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June 06, 2007
Hot Betas: Ziki, Steek, Sclipo, and 5min
The hot betas for this week are France's Ziki, which we found via Decideurs.tv, Sclipo, out of Spain, and 5min, out of Tel Aviv, both are video oriented sites that are pushing the envelope we hear and won recognition in the Euroean Startup 2.0 competition in Bilbao a week or so ago, and last but not least some upbeat news from France's Steekup.
Ziki is how you say better-than-MySpace in French (it's early and we cannot think of anything wittier to say than that). It has had a bit of buzz among French entrepreneur-bloggers. It's offering individuals, companies, and event organizers free rent to publish profiles and miniwebsites. Catalyzing early adopters to sign up was an offer for free sponsored links on Googe, Yahoo, or MSN, which was gratis for the first 10K users, a landmark that the startup reached a week or so ago.
No news yet on how much it will cost thereafter or how the startup is funding it. Ziki boasts a founding team with some Internet creds: Olivier Ruffin (former CTO of web hosting company Amen) and Patrick Chassany (founder of Amen and co-founder of Fotolia, the French stock photo company. Ziki currently reports the following user stats: 12,369 people; 2,074 companies; 392 groups and 76 languages.
Sclipo
Out of a pool of 250 companies in a competition to find innovative European web2.0 startups, Sclipo came in tops. It seems to be similar to VideoJug, also out of Europe, as well as the other finalist 5min (see below). The difference is that it's about skills while the others are DIY how-to sites. We guess you had to be there to understand the differences. Also placing in the top three was Properazzi, which by the way is now working with Nokia spinoff Widsets to take its property search mobile, according to its blog. (See our early post on Properazzi)
Steekup
The founders of Agematis, the company behind Steekup and Steekr wrote in to tell us that they now have 350 000 active users for its steekUP : an online backup solution for mass market backups and steekR : an online virtual drive to store, share and play your personal content. The steek technology is used by NeufCegetel for the NeufGiga service with more than 450 000 active users.
5min
A startup team out of Israel, 5min is like Sclipo, a short format, DIY video publishing platform. It's got some unique content though, like how to make homemade sex toys or how to adjust a sliding door. DIY cable TV shows watch out!
Posted on June 6, 2007 11:09 AM | Posted to Web 2.0 | Permalink
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