According to Reuters, SideStep Inc. should be set today to announce that they will be acquiring TravelPost.com.  SideStep is a traveler’s search engine that searches over 150 websites to find travel bargains.  Every month, SideStep services are used by 5 million consumers.  TravelPost is a website for consumers to read and review hotels and other resorts.  “SideStep plans to combine TravelPost’s reviews with its own site in the coming months, matching travelers with hotels based on advice from people with similar interests [source].”

SideStep (#10 Travel website) is geared towards competing hyperactively against Expedia, Travelocity, Cheap Tickets, Orbitz, and Yahoo!

Private company, SideStep Inc. was founded in 1999 and is based in Santa Clara, CA.  TravelPost.com was founded in San Mateo, CA and has generated over 250,000 reviews by users on 50,000 hotels.  SideStep has previously raised over $17 million in funding from Trident Capital and other investors.  Rob Solomon a former general manager of Yahoo! Travel took over as President and CEO of SideStep.
[Article Source: paidContent]

Google now has a market cap of around $145 billion. The only technology company with a higher market cap is Microsoft at $282.5 billion. Google’s market cap soared after it announced surprisingly strong third-quarter financial results last week. Google’s profits soared past analyst expectations by nearly doubling.

Yahoo on the other hand saw a 38% drop in profits primarily due to slowing ad sales and problems rolling out its own contextual ad network. According to comScore, Google held 45% of the online USA search market in September as opposed to Yahoo’s 28%. Yahoo’s share of the online search market is steadily dipping.

Google’s phenomenal growth is something very few technology companies see. Its surprising how fast Google blew past some of the oldest and most respectable technology companies around.

As you can see, Google continues to dominate Silicon Valley and eat small competitors alive. But everything good comes to an end. And eventually, some new startup will wow millions of Internet users and become the next Google.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition has filed a complaint with the FTC against Zillow stating that the company is misleading consumers and real estate professionals that rely on the accuracy of its home valuation service.

Zillow has created a lot of buzz around its home value estimation tool. I know a number of real estate agents that use Zillow’s valuation tool on a regular basis. And nearly all those agents heavily rely on the accuracy of the valuation. Therefore, if Zillow is in fact misleading people, this could become a major issue.

You can check out the complaint PDF here. [link]

In the complaint, the NCRC states that Zillow misrepresents itself as the Kelly Blue Book for homes. It also states that  Zillow misrepresents the accuracy percentage of its home estimates. According to Zillow, its estimates are with-in 10% of a home’s selling price. Unfortunately, many consumers do not realize that they should take any online home valuation tool’s estimate with a grain of salt. Zillow should maybe add a disclaimer for real estate professionals stating that its estimates may be inaccurate.

I do hope that Zillow gets out of this complaint. I really like Zillow’s website. It’s intuitive and easy to use. And even if the estimates are not completely accurate, at least it’s a place to start.

 

According to the Wall Street Journal, unique September visits to Facebook fell 12% and MySpace to 4% from August. The reason for the decline in visitors may be due to the prevalence of spam and fake profiles on these social networks. Marketers are now using MySpace and Facebook more then ever to promote their businesses and products. Hundreds of thousands of fake profiles are being created each month by spammers.

I think spam is a much bigger issue on MySpace then Facebook. Although we may start seeing more fake profiles on Facebook now that it’s publicly open.

Many users of these social networks are starting to get annoyed by spam, fake profiles and random friend requests from unknown people. This is most likely driving away users. In the beginning, its exciting to connect with a large number of friends, leave comments on people’s profiles, and even support businesses that have profiles online.

Eventually, users get sick of this routine. I know a few people that got sick of getting MySpace friend requests from profiles that linked to pornographic websites.

Even with all the spam and fake profiles, I am sure Facebook and MySpace will continue to see growth. Unfortunately, their steadily growing user-base and “cool factor” will keep attracting advertisers and spammers. However, a majority of users could probably care less at this point. Afterall, leaving a network that connects you to all your friends is not easy.

Eyespot is an online video editing and sharing website backed by Michael Robertson, the founder of MP3.com. The video website, which was launched in April of 2006, secured $3.7 million in funding led by Gabriel Venture.

Like Jumpcut, Eyespot is a video remix site that lets users edit and combine videos, photos, and music into a single video. The user-created videos are shared through email, cell phones, and blogs. Users can upload videos to Eyespot through cell phones as well as their PCs.

Tim Chang, a partner at Gabriel Venture Partners said “We’re still in the early days of user-generated video, and have long believed that a platform like Eyespot is needed to take user-generated content to the next level, beyond simple upload or pirated content to active creation and participation.” [source]

To its advantage, Eyespot has managed to build relationships with media companies that can provide legal content to its users. Its partners include Blip.tv, Veoh Networks, Current TV, and Lions Gate Entertainment. It has also partnered with artists from noteworthy labels like Columbia.

I am not sure how Eyespot plans to monetize its user-base. The site has no ads on it and they have no premium service options. Another problem I see with the site is the quality of videos on there. They are rather obscure. Browse through some of the videos and you will know what I mean.

I think a smart move for Eyespot would be to license their technology to other companies. There are plenty of companies that can use Eyespot’s video remixing technology. Therefore, I can see a good amount of this funding going into Eyespot improving their technology to license out. As for Eyespot’s own user-base, it’s hard to say how much growth it will see. We’ll just have to wait and see how this company does.

The way that Skyrider works essentially is by taking over certain search results for keywords in which there is an advertising opportunity.  An example given by the Skyrider website is below:

In the above screenshot, it displays how Skyrider will add a link to a website that sells pop artist, Shakira’s concert tickets if a user searches for Shakira in P2P software, Limewire.  Skyrider is aiming to make money from these ads similar to how Google is making money from search engine results.

The advertisement is part of the search results, but will be mainly depicted by all capital letters.  This helps the advertisement differentiate itself from spam.  The advertisement will be displayed in the top results and if a user clicks the ad, then the default Internet browser will open the ad.

Currently Skyrider is a first to market for P2P advertisements on a large scale.  Skyrider is pulling together millions of search queries and will soon be processing hundreds of millions of queries per day.  Statistics say that searches queries made on Yahoo! and Google are roughly the same number of searches made on P2P networks.

Skyrider was founded by Dr. Ori Cohen and Stas Khirman.  Both of these founders previously created Narus, which is a leader of software and technology in the telecommunications and government agency industry.

[Edit - Jingle has raised a total of $61.4 million, not $56.4 million. I missed a $5 million funding round they had in December.]

Jingle Networks has received a $30 million investment led by Goldman Sachs and Hearst Corporation. Jingle operates FREE411.COM, a service that provides free ad-supported telephone directory assistance.

This is the company’s fourth funding round. Jingle raised $400,000 when they started out, $5 million in December, and $26 million in April. So to date, Jingle has raised $61.4 million.

I would guess that investors own roughly 1/3 of Jingle. Therefore, Jingle’s valuation is possibly around $184 million. Not bad for such a young company.

FREE411 works like any other directory assistance service. You call 1-800-FREE-411 and are answered by an automated service that asks you a few questions about the business number you are looking for. And while you wait for the number, sponsored ads related to your listing are played. If the automated service is unable to help you, live operators are also available.

I think Jingle has a great thing going for it. Directory assistance services cost a lot. Sprint charged me something like $3.00 to use their assistance service last week which was ridiculous! I don’t mind having to listen to a few ads to save $3.00.

It’s projected that Americans use directory assistance services 6 billion times a year. Therefore, FREE411.COM has huge potential for growth. According to Jingle, its service handled 13 million calls in September. That’s a sizeable number. If Jingle keeps growing and capturing segments of the traditional directory assistance market, I can easily see it become a billion dollar company.

On January 15, 2001, Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia.org, an open-source encyclopedia where users edit or add information on certain subjects.  The project proved to be very successful, but Larry Sanger felt that it could improved.  Sanger feels that the problem with Wikipedia is that users cannot tell when information on Wikipedia is outdated or if data is inaccurate.

This is why Sanger is planning on unleashing a new website called Citizendium.org.  Sanger is calling this initiative an “encyclopedia project” which also will be open to the public, but will be headed by experts on subjects.  Citizendium will be geared more towards users of Encarta and The Encyclopedia Brittanica.  Participating as a contributor will be by invite-only.Â

In referring to Wikipedia, “Its content is uneven in quality,” Sanger stated. “In science and technology, the articles are rather good but in social science and humanities, they are rather amateurish.”

Since there were not any real restrictions about who can contribute to articles, a lot of vandalization has been taking place.  “Widespread anonymity leads to a lot of trolling,” Sanger stated. “As a result, the whole system is off-putting to a lot of people, including the most valuable contributors: academics, scholars, scientists, etc.”  Citizendium’s plan is to have contributors use their real names instead of aliases.

Many scholars and editors have been receptive to Sanger’s new idea and have willfully signed up.  This includes Gareth Leng, a professor in Physiology at the University of Edinburgh.  Other professors or professionals that will be able to sign on as a contributor to certain subjects on Citizendium will be required to have 3 years of experience along with other qualifications.  However, as Citizendium progresses, the requirements for contributors will be less strict.

“Those are requirements for the pilot project but the plan is to allow editors to be self selecting,” Sanger stated. “We’ll post the requirements in terms of degrees on the wiki itself and when it is out of the pilot phase, people will be able to make the judgment themselves whether they have the qualifications. They’ll have to link that they have the qualifications but otherwise it’s going to be a very much a wiki. It’s a Web 2.0 approach to getting editors involved.”

Citizendium is a volunteer project and no one is getting paid for this initiative.  Citizendium is currently being funded by donations and Sanger is exploring the possibilities of attaining corporate sponsorships.

For more information, make sure to check out the Citizendium link in the 2nd paragraph or refer to the Wikipedia content on [Citizendium]