for their own server. It also announced it has raised $15.5 million more in financing to expand.

Ad servers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. For example, they can note if you arrive at a site for the second time in an hour and be programmed to show you a different ad than the one you saw the first time — to improve efficiency (here’s a demo of how it works).

There’s also a huge and growing market for ad management, as more and more people go to the web to research and read.

OpenAds’ server is open source, and therefore so cheap that it is undercutting the incumbents, such as Microsoft’s aQuantive, and giant Doubleclick, the company Google is acquiring. While the basic version is free, OpenAds gets paid by offering support.

The second round of financing is led by Accel Partners, with previous investors Index Ventures, First Round Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures participating. It follows a first $5 million round last year.

OpenAds says it is used by more than 30,000 publishers worldwide.