Yoick - Hightechwire

It’s been a busy few days on the funding front — deals that entered the investment pipelines are popping up like flowers in a spring field at the moment. Here’s a snapshot:

* Buzzlogic, a social media influence software company based in San Francisco has not only been chosen by AlwaysOn Media as an AO Media 100 Top Private Companies, but they’ve also secured a Series A round of $9.6 million. The round was led by Adams Capital Management and included Ackerley Partners and Transcosmos.

* Boxxet, based in Burlingame, Ca this popular topic information site creator has raised $900k in seed funding from Ascend Venture Group.

* Music Nation, a New York company focused on independent music videos, has raised a first round of $5.5 million from Greylock Partners and Point Judith Capital.

* OKcupid, a dating site in New York has raised $6 million in angel funding, and a mobile dating service, Icebreaker, from Bellevue, Washington has secured funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners for Crush or Flush, its mobile version of Hot or Not.

* Brightcove has raised $59.5 million in a Series C round. The funding in this online video platform company which bills itself as an Internet TV company was led by AllianceBernstein, Brookside Capital and Maverick Capital and also included a bunch of others along with The New York Times Company.

* Millenial Media, a wireless advertising company based in Baltimore, MD has secured $6.3 million in a Series A round from Bessemer Venture Partners, Columbia Capital and Acta Wireless.

Charles Moldow, a General Partner at Foundation Capital, has written a great piece of advice for entrpreneurs considering their route to market titled VC to aspiring entrepreneur: Are you sure you want out money? in which he outlines the equity dilution principle vis a vis exit opportunities and urges would be investees to think hard about the path they choose.

The latest venture funding activity includes:

* Heavy.com, an online video site for 18-34 year old males, which has closed a $20m financing from Polaris Venture Partners. The funding (which comes on top of $10m provided by Polaris in early 2006) will be used to expand Heavy’s network internationally. According to Mike Hirshland, a partner at Polaris, “Heavy is building a true 21st century media company, which combines internally developed content with great consumer generated content and with a sustainable revenue model. As advertisers expand their online video budgets in 2007, they are looking to work with the few online brands that can effectively deliver audience in scale.”

* With technology developed in Israel, San Francisco based Amobee has developed a telco grade adserving solution for mobile operators, which enables them to ad-fund non-voice related apps and services. The company has raised further funding from Sequoia and Accel (they raised $5m in 2005).

On the M&A side, Colorado-based Digitalglobe, which provides high resolution commercial satellite imagery and geospatial information products has acquired GlobeXplorer, a geographic data integration and publishing company from Stewart REI. GlobeXplorer’s web-based search and delivery apps will augment Digitalglobe’s Quickbird satellite system. The company’s images power GoogleEarth and they anticipate launching two new satellites in 07/08.

Mark Sigal has written an interesting post about the shift from traditional media in which the main rule was that Content is King to the new media arena in which the Conversation is King.

New media is exemplified by the almost random, helter-skelter manner that conversations about a song, a news story or a video clip can spark up and then spread virally across many groups of “friends” who share similar interests.

Unlike “old media,” where content was the star, in new media, it is about the users and giving them control of what they digest, how they digest it and with whom.

Mark, who is CEO of vSocial and a hyper entrepreneur, suggests a new value chain is emerging…what he calls Channel Me:

First off, it will be user-centric. By that, I mean users will have the tools that they need for easy capturing, organizing, customizing and sharing of content of interest.

More often than not, such content will be ad supported, but the interesting question that comes to the fore is who pays whom? In some cases it will be a third party advertiser looking to affiliate with contextually targeted content. In others, however, the content owner may actually reward the most virally connected users for spreading the word.

I’ll let you read the rest of the post on Mark’s blog, but before I go here is a final nugget…

The evolution of the Web from text, pictures and links to video-powered social nets is as profound as the evolution of broadcast media from radio to television, and it is destined to be no less exciting.

Sulake Corporation are reported to be running a mobile pilot in their home country of Finland for their virtual community product, Habbo Hotel.

  Billed as the fastest growing tech company in the Nordic region by Deloittes recently, Sulake plans to launch its mobile services globally in Q1 07. Habbo’s more than one million users will be able to send and receive Habbo messages over WAP and i-Mode to friend lists. There will also be mobile news and competitions and the ability to download games, wallpapers and ringtones. More importantly, users will be able to make Habbo credit purchases and Habbo Club subscription purchases.

Here are some stats on Sulake, courtesy of Mobile Monday:-

The long-term objectives of Sulake call for the company to become a provider of world-class interactive entertainment with brand extensions in animation/TV, publications, consumer products and broad portfolio of consumer properties addressing different target audiences.

More than two thirds of Habbo income comes from users, the rest comes from advertising.

Pitching for funding is an art form. I’ve seen literally thousands and what amazes me is how so many folk get it so wrong. You need to engage your audience from the get go and keep them on the edge of their seats the whole way through.

Whether you’re pitching Charles River for 60 seconds in their Entrepreneur Idol competition, submitting a 30 second mobile clip on MyWaves and hoping to Win a Date with 4 Top Tier Venture Capitalists, Stirring things up at PitchLab or formally pitching  to a room of venture partners who are simultaneously asking questions, checking emails and coming and going…there is a winning formula.

Here’s my guide to pitching: pitch-guideline-06.doc . Keep it simple, less is more on slides, big font, no jokes and …exude passion. 

Mobile Internet startup, Bluepulse, which was founded in Sydney by Ben Keighran, has received rave reviews over at Techcrunch.

I caught up with Ben recently and was very impressed with the progress they’ve made.  

This from the Bluepulse site:

Ben set out to develop a standard platform for publishing and consuming content on mobile and he has done that with the release in late 2006 of bluepulse 2.0. The bluepulse application works on Java MIPD1, MIDP2 and Symbian mobile phones on any data-enabled mobile networks, anywhere in the world. Bluepulse works on more mobile phones than any other mobile application the company is aware of.

A report on viewing trends in the UK has shown that as much as 43% of the population who watch video on a device such as a a mobile phone or via the Internet watch less normal TV.

While still in the minority, with only 9% doing so regularly, the trend is a slippery slope in the UK and is set to catch up with the US.  The trend clearly demonstrates that  mobile and Internet video will continue to increase in viewer’s attention globally.

Yahoo is in the process of acquiring three companies at present: -

• Bix, an online contest company
• MyBlogLog, a blog analytics tool developer and
•  Kenet Works, a mobile content company.

Techcrunch rightly classifies these as social media acquisitions. Perhaps Yahoo is finally getting its mojo back.

For all those rocking air guitar players out there….your time has come to shine. No longer will your gestures be seen as trite, no longer will you be beholden to another’s musical whims…

Entering from left of stage…put your hands together for the air guitar!

Scientists at CSIRO, one of Australia’s research labs, have built a virtual guitar by embedding sensors into a shirt.

It works by recognising and interpreting arm movements and relaying this wirelessly to computer for audio generation. There are no trailing cables to get in the way or trip over.

Textile motion sensors embedded in the shirt sleeves detect motion when the arm bends - in most cases the left arm chooses a note and the right arm plays it.

Way to go CSIRO - who said scientists aren’t uber cool.

I’m heading over on Sunday for next week’s Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Besides those of us who got invited there will be a heap (aka a lot) of Aussie entrepreneurs in the Bay area hanging out and networking with the crowd who will be town, including some of the protagonists mentioned in my initial post/

I’ve got an insane diary, but prepared to meet with folks interested in participating in the burgeoning Yoickpire.

UPDATE: Richard McManus will be there too. In his post, Richard talks about the report O’Reilly has just released, Web 2.0 Principles and Best Practices, which I have managed to get a copy of too. I’ll read it on the plane over from Sydney and share my thoughts from San Francisco.