Polls are popular on the Web because they are interactive without requiring too much effort. They are also a good way to collect a lot of data from users across the Web. SodaHead, a startup founded by former MySpace executives Jason Feffer and Michael Glazer, announced an $8.4 million series B investment today. The round was led by Mission Ventures and Mohr Davidow. (The company previously raised $4.25 million from Mohr Davidow, Ron Conway, and Tech Coast Angels in January, 2007). Since the site launched last September, it has attracted 600,000 registered members who have submitted three million answers. SodaHead competes with PollDaddy, SurveyMonkey, and Vizu, although it is targeted more at the MySpace crowd. And you can add songs, videos,and images to the polls. Think Yahoo Answers meets PollDaddy. The company says it is really going after Yahoo Answers. Says Glazer; We are a community site, around any topic people are taking about. With Yahoo Answers, what they missed is the community aspect. Although any question a user makes can be spread virally as a widget, 90 percent of SodaHead’s traffic still goes through its site. Traffic has been ramping up nicely to 1.2 million U.S. visitors a month, according to comScore (Yahoo Answers, which seems to be doing fine just the way it is, has 33.6 million and growing). The site is only running Google AdSense ads right now, but since SodaHead is building up a database of the preferences of members based on what kinds of questions they answer in different categories, and even their specific answers, Glazer is confident SodaHead will be able to do better ad targeting overtime. Another revenue source is helping brands engage with consumers through their own polls. → Read More
At Supernova’s 2007 Connected Innovators session, 12 young startups (well, 13 if you count the fake one planted to keep the audience on their toes), pitched their products to an audience at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco with punditry by Kevin Werbach and Michael Arrington and supporting color from Josh Kopelman, Julia Hanna Farris and Paul Kedrosky. Here’s a look at the 13 companies: adap.tv AdaptiveBlue AggregateKnowledge CastTV Critical Metrics Jangl Pando Networks SodaHead Spock Wize ZapMeals ZenZui Zing Adap.tv – They’re like adsense for video, tying contextual text ads based on the content of a video. When videos play, Adap.tv digs up relevant Amazon products and Looksmart ads to populate an ad bar on the bottom of the video at key moments. They use tags and other meta data, as well as speech to text translations to find out what the video is about. AdaptiveBlue – Makers of the Blue Organizer, a Firefox bookmarking and tagging add-on that parses web pages, adding contextual information where appropriate. For instance, if you go to a web page about a band, Blue Organizer’s right-click menu will show you more info about the band drawn from sites like Odeo or Wikipedia. The plugin also has smart links that let you easily push the link to services like Digg or LibraryThing. More coverage of the recent feature additions here. Aggregate Knowledge – One of the more established companies at the event, they work with online commerce sites to provide personalized recommendations by looking at user’s collective behavior. They just closed a large round of financing and are rumored to be profitable after a little over a year in operation. CastTV – A video search engine that pieces together context for a video based on it’s metadata, the content surrounding it, and the content of pages linking to the video. The service performed well in our earlier review. They recently raised a $3.1 million round of financing from DFJ. Critical Metrics – A music recommendation service that aggregates music reviews from around the web. Each song includes an audio and optional Youtube sample and purchasing options from services like Yahoo Music, iTunes, or Rhapsody. Jangl – They specialize in anonymous phone communication. A Jangl is a real phone number lets people call you with knowing your real number. The first time someone calls you they have to leave a message and request permission → Read More
Kevin Werbach and I are pleased to announce this year’s finalists to present at the Supernova 2007 Conference, on Thursday, June 21, 3:30pm – 5:30pm, at the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco. We had a record number of submissions this year, which made it extremely difficult to select the finalists. Many of the selected companies will be showcasing new products for the first time at the conference. Here are the companies that made the final cut: adap.tv Adaptive Blue Aggregate Knowledge CastTV CriticalMetrics Jangl Pando Networks SodaHead Spock Wize ZapMeals ZenZui Zing Thank you to everyone who took the time to submit their company for consideration. I look forward to moderating the panel with Kevin and to seeing more great technology in action. TechCrunch readers can take advantage of a $200 discount for Supernova registration using “crunch2″ for the 2-day registration and “crunch3″ for the full conference package. → Read More
