BlogOn 2005 Social Media Innovators
After an extensive selection process led by executive producer Chris Shipley, a select number of technology providers have been named as BlogOn 2005 Social Media Innovators.With more than 20 years of experience in identifying breakthrough technology products and helping them come to market, Chris has a worldwide reputation as host of the DEMO conferences for introducing innovative technology companies.
Companies selected as Innovators hosted a tabletop exhibit area at BlogOn 2005, and a handful of the most exciting products and services were featured in a brief on-stage presentation during the general session.
Attensa
Attensa, Inc. is a venture-backed software company developing an end-to-end RSS Network that automatically and intelligently delivers prioritized, relevant RSS information to anyone in the world and on any device.
The Attensa RSS network infrastructure efficiently organizes, distributes and measures RSS news feed articles and their associated attention stream to deliver the most relevant information to users while providing publishers and marketers with meaningful metrics giving them deeper insights into how readers are interacting with their content.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Craig Barnes – Cofounder, Chief Executive Officer
Eric Hayes – Cofounder, VP Research & Development
Tim Brown – Cofounder, Chief Technology Officer
Guy Field - Chief Financial Officer
Funding:
$3 million - Series A
SmartForest Ventures
2nd Avenue Ventures
BlogBridge
BlogBridge is an RSS and feed aggregation solution specifically designed for people like you - professionals - people like analysts, journalists, sales people, researchers, writers, pr people, etc.
BlogBridge is a blog, feed and RSS aggregator for "info-junkies."
While there are other aggregators out there, BlogBridge is designed for people who are required to follow lots of feeds, not 10 or 20, but 200 or 400. You can't read that much, so BlogBridge gives you lots of ways to organize, sort through, skim and discover what's important to you in this avalanche of information.
BlogBridge is an open source project, sponsored by Salas and Associates.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Pito Salas, Founder
Funding:
Private.
Web and Blog: www.blogbridge.com
Blogtronix
Blogtronix provides web 2.0-communication platform, which enables executives and employees to have a real time overview of their business operations. Employees, clients and partners can now communicate in a structured and more efficient way than ever before using Blogtronix corporate blogging, wiki, and business networking services.
Blogtronix’s services are based on several generations of web based content management, publishing, and community applications, which have been deployed to numerous enterprises and federal government agencies in the U.S. and Europe. Blogtronix LLC is headquartered in Oakland, California, with offices in Colorado and European HQ in Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Vassil Mladjov, Founder and CEO
George Athannassov, Founder and Business Development
Hristo Serafimov, CTO
Bozhidar Zashev, VP Product Development
Ivan Popgruev, Product Development
Funding:
Strategic investor on board since October 1st, 2005.
Buzznex
Buzznex is the first of the next-generation social networking websites. In addition to all the expected elements of a social networking site, members can use our proprietary technology to create their own personalized Buzznex Hotlist. The Hotlist expresses their tastes in music, fashion, books, film,and more. Users surf through our database and add specific items they like - whether it be the new
Franz Ferdinand album, a pair of Marc Jacobs boots, or the latest Tim Burton film. Friends are socially networked by their tastes, and also have the ability to see what is popular amongst their friends, within their neighborhood, and at their school.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Mike More, CEO
Moninder Jheeta, CTO
Funding:
Friends and family.
coBRANDiT
(Obtainium Methodologies LLC)
Founded in 2002, coBRANDiT is a boutique advertising and marketing agency that specializes in the creation, production, and placement of documentary advertising. This new discipline combines the fields of ethnographic market research, advertising, videoblogging, and word-of-mouth marketing--the result is integrated, measurable content about and by consumers and the life they lead with brands.
Documentary advertising can be described as video ethnography edited into stylized short-form branded content. Our work is designed to be placed online in brand microsites and videoblogs, in cable and broadcast distribution, and in print and outdoor executions. In addition, we have relationships with the leading providers of community management tools and measurement/tracking programs, as well as campus, trend, and infomercial organizations offering events, web, and cable distribution.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Owen Mack, Jesse Buckley, Cofounders & Self-Funding Bootstrappers
ComVu
Imagine broadcasting breaking news instantly to a global audience -- simply and inexpensively. ComVu does just that. The company is the first to enable users to broadcast live events to any size audience using ComVu's "do-it-yourself" video network. Ordinary people can transmit events as they happen from their desktop or camera phone to their audience of friends, family, colleagues, or online communities. With this new communication tool bloggers can broadcast live from conferences like BlogOn, family members can capture and share spontaneous moments, and company spokespeople can broadcast news immediately to stakeholders around the world.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
William Mutual, Chairman & CEO
Jennifer Blome, VP of Marketing
Funding:
Self-Funded
www.comvu.com
Blog: blog.comvu.com
Cymfony
Cymfony provides award-winning market research, media measurement and business intelligence solutions that are used to measure, analyze, and manage global brands. Cymfony offers customizable dashboards that analyze traditional media, blogs, and online discussions providing automated market intelligence, consumer feedback, message analysis, visibility metrics, and competitive comparisons across thousands of media sources. Cymfony’s solution provides marketing professionals with insights regarding consumer behavior, competitors and market trends enabling companies to adjust corporate strategy and marketing campaigns, accelerate response to product problems and identify strategic market opportunities.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Andrew Bernstein, CEO
Julie Woods, EVP Product Strategy & Marketing
Patricia Fennessey, VP of Professional Services and Customer Support
Funding:
Cymfony secured $7M in a series D round earlier this year lead by Ascent Venture Partners. Existing investor Trident Capital and Hearst Interactive also participated in the round. The funding brings the company’s total venture backing to $24 million.
Eurekster, Inc.
Eurekster harnesses the power of the communities that form around every website by providing publishers with behavior-driven search and advertising systems that improve their visitors' experience, increase site loyalty, and maximize revenue. Eurekster SearchPublisher and swicki products continuously learn from the behavior of users to deliver personalized search results and contextual advertising, and instantly share the most popular and recommended Web searches. Eurekster provides publishers with the ability to offer a branded search feature through which users share their knowledge and experiences anonymously, simply by using Eurekster swicki to search the Web and other sources of content. Eurekster relies on patented Learning Search™ technology and patent-pending processes that link search algorithms to social networks and communities of interest. The privately held Eurekster, Inc. is headquartered in San Francisco.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Steven E. Marder, CEO & Cofounder
Grant Ryan, Chief Scientist & Cofounder
Bill Stalker, CTO & Cofounder
Gary Franklin, VP Product & Services & co-founder
Adrian Vanzyl, VP Business Development
Tac Leung, VP Design
Funding:
Series A completed Dec 2004
Tapit Partners & Angels (Silicon Valley, Asia Pacific)
Feedster, Inc.
Feedster is an established and rapidly growing Internet search engine and advertising network for RSS feeds. Feedster helps individuals and organizations harness the rich information available in the universe of RSS feeds, which includes blogs, traditional news services, e-commerce sites, and entertainment properties. Feedster’s search engine scans the Blogosphere constantly, providing a fresh look at the more than 16 million sources it tracks. Each and every day, Feedster adds millions of new posts from existing feeds as well as finding tens of thousands of new sources. Feedster’s advertising network brings together advertisers with the premium demographic of RSS subscribers through highly targeted content in numerous vertical categories.
Feedster, located in San Francisco is a privately held corporation established in 2003. For further information on Feedster’s offerings and employment opportunities please visit www.feedster.com.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
J. Scott Johnson, Cofounder & CTO
François Schiettecatte, Cofounder & Chief Scientist
Chris Redlitz, VP Sales & Marketing
Oren Michels, VP Engineering
Funding:
Selby Venture Partners
Mitsui & Co. Ltd.
Omidyar Networks
Flock, Inc.
Flock is a garage start-up based in Palo Alto, CA. Flock was founded by Bart Decrem, Geoffrey Arone, and Anthony Young. Prior to Flock, Mr. Decrem headed up marketing and business affairs for the Mozilla Foundation and was there through the 1.0 launch of Firefox. Mr. Arone was product manager of the RealPlayer, where he also worked with Mr. Young. The three of them put their heads together and decided to make a run at making the web browsing experience more interactive.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Bart Decrem, Cofounder & CEO
Geoffrey Arone, Cofounder & VP of Marketing
Anthony Young, Cofounder & Chief Architect
Funding:
Series A and Series B raised (amounts not disclosed)
Bessemer Venture Partners & Catamount Ventures
Imeem
imeem is an emerging leader in the development of a next generation social multimedia platform. As a consumer-focused company, imeem is dedicated to delivering the innovative communications services which are destined to become the "dashboard for your digital life." imeem's mission is to give people control over their content and communicate with others in an enhanced user experience.
imeem is a 100% free service that combines unique database ideas with a powerful network to allow users to connect directly with friends and find new people and groups over the Internet.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Jan Jannink, Founder, CTO & President
Dalton Caldwell, Founder, CEO & VP, Engineering
Steve Jang, Director, Business Development
Funding:
Series A, Morgenthaler Ventures
www.imeem.com
Blog: blogs.imeem.com
KnowNow, Inc.
KnowNow, Inc. is a market leader in notification services and RSS content delivery. KnowNow’s solutions instantly deliver the information people want and need to know through its RSS technology, serving enterprises, online businesses, and end-users. KnowNow helps corporations deliver relevant, actionable information to employees, partners and customers, whether that be partner and marketing offers, company and product updates, RSS feeds or account information. You choose, you streamline, you push the relevant data to your audiences and its immediate, tailored and fast. KnowNow eLerts service is available directly to end-users and as a hosted branded service for businesses.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Todd Rulon-Miller, CEO & President
Ron Rasmussen, CTO & VP, Product Development
Bill Hodges, Senior VP, Worldwide Sales
Sean Martin, VP, Product Management
Funding:
KnowNow is privately held, with backing from premier venture capital firms including Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Levensohn Venture Partners, Palomar Ventures, TPG Ventures and Wachovia Strategic Ventures.
NewsGator Technologies, Inc.
NewsGator Technologies is the leading RSS platform company. Consumers, business, and enterprise customers can subscribe to NewsGator’s services and read all their news in Outlook, on the web, on their mobile phones, via FeedDemon and through a rich array of other devices, anytime, anywhere. For more information, visit us on the web at www.newsgator.com.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Greg Reinacker, Founder and CTO
JB Holston, President and CEO
A.V. “Sandy” Hamilton, EVP, Sales, Marketing, and Business Development
Mark Nass, VP Finance and Administration
Funding:
Mobius Venture Capital
Masthead Venture Partners
Pheedo
Pheedo is the world's leading provider of tools that enable individuals, organizations and corporations to promote, analyze, and optimize advertising in their weblogs and content (RSS) feeds. Pheedo's online products simplify the processes of creating, producing, distributing and tracking advertising on weblogs and content feeds. Pheedo makes it easy for publishers to generate revenue by inserting targeted advertising in both weblogs and syndicated feeds through a single ad management platform. Pheedo provides advertisers with powerful new ways to reach targeted audiences that are tapping into new media forms, including weblogs, RSS feeds and podcasts, in growing numbers.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Charles Smith – President/Chief Operating Officer, Cofounder
Bill Flitter – Chief Marketing Officer, Cofounder
Funding:
Undisclosed amount/ - /Transcosmos (Japan)
Pluck Corporation
Pluck transforms how active Internet users consume, control and create online information. Providing browser software, destination sites for consumers and web services for publishers and portals, Pluck is a leader in Web 2.0 technology. Pluck is the first to support and synchronize bookmarks and RSS web feeds between IE and Firefox, and is rated the #1 browser-based RSS reader for IE.
With Shadows, Pluck is giving internet users a new content discovery and discussion mechanism for every page and topic on the web. The dream behind Shadows: let humans index the Web, allowing smarter, quicker searches and creating impromptu forums and on-the-fly blogs.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Andrew Busey (creator of instant messaging), Cofounder and Executive Vice President
Dave Panos, (Collaboration Technology Pioneer) Chief Executive Officer and Cofounder
Funding:
$10 Million A & B – Mayfield and Austin Ventures
Techdirt, Inc.
Techdirt empowers companies to consistently make better decisions by putting the right information in the hands of the right people at the right time. Techdirt blends expert analysis with advanced technology to provide custom corporate intelligence services for Fortune 500-level companies. Our clients receive private, customized, tactical analysis of news and information in a context specifically relevant to their needs, delivered daily in an easy to read blog format. Insight from Techdirt's expert analysts is also available on our award winning public blog.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Michael Masnick, CEO & Founder
Grier Graham, VP Sales & Marketing, Founder
Dennis Yang, VP Product Development, Founder
Michael Ho, Executive Director, Research/ Founder
Michael Costanza, Executive Director, Technology / Founder
Funding:
Self-funded, funded by revenue
Umbria
Umbria analyzes the opinions and perceptions of the online community – comprised of over 16 million weblogs, message boards, chat and other online forums – and distills them into actionable market insights. Using proprietary natural language processing and machine learning approaches, Umbria is able to derive meaning out of the hundreds of thousands of conversations taking place on the Internet everyday, giving you in-depth analysis on consumer attitudes, behaviors and motivations relative to your brands, products and the competition.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Howard Kaushansky – President & Chief Executive Officer
David Howlett – Vice President, Product Management
Andrew Evans - Chief Financial Officer
Ted Kremer - Chief Technology Officer
Luci Sheehan – Vice President, Sales
Bill Tuohig – Vice President, Client Services
Funding:
March – 2005: Series A Funding = $6.7 million
Arrowpath Venture Partners
Sequel Venture Partners
Vista Ventures
VideoEgg
VideoEgg, Inc. is an innovative, venture-backed company committed to making online video posting truly easy. All across the web we see everyday internet users struggling with a complex mix of video formats, editing software, and players when they try to put video online. Our solutions will revolutionize the way videos are captured, edited, and published - removing technical complexity and empowering communities and services across the web with easy video publishing tools.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Matt Sanchez, Co-founder, President & CEO
Kevin Sladek, Co-founder, Business Development
David Lerman, Co-founder, Technology & Product Development
Funding:
n/a
Yuku
Since 1999, ezboard, Inc. has been quietly and profitably building a huge base of passionate community users who are actively participating in a wide range of discussion boards. Ezboard has over 30 million registered users and over a half million communities created.
To build our next product ezboard interviewed over 100 of its leading users and analyzed 33,000 user survey responses. We learned that our users want an online blogging and community service in one place; they want it to be free, easy to set up and use.
In response, we created our new community blogging platform called Yuku. Yuku is the best of blogs and forums in one place. Come check out Yuku and find out why Yuku is Better then Free!
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Robert Labatt, CEO
Funding:
Privately held, profitable and venture backed.
For specific information please contact Robert Labatt, CEO at rlabatt@ezboardcorp.com
www.yuku.com
Blog: www.yuku.com
Zoto
Zoto is where you can securely store all your digital photos, easily organize them and then do interesting stuff with them.
Zoto enables users to publish photos to any major blogging platform, so with 2GB of free storage (nearly 2,000 pictures) it’s perfect for photobloggers. Zoto displays geotagged photos on Google Maps and Google Earth which is great for hikers, travelers and anybody with a GPS device. Zoto is partnering with Rabble for mobile blogging. And now Zoto provides customizable galleries, so you can share your pictures and even let friends share their pictures back with you in the same gallery. Sign up for free today at www.Zoto.com.
Founders/Corporate Officers:
Founders:
Kord Campbell, Chief Executive Officer
Trey Stout, Chief Technology Officer
Rick Dunning
Corporate Officers:
Dakota Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer
Funding:
Seed Funding:
Founders + Private Equity + State of Oklahoma Technology Grant: $1.5M
