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

Likebetter: I don’t know about you, but I take a ton of digital photos. I literally have ten thousand photos on my hard drive, just sitting there in folders. No one besides me has ever seen them, and really, I only saw them when I took the picture in the first place. This shouldn’t be.

We want to help you dust off those monster collections of photos, by acting as a “goodness filter” that only the best photos can pass through. You upload your collection to likebetter, send a link to your friends, and within minutes you have a list of your best photos - which you can then do cool stuff with, like exporting them to flickr, printing them, or posting them on your blog.

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

Likebetter: There are a ton of companies in the photo space. No one that we know of has tackled this particular problem in the way we have.

A lot of companies have adopted our lovely interface though. Which we take as a compliment, and then we make catnip voodoo dolls of their creators, and introduce them to Felix.

Likebetter.com stands out from other photo-centered sites like Flickr because it’s all about helping you find your best photos. Since finding your best photos is hard, and Flickr isn’t helping much, we’re fixing it ourselves.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Likebetter:

* It’s much easier to upload tons of photos at once here than there.

* Social editing features - your friends sort and rotate your images for you.

* Photo viewing and voting are the same - whenever someone views your photos, they’re giving you feedback. Everyone participates in some small way.

* Exporting to other photo sites (soon): no one we know does/allows this. Most photo sharing sites don’t allow sharing in this way, which sort of defeats the purpose. You own your photos, so we’re going to help you do what you want with them.

* Our interface is super-simple and really, really pretty.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

Likebetter: Anyone with a digital camera, really. Since that list now includes my mom, it must be really, really big.

Our power users are photographers, graphic designers, web designers; anyone who works with visual information, and needs to evaluate it in some way. There’s nothing stopping you from finding your best logo designs, web site layouts, or whatever you want. We’ve kept likebetter general on purpose.

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

Likebetter: Lots of stuff. Right now we’re fleshing out the flickr/smugmug/etc integration. That’s coming soon.

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

Likebetter: Likebetter should be the place you put your pictures as soon as you plug in your camera.

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

Likebetter: No, none really (hurray!). Some people complain about a lack of so-and-so a feature, but we just add it and they’re happy.

Scaling was a hard problem to lick, and will likely continue to prove difficult in the future. It’s just one of those things you need to deal with.

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

Likebetter: Make something that people want.

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

Likebetter: Wait, is this a trick question? Are you trying to get me to change my story? Likebetter is going to revolutionize the telecommunications industry, of course.

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

Likebetter: We were funded by ycombinator.

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?

Likebetter: October 2006. Digg was very helpful.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, Director of Content at SplashCast, said, “Splashcast is a multimedia platform that I believe is going to change the web in some important ways. From independent journalism to modern dance performances to photo slide shows of train yard graffiti set to the music of emerging underground hip hop artists - Splashcast is going to be a great way to spin out channels of thematic media content. I’m excited to demonstrate how it can be done by creating and co-ordinating channels like that myself. I hope that many people will want to use the Splashcast media sharing system but I intend to create a premier destination for highlighted User Generated Content that will be worth visiting regularly for anyone online.”

Check out their new website at http://splashcastmedia.com/.

Location: Headquartered in New York, NY

Launch Date: Founded in 2001

In the company’s own words, what is it? Founded in 2001 as a publishing automation software company, today Mochila is an online content marketplace for publishers, editors, creators and advertisers. Designed to be first to market, Mochila leverages the power of the Internet to facilitate the acquisition and sale of high quality content that includes articles, photography and soon video and audio.

Mochila’s executive team and advisors are distinguished media and technology veterans who have observed a shift in the publishing landscape, including huge growth in certain sectors. Last year approximately 16.8 billion words and 1.8 billion photos and graphics were sold over wire services such as the Associated Press, Bloomberg, and Reuters. Combine those numbers with audio and video sales, and the world spent just under $2 billion on syndicated news content last year. This market is expected to grow to $3 billion by 2008. Additionally, niche publications will spend nearly $3 billion on outsourced content. The explosion of blogs, web sites, and online newsletters promises to further fuel market growth.

Responding to the evolution of publishing, Mochila provides a resource for selling and acquiring content in ways that can greatly enhance efficiency and revenue. Founded on principles of trust and integrity, Mochila builds value, protects licensing rights and offers safe access and convenience to all who join.

Mochila is a technological breakthrough for the publishing world, combining rock solid data and license management capabilities with advanced search engine and e-commerce technologies. Created to be first to market, Mochila allows content to be an asset that can be monetized with greatly expanded revenue potential for everyone who participates in the new media marketplace.

Outside quote about company: “Quigo’s Adsonar platform offers unparalleled control and transparency for pay per click advertisers and content publishers, so it truly is the right fit for Mochila’s transparent content-syndication marketplace,” says Henry Vogel, Quigo’s Chief Revenue Officer.

Features:
* first global online media marketplace for print, audio, video, and photo content
* offers simple but powerful tools for content sellers to set licensing rules
* offers Mochila AdMatch

Management/Directors:
Keith McAllister, Chief Executive Officer
Benjamin Chen, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer
Carolyn Bekkedahl, VP Business Development
Jason Oliver, VP Marketing
Tushar Patel, VP of Engineering and Technical Operations
Bill Lindsey, VP Architecture

Relevant Links:
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060403-2.shtml
http://mochila.com/company_press011707.html
http://mochila.com/company_press010107.html
http://mochila.com/company_press100606.html

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

Launch Date: Not officially launched

In the company’s own words, what is it? Joost™ is a new way to watch TV, free of the schedules and restrictions that come with traditional television. Combining the best of TV with the best of the internet, Joost™ gives you more control and freedom than ever before - control over what you watch, and freedom to watch it whenever you like. We’re providing a platform for the best television content on the planet - a platform that will bring you the biggest and best shows from the TV studios, as well as the specialist programs created by professionals and enthusiasts. It’s all overlaid with a raft of nifty features that help you find the shows you love, watch and chat with friends, and even create your own TV channels.

Outside quote about company: Greg Sandoval of CNET News says, “Joost’s nifty technology may be enough to sway the entertainment industry to place a bet on proven winners in Friis and Zennstrom.

A menu allows users to switch channels with a click of a link. Users will also have TiVo-like control of the content and access to any show offered regardless of time of day. They can also can skip ahead or backward within a show.

The Luxembourg-based company will support itself with advertising, specifically Internet ads that behave just like TV commercials.”

Features:
* first global TV distribution platform
* interactive, community-driven environment
* viewable anytime, anywhere with a broadband Internet connection
* broadcast-quality content
* free
* secure

Management/Directors:
Fredrik de Wahl, CEO
Janus Friis, Co-founder
Niklas Zennström, Co-founder
Dirk-Willem van Gulik, CTO

Relevant Links:
http://joost.com/press/2007/01/the-venice-project-code-named-no-more.html
http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/2007/01/venice_project_.html
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2085227,00.asp
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/8689/1103/

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.

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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

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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.

NEW YORK - December 11, 2006 - TAKKLE, Inc., (www.takkle.com) the premier online social network for high school sports, today launched its nationwide service to connect high school athletes of all sports. In conjunction with its nationwide launch, TAKKLE also announced a strategic alliance with the Sports Illustrated franchise.

TAKKLE, the first online network for high school sports, now allows high school athletes across the nation participating in sports ranging from cheerleading to wrestling to football - over 20 sports in all - to develop personal connections rooted in their shared interests. TAKKLE is taking high school athletics to the next level by providing the tools and a platform for high school athletes across the country to create player and team profiles, upload videos and photos, track and view statistics, check out opponents before games, and discover the best athletes in the country.

“Sports is one of the oldest and most powerful social networks. TAKKLE captures teenagers’ passion for sports and connecting online with their friends,” said David Birnbaum, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TAKKLE. “With half of teenagers actively engaged in high school sports today and the explosive growth of social networking, we believe that TAKKLE will become a dynamic, compelling destination for teens.”

TAKKLE’s new strategic alliance with Sports Illustrated enables the venerable sports media giant to engage a hard-to-reach audience that’s young and tech-savvy via an online platform specifically designed for high school athletes.

Building on the success of SI’s iconic Faces in the Crowd franchise - a popular section of the magazine for 50 years - athletes, coaches, athletic directors, and fans can now log onto TAKKLE to nominate athletes for SI’s Faces in the Crowd and a brand new Video Faces In the Crowd feature (www.takkle.com/faces), available exclusively on TAKKLE. Visitors to TAKKLE can upload and view user-generated video highlights of high school athletes from across the country. Each week, SI’s editors will select one candidate to appear in the Faces in the Crowd section of the magazine and showcase the athlete’s video as part of the new weekly feature on TAKKLE called “Sports Illustrated - Video Faces in the Crowd.”

“This is a great opportunity for us to introduce Faces in the Crowd to the next generation of athletes in a way that is extremely popular in today’s world,” said Jeff Price, President of SI Digital. “Young athletes will now be able to to join the more than 15,000 individuals who have been featured in Sports Illustrated’s Faces in the Crowd by sharing their own video highlights with athletes and fans from around the country.”

In addition to its relationship with Sports Illustrated, TAKKLE has a strategic partner and investor with Wasserman Media Group (WMG), a leading sports and entertainment management, marketing and content company. WMG’s divisions represent some of the most recognized athletes and sports brands, such as Tracy McGrady, Freddy Adu, Chase Utley, and many others. TAKKLE will offer WMG a unique online social network to reach an engaged, targeted audience. In addition, WMG will use its wide-ranging contacts and clients in the industry to benefit TAKKLE as the service grows and expands its reach and visibility with athletes and fans.

# # #

About TAKKLE
TAKKLE, the premier online social network for high school sports, connects athletes, coaches, fans, friends, and recruiters for all high school athletics. On TAKKLE, high school athletes can track and compare their stats, post team schedules, scout rivals, and share videos and photos with their teammates and opponents.

TAKKLE offers advertisers and marketers the ability to strategically target a passionate, engaged audience of high school athletes and fans. TAKKLE’s investors include Wasserman Media Group LLC, Greycroft Partners LLC, IJ Smith Enterprises LLC, and Jack Schneider, Managing Director at Allen & Company, Inc.

About SI
SI is a multimedia sports brand that takes the consumer into the heart and soul of sports. The SI franchise is anchored by Sports Illustrated, the most respected voice in sports journalism which reaches a weekly audience of nearly 21 million adults, and SI.com, the magazine’s 24/7 sports news website that delivers more than 150 original stories to its users each week.

The SI franchise also includes Sports Illustrated Kids (sikids.com), a monthly magazine targeted to kids age 8 and up; Golf Magazine and Golf.com; SIOncampus.com, a website dedicated to college sports and the college sports lifestyle; SI Presents the magazine’s specialty publishing division; as well as SI Books, SI Pictures, SI Productions, SI Digital and SI Events. Founded in 1954, SI is a division of Time Inc., the world’s leading magazine publishing company and a subsidiary of Time Warner.

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

Like.com: Like.com, a product of Riya, is the first true visual search engine, where the contents of photos are used to search and retrieve similar items.

We believe that there are literally millions of items that are difficult to describe via text-based search and where individual tastes are all over the map — think of your favorite pair of earrings or shoes and what an ordeal it can be to find something new but in a similar style.

We created Like.com to solve the challenge of finding “the perfect you” for a broad range of aesthetic and soft goods.

Like.com utilizes our Likeness Technology™ to create a digital signature that describes the photo’s contents and enables a more accurate search for similar looking items and products. Our initial launch focuses on handbags, jewelry, shoes, and watches - allowing users to search and purchase items from thousands of leading and boutique brands. We will very quickly add clothing and a number of other aesthetically oriented product categories.

About Riya
Riya was founded in August 2004 and has assembled one of the largest visual computing research teams in the world. Its mission is to simplify search and ecommerce by harnessing the latest breakthroughs in visual computing. It has almost one dozen patents pending in the areas of visual recognition and search. Riya has raised $19.5 million from venture and private equity investors, including Bay Partners, BlueRun Ventures, and Leapfrog Ventures.

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

Like.com: We let people shop by appearance.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Like.com: Key features of Like.com include:

• Likeness Search™ - the ability to search by image instead of text;
• Like Detail™ - finds items that have a specific feature you like (such as a buckle, straps, bezel, etc);
• Like Color™ - find color variants of the item you desire;
• Like Celebrity™ - find clothing, shoes and accessories similar to those worn by your favorite celebrities;
• Like Upload™ - the ability to upload your own photo of your favorite item and find the same or similar products, coming soon.
  

To learn more about Like.com and the great ways to use the product make sure to visit our blog. Happy shopping!

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

Like.com: Women 20 to 30

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

Like.com: To be a full blown visual search engine

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

Like.com: See above

Zorpia: Zorpia is a photo sharing social networking site. People come to Zorpia to share photos that they like and get to know people from around the world. We have a well spread global user base. Our users, ‘Zorpians’, use our photo feature actively to spice up their profile and meet new friends. We provide a platform for them to hang out and meet friends that share the same interests.

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

Zorpia: The fact that we are international makes us a unique social networking site. Other sites may have regional dominance, but none of them truly embrace an international community. For example, on MySpace, the majority of the users are from the United States. Americans tend to form a closed community that’s not welcoming for users from other countries. Bebo’s user base is mainly from the UK, and so it’s not particularly useful for people outside of the UK either. Zorpia is international, when people become Zorpians, they get friend requests, messages and comments from people around the world. Asia, Europe, Australia, Americas, Africa, you name the place, we have got active members from there.

We provide an international platform for our fellow Zorpians to hang out and meet friends with people that share the same interests. We have not yet seen any other social networking site that provides such an atmosphere in their communities.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

Zorpia:
- unlimited storage and bandwidth for photo sharing
- social networking
- private messaging
- blogging
- music
- comments and forums, also our responses feature lets you track all the comments you got through out the site easily
- groups
- schools
- homepage customization

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

Zorpia: Our target audience are people aged 16-30 from anywhere of the world.

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

Zorpia: We just released a music feature. We allow music artists to set up profiles on Zorpia. Zorpians can add their songs to their play list and even share their music in other sites. We are currently working on partnership deals with music labels to get more artists on Zorpia. We already have Avril Lavigne and Sarah Mclachlan and more onboard, and we will get more big named artists in near future.

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

Zorpia: We have already launched a music feature and a Chinese version of Zorpia. We will continue to provide features and branded sites that cater to more niche markets.

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

Zorpia: We had a release 2 weeks ago, which we upgraded our whole database platform and code base. Everything changed at the backend while we had to maintain exactly the same functionalities and layouts. As a result, Zorpia had technical glitches and performance issues the first few days after the release. We apologized to our fellow Zorpians, worked super hard to get the problems solved. Now we’ve got our happy community back!

Another common problem of sites like this is that people use it for inappropriate ‘adult’ use. Like other sites, this was common for us . Around 6 months ago we decided to tackle this, and through various automated, and human effort methods, we have managed to greatly reduce this content. This makes the whole site more pleasant to use for our users.

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

Zorpia: We constantly study our fellow Zorpians’ usage trend. We do polls and survey in the site to get user feedback. We listen to their opinions and morph our site according to their feedback.

TechA