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Communications - Friday, April 15, 2005

Bubbler - Profile

HQ: Palo Alto, CA. Parent corporation is FiveAcross, which also developed the workgroup IM application Intercomm.

Founded: 2004

Management: CEO is Glenn Reid who ran engineering projects at Apple that resulted in iMovie and iPhoto.

Investors: In August 2004, the company raised $2M in Series A investment from Granite Ventures and Adobe Ventures.

Business Model: The company sells subscriptions for a hosted blogging platform - it's $5 for a basic version and $10 per month for advanced features. The server can also be purchased. Bubbler allows posting of any kind of content into a blog, including audio, video, spreadsheets, and PDFs. Instead of updating blogs through a browser-based Web form, users post entries through a Bubbler desktop application. Five Across plans to offer Bubbler as part of a workgroup suite that also includes instant messaging and a group collaboration client.

Competitors: iUpload, WhatCountsblogger, Xanga, MoveableType.

Dirt: Bubbler has a lot of buzz thanks to a great demo at this year's Demo Event. CEO Reid has attacked Blogger and Movable Type for lousy applications. Indeed, there is room for a lot of improvement.