Yoick - Hightechwire

Doppelganger, a San Francisco-based virtual world company has raised a Series C funding round of $5 million from Greycroft Partners.

CEO, Andrew Littlefield, prefers to call them a community entertainment company that builds virtual environments for the rest of us, aka non hardcore gamers.

Doppelganger initially raised a Series A of $2.5 m from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and a Series B of $8.5 m from Trident Capital, DFJ and Draper Richards. That’s a lot of dough for a virtual world play - but when you consider it costs them up to $250k to build one of their inworld characters you understand where the money is going. Hey guys, ever heard of user-generated content…

Andrew sees the market for 3D environment vendors to be akin to the nascent cable market. He sees Second Life as focusing on the older sci-fi demographic whereas they are angling to be the 3D MTV, with Habbo Hotel the Nickolodeon. Neat analogy.

At Yoick we agree that these interactive spaces will act mostly as a connection manager (the first C in CICS), at least initially, and we also agree that they will reach similar sizes as MySpace.

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.

MySpace has launched in France. This follows a December 2006 launch in Italy and beta testing in Germany. The social networking company is also headed for Japan, courtesy of a joint venture with Softbank.

The French version comes up against Skyblog, which has some 6.6 million users, but given mySpace’s sixfold growth across Europe over the past year can anything stop the juggernaut. 

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.

Dappled Cities Fly is heading over to Sydney midway through their sold-out Australian Granddance tour to perform a private show for 100 fans.

The show is being hosted by Defhead, a new site set up by Viocorp, to showcase up and coming bands and artists.

Be sure to tune into the live webcast at 8pm Sydney time (AEST) Tuesday 5th December…and, of course, Yoick will be on hand to blog the event.

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.

Ok, so I admit the title for this blog is a bit …out there. However, for the folks who made it along to Annie’s this evening in San Francisco…the party was rocking and Maney mania was in full swing.

Kevin writes for USA Today, but he also fronts a band and tonite they were given it a good tonk down in the soma district of SF.

Way to go Kevin.

For the Aussies out there, the guy accosting the band is none other than our own Cameron Reilly. Kevin is looking on in striped shirt.

UPDATE: Cameron Reilly blogged last night’s event (yeah, Cam I am Mr Everywhere :)  and Kevin Maney’s post is here.

Canadian rock group, the Barenaked Ladies are offering their album, “Barenaked Ladies Are Me”, for download from their website.  

More and more bands are starting to circumvent the traditional recording industry distribution channels and ‘doing it for themselves’.

 BNL grossed $970,000 in the first week following the release of their album. Nice going guys.

Through its European arm, Benchmark Capital, has led a $10 million Series B round in Stuttgart-based spodradio.

The company bills itself as the first worldwide radio and podcast hub for mobiles. Their aim is to enable the mobile phone to become the ultimate music device with a total radio experience anywhere and anytime, including live interactive radio, podcasts, personalized radio and on-demand radio services.

OK, so when I out running or mountain biking, my Garmin 305 tells me to pick up the pace or slow down when I’m going to fast, but my music is piped full on, all the time.

Now there’s a solution:

PersonalSoundtrack, a tiny wearable computer, detects your walking or running speed and plays songs from your music library that match your pace. Song speed is adjusted in real-time to match subtle variations in your gait, while larger, deliberate pace changes cause the device to change songs. You simply put it on and begin moving; that’s it.

Most computational devices require the user to adapt to the machine. PersonalSoundtrack offers, instead, a symbiotic relationship: both human and machine actively adapt to each other in real-time. The ‘interface’ is one’s natural gait. There is no optimal or pre-defined experience, encouraging meandering, wasting time, and loitering.

Gotta love it! Well done Greg Elliot - but can I upload this onto my sunglasses?