VentureBeat

Socialmedian, the social news site created by Jobster co-founder Jason Goldberg, is opening the doors on its public test tonight.

The site has a compelling concept — that the best way to sort through the tremendous flood of news is with a little help from your friends — and it has been in private testing mode for four months. Socialmedian is built around news networks with topics like “tech news” and “venture capital,” which pull stories from relevant sources around the web. Users can submit articles to a network, create their own networks and also “clip” (recommend) the articles they find on Socialmedian.

The New York and Pune, India-based startup faces some big challenges; there’s a lot of competition, and not just from news-focused sites. After all, many news aggregators let you share news with your friends, and most social networks let you post interesting articles, too. With its “clip” feature, Socialmedian can also sound a bit like a Digg clone. And when I looked at Socialmedian back in May, nothing really grabbed me. Yes, there were some cool features and a clean interface, but it wasn’t enough to make me change my Google News and Techmeme-driven ways.

But here’s what’s encouraging: Socialmedian is getting better, and fast. Goldberg says Socialmedian’s development model is based on a lesson he learned from Jobster (which doesn’t seem to be taking off, although it’s still raising money) — that the CEO doesn’t know everything. Instead of taking the time to build a rich, fully functional site, Goldberg’s team created the skeleton in just a few weeks, and has been taking user suggestions to flesh out the bones.

“Those 350 different feature requests are what the site is today,” Goldberg says.

Of the features that have been added since May, the most important are the ability to follow individual “newsmakers” and see what they’re clipping and discussing, a “share” button that lets you easily post Socialmedian articles to Twitter and a “volume bar” that lets you adjust how many stories from a network show up in your news feed. (The volume bar wasn’t available when I checked this afternoon, but Goldberg says it should be up once the public test begins, which is right about now.) Even more interesting are some of the features that Goldberg says are coming soon, particularly integration with conversation and aggregation site FriendFeed. FriendFeed already lets people share and discuss news articles, so I’m curious to see if the two services will be as complementary as Goldberg says. Also on the way are invite-only news networks and a Socialmedian iPhone app.

Goldberg says he kept fundraising to a minimum, since he doesn’t need much cash. Socialmedian has raised less than $600,000, but that money comes from some high-profile backers including the Washington Post and angel investors like Reed Hundt, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, and Gordon Crovitz, former publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

In invite-only mode, the site has attracted more than 4,200 users who have created more than 1,000 news networks.

As more and more news floods the Internet, more and more companies are releasing products to help you sift through that flood. One of the latest is socialmedian, a site that uses social networking tools to help users find the articles that are most interesting and relevant to them. The idea, says chief executive Jason Goldberg, is that people with common interests are better at filtering the news for each other than traditional media.

With so much competition, it’s hard to see how another news site can stand out. To use my own habits as an example, I live and die by aggregators like Techmeme and Google News, and there are plenty of sites that offer a more social experience too, most prominently Digg (which just announced a partnership with Facebook). Even Google has started adding sharing and commenting features to its RSS reader. And there are specialized news networks, like the political site Skewz.

But the plethora of sites also points to the size of the problem, and the room for different approaches. Goldberg (who previously co-founded Jobster) and his team are experimenting with tools that can make the newsreading experience better and more personalized.

The site is still evolving, but its core features are its customizable news networks and the ability to “clip” stories. There are currently more than 600 networks on topics like tech news, venture capital and the presidential campaign. Even better, users can create their own networks, identifying general topics and specific news sources that socialmedian should scour for articles.

Within each network, users can click the “clip it!” icon next to the stories that are most relevant to them. That saves the story on a user’s own home page — more importantly, other users can see in their news feeds what you have clipped. Now, “clipping” may sound a bit like “digging” (namely, saying you like a story on Digg), but the focus is less on the all-out popularity contests that you find on Digg, and more on seeing what people with similar interests are reading.

It also helps that socialmedian continues to add bells and whistles. For example, it has launched a contest for users to create and vote on the best design for the site, and it just enabled RSS for user’s news feeds.

Socialmedian is still in private testing mode, so it’s too early to say much about its traction. Still, Goldberg says that 30 percent of the early users are returning to the site daily and view nine pages on average during each visit.

Goldberg also sent out an email today saying socialmedian is “inching toward” public testing. Until then, we’ve got 200 invites for our readers, so you can check it out for yourself. Just go to the socialmedian site, and create a new account using “venturebeat” as the password.

New York-based socialmedian has raised a seed round from angel investors and from the Washington Post. Goldberg says he may raise more angel money later this year.

Here’s the latest action:

1. Yahoo ad and IM leaders head to successful startups
2. VC’s confidence at a four-year low
3. Intel launches chip intended for larger-than-a-cell-phone portable devices
4. Ex-Jobster chief executive Jason Goldberg gets angel funding for new startup
5. Report: MySpace, Facebook image uploading software vulnerable to hacks
6. PR folks, Marketwire has a new way to make your press releases “Web 2.0″
7. Mobile-only social networking site MocoSpace raises $4 million round
8. Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC?

Yahoo ad and IM leaders head to successful startups — Glam Media, the advertising network, has nabbed Dr. Kiumarse Zamanian, who formerly led the Yahoo team responsible for serving, targeting, logging/tracking and predicting inventory for graphical ads across Yahoo’s ad network. At Glam, Zamanian will oversee the development of “premium” Glam ads that appear during prime viewing times and to targeted audiences. Glam has also hired Adam Souzis of StyleMob and expert on XML and RDF web code standards. Pic of Zamanian, left, via his consulting company. (See our our recent coverage of Glam’s fundraising effort, here.)

Meanwhile, instant message service Meebo has hired Chris Szeto (pictured, left), the newly ex-Director of Product Management for Yahoo! Messenger. Szeto was an early believer in Meebo, chief executive Seth Sternburg says. Now, Szeto will be Meebo’s new senior product director.

VC’s confidence at a four-year low — That’s according to a new survey by the Silicon Valley Venture Capital Confidence Index published less than two months after a national survey showed a more positive outlook despite the economy. The confidence level dropped to 3.54 from 4.14 on a 5-point scale. One year earlier, the index had been at 4.38. See this Mercury News article for more. I’ve recently had local investors tell me that the best time for startups to raise venture money is passing now or has already passed, considering the economic outlook. If you’re an entrepreneur looking for funding, you can also check out this list of seed and angel sources — and don’t stop thinking about how to bootstrap your way up.

Intel launches chip intended for larger-than-a-cell-phone portable devices — The company envisions running “full Windows Vista software loads” on these mobile Internet devices, as InfoWeek puts it. The smaller-than-a-laptop devices need very low power consumption to preserver battery life, which the chip offers. However, “[i]t’s not clear if Windows makes it down into this [ultramobile] form factor successfully. The initial ultramobile PCs from Samsung and OQO have not set the world on fire,” as one analyst is quoted as saying in the article. The leader of the mobile pack, however, is the more phone-like Apple iPhone, which analysts expect to grow from fewer than 100 million units this year to to more than 400 million units by the end of 2010. It doesn’t use Intel chips. More Intel product launch coverage on Techmeme.

Ex-Jobster chief executive Jason Goldberg gets angel funding for new startup — Goldberg left job site Jobster last month to start a new company — which will be focused on disrupting the news industry, as he writes on his blog, here.

Report: MySpace, Facebook image uploading software vulnerable to hacks — If you’re on either Myspace or Facebook, and you use the photo uploading services provided by either site, be careful. Two recent reports by researcher Elazar Broad detail how Myspace’s image loader could be hacked to allow specially designed web pages to crash Windows systems. Older versions of the Facebook image uploader are separately vulnerable and could allow for denial-of-service attacks or for malicious code to run on your PC. Recent versions of Facebook PhotoUploader 4.5.57.1 are not vulnerable, according to the report. The company behind both uploaders, Aurigma, recommends upgrading to the latest Myspace uploader versions. You can also disable all ActiveX within Internet Explorer or just disable the uploader completely.

PR folks, Marketwire has a new way to make your press releases “Web 2.0″ — More here.

Mobile-only social networking site MocoSpace raises $4 million round — The funding came from previous investors General Catalyst, Pilot Group and former eBay executive Michael Deering. The site has quickly grown to a billion mobile pageviews, it claims. Techcrunch has more here.

Is Obama a Mac and Clinton a PC? — The New York Times compares the two.

Here’s the latest action:
1) Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg out
2) US delegation to Bali pisses off Al Gore
3) Opera sues Microsoft over Explorer
4) VC Heidi Roizen sheds weight while crafting songs
5) The guidelines for online video success
6) Five hundred ways to customize stuff
7) John Lennon’s son invests in MyStore
8) Most popular search term: iPhone beats Facebook
9) DecentralTV (Kyte) and PermissionTV raise more cash, Podtech on rocks?

Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg out — Jason Goldberg, co-founder and CEO of the job site Jobster, is headed to the Big Apple to work on a new company. Jeff Seely, who just helped sell Sharebuilder, an online share trading site, for $220 million, is stepping into his role. A sign of more trouble for Jobster, or the beginning of a turnaround? As we’ve noted before, despite its $50 million in funding Jobster hasn’t yet done much to put itself ahead of the pack.

US delegation to Bali pisses off Al Gore — Al Gore, the newest star of Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins, doesn’t like what the official US delegation to Bali is up to. Neither do John Kerry or Michael Bloomberg, who have teamed with Gore to become an unofficial delegation at the world climate summit, according to the WSJ. “People are turning away from the official delegation…” a WWF director said, referring to how senior diplomats are snubbing President Bush’s team in order to dine with Gore, et al. Ah, sweet liberal revenge.

Opera sues Microsoft over Internet Explorer — The underdog web browser Opera accuses Microsoft of being a monopolist because it packages Internet Explorer with Windows — the standard fare for eliciting lawsuits against the Redmond, Wash., software giant. However, the suit also complains Microsoft refuses to abide by the design principles of the internet, even with the newer IE7. If the complaint finds footing, Microsoft may be forced to mend its ways, which could make web designers happy.
Venture capitalists Heidi Roizen slims down — Roizen has closed down her venture capital firm, as already reported, and instead has slimmed down, and crafted a collection of songs to help other women lose weight while grooving to her tunes. Details here.

The guidelines for online video success — Blip.tv co-founder Dina Kaplan and others share their insights about the economics of online video with TVWeek. First guideline: You need 50,000 to 100,000 pageviews per month before advertisers will take you seriously, and 500,000 before it can be a full-time job. Read the rest here.

Five hundred ways to customize stuff — Startups or VCs toying with the idea of mass customization in a business may want to take a look at the cyLEDGE International Configurator Database. The people behind it have managed to collect what looks like every product customization tool on the internet, providing a handy reference to those building their own.

Julian Lennon, son of Beatles icon John Lennon, invests in MyStore — MyStore emerged as a response to MySpace’s restrictions against selling within its network, letting artists become their own distributors with a button on their MySpace page. It is now an online service that serves all sorts of sellers, not just artists. Details here.

The iPhone dominates, here and abroad — This year’s-end Zeitgeist reflects both the most popular and the fastest-rising global search terms that people have typed into Google.com over the past year. To see the results, visit http://www.google.com/zeitgeist.

PermissionTV and Decentral.TV both raise more cash, while Podtech struggles — Details here, for the fundings of video sites DecentralTV and PermissionTV. Podtech, another video site, however, has lost well-known blogger Robert Scoble. We’ve asked Podtech’s investors for comment, given increasing rumors the company is on the rocks. We haven’t heard back yet. Scoble is reportedly considering joining Fast Company, but he isn’t confirming yet.