Web 2.0 - Monday, February 25, 2008
As It Is Raises $3M For AI-Backed Pageflakes Rival
Truethinker seems like an odd name (so does the parent name As It Is Inc.). But the concept is mainstream. Truethinker wants users to sign up and make it their personalized home page fed by customized RSS feeds. Sounds like Netvibes, Pageflakes and any number of rivals in this space. The trouble for Truethinker is that the UI is not nearly as cool as NetVibes nor Pageflakes. A bigger problem is that Truethinker wants you to pay $24.85 per year. That's not much but this is a non-starter given that you can get comparable applications for free. The startup hopes that it will gain attention and users because it deploys artificial intelligence.
Based in Buffalo, NY As It Is has raised $3M in a first round from undisclosed angel investors. The startup says that this is 60% of their goal for the round.
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Behavioral Ad Network JellyCloud Raises $11.5M
Friday May 16, 2008
Redwood City's JellyCloud has called down $6.6M of a $12M Series A1 round, says PEWire. Investors are Softbank America,US Venture Partners , Crosslink Capital and Sand Hill Capital. JellyCloud is led by CEO Scott VanDeVelde who was CEO at Claria (aka adware's Gator). Others in the leadership come from Claria. JellyCloud is in semi-stealth mode but leverages patented behavioral targeting technology on behalf of Advertisers, Publishers, Software providers and ISPs. The key here is ISPs. The trend among behavioral networks is to partner with ISPs to match data that ISPs have on Web traffic with ads that want to be targeted. As with Claira, it looks like Jellycloud is starting to become controversial. We spotted some complains on message boards like this one from Darlene T: "How do i get grape.jellycloud.com to stop coming up as my home page. I don't know what it is.?" and from Woodbrooke "My internet history keeps reporting grape.jellycloud.com, i don't know what this is?" View - site...
Ask.com Picks Up Dictionary.com After It Was Jilted By Answers.com
Thursday May 15, 2008
Ask.com is buying Dictionary.com parent Lexico (which also owns Thesaurus.com. If it sounds like this is a repeat of an old post that's because Answers.com had announced it would pay $100M for Lexico last year, before that deal went south with Answers' financing. The NY Times reports that Ask.com will also pay about $100M. Ask.com says that buying Lexico will expand its audience by 11% thanks to 145M unique monthly users. An eye-popping number is that Lexico currently only has 20 employees. Wow. View - site...
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