Stumble Upon :
Launched in 2002 by three 20-somethings in a Calgary, Alberta, apartment, StumbleUpon now has 2 million registered users drawn by its knack for finding websites that match their interests and those of others with similar tastes as they "stumble" around the Net.
Can you believe it ?? 2 million registered users ?
Funding: $1.5 million (Ron Conway, Mitch Kapor, Josh Kopelman, Brad O'Neill, Ram Shriram)
Headquarters: San Francisco
Employees: 12
Founded: 2001
Business model: Advertising, subscriptions
Bragging rights: Cash flow positive
Next up: New features like content controls and mobile video recommendations
www.slide.com
Slide has developed customizable and easily assembled slide shows of photos that can be embedded in a blog or a MySpace page, sent out in an RSS feed, and streamed to a desktop as a screensaver.
Funding: Not disclosed (Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, others)
Founder & CEO: Max Levchin (shown right)
Headquarters: San Francisco
Employees: 45
Founded: 2004
Business model: Advertising, subscription
www.bebo.com
Bebo has built a social network, more than 30 million members strong, that keeps users' pages private but still allows them to share things like video and drawings made on an online whiteboard.
Founders: Michael Birch (also CEO), Xochi Birch (shown right)
Headquarters: San Francisco
Employees: 28
Founded: 2005
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights: Profitable; advertisers include Disney, Alltel, Dawn and AOL)
Next up: Promoting new Bebo Authors channel (launched Feb. 22); hiring in-house sales team
www.meebo.com
Meebo lets users manage multiple instant-messaging services from one site. Meebo's killer app is a widget that places an IM window on your blog or webpage.
Funding: $12.5 million (Draper Fisher, Jurvetson, Sequoia Capital)
Founders: Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg (also CEO), Elaine Wherry (shown right)
Employees: 12
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights:: 5.3 million unique instant messenger IDs per month
Next up: Doubling staff in 2007
www.wikia.com
Wikia operates a hosting service for ad-supported community sites that use the same software and collaborative content model that made Wikipedia a Web phenomenon.
Launched in 2004, Wikia communities range from fans of 24 to politics junkies. Wikia is also working on an open-source, user-generated search engine.
Funding: $4 million (Amazon.com, Marc Andreessen, Bessemer Venture Partners, others)
Founders: Angela Beesley, Jimmy Wales (shown right)
Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.
Employees: 33
Founded: 2004
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights: 500,000 articles in 45 languages
Next up: Hiring; expanding into Japan; adding more languages; developing open-source search engine
www.joost.com
Forget the three-minute video blog. The 30-minute, broadcast-quality Web 2.0 TV show is coming in all its full-screen glory. And if serial disrupters Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have their way, neither television nor the Internet will be the same.
The duo behind peer-to-peer services Kazaa and Skype will officially launch Joost this spring, aiming to merge the best of TV with the best of the Net.
Funding: Not disclosed
Founders: Janus Friis, Niklas Zennstrom (shown above)
Headquarters: Luxembourg
Employees: 100
Founded: 2006
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights: 40,000 beta testers; just beat rival YouTube by signing major content deal with Viacom; other content providers include National Geographic, Warner Music Group, and Dutch TV production company Endemol
Next up: Striking more content deals
www.dabble.com
Dabble has designed a tool for organizing videos into playlists of favorites. Users share them across the network, so, say, food lovers can dabble in one another's video collections.
Funding: $750,000 (Hank Barry, Evan Williams, others)
Founder & CEO: Mary Hodder (shown right)
Headquarters: Berkeley, Calif.
Employees: 11
Founded: 2005
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights: 12,000 registered users to date; partnerships with MySpace, YouTube, Grouper, Brightcove
Next up: Hiring; a groups feature for users with similar interests to share video
www.metacafe.com
Metacafe's service ranks uploaded videos by popularity and feedback from a community of 17 million monthly visitors - and pays the creators for the success of their work. The auteurs get $100 after 20,000 viewings and $5 for every 1,000 subsequent views. Since September, Metacafe has paid a total of $250,000 to 200 contributors.
Funding: $20 million (Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital)
CEO: Erick Hachenburg (shown right)
Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.
Employees: 65
Founded: 2003
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights: 17 million monthly users; revenues doubling each quarter
Next up: Hiring 100 employees in 2007; partnering with movie studios, record labels and producers
www.revision3.com
Revision 3 is a production studio for geek-oriented online shows. Started by Digg founder Kevin Rose and its CEO, Jay Adelson, Revision3 sells sponsorships to companies like Go Daddy, Microsoft, and Sony for as much as $10,000 per episode.
Funding: $1 Million (Adelson, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, others)
Cofounder & CEO: Jay Adelson (shown right)
Headquarters: San Francisco
Employees: 7
Founded: 2005
Business model: Advertising
Bragging rights: 1.5 million monthly viewers; advertisers include Sony, IBM and Go Daddy
Next up: Launching up to 4 new shows
www.blip.tv
Blip.tv has built a platform for syndicating serialized online shows such as Starring Amanda Congdon and TreeHugger TV. Blip provides producers with software, ads, and distribution to websites and blogs. A deal is already signed with Web TV service Akimbo, which lets producers send their videos to TV sets.
Funding: Not disclosed (Ron Conway, Mark Gerson, Ken Lerer, Peter Thiel)
Cofounders: Dina Kaplan, Mike Hudack (also CEO; shown right with Kaplan)
Headquarters: New York City
Employees: 12
Founded: 2005
Business model: Licensing, advertising
Bragging rights: 45,000 content creators; key advertisers include Dove, Paltalk; licensors include CNN, Oxygen TV
Next up: Doubling staff in 2007
