Magnify gets $1.2 million

Magnify.net recently received $1.2 million in funding. The round was led by New York Angels and NextStage Capital. Magnify allows websites to add video channels to their own sites. Individual website owners dont have to worry about storage or bandwidth. They claim to share ad revenue with the channel owners. Magnify has a lot of templates and tools to manage your video channel.

From what I can gather Magnify is like the MySpace of videos. Monetization will be through ads.

Via newteevee

Imagekind receives $2.6 million

Seattle based Imagekind has raised $2.6 million in funding. Imagekind allows artists to upload their artwork and sell it at prices of the artists choosing. Imagekind takes a charge to cover the cost of printing, framing and shipping. In addition they charge a service fee, $8.99 is the minimum charge for Imagekind. This round was led by Holtzbrinck ventures.

Art.com is their direct competitor.

Via techcrunch

Koolanoo secures $3 million

Koolanoo announced that they have secured $3 million in funding. Koolanoo is a Jewish social network. Giza Venture Capital is leading this round of investment.

Other companies with some link to Israel in the news are Zlango and AniBOOM.

Via Mashable

Shelfari gets $1 million from Amazon

Amazon has made another investment into a social networking site for book lovers. Shelfari actually taps into Amazon apis to get book covers, author names, reviews and other book details. They plan to make money by selling books through amazon and getting an affiliates fee. The main appeal seems to be the way you can display your books on a shelf and find out who else owns these books. You can then share your book shelf on blogs and other websites.

Amazon has made investments in FantasyMoguls recently.

Via seattlepi

AniBOOM raises $4.5 million

AniBOOM raised $4.5 million with Evergreen leading the round. AniBOOM is based in Israel and is a YouTube for animations. They are involved in different projects including contests and tools for animators.

Israeli based Zlango also got a round of funding recently.

Via newteevee

FantasyMoguls receives $1 million

FantasyMoguls a game from Atomic Moguls has received $1 million from Second Avenue Partners and Amazon. The game is based on Hollywood movies. Members can draft six movies and points are handed out based on variables like performance, reviews from IMDB, per theater average. In short its a twist on fantasy sports leagues.

Monetization will be through online advertising and partnerships with other entertainment sites.

Via seattlepi

PBWiki receives $2 million

PBWiki has raised $2 million in funding from Mohr Davidow Ventures. PBWiki allows anyone to start a wiki. This company seems to be going after the same market that Wetpaint and countless other wiki providers are trying to capture.

Via Mashable

Zlango secures $12 million

Zlango, an Israel based company, announced on Feb 12th 2007 that they had secured $12 million in funding. The funding was led by Accel partners and Benchmark Capital. Zlango has created a brand new language using colorful icons. So as long as you know the meaning of these icons you should be able to get your message across to people who cant speak the same language. The idea is pretty good. It remains to be seen how many people are willing to take the plunge and learn a new language.

Benchmark seems to be big on these kind of companies. Earlier this year they funded Gigya which is an email company that allows you to embed different digital media. Accel made a sizeable investment in Wetpaint.

Via startupsquad

Brickfish gets $11.2 million in Series A funding.

Brickfish announced on Feb 21st 2007 that they got $11.2 million in Series A funding. This round of funding was led by DCM. Brickfish provides a platform that connects advertisers and consumers through user generated content. For example person x who likes hyper comics can blog about it and create a contest/campaign that rewards people with real cash for original comic ideas. The rest of the brickfish community will vote on the user submitted ideas. The rewards would be provided by the owner of hyper comics. Brickfish is located in San Diego, California.

Via vcaonline

Mozes raises $5 million

Palo Alto based Mozes raised $5 million in series A funding. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners. Mozes allows people to manage text based mobile campaigns. Anyone can register a keyword. When I text Mozes with that keyword I will get messages from the owner of that keyword. First keyword can be registered for free. Seems like a lot of bands are grabbing up the keywords. This can be an ideal solution for people who are on the go and need to get the latest news fix.

Norwest Venture Partners also made an investment in SideStep this year.

Via techtoken

iSkoot receives $7 million

iSkoot announced that it had received $7 million in Series B funding. Charles River Ventures led this round. iSkoot allows people to talk with their Skype contacts through a mobile phone. iSkoot is a phone software application. They plan to be compatible with Yahoo Messenger and Google Talk.

iSkoot is trying to convince mobile phone operators to bundle their software on different mobile phones. Microsoft compatibility is conspicuously missing. The download is free so I guess they are hoping that cellphone operators will pay them.

Via Mashable

SideStep secures $15 million

SideStep announced on Feb 7th 2007 that they had secured $15 million in a Series C round. This round was led by Norwest Venture Partners. SideStep allows consumers to find the best travel bargains by searching on more than 150 sites. According to SideStep more than 5 million consumers turn to SideStep each month. SideStep Press Release.

The travel category seems to be heating up. Recently we saw a $12.1 million deal for Farecast.

Via SiliconTap

Gigya gets $4 million

Gigya has secured $4 million in funding from Benchmark capital. Gigya was launched in November 2006 and is a webmail service that allows you to add MySpace layouts, rockyou slide shows, photobucket pictures and youtube videos to name a few. Users can import hotmail, yahoo and gmail contacts.

This seems squarely aimed at the MySpace crowd.

Via thealarmclock

Vizu raises 2.9 million

Vizu announced on Jan 31 2007 that they had raised $2.9 million in funding. This funding will be used to develop Vizu Answers. Draper Fisher Jurveston led this round of funding. Vizu Answers is like google adsense for polls. Companies can create polls that are then distributed to sites/affiliates within Vizus network. Sites that display the polls get a share of the revenue.

Draper Fisher Jurveston also made an investment in Meebo in January.

Via techcrunch

Jan 2007 Funding Roundup

Im going to do a highly unscientific analysis of the state of venture capital for the month of Jan 2007. Lets see how un/profitable is it to be in the world of web 2.0.

In Jan there were deals in the

1 to 5 million range. (5)
     Vizu, Shiny Media, MyYearBook, Wize, Kiptronic

5 to 10 million range. (4)
     Wetpaint, Buzzlogic, Wikio, Meebo

10 to 15 million range. (3)
     Piczo, LinkedIn, Farecast

0 to 1 million range. (1)
     Lijit


Promising Deals: (5)
     Piczo, LinkedIn, Meebo, MyYearBook, Kiptronic

On the Fence Deals: (3)
     Vizu, Shiny Media, Farecast

Doomed Deals: (5)
     Wetpaint, Buzzlogic, Wikio, Lijit, Wize


Total Deals: 13 worth 89.7 million dollars


23% of the deals seem to be doomed while 38% are likely candidates for success. The other 38% have a 50/50 chance.

Overall seems to be a good time for VCs and 2.0 companies neeeding funding. However we still have some time to reach the madness of 2000.

Disclaimer: This is not a complete list of the deals that took place in Jan.