The company plans to announce that it’s buying Five Across, an 11-person company based in San Francisco that has developed software that allows large companies to easily add social-networking features to their Web sites without needing to hire a team of engineers from Stanford to do it. Using this tool, companies will be able to add communities so that users can share audio, video and photos, as well as post blogs, podcasts and profiles.Cisco has not disclosed terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter Cisco’s fiscal year 2007, which ends April 28, 2007. While at first blush it seems odd that Cisco, a company that sells hardware to shuttle bits around the Internet, would buy a software-based, social-networking company, analysts following the company say it actually fits in well with Cisco’s long-term strategy.

“Social networking is all about attracting more eyeballs,” said Danielle Levitas, senior analyst and vice president for IDC. “And it’s interactive in nature, so people are downloading and uploading pictures and video. They are streaming media. It drives a lot of traffic on the network, which causes a need for more capacity. And Cisco is the company that provides all that infrastructure.” For more than a year, Cisco has been implementing a strategy to broaden its product portfolio beyond simply being the “plumbers of the Internet.” The company has been aggressively pushing into new markets that are more consumer focused, such as video, home networking and even consumer electronics.

Late last year, it created the Media Solutions business unit, which develops and markets products to digital media content owners. The head of the group, Dan Scheinman, has said the next step for Cisco is to work more closely with the companies that are creating the movies, TV shows, music and other multimedia content that end up in consumers’ homes. Cisco executives say this acquisition will likely lay the cornerstone of its digital media strategy, because social networking is an important way that people connect with and discover content. This will become critical for big media companies, such as the movie studios and television networks, as they continue to move their content onto the Internet.

As audiences find more ways to consume content, whether it be on the Web, on a cell phone or on another portable device like an iPod, media companies need to maintain their connection to these consumers to continue to make their brands relevant. Disney has already seen the value in the social networking phenomenon. It recently revamped its Web site to create a MySpace for tots. Kids are able to play games, watch music videos, customize their web sites with Disney characters like Tinkerbell or chat with other kids.

Disney’s new site was home grown and took more than a year to design. But Cisco hopes that with the Five Across software, it can help other media companies build these features much more quickly, making it more plug-and-play. Cisco is approaching this market much like it has any other new market it has entered. Executives at Cisco said that Five Across is just the first of many acquisitions to come. That said, it’s still unclear what other pieces Cisco may feel it needs to assemble to fully build out its portfolio.

But one thing is becoming clear. As Cisco moves into this new market, it’s going to face a slew of new competitors from Google to Yahoo to Microsoft, which either own social-networking sites or offer tools to help build social networking into Web sites. So far, these companies have focused on allowing people to add social-networking features to their personal blogs and Web sites. None of them has developed a comprehensive solution that could be sold directly to large companies. “It will likely change who Cisco views as competitors in the future,” Levitas said. “But it won’t happen over night. Yahoo and Google are offering some of these tools piecemeal. And it’s not like everyone will rush out to buy Cisco’s software right away.”

By Marguerite Reardon Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The exclusive deal will help Vodafone, Europe’s biggest mobile operator, boost mobile usage and with it data revenues, and also helps MySpace launch itself in the European mobile market.MySpace, bought by media giant News Corp for $580 million in 2005, has been looking to boost its global network of users via international expansion, offering mobile and video-related content.

“The partnership will enable millions of Vodafone customers to access MySpace mobile, allowing them to edit their own MySpace profiles, find and add friends, post photos and blogs and send and receive MySpace messages while on the move,” the two companies said in a statement.

Vodafone, which plans to initially roll out the service in the UK in the first half of 2007, said it would pre-load MySpace mobile software on select handsets in the future, and also make it available for download from its Vodafone live! portal.

MySpace, which lets members look up friends’ blogs and songs posted by their favorite artists, launched in the UK last year and has been looking to spread its wings in Europe. Last month it launched its French website and it has a beta site in Germany.

© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Facebook.com, the social-networking Web site, said Tuesday it is moving into television by teaming up with cable operator Comcast’s online video site Ziddio to produce a new series from users’ clips called Facebook Diaries.

The companies are enlisting Hollywood TV producer R.J. Cutler, to choose the best submissions and create 10 half-hour-long episodes that will be streamed online and on Comcast On-Demand. The program will start in March. Terms were not disclosed.Online video is one of the fastest growing sectors on the Web and major sites including Google’s YouTube and News Corp.’s MySpace are investing heavily in building their video capacity. Analysts say there is high demand for online video inventory from advertisers.

Though 2-year-old Facebook is one of the biggest social-networking sites on the Web with more than 16 million users, this is the first major move it is making to push video on the site.

“We think the opportunity for our users to have their content shown on television is a real draw,” said Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer at Facebook.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Facebook in September opened up its site beyond its original core of students to reach a wider audience and believes that exposure on television will raise the brand’s profile.

“The brand has always been associated with college students but we’re seeing from the growth of our users that the utility and value of Facebook is beyond that,” Van Natta said.

The partnership could also help raise the profile of Comcast’s Ziddio site with online users.

Ziddio was soft-launched last November as a site for uploading personal videos like YouTube. But Comcast hopes it will be differentiated from others by airing users’ best videos feature on Comcast’s TV On-Demand service. Both companies hope the partnership will attract advertisers.

“Working with Facebook is a terrific opportunity for sponsors who want to reach a youth demographic–it’s one that advertisers most want to reach,” said Liz Schimel, senior vice president entertainment, Comcast Interactive Media.

Story Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

The social-networking site MySpace.com has donated technology it helped develop to identify and block sexual predators from online communities.

The company, a unit of News Corp., said it will donate its Sentinel Safe database software to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. MySpace has been developing the program with Sentinel Tech Holding Corp. The program promises to let Web sites to identify convicted sex offenders and bar them from their online communities, although it might not catch those who sign up under false names.

Sentinel Safe contains information on the estimated 600,000 registered sex offenders in the United States and is designed to receive updates from state sex offender registries. The tool is used by MySpace security officials who monitor profiles on the site and match identities against the database, then remove suspect profiles.

The donation of the technology to the center is meant to help law-enforcement officials with missing-children cases and other child-related investigations. MySpace has increased its efforts to police its growing site after complaints from parents about sexual predators using the popular community to contact underage children. Those efforts include hiring a former federal prosecutor to head an expanded security team.

This week, the company also said it would back new legislation to require sex offenders to register their e-mail and instant-messaging addresses with the National Sex Offender Registry. The information would be made available to sites such as MySpace to compare with user profiles.

Location: San Francisco, CA

Launch Date: Formed in 2004; formally launched in U.S. in September, 2006

In the company’s own words, what is it? Piczo has created a space that gives teens around the world the freedom and tools to express themselves and connect with friends in a safer social networking environment.

Piczo allows its users to create fully customizable personal websites that do not require any understanding of html code. Users share their life stories with friends by designing their sites with multiple pages featuring photos, graphics, guest books, comment boards, music, and more. Each site can be linked to other friends’ sites and users can interact with them and their friends, and meet new people online.

Since its launch less than two years ago, Piczo has grown to over 10 million monthly unique visitors and 2.5 billion monthly page views solely through the viral efforts of its loyal members. Rave reviews from these users claim that Piczo is unmatched in the control it offers over their sites, ease-of-use, and ‘walled-garden’ approach with no searching for users.

Outside quote about company: “We are attracted to Piczo’s approach for a safer online environment in the social networking space. The demographic that Piczo has attracted, the younger teen audience, is quickly claiming the web as their own medium. Marketers and media companies covet this demographic and we are pleased to be part of Piczo’s continued growth,” said Paul Matteucci, general partner, U.S. Venture Partners.

Features:
* create your own website and web address
* manage your homepage and page list
* upload pictures and music videos
* create a guestbook, comment board and journal
* it’s free and easy

Management/Directors:
Jeremy Verba, CEO
Jim Conning, Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Jeanine LeFlore, Vice President of Products
Michael J. Sherf, Vice President of Technical Operations
Paul Remer, Vice President of Business Development
Peter J. van Pruissen, Vice President of Finance
Geoff Judge, Chief Revenue Officer
Chris Seth, UK Managing Director

Relevant Links:
http://www.piczoinc.com/piczoFunding.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-2496035.html
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21024303-7582,00.html
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/01/18/teen-focused-online-social-network-piczo-raises-11-million

Media Search Technology Now Available to all Websites; Unveils Search Engine Ad Unit
San Francisco, CA — Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Pixsy Corporation, a next-generation media search platform that powers private label image and video search engines, today announced PixsyPower, a suite of media search tools and widgets for website publishers of all sizes. PixsyPower tools enable website publishers to increase their site traffic by offering unique content and media search functionality to their visitors.

PixsyPower enables bloggers, social networking sites, or any website to run private label photo and video search engines and widgets on their sites by simply signing up for free at PixsyPower.com. Image and video search are the fastest growing search verticals on the web and PixsyPower enables any website publisher to tap into this popular consumer activity within their own site. With three easy steps, Pixsy’s image and video search engine and widgets can be deployed on any website with content customized to the specific topic of their site. The service also provides a set of reporting tools to track visitor activities and search patterns.

“Pixsy’s business model of using media search tools to create search traffic on websites is a unique and effective way of generating new targeted advertising inventory across the web,” said Jack Klues, Chairman, Publicis Groupe Media. “We believe that Pixsy is well positioned to significantly exploit this growing market.”

Pixsy PhotoSense
The PixsyPower service features the new Pixsy PhotoSense tool, allowing publishers to select a category or specific provider and create an advertising unit that can be dropped into their site. This ad unit changes dynamically to deliver fresh and interesting visual content, changing all the time. Whether the topic is news, sports, celebrities or entertainment, PhotoSense enables publishers to customize their images and videos, as well as select their content providers and categories. PhotoSense is available in all major IAB size ad units.

With the new Pixsy PhotoSense Search Widget, website publishers can run a full blown media search engine inside their site. Photo and video searches can be performed and viewed directly inside the widget. For example, a travel website can have a travel photo and video search engine directly inside their site, with photo and video results showing up inside the widget on the site.

“PixsyPower is the next breakthrough in the evolution of our media search distribution business,” said Chase Norlin, CEO, Pixsy Corporation. “Media search should be in the hands of all website operators, not just the big search portals.”

About Pixsy
Pixsy Corporation is a next-generation media search platform that powers private label image and video search engines for online publishers. Pixsy has offices in San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA and was founded by a team of engineers and business leaders hailing from Microsoft, Sony, and ValueClick.

Contact:
Pixsy Corporation
Lauren Karp
415.533.4000
lauren[at]pixsy.com

IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Staying Connected Has Never Been Easier
Seattle-based SynapseLife bets peers want to be more productive

Seattle, WA (January 10, 2006) – Chances are your teenager, sibling, or workmates are using Facebook, MySpace, or another Internet social network on a daily basis. In this virtual civilization, they can message back and forth, peek into the world of others, and generally experience another existence.

The majority of contenders in this arena are designing their web products to provide entertainment to their users. While there is no question that entertainment sells, what else can this new and creative medium provide?

– Enter SynapseLife!

SynapseLife is the brainchild of Mark Michael and Daniel Rust, based out of Seattle, Washington. And they are betting that their peers need everyday web/mobile tools to complement their online social use.

Since originally launching SynapseLife October 2006 as a free product the young company quickly gained popularity in over 34 countries worldwide, with 75 percent of its users residing in the United States. Users were immediately enthused by its enhanced group of web-based applications for managing their personal, contact, and favorite information.

With SynapseLife users can easily upload their contacts, favorites, calendars events, and a variety of other useful information from their computers, and have access to it from any Internet-ready device. They can set up RSS feeds, access their email, create a budget, communicate and share information.

With its Phase 2 release scheduled for January 10, 2007, they have enhanced the package to allow sharing of information, expanded its tagging and search features, and have added a variety of other new and innovative features.

One of its most creative additions includes an option for launching a browser toolbar for sharing of information between other social networking applications and SynapseLife. The toolbar currently supports interface with Facebook.com, with ability to share with other popular social networks to soon follow.

“The primary focus of this update is to expand our user’s capability to complement their experiences with social networks,” explained Mark Michael. “This fills a gap, since other community projects seem to have neglected to offer their user’s functional applications that allow them to manage their everyday lives.”

“We initially focused on providing a Facebook.com interface for our toolbar, because our users requested it, and Facebook has a large market penetration,” explains Daniel Rust, SynapseLife’s Chief Architect. “We will then start to tackle interface with the other popular network applications.”

SynapseLife has gained their quick notoriety primarily through exposure on many of the Internet’s most popular technical blogs, such as TechCrunch.com and Business 2.0, with several providing review of the initial SynapseLife product and interviews with its developers.

“We expect that with launch of the Phase 2 release, that our current user base will expand impressively within a matter of weeks,” says Mark Michael. “This is the pattern we have seen in the past, and expect the major enhancements included in the Phase 2 release to stimulate similar excitement.”

Currently SynapseLife is a free product, and both its developers have stated that it will always include a free component. Users can start using SynapseLife simply going to www.synapselife.com and setting up an account. Its simple and no software needs downloaded to your device.

University of Sydney Union has partnered with studentface.com.au, Australia’s largest online student community, to launch a new service for undergraduate students and high school leavers.

Australia’s skills shortage has created record demand for graduates; however, high school students find it hard to enter university because they don’t know any university students who can encourage them to enter tertiary education.

“This partnership is significant because it helps high school leavers log onto studentface.com.au, locate University students who are studying their desired degree, ask them questions and then enter university with greater confidence about what they are studying”, explained Jahangir Shagaev from studentface.com.au.

Studentface is Australia’s largest online community for students with representation at over 25 Australian universities where students form study groups, share photos, videos, make friendships and find career opportunities.

“We think studentface.com.au is great because it helps students have a better university experience”, said Katy Fernandez, President of the USYD Union.

—-END—-

——————————————-

About Studentface.com.au
Studentface.com.au is Australia’s largest online community for university students with presence at over 25 Australian Universities, representing over 80% of Australia’s student population. The company is based in Sydney and has a vision of creating an online platform for Australian students where high school leavers can discover what life is like at university and where university students can access career opportunities through alumni and graduates of their institution.

Contact:
Studentface.com.au
Level13/167 Macquarie House
Sydney, NSW, Australia
t: +61 (02) 8216 0780

——————————————-

About University of Sydney Union
The University of Sydney Union (USU) has provided services to students since 1874, enriching the life of students while they are at University. Those services include cultural and commercial services such as student development, clubs & Societies programs, community outreach programs, retail and food & beverage services, entertainment, o-week and many more. For more information please contact George Livery on 0411 742313 or go to usuonline.com.au.

TechAddress: Tell me a bit about your company, what it does and what’s your value proposition?

KickApps: KickApps is a fully hosted ASP platform that quickly enables any website with all the functionality typically found at portals like MySpace, YouTube and Flickr, including user-generated video, photos, personal pages, video blogging, tagging, rating, transcoding, video player customization, etc.

The KickApps platform deploys in a fast (hours, not months), highly customizable fashion by automatically generating custom media widgets with a number of unique viral features.

The KickApps platform allows websites to dramatically increase their page impressions and ad inventory and includes an administration, media management and reporting/data mining console. The platform also enables ad insertion including banner, pre-roll video and post-roll video.

TechAddress: What makes your company stand apart from your competitors?

KickApps: KickApps deploys rich functionality on major media websites in just a few hours with very little engineering integration. AJAX, Flash and html elements blend into a robust, seamless experience on a highly stable and scalable JAVA-based platform (Spring Framework, Hibernate). There are a number of features unique to the KickApps platform, including user-generated content and social networking deployed simply by the platform’s instant widget generator. The platform is also supported by a sophisticated media management platform which allows websites to invite rich media user participation while protecting their brands and advertisers from pornography and inappropriate material. Media screening includes automatic removal of media flagged by users as inappropriate as well as a media management console that allows webmaster to pre-screen content, adjust meta-data and disable unruly members. Web services include single sign on, reporting and module support. While many platform support widgets, those widgets have minimal functionality and are generally skin deep. KickApps widgets click to deeper user experiences, all supported by an integrated platform.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

KickApps: Video, photo and audio file uploads, transcoding and hosting within a sophisticated media management system easily controlled by our affiliate websites in an efficient administration console. User personal pages are automatically generated and multi-media enabled thru a media management system that gives detailed control to both website visitors and webmasters. The platform also includes multi-media community boards and Flash video blogging that allows users to create and post videos instantly with an inexpensive webcam.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

KickApps: Major media and high traffic websites that currently have an audience but do not yet invite true user participation. Radio station websites, television show websites, talk show websites, gaming websites, reality show websites, major music artist and celebrity websites, record company websites, etc.

TechAddress: Any new things in particular that you’re working on right now?

KickApps: New features will allow websites to also use the KickApps platform to manage and play their premium with a selection of easily customizable and programmable video player widgets.

TechAddress: Where do you see your company heading in the future?

KickApps: KickApps has launched as a platform that enables a wide array of highly integrated community and video features, but will evolve into a multipurpose platform that will provide webmasters with a complete range of hosted applications, deployable at their web properties in a number of ways (e.g. widgets, web services, other APIs). Integrated administration, media management, reporting and data mining services will continue to evolve and will be fully accessible in dynamic fashion. For major media websites our platform will be increasingly customizable and extensible to support almost any front-end implementation. For smaller websites our platform will continue to develop simple but effective turnkey solutions.

TechAddress: Any negative feedback or criticism regarding technology and services?

KickApps: Very little thus far, however we have many requests for new features that for the most part will be added over the next few months.

TechAddress: So what would you say is the guiding principle behind your company?

KickApps: Technology and budget limitations should not prevent webmasters from including state-of-the-art rich media and community functionality on their websites.

TechAddress: What is the mission of your company and what are you bringing to the market that is innovative?

KickApps: Impact thousands of websites, large and small, by solving difficult technical problems with simple, hosted solutions.

TechAddress: Where are you in terms of funding and your lifecycle?

KickApps: KickApps is a well-funded NYC-based venture backed by Spark Capital and Prism ventures. Board members include former NFL and MTV President Sara Levinson and former E! Entertainment founder/CEO and Liberty Digital CEO Jarl Mohn.

TechAddress: If your technology or service is not formally launched yet, when’s the launch date? If you have already launched, when was your launch date?

KickApps: KickApps launched its first wide release product in the Fall of 2006.