Despite the proliferation of social news sites like Reddit which aggregate popular content and social bookmarking sites like Delicious that archive it, social browsing still remains a largely open market. It’s in this market that Y Combinator-backed startup Socialbrowse seeks to make its niche.

Socialbrowse combines in page icons and the ubiquitous activity feed to add value to pages by emphasizing content shared by friends, and pushing content to the user they’re likely to find interesting.

Here’s a brief rundown of some of the features available today as Socialbrowse leaves its 3 month private beta and goes public.

Sidebar – Users can use tabs in the sidebar to filter which types of feed items they wish to view, or to display them all at once. There’s also a "hot" tab that lets you track which content was most popular among your friends recently. The hot tab scores each feed item according to how many of your friends shared or discussed the link, then decrements the score over time to keep it fresh.

Site – Socialbrowse seeks to emphasize the most important content, providing separate tabs for each type of content each person has shared. This allows you to easily toggle between each user’s shared links, their comments, their messages, or to see them all at once. The search feature lets you recover any link or comment for each user (or yourself). The side menu shows user’s social points, their personal information, the users they are following, and their fans.

Enhanced, embedded icons (embed_and_hover.png) – Socialbrowse’s bread-and-butter feature is the in-page embedded icons, showing you what content your friends liked and how many of them liked it. Hovering over this icon shows a menu detailing which user(s) shared that link, and some of their other recent activity.

In-page commenting – The in-page commenting allows for users to toggle comments open and close in the top corner of the page, letting you quickly view all comments or submit your own.

Categories – In tandem with Socialbrowse’s filtering technology, categories allow you to set the categories you wish to receive or ignore.

Having used Socialbrowse for over a month, I’ve found that sharing content while browsing comes naturally, the conversations are more stimulating and varied than on sites like Digg where groupthink prevails, and the discovery aspect inherent to using the application is a great way to not just find interesting content, but to connect with interesting people.

Socialbrowse has gone a long way towards living up to Co-Founder Zachary Garbow’s stated goal of bringing "a novel, social aspect to every day web use," it’s going to take adoption for Socialbrowse to really live up to its full potential.

With several years of startup experience already behind him, Rick Kenney is a senior Mass Comm. student and Marketing Intern with The Participatory Culture Foundation, the people behind Miro.

Special Alert: CenterNetworks Conference Coverage:
– DEMO
– Techcrunch50
– Event and Interview Videos

It’s also a lot of fun to look at the patters from the aggregate data.

You create a contest widget by entering all the details of the giveaway: prizes, deadlines, rules. Winners can be randomly chosen by ContestMachine or judged by the blogger. It automates the process of creating giveaways, and opens up contests to any blogger or small business who has a Website. The service is free to try out for up to two contests a month, and then charges $9 a month or $90 a year for more contests.

So what’s the deal? In an email we’ve obtained from Microsoft SVP Bill Veghte to all employees, he talks about the goals of the campaign. The overall goal is to inspire consumers and “tell the story of how Windows enables a billion people around the globe to do more with their lives today.” This first phase, he says, “is designed to engage consumers and spark a new conversation about Windows – a conversation that will evolve as the campaign progresses, but will always be marked by humor and humanity.”

The ads are just an icebreaker, he ads, to reintroduce Microsoft to consumers. Later this month they’ll do a deeper dive, which I assume means talking about features.

One thing’s for sure - the ads have sparked conversation. Full text of email is below:Source:TechCrunch
Dropbox is one of those infuriating startups that just won’t show us much of what they’re up to beyond the basic user experience (see video). We first saw them at Y Combinator demo day in August 2007, and talked to them again in March when they went into private beta.

It looks like Sequoia was on them fast though. Last September, we’ve learned, the company raised a small $1.2 million round of financing from the fund, making it Sequoia’s second known investment in a YCombinator company (the other is Loopt).

Expect more news on Dropbox in the next week or two.

Editor’s Note: This post is part of an ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems Startup Essentials. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.

STARTUP DETAILS:

Company Name: Ipoki

20-word Description: Ipoki is a GPS-based social network that allows you to share and track your position with our friends.

CEO’s Pitch: Ipoki allows people to share geo-location data using a small application installed in their mobile devices. With Ipoki you can track the position in Google Maps or Google Earth of all our friends. Keep your tracks in Ipoki and upload your photos in Flickr. Now you can geo-locate all your Flickr photos from Ipoki just with one click! Embed your map with your real-time location in your Blog or any other site. Geo-locate live video with Qik integration. Send your position to Fire Eagle automatically, too.

Mashable’s Take: Working the international, location-based social scene from its place of origin in Galicia, Spain, Ipoki’s play for a broad, mobile and well-connected membership is all about bridging connections. That goes for friends as well as popular Web services. The company’s CEO mentions names like Google Maps, Google Earth, Fire Eagle, Flickr and Qik. Such references help to explain clearly what it is Ipoki’s role is for its users. Location integration, is how I would frame it.

Ipoki hasn’t been around for very long, even when compared to other location-based services. There certainly are more veteran names in the sector. Loopt is just one. But Ipoki is nonetheless a good choice for those who wish to share their mobile lives as broadly as possible, with friends, family, and the network at large. And fortunately, many mobile phone users can enjoy what Ipoki provides. Downloads are provided for Windows XP, Vista, Pocket PC, Smartphone platforms as well as Symbian S60 and BlackBerry devices. A mobile-specific URL, “http://ipoki.mobi” is available as well. For users of phones which can scan mobile QR codes, Ipoki displays one on its website for fast access.

Of course, if you use Ipoki simply for the sake of tracking, there’s not much to it. It’s a little too simple in that sense. But employ it to its full potential as the hub or nexus it is, with the few value-added connections it can establish for networkers, and everything seems to mesh. Or “mash,” as we’d like to put it. It is only as powerful as its users allow it to be. You can make your account singularly dish short blog posts. Or you can get involved with photo and video, too. Your call. Tread lightly or heavily. Within reason, Ipoki allows it all.

Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials

Source:Mashable!

There was interesting talk about venture capitalists and their role in Internet startups last week. It started with a post by John Casasanta of Taptaptap simply entitled “Fuck the VCs.” Responses from Hacker News and John Furrier, among others, led to a lot of heated debate over the role and significance of venture capital.

Although I clearly cannot provide justice to the topic of venture capital in one or even a thousand articles, I did want to talk about the changing face of venture capital for Internet startups.

Venture capital is a spread-out game with a large cast of players. Angel investors, professional VC firms, incubators, bankers, lawyers, investment funds, and entrepreneurs are all involved in nothing less than a tangled mess. Finding venture capital often takes luck, great networking, or eye-popping credentials, not to mention dedication and a thick skin to streaks of constant failure. You could submit your business plan to a hundred VCs and get a response from ten or from zero depending on when you send, what they’re looking for, and who you know.

In other words, it can be a crapshoot for both the VC firm and the entrepreneur.

But that model is slowly changing to one that takes out some of that uncertainty and disarray and acts as a filter for venture capitalists to reach good, solid business ideas.

The leader of that model is Y Combinator. Y Combinator is altering the game as the university of Internet startups by providing some of the resources, education, and networking many entrepreneurs need, providing its brand credibility, and most of all, acting as a filter for solid, developed Internet business ideas.

What’s the mission of a university? Well, I could read you Harvard’s mission statement, but it essentially boils down to the advancement of education.

But what’s the purpose of a university for a society? Beyond the learning, I argue that the university is a filter for society to sort people by their intelligence, talents, and interests, especially in regards to the corporate world. When the high school grad finally comes out of college with that diploma, you can assume that they have the dedication, intelligence, and personal interest to work in certain industries and companies. McKinsey and Google know that when they hire a graduate of Harvard, Stanford, or Northwestern, they’re going to (usually) get a quality product. The university serves as a gatekeeper.

Yes, I am simplifying the role of the university, but the result is just the same - companies generally hire college grads for higher-level, thought-intensive jobs and can initially gauge your intelligence based on the college you attended and your GPA. Oh, and in return for this social filter, you cough up tens of thousands of dollars.

Y Combinator is similar to the university. You join a class of peers when you arrive. You get startup education, networking, and those lovely entrepreneur dinners. And most of all, you get the right to show off your work at the Y Combinator demo day, where venture capitalists will come, rip your idea to shreds, and then hopefully pour a couple million dollars into your idea. Oh, and in return for this startup filter and the Y Combinator brand name, you cough up ~6% of your company.

Sure, Y Combinator is probably not the first firm to do these things, but it is the first to become so well known for it. The class model is unlike how any incubator or angel investor operates. Y Combinator now has brand credibility, and that’s why VCs come to the demo day - they know they’re going to find quality ideas. The Y Combinator has served its purpose. It has brought up the best ideas for the next level.

In this sense, Y Combinator is the premier university of Internet startups. Hundreds apply, no more than a few dozen get in. And those few that get in have been successful or are on the right track. 102 startups have been through the program with 81 having been funded, purchased, reached profitability, or are in the process of funding. Those are great success rates in the world of venture capital by any standard. And that success has spurned several competitors or copycats, whichever way you see it.

Y Combinator is helping create a more streamlined path and a new filter for startup ideas. Now as more firms like the Y Combinator pop up and more entrepreneurs and VCs choose to go to Y Combinator seed firms for the support, brand name, and filter, the question becomes this:

Do we want Universities of Internet Startups to be the regulator, filter, and gatekeeper for startup ideas?

We need to confront the pros and cons of having Universities of Startups in the world of entrepreneurship and venture capital, especially as the Y Combinator model grows and expands. We may very well be seeing the transformation of venture capital.

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I’ve been scrolling slowly down the list of items mentioned by Paul Graham, a partner at the startup micro-financier outfit Y Combinator, in a piece titled “Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund.” It’s an interesting write-up, and I think a whole lot of people should give it a look. Not necessarily because genius resides within. In fact, a lot of what Graham says will strike most any reader as fairly obviously wanting for the wand of progress.

There are some points raised, however, that either seem too vague or uninformative, or just plain unnecessary, to be worth a “new” attempt. Of course, I do recognize that Graham’s post is only a soft invitation for startups to submit ideas to Y Combinator. And, well, it would be pretty senseless to object to the inclinations of the firm. That’s not what I intend for here. Rather, I simply wish to parse some items that I consider superfluous and unnecessary. The kind of stuff that invokes the “been there, done that” adage, in other words. Ideas that already have solid representation on the Web, and don’t require major fixes or alterations.

First, there is the idea posited by YC (I’ll abbreviate it investor’s name from here on out) for a fresh startup to compete with Microsoft. Now, a plan to take on Redmond is all good and well. An admirable goal for sure. But others are already working toward that objective. Google is one. Zoho is another. Adobe recently introduced its own suite as well. And while they may ideally prefer to engineer a collective effort to bring down the software market’s reigning cash cow, they will no doubt look after their own health above all other concerns. Save for an acquisition, new rising stars aren’t likely to grow so tall, in other words. But with the tech sector feeling a few pangs of financial caution, the idea of buying only what you need would logically come to the fore. So at this point, I’ll short any newbies to this particular segment of the Web application market.

Photo/video sharing services are another group on YC’s agenda. Why that is is somewhat of a mystery to me. Flickr, Photobucket, Facebook are all solid examples. YC explains that “there may ultimately be 30 different subtypes of image/video sharing services, have of which remain to be discovered.” I’m not so sure about that. People like having reams of data at their fingertips. That’s part of the reason why industry’s giant have succeeded. Everyone likes a winner, right? As for serving the long tail of the Web, where photo and video users may prefer to take their media host service’s platform and adapt it to fit conditions on personal websites, that can already be accomplished. SmugMug is a nice example of this, actually.

On entirely separate note, while Y Combinator imagines there are “better” dating sites to come, I would say the life of those networks is finite. I sure hope so, anyway. To approach the concept in a different way, dating sites will simply be replaced by your run-of-the-mill social networking services. Mobile ones, especially. To keep perpetuating this idea of specialized matchmaking through ample profile metadata and the like is simply absurd. It may work some of the time, but it doesn’t work enough of the time.

I really wish Wikipedia alternatives much luck, because they’ll need it. Wikipedia may evolve, it may invoke new layers of security, it may open itself up to cool new (or old) sources of information. But the chance of Wikipedia actually being irretrievably challenged or supplanted in the foreseeable future is [insert dirty word(s) here]. Wikipedia is going to be the new encyclopedia. It may not be something taken seriously by [insert name of educational or professional institution here] now, but it shall. The fact of the matter is that Wikipedia has been built on a collective brain power similar in structure to that which built the Oxford English Dictionary. And how is the OED considered by academics, might I ask?

Lastly, I’d like to highlight an idea put forth by YC placed somewhere near the  middle of its list of 30. This one is 16. It reads as such:

“A form of search that depends on design. Google doesn’t have a lot of weaknesses. One of the biggest is that they have no sense of design. They do the next best thing, which is to keep things sparse. But if there were a kind of search that depended a lot on design, a startup might actually be able to beat Google at search….”

There are a number of things wrong with that statement. For one, Google may not seem to have any sense of design for some, but it does. It’s actually described in Paul Graham’s subsequent line. Indeed, sparseness is Google’s schtick.

That, and a super-simple color palette. Those appear to be the fundamentals for the company’s overarching design. And years and years of experience and trend setting and all other things that go into making an Internet company into a Internet giant and an Internet leader have shown that Google has largely been walking the right path. No, its engine doesn’t connote iPod-like elegance. Goodness sake, though, its primary businesses are search and advertising. How in the world do you make that visually delightful and retain a modicum of user friendliness?

An even more pressing question to ask: What makes one think that fantastic design alone is a prescription for beating Google? There’s already quite a visually attractive alternative to Google. It’s called Ask.com. Take a look. You’ll see. And it’s nowhere near #1.

To end, I would say that, taken as a largely suggestive request for fresh ideas, Graham’s solicitation definitely has its strong points. If some number of startups manage to develop something that addresses many of the weak spots in the Internet market currently afflicting users - particularly the non-tech-savvy - and those startups happen to take the route of YC, the firm’s partners could be riding some serious gravy trains. New ideas are what will let milk and honey flow. Companies which try to address the topics parsed above, however, aren’t likely to reach such grand heights.

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