CoTweet is a startup that has built a Twitter platform for helping companies reach and engage customers.  CoTweet has several prominent companies using their platform such as Ford, Starbucks, Microsoft, Sports Illustrated, Zendesk, and Dish Network.

CoTweet announced earlier this week that they have raised $1.1 million in first round funding from Baseline, Founders Fund, First Round Capital, SV Angel, Maples Investments, and Freestyle Capital.

The company platform has the ability to manage multiple tools and accounts at once.  Several people also have the ability to post to a single account using the CoTweet platform.

CoTweet is available for free as of right now but the company will eventually charge for their services.  “CoTweet is an essential tool that allows us to manage multiple accounts from a single dashboard, or have a single account with multiple people managing it,” stated Scott Monty, the digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford Motor Company in a press release. “We can also identify who’s responsible for Tweets, which gives us the flexibility to pull experts into the discussion, and to keep a human face while doing so.”

Xobni is a San Francisco, Calif. based startup that built a platform around Microsoft Outlook.  Xobni makes it easier to find people, email, and attachments within Outlook.  Bill Gates even called Xobni the next generation of social networking.  Xobni has recently raised $7 million in Series B.  Xobni started as a Y-Combinator company then went on to raise $4.26 million in Series A.

Xobni’s Outlook software has been downloaded over 1.5 million times.  Xobni is currently doing product trials with Fortune 500 companies.  Some of the companies Xobni has partnered with includes LinkedIn, Facebook, Skype, and Yahoo!  Cisco’s investment in Xobni is an indication that they are becoming serious about enterprise email.  In August 2008, Cisco acquired PostPath, an email and calendar company for $215 million.

Prior to the $7 million investment, Xobni raised $4.26 million in funding from Khosla Ventures, Atomico, and First Round Capital.  The individuals that participated in Xobni’s first round of funding was Ariel Poler, Saar Gur, and Tom Pickney.

I often times write blog posts about companies that raise money and immediately think to myself, “how could a company with an idea that an elementary schooler can come up with raise this much?”  I’m In Like With You is no exception. 

The site even boasts how many hours have been wasted on the site on each game: over 2 million on Draw My Thing itself.  I have to admit that the design of the site is pretty sweet, but $1.5 million for a site with a few Flash games is pretty substantial. 

What are they doing with the money?  Founder Charles Forman will be expanding the I’m In Like With You team starting with Poojitha Preena from Skype as the company’s COO.

The funding was led by Spark Capital.  Baseline Ventures, Betaworks, Ron Conway, and Marc Andreessen also participated in this round.  This is I’m In Like With You’s first round, but they received seed funding last year too.  I’m In Like With You used to be a social network for flirting before they switched to online gaming.

I’ve tried a couple of the games and they were sort of fun, but I became bored pretty quickly.  Sometimes the experience can be unpleasant because chatroom bots and send mass messages that prevent you from being able to communicate with other users.

I think I’m In Like With You is an interesting idea, but how will it continue to make itself useful to society in the long-run?  That’s the 1.5 million dollar question.

The website is located at: www.iminlikewithyou.com/

 

Dollar Amount Involved: $3 Million Today / Expected $19 Million
Adify was founded in 2005 and has worked with large media companies such as Time, the Washington Post, NBC, and Comcast as clients to provide advertising supply.

Larry Braitman, the CEO/founder of Adify stated “We envision thousands of niche or vertically-focused ad networks emerging to meet specific market needs, driven by entrepreneurs and enterprises who are members of the specific communities they serve. These network builders are in the position to assemble publishers and deliver value to advertisers” at a recent Web 2.0 conference.

The first $3 million portion of a $19 million first round fund came from NBC Universal and GE Media Communications & Entertainment. Other investors in this round includes U.S. Venture Partners, Venrock Associates, and Time Warner.

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Sequoia Capital has partnered with Gary Sanchez Productions for a new comedy video website that will feature clips with multiple hit actor, Will Ferrell. The producer of Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Adam McKay is also heavily involved in the project. The project is called Funny or Die.

The website has already attained over 1.5 million page views as of today. The first video to appear on the website features Will Ferrell arguing with his landlord which happens to be an infant.Any user will be able to upload their own videos, but if they are given a low score by Funny or Die visitors, the video will be banished. Outstandingly comedic clips will be noticed by adminstrators of the website and may potentially score further movie deals according to Gary Sanchez Productions. The FunnyOrDie and Sequoia deal was brokered by Jimmy Miller and Deborah Klein.

Dollar Amount Involved: $300,000
5min is a website with video tutorials such as ‘how to catch a flying disc’ and ‘Sushi: How To Make Pickled Ginger.’ The founder of the company is Ran Harnevo, who is based in Israel. The $300,000 was in seed funding and the investors are unknown.

Dollar Amount Involved: Undisclosed
Yardbarker is like a Digg for sports news only. Users submit links and news articles with the best sports content from all over the Internet. Yardbarker, Inc. is based in Berkeley, CA and was founded in 2006. “Welcome to Sports 2.0″ states the About Yardbarker page.Russell Siegelman, a partner at Kleiner Perkins was the investor in this round of seed funding.Some of the other investors include Ron Conway, Steve Anderson (Baseline Ventures), Ronald “Ronnie” Lott (former USC/San Francisco 49ers football player), Harris Barton (HRJ Capital), Labrador Ventures, and the Band of Angels.

[Information Source: alarm:clock]