Blog = http://incircular.blogspot.com

Breakthrough - Unlike existing IM networks that restrict you to one-on-one conversations with people you already know, InCircles is the first truly distributed CM (Concurrent Messaging) network that connects concurrent web users en masse!

InCircles immediately detects a user’s presence on a website and allows them to communicate with everyone else - in a group with select friends, privately one on one and collectively on the web page itself.

InCircles enables users to form groups and traverse the InCircles meta networks, which consist of high-density sites where other users are discussing their favorite topics in real-time. Unprecedented group travel allows users to surf the web in packs, ushering in a new era of real-time interaction and content sharing!

InCircles can be embedded on millions of sites - unlike their competitors, InCircles technology also functions over many common filters and widget impediments (e.g. MySpace). Simply drop the code on your site once; thanks to a Flash-based front end, all future updates will be automatically pushed to the user when their page is refreshed.

As a publishing tool and traffic accelerator, InCircles allows websites to be connected to one another via a meta network, resulting in a boost in traffic and user-base that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. InCircles allows both conceptually disparate and similar sites alike to exchange traffic by sharing contextual relevancy across the InCircles network, giving users the ability to deduce what’s happening on a publisher’s page at that exact moment.

Their Popular Pages feature allows InCircles users to connect to other popular sites in their network. InCircles will be making this feature even more relevant to individual users in their beta release.

Unlike existing IM suites, InCircles is offering considerably more customization for websites that are looking to increase their traffic and user interaction. For a limited time they are offering FREE skins. InCircles are now inviting site publishers to contact them to discuss the numerous customization possibilities

InCircles started life six months ago on a sailboat in Marina del Rey when Zach Fierstadt (formerly at MySpace) and Simon Foster (usually busy making commercials and music videos) were chatting about the possibilities of IM on the web and the lack of innovation over the last ten years.

Since then those ideas have evolved into a startup. We now have a talented team of nine people and hope to be hiring more very soon. We bootstrapped InCircles up to this point. We’re very close to launching our ‘alpha’ InCircles CM (concurrent messaging) platform. What you see now is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ll keep you posted as we get closer to rolling out the next generations of InCircles.

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

WeeWorld: WeeWorld is the creator of the WeeMees, visual identities for consumers’ digital life. WeeMees help today’s digital society express itself, communicate and have fun with old and new friends throughout their digital life - blogs, websites, instant messaging systems, social networks, mobile phones and email. Incredibly attention-grabbing, WeeMees are the fastest growing online identity experience in the world. So far more than 11 million WeeMees have been created globally, and a new one is created every few seconds!

For consumers, WeeMees allow rich digital personalization, self expression, socializing and play across many digital platforms. Users can show friends and others how they look and feel in a much more personal, dynamic way than any generic picture or emoticon because WeeMees are interactive and animated.

For established partners such as AOL, MSN, Skype, Jamba, Vodafone and Motorola, WeeMees enrich the instant messaging, email and mobile experience, increase return rates, provide additional profile information and add excitement, buzz and fun that appeals to valuable youth segments. Marketers have also discovered the value of providing gear and backgrounds for WeeMees, or even creating celebrity WeeMees. Strategic marketing placements with WeeWorld provide immersive, interactive and indelible brand experiences.

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

WeeWorld: What sets WeeWorld and WeeMees apart from the competition the most is the pervasive irreverent and cheeky humor. We try not to take ourselves too seriously, and we make personalization fun. For instance in a recent Ypulse blog titled “WeeWorld Makes You Laugh”, GenY blogger Anastasia Goodstein noted that she was now aware of “why WeeWorld might actually blow up in the U.S.”. http://ypulse.com/archives/2006/10/weeworld_makes.php

In addition, we’ve proactively gone where our target users spend the most time already – instant messaging and mobile – and formed key partnerships to integrate WeeMees directly into the experience. WeeMees are designed to “travel” anywhere the consumer wants to take their unique digital identity throughout their online and mobile worlds.

Following their widespread adoption in the U.K. and E.U., we launched WeeMees in the United States in September via WeeWorld.com, a new partnership with AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) http://aim.weeworld.com and most recently with an extension of our existing global partnership with Windows Live Messenger http://www.wee-mee.com in the United States.

We believe social networks are rapidly evolving toward visual self-expression and experiences and WeeWorld is the only provider poised to deliver on consumers’ increasing visual and interactive demands through our established partnerships and strategic future-focus. For instance, in a recent Mashable! blog titled “WeeMee Partners with Windows Live Messenger in the US” Peter Cashmore noted, “WeeWorld is pretty much leading the pack when it comes to portable avatars - Meez has a great offering, while sites like Habbo Hotel and Cyworld also have the ability to take your avatar elsewhere. But with a more established service and some big name partnerships, WeeWorld is staying ahead.” http://mashable.com/2006/10/10/weemee-partners-with-windows-live-messenger-in-the-us/

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

WeeWorld: WeeMees are tightly integrated with strategic partners such as AOL, Microsoft and Jamba to provide the seamless transport of users’ WeeMees anywhere, anytime.

• For example, Users can create WeeMees via AIM or MSN and use them in their chat environments when they’re talking to friends.
• In instant messaging through MSN or AOL, users create a visually stimulating, interactive chat environment by selecting different animations, interactive backgrounds and hidden text and emoticon triggers.
• Choose the angry emoticon and your WeeMee has storm clouds and lightning appear around its head. Or use the text triggers such as “LOL” (WeeMee laughs), “OK” (it gives a thumbs up), or “bling” (a gold grill and dollar signs appear).
• The chat background is all part of the fun with secret animations unveiled by click or by keystroke – such as a humvee limo swinging by to give the WeeMee a ride.
• In addition, from AOL, WeeWorld.com is only one click away, where users can blog, play games, or send personalized ecards with their unique WeeMee.
• WeeWorld.com also offers all the needed code and instructions to help consumers port their WeeMee to their favorite blogs, social networks, etc., with no download required.
• Users can even add their WeeMee to their mobile phone http://www.jamster.com/jcw/goto/games/software/prtid-1862764/doc-7377760/info-page for call wallpapers, call ID alerts, etc.
• Above all else, however, our main feature is fun and self-expression.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

WeeWorld: The target for WeeWorld is anyone aged 16-30. Of the most recent 1,000,000 WeeMees built, 33 percent were created by users aged 13-17, and 30 percent were created by users aged 18-24. That being said, WeeMees have universal appeal — two thirds were created and owned by users age 18 and over, including one very dedicated WeeMee fan in her 80s. Anyone embracing today’s digital revolution and living on the Web, is a potential consumer for WeeWorld.

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

WeeWorld: Our U.S. launch has fueled a massive increase the creation of WeeMees. We’ve just launched on Windows Live Messenger this week, as well as the extension to Jamba, where users can create and save their WeeMee on their cell phone and use it as a caller ID or to send to personalized picture messages to friends.

While we recently launched on AIM, we’re also excited to be launching two WeeMee promotions on AIM. One is tailored specifically for the CBS show Gold Rush, complete with a Celebrity WeeMee of the show’s host, Mark Steines, and loads of gold bling accessories for WeeMees and a special background. The other promotion will be released within a week as part of a massive campaign featuring celebrities and iconic brands to promote a charity organization that WeeWorld holds in high regard.

Advertisers are extremely interested in creating customized backgrounds, animations and assets for WeeMees. And our designers are constantly updating WeeWorld.com with new and exciting features to maintain the fresh and fun user experience.

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

WeeWorld: We’ve only just begun so stay tuned! Look for a more extensive WeeWorld.com community, premium WeeMee items for sale such as designer bags or high-end bling, and an evolving, immersive environment ripe for customization. We see ourselves as the visual identity of choice on every email signature, blog and mobile.

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

WeeWorld: The primary request of our users is that they want more community and virtual world features on WeeWorld.com, as well as more accessories, backgrounds and gear for their WeeMees. We view the requests as further validation that the WeeWorld model is in demand and consumers want to be as expressive and unique as possible throughout their digital lives; we’re working hard to make sure that all comes to fruition as soon as possible.

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

WeeWorld: Be visual. Be fun. Be expressive. Be you.

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

WeeWorld: We hope to create the world’s most widely-used and intelligent digital visual identity and have it form the heart of a thriving community for self-expression. We want everyone to have a WeeMee as a personal expression of themselves, with WeeMees becoming as pervasiveness as cell phones and computers – a vision we call “Wee” world domination.

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

WeeWorld: We closed a $15.5M Series B funding round in May 2006 with Benchmark and Accel.

Shortly after posting the article KoolIM’s application and services came to our attention and we wanted to share what we have learned more Mr. Bazzi.

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

KoolIM: KoolIM has been launched for close to 10 weeks now, the idea was formed many months ago. BuddyStream, which is our platform company, builds and develops the BuddyStream server which works as a proxy product for IM, Chat, Email, Content, Bots and alerts. We bring together all of those modules and present them from one central location. We like to say that Google organizes the world’s information and we bring together the world’s information. We have a staff of 12 people now; we are located in Dearborn, Michigan USA.

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

KoolIM: There are a lot of things that make us unique, we use our own back end product, we have been working on instant messaging technology for close to 4 years, and some on the team have been working on messaging overall for close to six years now. Our technology is fully owned by us and built by us. Our business model, with time, will show that we do have a plan to make money rather than just trying to acquire users. We do believe that acquiring users is a big part of it all but as you can see that even with some of our competitors, they have been able to acquire millions of users but have yet been able to monetize from those users as of yet.

TechAddress: What are some of the main features?

KoolIM: Currently we aggregate instant messaging, chat, email and content; soon we will allow you to connect to other services such as Ebay, Paypal and others. We have a real-time alerts module but that will not be part of the suite as of yet.

TechAddress: Who’s your target customer or audience?

KoolIM: Right now our target customers are users behind school firewalls which block instant messaging and corporate networks which also block instant messaging from their network. Our target audience is this segment of users at the moment but eventually we will not be totally reliant on this user base. The target customer will eventually be everyone who uses more than one IM app, more than one web service, more than one email account and eventually the mobile work force.

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

KoolIM: We are always working on many things in the background. Most of the stuff I really can’t talk much about for obvious reasons. We are working on 6 Major features which should be available in our next major release. I promise they will make a HUGE impact because they have been well thought out. People should know that we are a platform company and KoolIM is built on top of our platform product.

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

KoolIM: We have not made public our business model as of yet as we are way to early in the game but we do have an excellent plan moving forward, we are not an “alternative technology” or one that solves the problem of users at work and school not being able to access IM so they come to us, although it is part of our business model, we do have other ideas on how to be more affective than being reliant on a specific need which could be challenged.

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

KoolIM: If you are referring to our technology then no, we have not received any criticism; we have received a lot of praise, if anything. We receive quite a few emails everyday from people thanking us and telling us their story on how KoolIM really helps them in their daily life. We do receive some negative feedback, we started off with one server and the traffic started to really pickup so we had to really move and setup an additional server.

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

KoolIM: To solve the problem of not having one central point for all your services and content, right now you have thousands of services and millions of content channels on the web, there is so much information and content for users to comb through. This surplus of content and information is taking its toll on the average user. What we like to think is that if we can organize your “favorite” services and content in to one central point, than your web experience will be much smoother. Instant Messaging, Email and Content are core to our offering but it will not stop there.

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

KoolIM: The mission of the company is to provide a central point via the web. We like to think that we are solving core problems for our user community. We basically link up external content sources, services, and web applications to one central application portal, which is presented in the form of IM.

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

KoolIM: We have raised an initial round of funding from local angels in the Michigan area. We are working on tweaking the platform and fixing any issues that our users are experiencing.

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