NewsGator used to have an online RSS reader service, but their market share started slipping away from competitors such as Netvibes, PageFlakes, and Google Reader.  Personally I never really used NewsGator, but I noticed Pulse2.com get a good amount of hits from their RSS reader about one or two years ago.  The company has decided to focus more on desktop applications and enterprise social tools.

On the NewsGator blog, they wrote that users are recommended to migrate to Google Reader by August 31, 2009.  Google employee Brian Shih wrote a welcoming blog post to users migrating from NewsGator to Google Reader yesterday.

As another alternative NewsGator’s desktop applications is one of the most used on the market.  Their RSS reader for the Windows operating system is called FeedDemon. And NewsGator’s desktop RSS reader for the Mac is called NetNewsWire.

Thus far NewsGator raised about $39 million in funding from Mobius Venture Capital and Masthead Venture Partners.

Some of NewsGator’s clients include 2 out of 3 of the top world banks, the world’s largest private public relations firm, the second largest U.S. advertising agency, the second largest law firm, four out of the top pharmaceutical companies, the fourth largest U.S. electrical company, and one of the top five investment banking companies in Canada.

“We’re very proud to continue to extend and expand our Global 2000 customer relationships,” stated NewsGator CEO and President JB Holston. “Demand is accelerating for our on-premise and SaaS-based social computing offerings as top quality companies turn to immediate, high-ROI solutions for content and collaboration.”

NewsGator is also well known for NetNewsWire, an RSS reader.  NetNewsWire was named one of the Top 10 iPhone Apps for 2008 in TIME magazine.

“The social computing models that have rocked the consumer world have equally important roles to play in the enterprise – and now more than ever in the current business environment,” stated NewsGator Director and Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital and Foundry Group Brad Feld. “It’s inspiring to see NewsGator tapping this rich vein of need and achieving remarkable results to document the value of its approach.”

Sifry launched Technorati in 2002.  The name, Technorati is based on the fusion of the words technology and literati (intellectuals).  Technorati allows users to search for blogs, photos, and other media.  Technorati redesigned their platform in 2007 to gain the attention of bloggers, Internet startups, entrepreneurs, and mainstream media.

In the first three rounds of investment, Technorati brought in $21.6 million.  Today the company announced that they have raised $7.5 million out of a targeted $10 million Series D round.  Montgomery & Co. is working on brokering an acquisition of the blog search engine company.

Previous investors in Technorati include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, August Capital, and Mobius Venture Capital.  In this round, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Mobius Venture Capital, and FG Incubation participated.

Upon visiting the Technorati homepage I noticed that at the top it says, “what’s percolating in blogs now.”  The frontpage consists of stories in the media that many blogs are commenting on and linking to.  This approach is very similar to Techmeme and Digg.

Technorati has a feature called Authority and Ranks individual blogs.  The more a blog gets linked to, the more authority and ranking it receives. The top 100 blogs on Technorati are available at: http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/.

Technorati will be making an official announcement next week about the funding and will be announcing a business strategy initiative.  Look for additional Technorati news next week.

Information Sources:
[1] paidContent: More Cash For Technorati: Blog Searcher Gets $7.5 Million Of $10 Million Fourth Round by Joseph Weisenthal
[2] TechCrunch: Technorati Confirms New Financing; New Business Focus Coming by Michael Arrington

Postini’s services will be a valuable add-on for Google Apps.  As 1,000 small businesses are signing up for Google Apps per day, Postini will most likely be used to protect the information transferring between these businesses.

“Larger enterprises, however, face a challenge: though they want to deliver simple, useful hosted applications to their employees, they’re also required to support complex business rules, information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate compliance issues. In effect, many businesses use legacy systems not because they are the best for their users, but because they are able to support complex business rules. This isn’t a tradeoff that any business should have to make,” stated Dave Girouard, VP & GM of Google Enterprise on the official Google Blog.

“We realized that we needed a more complete way to address these information security and compliance issues in order to better support the enterprise community. That’s why we’re excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Postini.”

Postini is a private, San Carlos, Calif.-based company.  August Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital, Pacifica Fund, Summit Partners and Sun Microsystems Inc. are all investors in Postini who will potentially see a nice return on investment.

Postini intends on using Google technologies to develop a new suite of products.  The synergy created through this acquisition also aligns Google’s partnership with Salesforce.com.

References:
[1]  Reuters: Google to buy Web security co Postini for $625 mln (via Yahoo! News)
[2] The Official Google Blog: Welcome, Postini team
[3] Pulse 2.0: Google AdWords Officially Merging Into Salesforce.com Apps

The previous investors of Technorati are Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital. Technorati acquired PersonalBee last month. Technorati also recently announced a service called WTF (Where’s the Fire?). This service explains why things are a buzz.