We received devastating news that Nahum Sharfman, founder of Shopping.com, and his wife, Nava, died in a plane crash in Greece. According to The Marker (the article is in Hebrew, here’s the translated version), Sharfman, who was a well-known entrepreneur in the Israeli tech space, perished in a plane crash on the Greek island of Korfo. The story has also been broken on Twitter. Initial reports attribute the cause of the crash to human error combined with severe weather conditions.
A successful entrepreneur, Sharfman founded Shopping.com which he brought to a successful IPO in 2004. Shopping.com was later acquired by eBay for $650 million. Earlier, Sharfman co-founded Commtouch and also brought the security technology company to an IPO in 2000. Prior to starting his own ventures, Sharfman spent 11 years working for National Semiconductor. He received a Ph.D. in High Energy Nuclear Physics from Carnegie Mellon University and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Physics from the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. Sharfman was also chairman of social content sharing site enips. → Read More
Three years ago when Web 2.0 began proliferating, Israeli startups used eSnips as the poster child for their case that a successful social network could be founded in Israel. Based on the criteria in those days, eSnips was in fact delivering: It was able to convince top tier VCs to buy into an advertising-based business model, it leveraged user-generated content (the main activity is sharing personal media), used free storage as a hook, traffic was rising steadily, and it became a press darling domestically and internationally. As we say in Israel, “It was all honey”.
Now fast forward to Q4 2008. A shell of its previous self, eSnips is now a startup train wreck: Founders divorced and dismissed, threatened litigation courtesy of a record label and, with no possibility for further funding, the company was unloaded for approximately $750,000 to the Logia Group.
In the past three months I have spoken to a number of sources close to the company and have managed to reconstruct the circumstances that brought the company from its zenith, to its nadir. → Read More
Lots of bad news leaking out of Israeli startup eSnips this week. The company, which is part social network and part file uploading service, continues to grow – recent Comscore says they had 8 million unique visitors in January, up from 2.2 million a year ago. But founding CEO Yael Elish left the company for “personal reasons” just as they were closing a round of funding a couple of months ago. The funding, inevitably, fell apart. The company tried to regroup under chairman Nahum Sharfman, who took over as acting CEO. But they eventually went the layoff route, letting most of the 16 or so employees go. It’s not clear if the company will fold or find a way to continue operations. But storm clouds have massed over what was once a promising startup. To date eSnips has raised $5 million, mostly from Gemini Israel Funds and Greylock. We’re putting them on DeadPool watch. CrunchBase Information eSnips Yael Elish Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Looks like tonight’s theme is social discovery. Israel-based eSnips, a media-centric social network we reviewed over a year ago, is releasing a new feature called “Social DNA” meant to help you discover people similar to yourself. The idea’s simple and already executed in one form or another by most online dating services. Users fill out quick and “fun” quizzes about a variety of topics. They also list their musical, literary, cinematic, and dietary preferences on the site. Social DNA then takes these two sources of input and compiles percentages meant to reflect how similar you are to others on different topics. You’ll find out that you and Sally are 64% alike in political beliefs but only 8% alike in musical tastes, etc. The site will also tell you who you match most closely in a particular community or group of friends. Social DNA is cute enough but seems to confuse the purpose of eSnips even more than it is already confused (is it an online storage service? a social network? a promotional tool?). Plus, the feature doesn’t add much substance; I don’t expect many people will actually get to know each other after discovering that their “social genes” match up well. But who knows; maybe eSnips’ reported four million users will really dig Social DNA. CrunchBase Information eSnips Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
The folks over at eSnips have created a simple website for tracking “Web 2.0″ traffic trends. The website uses Alexa data. I’d love to see someone create a similar website that ranks these Web 2.0 websites (or rather, these ones) by using various other measurements, such as # of backlinks in Technorati and # of mentions on blogs indexed by Technorati. Editor’s Note: This post was written by guest contributor Steve Poland, whose blog Techquila Shots brainstorms web start-up ideas. → Read More
Israel based social networking and user generated media sharing site eSnips is announcing the closure of its Series A funding with $2 million from Greylock Partners and Gemini Israel Funds. Users buy and sell art, music and other user generated content on the site. The company says it has registered nearly one million users since launching this March. See our previous coverage of eSnips here. This is a company that takes a remarkably simple approach to serving consumer producers. They monetize storage beyond 1 GB of media and run AdSense on most pages. Purchasing items on eSnips currently goes on through PayPal. I wouldn’t be surprised if this new funding is used in part to develop or purchase an ecommerce tool that eSnips can generate revenue with. They certainly have built up a vibrant user community in a short period of time. → Read More
Israel based eSnips is an intriguingly simple online social network for sharing images, video, files and almost anything else. We wrote about it here when it recently relaunched and now the site has added PayPal functionality to allow users to buy and sell directly on the site. The company already saw people trying to buy and sell through their pages and said that adding e-commerce only made sense. Right now eSnips doesn’t charge any fees for the transactions – they just hope that the feature will make the site more compelling for users to stick with. I’ll be curious to see how that works out. The company reports that paintings and photographs are the most popular items sold on the site, followed by jewelry, “other items,” and crafts. Music, video and games are also sold on the site. Users get 1 GB of free storage with their accounts. Revenue is generated by selling extra storage and through Adsense. Any item can also be displayed off site with an HTML widget. Items are uploaded with a Windows-only tool. ESnips is an unassuming site that seems to just plain work for people. The company is currently hosting an “open studio week” highlighting selected artists who share their work on the site. I guess it’s all just further proof that the Web 2.0 world of user generated content, data portability and social networking doesn’t have to be flashy to get peoples’ attention. This seems like the kind of thing that would have flopped a decade ago, but that could really work now that the idea of sharing content online has become much more mainstream. Has it become mainstream enough to support business models like the one at eSnips? We shall see. → Read More
Israeli startup eSnips relaunched today with a new look and substantial feature upgrades. I did not have a chance to meet with eSnips during my recent trip to Israel, but CEO Yael Elish and VP Marketing Efrat Moshkoviz visited silicon valley a couple of weeks ago and i was able to get a demo. It’s hard to categorize eSnips. We looked at it as part of our review of online storage providers – and although eSnips does provide 1 GB of free storage for users, they clearly are up to something else as well. The core idea is to allow users to upload media files of any type – photos, videos, office documents, whatever – tag them, and either keep them private, share with other or make them public. But eSnips is also allowing bookmarking of web content, from a whole page to a line or paragraph. Others can comment on each piece of media or content as well, and rate a user created page. RSS feeds are available for everything. Given the social aspects of the service, eSnips is really a content-centric social network. eSnips also offers a client uploader for file transfers, and a toolbar for easier bookmarking. Both only work on Windows machines at this time, however. I like combining media and other files with bookmarked content, and although I’m not sure if eSnips in its current form will stand out enough from the crowd, I do think they are on to something interesting. If virality kicks in from sharing, they could have a winner. eSnips is free, and they will charge for storage above 1 GB and other services. → Read More
The online storage market is evolving fast. In the past, users could expect no more than a simple service where files could be slowly uploaded and downloaded from a mapped virtual drive or a simple web based interface. Little competition (and the bursting of the bubble) led to very high prices for a minimal amount of storage. Over the last year a slew of new services have launched (some are launching in February) with serious web 2.0 features, reasonable pricing (including free unlimited storage) and, in at least one case (OmniDrive), the ability to read/write directly to the file with local applications like Office, on the remote server. This last feature speeds the process of writing to files significantly by skipping the requirement to download the file to the hard drive first. The Online Storage Gang We looked at a total of thirteen companies. They are: AllMyData, Box.net, eSnips, Freepository, (the unfortunately named) GoDaddy, iStorage, Mofile, Mozy, Omnidrive, Openomy, Streamload, Strongspace and Xdrive. Another service, Zingee, has yet to launch and may also (or may not) have a compelling offering. Of the thirteen companies that we researched for this post, three really stand out. Australia-based OmniDrive (unfunded but not for long) is the clear leader in features. Box.net and Streamload are also very good choices. The services can roughly be broken down into storage-centric and sharing-centric. Some services, like Mozy and the unfortunately named Godaddy, are centered on storage only. GoDaddy offers online file backup with very basic uploading and downloading features – effectively a remote network drive. They are a bare-bones service with a fairly attractive price point ($20/year for 2 GB). You will not find sharing or other advanced features here. Other services offer storage but really focus on sharing files. There are a number of options here, but the best (OmniDrive, Box.net and Streamload) offer full private and public sharing. In addition, I really like the way Box.net approaches group folders, where any number of people can have read/write priviliges. Omnidrive is close to launching this feature as well. Web 2.0 Features Most of the new players (possibly with the exception of Mozy) are laser focused on key web 2.0 features. The best have multiple folders (private, shared, group, public), RSS feeds for each folder, etc. A couple, including Omnidrive, have also built features that allow subscriptions for RSS enclosures (such as podcasts), so that those files → Read More
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