Accosted by a man with a video camera who asks you what Web 2.0 is all about during Web 2 Expo, I had a crack a the subject in a few pithy sentences. The video by SocialTNT is below, but if you don’t have 5 minutes (for the whole video) then here’s the short version. I think the Web has gone through three stages, or what I call the “Three Ps” : 1. Pages (“dumb” pages with no intelligence or data) 2. People (social networks producing richer data and eventually platforms for applications) 3. Power (all that data producing powerful intelligence about the things we really want to know, like ‘what’ or ‘who’ am I looking for etc). Luckily, there were several, far more intelligent answers from others such as Dan Farber (CNET News.com), Marshall Kirkpatrick (ReadWriteWeb), Dean Takahashi (VentureBeat), Scott Beale (Laughing Squid) and Josh Lowensohn (Webware). → Read More

I’ve decided to go the whole hog and pull out the whole of 2007′s list of VC investments in tech companies, as compiled by CalibreOne recently. Over the next few days and weeks I’m going to delve into what happened to a few of these firms, a large number of which are the kinds of companies TechCrunch would take an interest in. But for now, feast your eyes on a year’s worth (all in dollars) of venture capital in the UK (after the jump, and I’ll do the same for Ireland shortly). → Read More

In case you haven’t noticed, we are still running a special launch offer of £20 a job on CrunchBoard. Here are some of the latest jobs: Senior Systems Administrator – Linux – VC Backed Internet Startup Technology Associate – University of the Arts User Interface Engineer – Jiglu.com Developer – School of Everything → Read More

James Brocket of Headhunters CallibreOne has been busy compiling a great list of VC investments in tech companies (PDF). Why? Because they do a lot of work for VC backed companies. The number are encouraging – surprising, even, given the doom and gloom in the wider economy. Nic Brisbourne DFJ Espirit pulled out some good points: More venture capital appeared in Europe in Q1 than ever before – the $1.3bn total was a lot higher than the previous peak in the first quarter of 2007. The UK lead the pack with $592m of deals, more than the previous three quarters combined. The average deal size for Europe broke $10m for the first time, boosted by big deals in the UK including $100m in Spinvox. The average deal size in the UK was $11.9m which is higher than the US figure of $11.6m. In Ireland the numbers also look encouraging. Total capital invested for the last quarter was $12.6m across two investments which contrasts with $8.4m invested in the first quarter last year across three. However, the numbers probably mask the seed/early stage market. I counted only four deals in the $1-$2m range, and anything below that was rarely announced or just too small to be picked up by CallibreOne. An anecdotally, we know that investment in early stage startups is probably going down right now. I have pulled out the relevant parts from the PDF (apologies for the messy list I will tidy it up shortly) and bolded the Web companies relevant to TechCrunch readers. United Kingdom Q1 2007 Month – Company – Total – ($US) – Investors 7-Feb Vizimo 1,422,000 Northstar Equity Investors, Private Investors 10-Feb Quick TV 1,738,000 NorthStar Equity Investors 10-Feb Seatwave 25,000,000 Fidelity Ventures, Atlas Venture, Mangrove Capital Partners, Adinvest 11-Feb Axis Network Technology 5,985,300 Bessemer Venture Partners 11-Feb Coull Undisclosed Finance Sout West, Creative Ventures 11-Feb Elonics 4,266,000 Braveheart, Scottish Venture Fund, Tom Farmer, Brian Souter 11-Feb FREEDOM4 Undisclosed Intel Capital, Pipex Communications 12-Feb Quartix 25,438,000 Bank of Scotland Corporate 12-Feb Velocix 27,334,000 Amadeus Capital Partners, 3i Group, Pentech Venutres 13-Feb Bragster 3,500,000 Intel Capital 14-Feb Camrivox 2,394,120 NESTA Investment, Phil O’Donovan, Create Partners, Bank of Scotland Growth Equity, Oxford Investment Opportunity Network 14-Feb Lexara Undisclosed South East Growth Fund 15-Feb Player X Undisclosed Kreos 15-Feb Quantum Filament Technologies Undisclosed Kreos 20-Feb SalesTrak Undisclosed Aspiration Capital 20-Feb Whizz Kid 4,266,000 Ingenious Media Active Capital 21-Feb → Read More

Rummble, the mobile and location-based ‘social discovery’ tool, has added a basic integration of Yahoo’s Fire Eagle location data to its service. If you have a Fire Eagle account (it’s in invite-only beta right now) you can allow Rummble to set your Fire Eagle location when you set your location on the Rummble web service. You can also update your location manually from within Fire Eagle. Rummble, which was recently on the WebMission, has an algorithm designed to works out which reviews of places are relevant to you based on your social network and location. CrunchBase Information Rummble Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

Coming out of Europe, Wolpy is a new social network for travellers to share their travel experiences. The basic idea is to create a map of the places you have visited and preview the places mentioned. You can share these places with your friends view their trips. You can view the map in full screen mode. It’s a nice clean design and has simple features, but other than a Google Mashup map there doesn’t seem to be much more to it. However, in a few weeks they plan to “add a whole bunch of new features”. It’s created by Miguel Abad (Developer) of Málaga, Spain and designer Ana Belén Ramón of Zurich, Switzerland. Possibly one to watch. CrunchBase Information Wolpy Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

Zattoo, the live TV to PC platform, has extended its channel line-up to include BBC 1 & 2, ITV 1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 via its online streaming media player. Zattoo will also carry financial news from Bloomberg, children’s programming from the BBC’s Cbeebies and special interest channels such as AutoMoto TV and The Poker Channel. Zattoo completely replicates the traditional TV viewing experience online. The UK channel launch will be followed by other planned European, US and Asian market entries throughout 2008. Content available also includes ABC News, CNBC, Al Jazeera, and a number of European channels. The service operates strictly legitimately on the basis of agreements with broadcasters and copyright law. All the content is free and Zattoo generates revenues through advertising and subscription fees. Zattoo’s ads are five second video slots available in the buffering zone when users switch channels and it can track them if they click on a dedicated landing page for an advertiser. In January Zattoo opened up its beta software to UK users, previously available for a closed user group since July 2007. It has about 2 million users in total, two thirds of whom use it regularly to watch TV on their PC. It aims to have 450,000 registered UK users by the end of the year. Alexandra Illes is UK country manager for Zattoo. The Zattoo player is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Zattoo has offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan (USA), Zurich, Switzerland and London, UK. However, although Zattoo concentrates on live streaming, it will face some competition when Project Kangaroo launches in the UK – the project from the major UK broadcasters to aggregate all their catch-up programming, though that won’t offer live streaming. Zattoo, based in Switzerland, has caused consternation among some in the broadcasting industry who reckon channels are being ‘ripped off’ because there is no way for them to monitor the views or have the audience added to their BARB ratings, key to attracting advertisers. However, Zattoo solves a few problems for channels. Assuming it can address audience measurement at some point, Zattoo will help broadcasters keep viewers when they travel around and leave the satellite dish behind. Plus, territorial breakdown of copyright is pretty anachronistic these days. Then again, Zatoo’s live streaming model doesn’t exactly play into Long Tail theory either, unless it can win hundreds of channel partners. The Microsoft/Skinkers P2P live television → Read More

Over 500,000 tracks from Sony BMG goes live on We7’s site today, following their first deal with the major label in March. Sony BMG manages act including Take That, Mark Ronson, The Hoosiers and Leona Lewis. We7 gives fans access to music for free by grafting a short audio advert onto the front of each track, with revenue going to artists and labels. Due to a registration system, We7 builds a profile of each individual user, so one user does not hear the same advert as another. The technology allows for the ad to be removed after a set number of listens, or an amount of elapsed time. Versions of the tracks without music can also be purchased out-right. Because the business model is ad-supported, file sharing of We7 tracks is actually encouraged. Steve Purdham, We7 co-founder and CEO, believes that in an iTunes world, only a small percentage of tracks are actually bought, whereas ads can monetise tracks no-one would normally pay for. I believe We7 is just one of the new wave of business models that will change the music industry beyond the old model. We7 took $6 million in a Series A round led by musician Peter Gabriel and Spark Ventures, with Eden Ventures also participating. Gabriel is also founder of TheFilter. CrunchBase Information we7 Steve Purdham Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

I’m going to have to apologise for the lack of updates on the Web Mission trip of 20 startups to San Francisco and Silicon Valley this week. What with being located in a different hotel to the group, having to run and jump on a bus somewhere every morning, getting WiFi in dribs and drabs, and then racing back to hotels only to go out again, the blogging has somewhat suffered! However, here is a quick update on events so far: Following the Sunday Brunch at Jim Buckmaster’s house (he is co-founder of Craigslist) the Monday saw a half-day series of chats and a panel at Oracle. I chaired a panel consisting of representatives from Facebook, Amazon and Google. It was a pretty general discussion with several highlights which were useful to the startups. At the end I asked the panel if they though it would be a good idea for UK companies to have some kind of presence (everything form visiting now and again all the way up to an office) in Silicon Valley. They all said yes. Then again, I guess they would, but they were pretty emphatic. That evening the group went to a special Glasshouse event – a conversation between Bebo’s Michael Birch and Jim Buckmaster – which was extremely funny. Think Pete and Dud. The next day saw the group head out to sponsor Heller Erman’s officies where each startup pitched their company before an audience of press and about 13 VCs. It was at this point I fully realised the high quality of the startups who’d been selected for WebMission, and these pitches formed the basis of my write-up in TechCrunch. After lunch the group went back to the SF hotel and dinner with Oracle, while I headed out to the unassuming TechCrunch HQ (Mike Arrington’s house). I did some work there and later Mike gave me a lift back into town. It was at this point that WebMission entered networking mode, and we all hit a lot of parties associated with the Web 2 Expo conference, such as the party thrown by Digg and others. I don’t think anyone would be grudge us the opportunity to network and get into the vibe of the startup scene here. Wednesday saw the group hit the Web 2 Expo in SF and plenty of walking was done between the vast, echoing halls of the conference. The → Read More

So, we have launched video comments on TechCrunch UK & Ireland, integrated with Seesmic. I’m going to test this out now. Feel free to have a go yourself… → Read More

The Angel-backed, social decision-making tool, Skimbit has won agreement with widget distribution network Gigya to include Skimbit in their Wildfire tool. UK-based Skimbit says it is also in talks with AddThis, the bookmarking and sharing tool. The Addthis button currently appears 20 billion times per month, but Skimbit would potentially be the first social decision-making tool in its network. Skimbit founder Alicia Navarro says Skimbit plans to close a seed round in the next month and hopes to land more publishers for its white-label service, as it did with Wedding TV in December. The Skimbit idea is that, as you might add a site to Digg, you would click a ‘Skim this!’ button to collect options for a decision such as choosing a holiday villa or buying a gadget. Skimbit interrogates the page you ‘skim’ to collect the relevant data for the decision making. CrunchBase Information Add This Skimbit Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

An ‘enterprise 2.0′ price war is looming as the UK’s Huddle starts to creep up on the incumbent in the space, Basecamp. The former says it is “growing like crazy”, adding 50% more users in the last month, while the latter recently dropped its prices to remain competitive. However, at $24-$149 a month, Basecamp remains pricier than Huddle’s $20 to $100 a month price range and is still reminiscent of the original Web design project workflow is was designed for. Wrike is different to both in that it charge per user, rather than per project for $3.99 per person per month. Huddle is also providing file-sharing on its service for free, something Basecamp doesn’t yet do. Huddle came out of the gate to compete pretty much head on with Basecamp. In November last year Huddle announced $4m in series A funding from Eden Ventures in London. Companies using Huddle include Reuters and PR group Edelman and UNICEF. CrunchBase Information Huddle.net Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

The BBC has quietly joined the OpenID Foundation, announcing the move on its BBC Internet blog. The BBC is the first large media company to join the foundation. Microsoft, Verisign, Google and IBM joined in February. Google,Yahoo, Digg, Technorati, AOL, Plaxo and WikiPedia have previously announced their intention to support the standard, seen as an easy way for users to use a single digital identity across the Internet. So it looks like OpenID is here to stay. The move is in no way a response to my recent rant on the BBC opening up their data more to outside developers and startups. But it’s a step in the right direction. However, the BBC’s Jem Stone says they won’t “immediately be offering OpeniDs on bbc.co.uk or even promising to do so.” First they have to “make absolutely sure that this is right for users, is secure and can be implemented properly across all the BBC’s many services.” So it’s really the announcement of an intention, not a service yet. First they need to replace their platform, with a substantial upgrade based on a data-driven, RESTful service oriented, platform independent architecture. Plus they need to replace their SSO (Single Sign On) identity platform to something OpenID compliant. It will be interesting to see what users make of this. I like the OpenID ide, but the term OpenID is way too suggestive of a lack of control for the user, and to promote it as ‘OpenID’ would make most mainstream BBC users thing they were ‘opening up’ their ID somehow. This is why services like ClickPass make so much sense. CrunchBase Information OpenID Foundation BBC Clickpass Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

HubDub, a fantasy league for designed to monetise news content better for publishers (review), has introduced the ability for users to challenge their friends in making predictions. Here’s how it works: A user sends a challenge to a friend to make a prediction on a particular question. Their friend then gets an email and whenever they complete the challenge they compete on their own friend’s leaderboard. Here is a couple of interesting markets. Since the new feature was introduced last week HubDub’s Nigel Eccles says their sign-up rate has tripled, while registered users are growing at 4% per week. It’s pitch to publishers is to do a rev-share and monetise their content inside this fantasy league-style environment. HubDub is clearly on to something. It’s most active users average about 400 page impressions per month and monthly uniques average about 66 per month. By contrast the news industry’s average is 8 pages per month per unique user. The Wall Street Journal‘s figure is 12, The Guardian is on 9, and most blogs average two or three, according to HubDub. According to HubDub the average person reads a newspaper for about 11 hours per week but consume’s the same newspaper content online for about 5 mins per week. By contrast, HubDub, which launched three months ago says it has top users who average 2-3 hours a day on the site, which sounds bizarre, but could well be true. People do enjoy these fantasy games and are known to be not that bothered about being offered prizes, as the Daily Telegraph’s long-running newspaper fantasy league has found. CrunchBase Information Hubdub Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

DotHomes, the UK-based real estate search engine which now covers the US, UK and South Africa, says it has doubled its number of nationwide real estate listings in the US, bringing its database up to two million residential properties for sale and rent. By contrast, Yahoo Real Estate, Roost, Trulia and Zillow (and others) get feeds from brokers and MLS services in the US. But DotHomes reckons it is now neck and neck with Trulia on the number of homes it has in its database just by crawling the Web. That’s good but it needs more marketing partners if it’s to become better known in the US, hence it is now out on the WebMission trip to Silicon Valley looking for some. From a natural language search, DotHomes generates direct links to the original source of information – the listing agent/broker – by sending out Google-like spiders to crawl sites. This is not a trivial matter given that it has to deal with forms, javascript and content on the page that that varies when the URL stays the same. DotHomes is funded by three of Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firms: The Accelerator Group; Arts Alliance; and Samos Investments. CrunchBase Information DotHomes Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

Making social networks work inside companies is a difficult nut to crack. Who wants to update their status all the time to tell everyone what they are working on? BEA Systems launched a social network for enterprise platform recently and Oracle’s AppsLab is working on a social network internally. But much of the intelligence in the system requires users to tag things manually. So Trampoline Systems, the privately funded UK-based Enterprise social computing startup, has today launched its new Sonar Dashboard tool designed to be a “Facebook for the enterprise”. The difference is it’s intelligent enough to update your colleagues about what you’re doing without you having to do very much heavy lifting. Essentially the employee-facing interface for Trampoline’s Sonar Server product, Dashboard allows employees to create profiles, watch a news feed of colleagues’ activity and use a contacts list. So far so Facebook. The clever bit is that Dashboard is automatically updated through integration with employees’ everyday work such as email. The Sonar Server analyses the social networks, information flows and expertise hidden within the company, alowing users to work out who in the company can help them and strengthening informal employee networks across departments and geographies. Of course, the whole thing sounds like a “Big Brother” nightmare, but in fact, users can completely control what they share with the rest of the company. The system regularly emails the user with terms which are being published to the rest of the company and the user then switches them on and off. So users can filter out too general topics like ‘lunch’ or more private issues like their email chats with their mistress/toyboy – assuming they are dumb enough to do that over work email. (The system automatically filters out references to porn etc). The real value comes when an employee hits a problem they know someone in the business could solve. Sonar Dashboard makes the network searchable, and gives visibility to the right people. A simple visualisation tool maps the user’s social graph so you can see who knows who. [Trampoline is touring Silicon Valley right now as part of the WebMission trade mission involving 20 UK startups]. CrunchBase Information Trampoline Systems Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More

Note: Please see update below. It’s just morning here in SF so I have just seen this post. The below is my initial response, but I have to go offline imminently (I am in San Francisco on the trip in question) so I’m just rattling this off now…. I think it’s rather strange of Carsonified’s Ryan Carson to go “attack dog” now when he could have called any one of the WebMission partners weeks ago when this trip was announced and put together. But hey, he has a right to criticise, it’s a democracy after all. I don’t know if he was prompted to this because so far the WebMission trip just looks like socialising. But the Saturday and Sunday were understandably light on business meetings for the group as it’s… the weekend. Keep watching… It’s worth pointing out that a tiny minority of the WebMission companies have even hinted to me that they would move to the US. The vast majority are simply here to research the market, take meetings with potential partners or investors or perhaps look at establishing a small office here. They are also here to LEARN, and take back anything useful to the UK, to make the startup scene and their own businesses more vibrant – something Ryan wants to I believe. I question his view that there is NOTHING to be learned from this exercise and everything we need is need the UK. That seems nonsensical. As for the “message” that this trip sends? I don’t see the problem. UK companies working out if there is anything to be gained from establishing trade or investment links in the US is not that big a story. Would we think the same thing of 20 startups which went to Paris for a week with a similar aim? No, and probably they’d get criticised for going on a jolly – but aren’t there also French startups and VCs and a market there to learn from? Carson’s post smacks of isolationism which feels unrealistic in today’s globalised world. I find it odd that some critics seem to imply that the WebMission attendees are somehow children who will immediately swallow the Silicon Valley cool-aid and destroy their businesses with US-thinking inappropriate to their strategy. Er, guess what people? They may well have their own grown-up minds and can take or leave the learning from this experience. Like, duh. There → Read More

So day two of WebMission began with plenty of recovery time following the previous evening’s partying, which took in the tad pricey Clift Hotel bar, and the Slide and Le Colonial clubs. I gather. I of course turned in with a nice cup of cocoa. In the morning the WebMission crew jumped on a bus and headed over to the rather nice house belonging to Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist who very generously opened his home for us. There were plenty of US entrepreneurs there, as well as some home-grown talent who’d moved out to Silicon Valley, including Bebo’s Michael Birch and trulia’s Pete Flint (formerly of LastMinute.com). Some interesting chats were had, including a general theme about the differences between the UK and the Valley, and about the chatter surrounding Startup School, the Y-Combinator event which happened the previous day (TC coverage) which was clearly a big event. In general, UK entrepreneurs who have moved to the Valley say it is easier to do a startup here, that people “get” your idea faster and there is a wide talent pool to draw on. No-one says Europe is not a place for startups (who would be that stupid, right?), but there is less friction here and less aversion to risk and failure. I met the 23 year old Tristan Harris, who recently got headlines for his first startup, Apture, who had a salient point: “Hey, if you’re ‘back-up plan’ in Silicon Valley is to get a great job at Google or Facebook then why NOT do a startup?” Following the brunch I joined Paul Birch, Paul Walsh, John Havens, to a BBQ thrown by Brian Solis, as a small-scale SXSW reunion in his garden. Over a catered BBQ, and live music, about 100 people chatted in the Californian sunshine, many of them the WebMission startups. We also met up with the unofficial WebMission “fringe” delegation in the form of RecommendBox and writer Paul Carr, who has now started an unofficial blog of the event, which is always a sign you are doing something right. On a more serious note, I guess we have all been told ad nauseam about Silicon Valley’s ‘clustering’ effect where similar companies all come together. But in practical terms you see that at work when someone throws a brunch, leaving you time to head over to another event, which then runs its course allowing you to head → Read More

Smart-up, a great blog about Central and Eastern European startups has been covering the TMT.Ventures’08 conference in Kiev. It sounds like a fascinating event. Blogger Michal Faber has also shot some video of the presenting VCs which includes the London-based Greg Marsh, of Index Ventures and Sean Seton-Rogers of Benchmark Capital, below. → Read More