The Social Software Weblog http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com The Social Software Weblog http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/media/feedlogo.gif The Social Software Weblog http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com en-us Copyright 2008 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/Wikicities gets $4 mill in VC funds, changes name to Wikiahttp://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/30/wikicities-gets-4-mill-in-vc-funds-changes-name-to-wikia/http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/30/wikicities-gets-4-mill-in-vc-funds-changes-name-to-wikia/http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/30/wikicities-gets-4-mill-in-vc-funds-changes-name-to-wikia/#commentsFiled under: ,

This is a couple of days old, so maybe it's only news to me - but Jimmy Wales' private wiki initiative has received $4 million in venture capital from a very hip crowd of investors.  Many people love the MediaWiki system that Wikipedia runs on.  I think others find it too complicated.

 Wikis are interesting, but I can't believe they are going to be exciting enough to be funded by advertising.    I like Wikis a lot, so I hope all these hip investors will be proven correct.  I'm not sure I can see truly mass audiences editing pages and reading edited pages on very specific topics.  I hope I'm wrong, though!
Found via alarm:clock
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world's leading online communities.

]]>fundingmediawikiwikiawikisMarshall Kirkpatrick2006-03-30T18:09:00+00:00Linden Labs gets $11 million to turn Second Life into Walmart Worldhttp://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/28/second-life-creators-score-11-mill-more-vc-bucks-to-extend-audi/http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/28/second-life-creators-score-11-mill-more-vc-bucks-to-extend-audi/http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/28/second-life-creators-score-11-mill-more-vc-bucks-to-extend-audi/#commentsFiled under:

Linden Labs, creators of the virtual reality game/experience Second Life, just got another $11million in venture funding.  Investors included Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos.  In Silicon Beat's coverage of the funding it's said that the money is going to be spent making Second Life more "mainstream."  By that they mean commercial, which is a real shame.  The CEO compares the commerce there in terms of number of equivalent Walmart stores.  Gross.

Second Life is already quite commercial, and the most interesting parts of it are the non-commercial events and locations, if you ask me.  But I guess real estate is real estate, huh?  When you're ruled over by a God-King (Linden Labs CEO Philip Rosedale, right?) then benevolence is too much to ask for.  I guess those of us who prioritize the noncommercial parts of life, be it our "first lives" or our second, will just have to keep digging out the niche spaces we always have.  You know what they say, it's money that makes the trains run on time and keeps the servers fired up.  I'll be watching New World Notes to see how this is responded to "in world."
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world's leading online communities.

]]>fundingLinden LabsLindenLabsSecond LifeSecondLifeVCMarshall Kirkpatrick2006-03-28T16:35:00+00:00Netvibes gets fundinghttp://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/25/netvibes-gets-funding/http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/25/netvibes-gets-funding/http://add.my.socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/2006/03/25/netvibes-gets-funding/#commentsFiled under: ,

Om Malik has posted an overview of some of the most prominent personal home page services, focusing on Netvibes.  Apparently the company just got a million dollars in funding from the founders of FON and Ning.    A few thoughts:

These RSS feed displaying pages seem low on the functionality and high on adopt ability to me.  It's basically the same thing as MyYahoo, isn't it?  More functionality than MyYahoo, perhaps, and NetVibes released an API earlier this month - so perhaps greater differentiation is just around the corner.  I know I have no interest in reading feeds in headline only format and without folders.  But this is how a large number of new users are getting into reading RSS feeds.  MyYahoo was the first RSS reader I used - for about an hour.

There's no mention of the funding on the company's development blog.  NetVibes has been around for a while, though, and is quite popular.  If it's funding is now coming from other start ups, themselves VC funded, does this speak to Nicholas Carr's supply/demand funding bubble argument?  Carr argues that the Web 2.0 scene isn't a bubble right now because there's not an excess of VC funds looking for projects to fund and thus funding lots of stupid ones.  That someone large hasn't thrown lots of money at NetVibes before now seems to me to support Carr's analysis.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

Sponsored by: Userplane Apps: Live communication applications powering the world's leading online communities.

]]>FONNetVibesNingMarshall Kirkpatrick2006-03-25T15:32:00+00:00