VentureBeat

Here’s the latest action:

Rulings could make website owners more vulnerable to lawsuits — Decisions made by judges in two separate cases, against Friendfinder.com and Roommates.com, could expose websites to potentially harmful lawsuits, according to an article on CNET. Websites were previously immune to most lawsuits based on content added to their sites by others.

Video search firm Meevee wants to throw in the towel — “Combining with an established player will maximize the potential for the community, technology and content relationships the company has built,” in-video search company Meevee said in a press release yesterday. Translation: Despite some growth, 1.1 million unique users per month just isn’t cutting it for a company that took $27 million in funding. Investors included Bay Area Equity Fund, Defta Partners, FCPR Israel Discovery Fund, Labrador Ventures, Rothschild Ventures and WaldenVC, according to peHUB. We wrote more about the company’s business model here.

Scientists learn to map CO2 emissions — Researchers have found a way to do daily tracking of carbon dioxide emissions based on locality. Preliminary results show the Southeast is an even heavier emitter than previously realized (but California produces a lot, too). It seems likely that such maps could someday be used to help address problem areas, when attempting to scale back emissions.

EMC lays down $213M for storage firm Iomega — Iomega, the maker of the popular branded storage drives Zip and Rev, sold itself to information infrastructure company EMC for $213 million. EMC has three main divisions, in content management, information security and storage; the acquisition should help it expand further into the consumer market.

Nimsoft acquires Indicative Software — Nimsoft works in the information technology management field, competing with the “Big Four” made up of Hewlett-Packard, CA, IBM and BMC, while Indicative Software makes domain monitoring and end-user experience testing tools for IT departments. The acquisition price was not disclosed. Indicative had taken $19 million from Sequel Venture Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures and Vista Ventures. [Red Herring]

Search engines pressured to delete user info more quickly in Europe – Google and other search engines should delete info showing what users searched for within six months, says the European Commission, which is considering making the suggestion a commandment. Google global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer claims the data should be kept for up to 18 months in order to help protect user’s identities, but the argument may not sway the EU. Thanks to the global nature of the internet, any decision made overseas may well be reflected at home.

Mytopia raises part of first round for cross-platform gaming — We recently wrote about Mytopia, which is working on connecting games across platforms like Facebook and MySpace. It’s raised about half of a sub-$5 million first round of funding, according to VentureWire. Update: According to Mytopia itself, they’re simply “in the midst” of raising a first round, and have not disclosed the total amount they’re aiming for.

Floating solar balloons proposed to power remote regions — Israel’s Technion Institute of Technology has created a design for floating, thin-film solar cell-coated balloons capable of generating about a kilowatt of power each, aimed at powering remote regions. It plans to start selling them in spring 2009. One question: Don’t remote regions, almost by definition, have plenty of free space on the ground? [Reuters via Ecogeek]

Snocap, the company that wanted to let bands set their own licensing terms for music downloads across the Web, has cut its staff by 60 percent, CNET has confirmed.

The San Francisco company has struggled to define a business model amid quick change in the industry, and recently had moved into new areas, setting up online stories for musicians at various sites. It said its technology can track the usage of music online, and ensure that it is being licensed properly, according to copyright. The stores were a way for musicians to sell the music. A good idea, but a fragile one considering it needed to find a way to make money from it.
We’ve been barraged by meaningless press releases from the company - four in the last month alone — that try to drum up publicity. A recent one was for aTreasure Trunk contest at the Treasure Island music festival in San Francisco.

Snocap was best known for being the post-Napster effort by Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning. Fanning had since left the company, however, starting his own gaming company, Rupture.

The blog ValleyWag first reported the story, and said the company is for sale, and a spokeswoman didn’t dispute that.

In September 2006, Snocap announced a deal to sell music on MySpace, allowing bands to sell music for whatever price they wanted, in line with Snocap’s model. Snocap would get a small cut. That deal appears to still be in place.

The company was backed with $25 million from Ron Conway, Morgenthaler Ventures and WaldenVC.

Glam Media, a Brisbane company that claims its online fashion site network has seven million unique readers per month, has raised $18.5 million in a third round of funding.

It has now raised a staggering $30 million, a huge amount of cash for a relatively new media company. The company is valued at $150 million after the round, according to various media reports, a level that nears absurdity. VentureBeat has not confirmed that value, but if true, it will be very difficult to turn a media company into something worth that much in the real marketplace.

Difficult, but possible, in this climate. It has a strategy. It plans to make a number of acquisitions, buying up Web 2.0 and other media properties. It has also struck a syndication deal with Hearst Magazines, whereby it is allowed to run that company’s content. Investors are clearly betting on the value of eye-balls, and in this sense, we’re back to 1999.

Its name, Glam, is sexy enough to help it grow. Glam cites ComsScore to say it is a top-10 women’s Web network (which include its own sites, but also Dwell, Nylon and 200 other sites and blogs). It runs news on fashion and celebrities, and then runs ads for folks like Guerlain, Victoria’s Secret, DKNY, Max Factor, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Neiman Marcus and Target. It pledges 10 million unique readers by the end of the year — representing very robust growth. It says it will be profitable soon.

DAG Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investors including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Accel Partners, WaldenVC and Information Capital.

Co-founder Samir Arora previously worked at NetObjects (acquired by IBM) and Tickle.

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.