Vinod Khosla: Venture Capital Will Survive Wall Street Woes

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The current financial crisis might actually have a silver lining for venture capital investing, VC titan Vinod Khosla told Andy up on the MIT campus yesterday. “When we go through a period like this, it’s actually healthy in the long run,” he says in this clip. Khosla is an affiliated partner at […]

 
 

Digg Raises $28.7 Million in New Funding, Announces International Expansion Plan

User-driven news site Digg announced a major expansion today that will include doubling its staff, growing internationally, improving infrastructure and developing new features. The company raised $28.7 million in a new round of funding led by Highland Capital Partners to finance its progress, according to Jay Adelson’s post on the Digg blog.

 
 

MySpace’s New Self-Serve Ads Blur Boundaries Between User Profiles and Branded Profiles

Yesterday night MySpace launched its Self-Serve Ad Service, which will allow MySpace users to post advertisements directing viewers to their profile pages. Nick O’Neill at Social Times writes that the service seems to be targeted toward musicians, but its a tool companies can take advantage of as well. Major advertisers are creating profile pages for […]

 
 

Women Made up Majority of McCain’s Online Video Viewers in August

John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate last month may have helped him attract a wider female audience of online video viewers, according to numbers Nielsen released today. Fifty-eight percent of his website’s online video viewers last month were women, compared to 37 percent in June.

 
 

AP Chooses thePlatform to Improve Online Video Network

The Associated Press announced today that it has chosen the Seattle-based video management and publishing company thePlatform to bring broader coverage and higher-quality video to its Online Video Network. For the first time, the AP’s 2,100 affiliate sites will be able to post AP videos to their destination pages using an embeddable player.

 
 

PubMatic Launches AdFlex to Provide Ad Networks with On-Demand Publishing Inventory

PubMatic, an optimization service that helps publishers earn more ad dollars, announced the launch of AdFlex today, a targeted, on-demand publishing inventory for ad networks. Andy interviewed PubMatic President Rajeev Goel at the Omma Global conference last week.

 
 

EQAL Launches LonelyGirl15 Follow-up, LG15: The Resistance

LG15: The Resistance, the long-awaited follow-up to LonelyGirl15, premiered Saturday to positive reviews. In the new web series from EQAL, LonelyGirl15 characters Jonas and Sarah return to battle evil secret society The Order–and perhaps an even higher threat.

 
 

Zoho Web Apps Contend for Adoption by GE

General Electric is currently evaluating which company’s web applications to add to its 400,000 computers worldwide, and a start-up called Zoho has risen to become a serious contender against Microsoft and Google.

 
 

Ogilvy’s Branded Content Series Features Celebrity Chefs Bobby Flay, Dave Lieberman

Branded content is still a relatively new and developing advertising format, but Ogilvy & Mather is ahead of the curve: In June 2007, while many digital ad agencies were still experimenting, it launched the high-production 12-episode web series "In Search of Real Food" on Yahoo for Unilever’s Hellmann’s. The second season, Real Food Summer School […]

 
 

Animoto Platform Creates Unique, Quality Video with the Click of a Button

Michael Arrington wrote that Animoto “is one of those start-ups that has success written all over it,” and it’s hard not to be impressed by their platform. Users simply upload pictures and music and Animoto automatically makes them into a high-production quality 30-second video; longer videos cost $3 a piece or $30 a year.

 
 

Ad Networks Mimick Television Fragmentation

Advertising networks are fragmenting into specialized verticals like travel ad networks, women’s ad networks and gay ad networks, according to Frank Addante, serial entrepreneur and CEO of advertising technology company The Rubicon Project. The fragmentation is mimicking the way television stations split off into cable channels, he says.

 
 

Is Product Placement the Next Multi-Billion Dollar Industry? Clearstone Managing Director Has Doubts

Angel investor Ron Conway made a bold prediction to the overflowing audience at TechCrunch50 last Monday: product placement will become the next multi-billion dollar industry. Online video creators rejoiced, but Jim Armstrong, Managing Director for Clearstone Venture Partners, is not convinced. 

 
 

Me-trics Tracks Users’ Lives Online, Shows Trends in Health, Finances

A person’s activities on Facebook, Flickr, training sites like Nike plus, and credit card purchases all generate data, and Me-trics wants to put it together in one place, co-founder James Vreeland told me after his presentation at TechCrunch50 last Tuesday. He describes the company as "Google Analytics for your life."

 
 

Adgregate Markets Lets Consumers Shop Within Banner Ads

Last Monday, Adgregate Markets launched ShopAds, a banner advertising widget where consumers can purchase products without being navigated away from the page. The credit card purchases within the transactional banner ads are secure, even if the sites they are placed on are not, CEO Henry Wong told me after his presentation last Monday at TechCrunch50.

 
 

DotSpots Wows Google’s Marissa Mayer, Press at TechCrunch50

Universal annotation system DotSpots, created by BizRate and Shopzilla founder Farhad Mohit, made quite a splash at the TechCrunch50 conference last week. Wired’s Besty Schiffman blogged that she had it pegged as the probable TechCrunch50 winner. 

 
 

TechCrunch50 Presenter Popego Knows What You Like, Delivers Tailored Digital Content

Argentinian start-up Popego brings together a user’s digital life in one place, CEO Santiago Siri told me after he presented at TechCrunch50 last Tuesday. The site creates interest profiles for users based on their Flickr photos, YouTube videos, blog posts, Twitters, and other digital content to help them find things and people that match their […]

 
 

TC50 Presenter Angstro Delivers News Alerts for Professional Networks

Google Alerts can’t distinguish people with common names, according to Angstro CEO Salim Ismael. His company, which presented at Techcrunch 50 Monday, uses an algorithmic solution to find news mentions of a user’s specific contacts and aggregate them into a personalized newspaper.

 
 

Tingz Widgets Sync Across Platforms, But Face Tough Competition

There are a lot of widgets on the web, but TechCrunch50 presenter Tingz has created a solution that works across almost any platform, including iPhones, Blackberrys, Macs OS X, and Windows Media Center. The widgets look and act the same on each device and automatically sync up, according to CEO Patrick Hunt.

 
 

Online Dating Meets Social Networking at TechCrunch50 Start-up MIXTT

MIXTT, which has dubbed itself "The Social Network for you Social Life," isn’t another Facebook or MySpace, according to founder and CEO Eve Peters. The site is geared toward meeting new people and offline interaction, and profiles are for groups of friends rather than individuals, she says. Instead of poking or sheep throwing, users can […]

 
 

Iamnews Presents at TechCrunch50 after Getting Voted Out of Demo Pit

Conference attendees voted alternative newsroom iamnews the best of the 100-plus companies exhibiting in the TechCrunch50 demo pit, awarding the company People’s Choice and the opportunity to present onstage Wednesday as the conference’s 52nd start-up. Attendees received three TC50 poker chips when they checked in and could vote for one company in the Demo Pit […]

 
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