Tag Archives: Idealab
PostUp Acquires Facebook Application Company EchoFon
PostUp is a Twitter search and advertising company that used to be known as TweetUp. PostUp has acquired Echofon. Echofon is a company that develops Facebook and Twitter applications that is used by about 3 million people. PostUp was incubated at Idealab and started allowing registration for their real-time search engine last year. PostUp also recently acquired Twidroyd and popurls. [TechCrunch]
Bill Gross Launching “AdSense For Twitter” Startup Tweetup
Incubator company idealab is launching a new startup company called Tweetup. The man behind Tweetup is Bill Gross. Gross is the original founder of GoTo.com. GoTo.com was renamed to Overture, a company that Yahoo! purchased. Yahoo! was able to leverage Overture patents by suing Google and settling for a settlement of 2.7 million shares.
Tweetup is a Twitter search engine that has an advertising platform. When you search for tweets using Tweetup, the search engine will use an algorithm to place important tweets at the top and contextual ads on the side.
If you integrate Tweetup into your own website, you can share 50-50 revenue with idealab. Tweetup already has an established partnership with Answers.com.
Investors have put in about $3.5 million into this idea. The investors include Index Ventures, SV Angel, First Round Capital, Betaworks, Jason Calacanis, Steve Case, and Jeff Jarvis. Danny Rimer of Index Ventures has a board seat at Tweetup. [TechCrunch]
GoDaddy Reminds You About Tuvalu Sinking When Buying .TV Domain
Tuvalu, an island in the South Pacific with about 11,000 inhabitants is eventually going to sink beneath the ocean. The .tv is the official domain name extension for the island and can be registered from GoDaddy.com.
Interestingly Twitter user Adam Quirk noticed that a pop-up window appears when registering the .tv domain name recommending buyers to go with a .com, .net, or .info. There is also a note that reminds people that the island is sinking.
If Tuvalu does end up sinking, its only real estate that will be left will exist on the Internet. Back in the 1990′s during the domain name rush, analysts were predicting that every TV station would want to snap up a .tv domain name for websites that could potentially be called NBC.tv, Sony.tv, Zee.tv, etc. But that never happened.
The island of Tuvalu even had a 12 year contract sharing agreement for revenue made from .tv registrations, marketed by DotTV. DotTV was even backed with $50 million in funding from Idealab.