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While the idea of text messaging has grown in popularity — both via the phone and in the form of Twitter — startup Zannel seems convinced that people are more interested in sharing pictures and video, at least while on their mobile phones.

Zannel, which has been called “a multimedia Twitter,” lets its users post updates and start conversations using text, pictures or video, or any combination of the three. Users can keep track of their friends on their phone, or on their computer.

Now the Menlo Park, Calif. company has raised $10 million in backing to help remain in the pack of companies trying to push mobile social networking.

In his excellent piece for VentureBeat describing the ten most important mobile social networks, mobile consultant Matthaus Krzkowski listed Zannel as one of the fast-growing newbies.

Here’s what he said of Zannel, and particularly noteworthy are his remarks about Zannel’s readiness to mesh itself with other social networks:

Zannel did not disclose detailed traffic figures to me, beyond saying “we currently serve millions of users per month.” Assuming that’s true, that easily makes them one of the big players in the field, and their claim to be “mobile’s first Instant Media Messaging service” may be valid, when you look at market acceptance and consider that rich media apps are its No. 1 traffic driver, according to the company. The majority of Zannel’s business is off-deck where Zannel sees “incredibly fast, viral uptake,” suggesting strong recent growth. Over two thirds of Zannel’s traffic comes from the mobile web, the remainder comes from online.

Zannel sees the iPhone as a transformative product for mobile industry — it increases awareness of mobile’s potential and is a great platform for distributing rich media apps (Zannel’s traffic driver). As a mobile media messaging hub, Zannel lets users visually communicate with other users across all major social networks vs. just one. Therefore, Zannel sees the major social networks as complementary services rather than direct competitors.

The company claims to have numerous big-name partnerships with companies including Warner Bros, New Line Cinema, Activition, Toyota, Limelife and others. It is included with some Verizon and Helio handsets, or can be downloaded by its users.

Alloy Ventures led the $10 million funding and was joined by previous investors U.S. Venture Partners and Palomar Ventures. Zannel has raised a total of $16 million; see our article on its first funding, in 2006 for a few more details on its founders.

updated after reaching CEO Russ Fradin and Cox Chief Financial Officer John Dyer

Adify, whose software helps companies build their own advertising networks, has been acquired by media company Cox Enterprises for $300 million, according to various sources.

We’ve since confirmed the acquisition with CEO Russ Fradin (see his own blog post here).

The San Bruno, Calif. startup had raised around $27 million in total funding, with backers including U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, GE Commercial Finance, NBC Universal, and Time Warner Investments.

Adify has built many vertical ad networks and its client list that includes the Guardian, Forbes.com and NBC WeatherPlus. Some speculate that Adify was a strategic acquisition target for Cox, which is a private but giant media company that owns Cox Newspapers (with related websites) and Cox Networks, the third-largest cable company in the United States.

However, Fradin downplayed the strategic nature of the deal, instead saying it was just the latest move by Cox to enter a high-growth media business, something it has done consistently over the years. Cox started as a newspaper company, but then diversified with each new innovation, moving to radio, TV and eventually online, building Autotrader, for example, cannibalizing its own existing classifieds business. Cox Chief FInancial Officer John Dyer also told us Cox’s media properties could use some help to build their own ad networks, but he said the main reason for the deal was Cox executives’ belief that Adify’s business will continue to grow.

The price tag must have made Adify executives and investors pretty happy. PaidContent reports (and we’ve since confirmed) that the company brought in $7 million in revenue in 2007 and was set to bring in around $35 million this year. Adify launched in 2006 and was founded by Larry Braitman and Richard Thompson, the team that also created Flycast Communications a decade earlier.

The company has built 108 ad networks, Fradin said.

SiBEAM, a company developing technology to stream high definition video more quickly than any existing technology, has raised $40 million in third round of funding.

The financing was led by New Enterprise Associates. The other firms backing up SiBEAM are Foundation Capital and U.S. Venture Partners.

SiBEAM, of Sunnyvale, Calif., is developing a technology called WirelessHD. The technology helps you move rich, high-definition data like video wirelessly from one gadget to another, such as from your portable digital video camera to you TV. We’ve covered the company earlier.

WirelessHD competes with WirelessUSB and WiFi. Wireless USB transfers data at a speed of 480 megabits a second over three meters, while wirelessHD uses the 60-gigahertz spectrum and works in higher speeds, starting at four gigabits at 10 meters and with the theoretical maximum speeds of up to 25 gigabits a second, as the technology matures. That is more than ten times faster than WiFi solutions.

SiBEAM is the first company to build 60GHz chipsets using a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology that lowers the costs of the WiHD solution so that it’s affordable for the mass market.

With the money raised, the company hopes to get is the first WiHD-gadgets to shops by the end of this year.

If SiBEAM succeeds, it will be remarkable. The video market is huge, and who wouldn’t want to download videos faster?

The first devices available to consumers will be “little adapter devices” that are used with the existing gadgets like TV, HD movie players, camcorders and gaming consoles, says John LeMoncheck, the President and CEO of SiBEAM.

The price of the adapter is expected to be on par with WiFi adapters. With the adapter, WirelessHD can be used with old gadgets. WirelessHD chips embedded to new TVs and other new gadgets will appear in shops in the beginning of year 2009, LeMoncheck says.

If you’ve just bought a flat-screen TV, and want to transfer hi-definition video from your laptop or camcorder to your TV, you can buy the adapter — instead of having to buy a new TV.

He says that the main target for the solution is new flat screen TVs. WiHD will work with a range of ten meters, so it’s meant to be used between the devices in one room, not in the whole house.

John LeMoncheck said he is convinced that WiHD will win “the battle of wireless technology” and become the standard in wireless. WirelessHD is promoted by SiBEAM, Intel, LG Electronics, Panasonic, NEC Corporation, Samsung Electronics, Toshiba and Sony. The companies formed a group to promote WirelessHD standard in the year 2006.

SiBEAM was founded 2004 by experts in wireless communications from the University of California, Berkeley and the private industry. The company has 80 employees.

1. Amazon S3, VentureBeat go down
2. Montalvo Systems vs. Intel, with chip for handheld devices
3. Fox Interactive to introduce “music Hulu for MySpace”
4. Yahoo’s board moving against Yang
5. Google searchers are wealthier, buy more online
6. Xobni hires Jeff Bonforte away from Yahoo, to be its new CEO
7. Stormfisher raises $350 million for biofuel project
8. Cable veteran Philip Balboni moving to online news site
9. Nielsen buys Audience Analytics
10. Air commuter conference coming up this spring
11. Report: Online Community Best Practices
12. Wal-Mart chooses Blu-Ray

Amazon S3, VentureBeat go down — Online data storage service S3 went down. Affected startups include SmugMug, 37Signals, Twitter and many others. Lots of coverage on Techmeme. Earlier today, VentureBeat was down because of separate hosting problems.

Montalvo Systems taking on Intel, focusing on a chip for handheld devices — It has designed a chip for smartphones, notebook computers and other portable devices, that should run software that works on Intel or AMD chips. The company’s plans have been outlined in some detail by Michael Kanellos at CNET (our previous coverage ).

Montalvo’s chips, however, will fundamentally differ from the latest Core or Opteron processors from Intel and AMD in that the cores on its chip won’t be symmetrical, i.e. identical to each other. Instead, Montalvo’s chips will sport a mix of high-performance cores and lower-performance cores on the same piece of silicon, similar to the Cell chip devised by IBM, Toshiba, and Sony, according to sources close to the company.

It has received more than $73 million venture and private equity firms including Bay Partners, NEA-IndoUS Ventures, U.S Venture Partners, Leapfrog Ventures, CMEA and Adams Street Partners.

Fox Interactive to introduce “music Hulu for MySpace”– The project, which is still being put together, intends to sign up all the major music labels as content providers — who would get equity. The music would be distributed on widgets and contained in a portal page, similar to video-sharing site Hulu, which Fox is a part of. The music on MySpace would be DRM-free and ad-supported. PaidContent has the scoop.

Yahoo’s board moving against Yang — Founder and chief executive Jerry Yang and a small group sympathetic members are trying to avoid a sale to Microsoft at all costs. But Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock is leading an informal group of board members and billionaire Ron Burkle who think that Yang may be ignoring his fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder returns. The New York Post has more.

Google searchers are wealthier, buy more online — Hitwise numbers here. See chart for more.

Xobni hires Jeff Bonforte away from Yahoo, to be its new chief executive — Bonforte was previously a vice president who helped lead the growth of Yahoo Messenger. Company blog post here.

Stormfisher raises $350 million for biofuel project — It turns agriculture and food-industry byproducts into methane gas, which reduces the levels of waste in landfills. The investor is private equity firm DenHam Capital, which has already sunk many millions into biofuel projects.

Cable veteran Philip Balboni moving to online news site — He’s leaving New England Cable News to join online international news company Global News Enterprises LLC, which is slated to launch in April with more than 70 international correspondents. The new company has taken on around $8 million from angels. (Photo via Columbia University.)

Nielsen buys Audience Analytics – The web measurement company says the Provo, Utah-based startup will improve its ability to handle large quantities of audience measurement data

Air commuter conference coming up this spring — Tech commentator Esther Dyson and publisher Imaginova are teaming up to organize the fourth annual Flight School from July 4-6, an event that brings entrepreneurs together to talk about innovation in aviation and space travel. The focus is still on “air taxis” — basically, smaller planes making local flights on-request — but Flight School’s scope will be broader this year, Dyson told us. Since the conference began, air taxis have become a marketplace reality through companies like DayJet, and commercial space flight is becoming more and more practical too, Dyson said. She added: “When I was a kid, I took it from granted that I would go to the moon. Now it looks like I’m going to have to work pretty hard to get there.”

Report: Online Community Best Practices — Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang delivers the report (buy here). Its tagline is “Communities Are A Powerful Tool, As Long As You Put Members’ Needs First.”

Wal-Mart chooses Blu-Ray — More here. Meanwhile, Toshiba may be ready to give up on HD DVD.

Box.net, a company that lets you store and access files online, said it raised $6 million more in a second round financing.

The round of financing comes at a crucial time for the company, because a host of tough competitors have emerged to make online storage de rigueur.

Google, for one, is about to launch GDrive, which let you store large files, like video, music, and images, and could come free like most of other Google products. Google already lets users have a few gigabyts of storage for free in GMail, its online email service. Gmail has been steadily increasing its storage capacity. PCs carrying Microsoft’s operating system often come pre-loaded now with Norton360 as a default option, a program that backs up all your files online. Not to mention the host of smaller competitors that focus more directly on online storage: Divshare (which is free ), MyFabrik (which recently raised $24.9 million), SoonR and a bunch of others.

Box.net has sought to differentiate itself by making it as easy as possible to use, however it still takes you through a number of steps that can trip up the novice. If you want to upload entire files of documents, it makes you use an applet, which didn’t work for me the first time around.

It offers a widget, so that you can store and access files directly from any Web page. The company is being quiet on its growth, refusing to disclose active user numbers. It merely quotes 1.4 “registered users,” but that includes people who no longer use it (like me, for example).

The funding was led by venture capital firm U.S. Venture Partners, and includes Draper Fisher Jurvetson, who led the company’s first round of $1.5 million a year ago . This year it will focus more on serving large companies, and offering collaboration tools.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you may want to avoid the Web 2.0 area, which is littered now with unpromising me-too ideas. You may want to consider something less sexy — data security, for example.

Vontu, a six-year-old Silicon Valley (Cupertino, Calif.) company which makes software to avoid data loss, said it has been acquired by Symantec, the maker of Norton security software, for a cool $350 million. That’s ten times the amount invested in Vontu by venture capitalists, meaning that management and investors both saw a nice profit.

Symantec said it plans to use Vontu to help customers prevent the loss of confidential information wherever it is stored.

There are lots of companies doing something similar to Vontu, but they all seem to have done well. There’s Oakley Networks (which was bought by Raytheon for $193 million), Port Authority (bought by Websense for $90 million), and others that are still private, including Tablus, Reconnex and Vericept.

Investors in Vontu include Venrock and Benchmark Capital, which had the lion’s share because of early investments, followed by U.S. Venture Partners and General Motors Asset Management.

This is a win by Benchmark partner David Beirne, who tried to hit big during the Internet boom with bets on companies like WebVan. WebVan, of course, was sexy, but was a notoriously bad investment, soaking up more than $1 billion in invetor’s money before going out of business. Vontu, on the other hand, is an example of how patience — over many years of toiling — can lead to solid, robust results. Benchmark first invested in 2002, after the hype of the bubble was long gone.

Vontu said it is close to profitability and expects to make $43 million in revenue this year.

Featured companies: Imalux, Sagent Pharmaceuticals, Sequel Pharmaceuticals, Sinexus, TranS1, U.S. Spinal Technologies

Sagent Pharmaceuticals draws in $53M for injectable generics — Sagent Pharmaceuticals, proving that there’s still life in the apparently lucrative but boring specialty-pharmaceuticals business, raised $53 million in a first funding round. Vivo Ventures led the round for the Schaumburg, Ill., company.

Like other specialty pharmas, Sagent essentially picks up abandoned or cast-off drugs from other companies and tries to make them work in new ways. The company plans to take its first product to market in the fourth quarter, VentureWire reports (subscription required).

From VentureWire:

Schaumburg, Ill.-based Sagent focuses on the development of injectable treatments. The company’s core strength is generic pharmaceuticals, Yu said, and it has a broad-based focus on injectable treatments for a variety of indications. Sagent currently has more than 200 products in development, and plans to launch its first injectable treatment, which has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, in the fourth quarter. For the commercialization, Sagent plans to draw on the 20 business partnerships the company has worked to establish, Pauli said.

NovaCardia spinoff Sequel Pharma draws on $20M for heart drug — Fresh from the sale of NovaCardia to Merck (see our coverage here), officials of that heart-drug company founded a second startup, San Diego’s aptly named Sequel Pharmaceuticals, and raised $20 million in a first funding round. Investors included Domain Associates, Forward Ventures, InterWest Partners, Montreux Equity Partners, and Skyline Ventures.

Sequel owns the rights to one of NovaCardia’s former drugs, which it intends to develop as a treatment for atrial fibrillation, a problem characterized by uncoordinated pumping and electrical activity in the heart’s upper chambers that can put people at risk of blood clots and strokes. The company also plans to develop novel drugs for its pipeline.

U.S. Spinal Tech to seek $20 million — Boca Raton, Fla.-based U.S. Spinal Technologies said it plans to solicit $20 million in third-round funding, VentureWire reports. The company has begun speaking to investors but hasn’t yet received any money.

So far, the company has raised $9 million, 40 percent of that from angels and the remainder from other individuals. U.S. Spine makes several spinal implants that are already on the market, but a flagship device designed to replace the “pedicle screws” that serve as anchor points for rods in spinal fusion is stilll under development.

Sinexus raises $3.5M for sinusitis devices — Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sinexus raised $3.5 million in a first funding round, PE Hub reports, citing a regulatory filing. Investors included Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Buyers and U.S. Venture Partners. The medical-device company is focused on treating chronic inflammation of the nasal passages.

As it turns out, Sinexus also received seed funding in 2003 from Durect, a company that makes drug-delivery technologies. According to this 10-K filed with the SEC, Durect and an unnamed venture-capital firm each loaned Sinexus $150,000; Durect repurchased the obligation from Sinexus in February 2006.

Medical imager Imalux pulls in $5.1M — Cleveland’s Imalux, a developer of optical-tomography imaging systems, raised $5.1 million in a third funding round. The proceeds include the conversion of $2.5 million in bridge financing. Early Stage Partners, ElectroSonics Medical, Reservoir Venture Partners, Symark, and more than twenty other prior and new investors participated in the round.

Spinal-device maker TranS1 sets IPO range, aims to raise up to $88.6M — Wilmington, N.C.-based TranS1, a developer of minimally invasive spinal-fusion devices, said it plans to price its IPO shares between $12 and $14 apiece, yielding a maximum possible take of $88.6 million. See our earlier coverage of TranS1’s IPO here.

Intermolecular, a new company located in the heart of Silicon Valley’s chip industry (San Jose, Calif.), has launched a technology it says will help semiconductor companies accelerate their research and development of new materials.

Manufacturing breakthroughs in semiconductors are getting more difficult, because of the tiny size of today’s chips. Finding new materials has become the hope for many chip companies. Intermolecular, which has been secretive for almost three years, has raised $36 million to develop its platform, which lets chip companies perform many more tests in R&D.

Early investors were CMEA Ventures and Redpoint Ventures, and U.S. Venture Partners and Symyx Technologies joined more recently.

Here’s a snippet from trade pub Semiconductor International (sorry, no link):

Today, much of the industry’s R&D is done with process equipment intended for volume wafer processing. By contrast, the Intermolecular system is intended to create “massively parallel” processes on a 300 mm wafer, up to 570 distinct process variations on a single wafer, said Gus Pinto, executive vice president of business development.

Intermolecular has worked with “a large logic manufacturer” to synthesize a unique molecule that will be used in copper interconnects at the 32 nm node. “This is a molecule that doesn’t exist anywhere else on Earth today, engineered to have properties of interest to that application,” [chief exec David] Lazovsky said. The Intermolecular approach helped the customer develop a novel integration scheme, including a specific process that allows the integration of the self-assembled monolayer. He called it “one of first implementations of a self-assembled copper monolayer.”

The company says it has more than 700 patents granted or applied for.