Lijit, the company that develops search applications for online publishers and publisher networks, has just closed a $7.1 million Series C round of financing, led by Foundry Group. Existing investors Boulder Ventures and Colorado Fund I, managed by High Country Venture, have also participated in this round. Lijit has now raised more than $10 million in total, following an earlier round last year.

Lijit offers social search widgets for individual blogs or online publishing networks seeking additional traffic and recommendations. Through connecting one’s social media content (and beyond) across the Web, Lijit can create a well-linked stream of collective of products that allows site visitors and readers to extend their relevant experience based on topics of interest and in turn generate more traffic and revenue for the publisher.

With the funding, Lijit now plans to begin monetizing all of those widgets, launching its own ad network. Additionally, Lijit will be expanding opening new offices and hiring more employees so that the company can continue to develop new products and maintain subsequent development.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Lijit Closes on Second Round of Funding with $3.3MLijit Funded, Partners With FeedburnerLijit to Close on $3.3M in Second Round of FundingWhat Google Should Learn From StartupsUndisclosed Buzzd Funding Amount Finally Comes To LightHuffington Post Raises Another $5 MillionYuMe Raises $9 Million for Another Video Ad Network

Source:Mashable!

Online music network MOG is delving deeper into advertising with a new ad network catering to independent music blogs and music websites. The company, which just received $2.8 million in funding earlier this year from larger music businesses including Sony, is looking to vastly expand its reach and influence within the online music industry with this new ad network.

Operating in what appears to be a format similar to ad networks like Glam, MOG will be enabling independent music blogs and websites to tap into the ads that are being offered through MOG, while also having the opportunity to publish content directly through MOG’s websites. In turn, MOG will also be pushing this content back out into the web via RSS on participating affiliate sites, which increases the potential reach of the redistributed content that’s provided by the independent music blogs and websites.

This multi-faceted approach to content aggregation, syndication and advertising makes MOG’s new ad network more than just a hub for accessing banner ads, as it presents additional publishing opportunities for content providers that are looking to expand their audience while also earning some kickback from ad revenue. As far as advertisers are concerned, this cross-network approach presents additional branding opportunities for marketing campaigns without additional work.

With the success of ad networks like Glam it’s clear that such aggregation and syndication is an attractive option to both publishers and advertisers. The aligning trend we’re seeing in one-stop shop ad networks, whether they come from dedicated ad networks or other web-based services that launch their own ad networks, is integrated social media options for deeper engagement with end users. This trend is typically coming from the platform arena, and given MOG’s existing community presence on the web, I expect to see some development on more engagement-based options for the new ad network as well.

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Source:Mashable!

Andrew Smith over at the Dallas Morning News Technology Blog had an interesting post this weekend which met with a great deal of resistance from his readers there. In his post, he briefly detailed the possible doom on the horizon for online gambling, particularly online poker. He quotes the EE Times:

Humanity was dealt a decisive blow by a poker-playing artificial intelligence program called Polaris during the Man-Machine Poker Competition in Las Vegas.

Poker champs fought the AI system to a draw, then won in the first two of four rounds (each round had Polaris playing 500 hands against two humans, whose points were averaged.) But in the final two rounds of the match, Polaris beat both human teams, two wins out of four, with one loss and one draw.

And in his most recent post:

“It wasn’t until mid-2000, [when] an algorithm was developed, that [bots] could even come close to a competent player. But now online computer poker playing may become a thing of the past,” said Ian Fellows, a researcher at the University of California at San Diego and author of the open-source poker bot, “Fell Omen.”

The commentors on Andrew’s posts had a slightly different opinion, and many of them conveyed a familiarity with online gambling in a way that only an avid gambler could, and all of them more or less said the same thing: I can spot a bot from a mile away, and so can the operators of every gambling site on the Internet.

I have to wonder if that’s true, though. The whole meme reminds me of a story that came up during the insanely slow doldrums of the Christmas/New Years season last.  Kristen and I were on the night shift scouring for a news story that piqued our interest, and we came across the tale of CyberLover.RU:

If you thought Facebook Beacon and AdInfuse were creepy avenues for collecting advertising data, wait until you hear about the readily evolved bots coming out of Russia. This advanced software is pre-programmed to woo you until your head spins–or until you give up the digits, along with any other personal information its parent company may find valuable to advertisers.

The software, which is currently only working in Russia, is reportedly very well organized and can fool just about anyone. PC Tools is actually sending out warnings for this software, as it can obviously be used for hacking and other malware intentions. That naughty software. It’s smart enough to post the right messages, URLs, files and photos.

The bottom line is that while bots may not be able to consistently fool and outplay humans at poker at the highest levels, that isn’t what’s necessary for a bot, or army of bots, to make a boatload of money for their owner. The average poker player is, well, average. The bots (presumably) play better than average, and that’s why they exist and continue to be profitable.

As Ray Kurzweil explained of his Law of Accelerating Returns, technology begets technology.  These bots are only going to get better, the hardware that drives them will only improve, and the financial model to incentivize the improvement of both in conjunction will always exist. The US government in all it’s moralistic intent to destroy online gambling might as well let nature run its course, as sooner or later the bots will do it for us.

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