Piczo inks video deal in Germany

Piczo, the teenagers-focused social networking site, has entered into a partnership with MyVideo, Germany’s leading video community. Video will be served into the community and onto personal profiles, including video from popular German shows like Popstars. Users will also be able to create video using the MyVideo platform on Piczo. The deal looks like a profit share one based on advertising. European managing partner Chris Seth announced the news here at Berlin Web 2 Expo today, adding that Piczo now has two million unique monthly users in Germany after a year of operation here. Piczo is one of the fastest growing teen sites in the UK and competes with the likes of Bebo.

The Crunchies - the Oscars for startups

The good news is that UK, Irish, other European startups and - in fact - any startup in the world will be able to enter the Crunchies, a new year-end startup competition and award ceremony/party which TechCrunch is coordinating with three other blog networks - GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb and Venturebeat (click on the links to see their coverage). The idea is this: let the community decide who to nominate, and who wins, in a number of award categories. The whole thing will be topped off with a big award ceremony and party in San Francisco. There will be sponsors for this event (see the event page for details if you would like to participate), but Sun Microsystems Business Analytics is first charter sponsor of the Crunchies. The four participating blogs will be sharing the decision making process and the economics of the event.

If you think there is scope for this event to be branched-out to individual countries, or perhaps a ‘European’ event, then say so in the comments. Or would you prefer this was an event which was largely global in nature? Let us know.

“OpenSocial” - Google’s combine and conquer social networking strategy

More details of Google's social networking plans have emerged, revealing a "combine and conquer" strategy aimed squarely at Facebook and, to a lesser extent, MySpace.
Read more [zdnet social]

Is Facebook really worth $15 Billion?

After last night's announcement that Microsoft had beat rival Google to become a minority investor in Facebook, and with it secure a long term ad partnership, the question on everyone's mind this morning: is Facebook really worth 15 billion dollars? That's how much the social networking site is valued based on Microsoft's $240 million investment, giving the company a 1.6% stake of a $15 Billion pie.
Read more [zdnet social]

MySpace to launch online games channel

News Corp.-owned MySpace has announced a partnership with with casual-game maker Oberon Games, part of Oberon Media, to create a dedicated "channel" on the social networking site, featuring of social games.
Read more [zdnet social]

MySpaceTV-produced series ‘Roommates’ debuts today

News Corp.-owned MySpace will today launch its latest MySpaceTV exclusive web video series -- Roommates -- co-created by MySpace and new-media production studio Iron Sink Productions. Roommates is the first time that the social-networking site has been behind the development of a scripted web show, in terms of being directly responsible at the content level, rather than just being a exclusive distributor or partner.
Read more [zdnet social]

MySpace to share ad-revenue with Sony BMG

MySpace is continuing its push to be as much a home for big brands and professionally-produced content, as it is for the User-Generated efforts of its millions of members. Today, the News Corp.-owned social networking site announced a partnership with Sony BMG in which ad-revenue will be shared in return for licensing music videos, "select audio material" and other content from label's roster of artists.
Read more [zdnet social]

StyleShake turns women into fashion designers

StyleShake, an e-commerce bespoke fashion brand, launches officially today. Headquartered in London/UK but also also available in Israel, the startup aims to allows customers to create and order individually tailor-made dress designs, share them online with other StyleShake users and, of course, wear them.

Essentially StyleShake puts design tools in the hands of customers who create designs using a simple tool Flash then. They can then order the design in a pre-selected size. Ten days later their hand-made dress turns up by mail.

StyleShake is the brainchild of former new media and online advertising professional (and mother of two), Iris Ben-David who describes StyleShake as ‘User Generated Content meets ecommerce.’ Ben-David came up with the idea out of frustration with existing online dress shopping, which prevented her from adjusting the design of the clothes on sale with the click of a mouse.

She has teamed up with designer Romina Karamanea who is StyleShake’s creative director. Karamanea was recently named one of the 100 most promising worldwide fashion designers and has shown in London and Milan fashion weeks. Also part of the team is CTO David Yanovsky, formally founder of Jetro Platform.

Now, I bet you are thinking what I was thinking: it’s all made in far-eastern sweat shops. However, I am assured by Iris that everything is made in London in the kind of clothing design studio you might find featured in the pages of a fashion magazine.

It looks to me like this is the case. I clicked on what I figured was a pretty simple dress, to be told that it would be £166. That suggests that this isn’t gong to be a mass-market brand. However, from what my wife tells me, many woman today would not blink at such prices for a good dress and would pay over the odds for very original designs you couldn’t find in the shops, and especially if they were hand-made. Plus the sharing side of StyleShake aims to build up a strong community of people who design their own clothes. Each dress can be commented on and rated.

Having said that, a couple of questions seem to stand out at launch. At some point it would be cool to allow even more bespoke tailoring, allowing women to input their their body measurements and then map their clothing designs onto them. Plus allowing them to sell the designs to each-other, thereby profiting from their own intellectual property. And currently the interface could do with some tweaking - adding ‘trimming’ was not obvious for instance. But it’s a good start. [Update: Iris calls to say they are planning to add an option to add your body measurements and also to open your own design shop.]

StyleShake raised money from Israel-based LightSpeed Gemini Internet Lab, a joint venture between Lightspeed Venture Partners and Gemini Israel ( of which, interest declared, TechCrunch France’s Ouriel Ohayon is a member).

Event: Virtual worlds show hits London

Later this month Virtual Worlds Forum Europe (VWFE) is going to be the first major conference in Europe, let along the UK, about - guess what - virtual worlds. It’s odd that it’s taken this long to have a major event about this most fascinating of areas, of interest both to everyone from technology entrepreneurs to media/marketing people.

Of particular interest to TechCrunch readers is going to be the VC panel on day two (Thursday 25th October) at 16.00 – 16.40, featuring a venture capital take on monetising virtual worlds, with the likes of Ben Holmes (Index Ventures), Nic Brisbourne (Esprit Capital) and Sean Seaton-Rogers (Balderton Capital).

Plus, on the evening of Tuesday October 23, there are Drinks with SXSWi in association with VWFE.

Overall, VWFE looks pretty interesting (though I must declare an interest, as I sat on the advisory board). From October 23rd to 26th the show will pack in 60 leading speakers, tracks on enterprise virtual worlds and the consumer perspective, workshops, networking opportunities (and parties). And something I think is pretty cool - a four day member pass to The Hospital a private members’ club for delegates.

The event will also bring the X|Media|Lab - the internationally acclaimed think-tank and creative workshop for digital media professionals - to London for the first time on the Friday of that week.

TechCrunch UK has a VIP code for anyone wanting to get which will get you of 15% off the conference fee. Just quote “VIPS011″. See you there.

Ebay adds social networking features

If you weren't convinced that social networking was as much a feature as a product, look no further than eBay "neighborhoods". The e-commerce giant has rolled out over 600 niche social networks around different product categories, where members can upload photos, contribute to discussion forums, read blog entries, as well as access and write product guides and reviews.
Read more [zdnet social]

50 million funding announced for community cohesion tactics

Read more [PublicTechnology. Net]

Jaiku bought by Google

BREAKING NEWS: Jaiku, the Twitter-like service from Finland, has been bought by Google.

Jaiku Founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen today posted this on their homepage:

“While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.”

The terms of the acquisition have not been released.

This is a fascinating move by Google which would have looked at Twitter prior to this acquisition, and Twitter’s recent $5 million series A funding last July.

The Finland-based SMS and microblogging service has long been regarded by aficionados as the better service in that it has a fairly sophisticated mobile application for the Symbian/Nokia platform, and allows more web-like commenting on its blogs, as opposed to Twitter’s more simplistic “@” replies. Jaiku’s client application for the Nokia S60 can be used to replace the Contacts program and enables automatic broadcast of your presence based on your availability and profile. You can also update your Jaiku page via the app respond to your Jaiku friends posts.

There will be inevitable comparison’s with Google’s acquisition of Dodgeball, which largely came to nothing, but it would appear that the time for social networking and blogging via mobile has come, and Google’s ability to add scale and marketing muscle to Jaiku should be putting Twitter on the back-foot right now. In addition, Jaiku - and in particular Jyri Engeström’s previous experience as a senior at Nokia - is going to help Google with its gPhone project.

A further statement clearly coming from Google read: “Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.”

It went on to say: “We are excited to welcome the Jaiku employees into Google. While it’s too soon to comment on specific products and development plans, we’ll be working with the Jaiku team over the coming months to expand their technology in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful.”

Jaiku will continue to support its existing user base but new user registrations have been closed, though some beta users will still be able to get an invite.

Jaiku was founded in February, 2006, one month before Twitter, and launched a service that July.

Facebook fbFund re-boots; tightens up terms and conditions

Originally asked to submit applications by email, the social networking site is now asking interested developers applying to its fbFund, to re-submit their proposals via a dedicated online application form. The reason, aside from the challenge of sifting through unstructured email submissions, is to make the fbFund terms and conditions much clearer and, presumably, legally binding.
Read more [zdnet social]

News In Brief, or ‘The Dredge’ 8/10/07

The first of a regular ‘dredge’ of items of interest, in no particular order…

• UK-based Dopplr has launched its blog badges, previously announced at the FOWA conference last week. The badge shows your future trips on your webpages in as much or as little detail as you’re comfortable with. You can change what’s shown using privacy settings. You can also just have the badge show on your site to those you’re already sharing information with on Dopplr. Neat, but no news yet on whether you’ll be able to win Dopplr ‘brownie points’ by NOT doing any overseas trips, thus cutting your carbon output and helping to save the planet. Admittedly this would make for a pretty boring Dopplr community (”This week: staying at home”) but what price the environment, eh?

• In less enlightened times the Japanese were often branded as being “copycats” - copying every good idea to happen around the globe. With some justification. The Tokyo subway system is based on the London Underground, for instance. But perhaps this is a charge one could more easily level at the German Web startup business at the moment. Not content with producing no less than six (6) micro-blogging copies of Twitter (count’em: Frazr, Wamadu, Faybl, 1you, Sloggen, and Partnr), we now have Yaggs.de. Founder Thomas Frütel says the site is a human powered directory of search results for popular search queries which displays either its own human-filtered page or a Google results page if no Yaggs page exists. Sound familiar? That’s because it is. US-based Mahalo launched exactly the same concept four months ago. However, I doubt the 35 pages so far created will be troubling CEO Jason Calacanis much yet, since Mahalo is currently on several thousand entries. Better get typing guys.

• From the pen of the UK’s Crowdstorm CEO Phil Wilkinson comes analysis of the Yahoo sale of Kelkoo. As a former European Kelkoo UK chieftain, Phil was once intimately acquainted with Kelkoo, so his post is interesting. Namely, he charges Yahoo! with sucking the innovation life out of Kelkoo: “The friends I know who are still there have kind of been indoctrinated and speak the corporate lingo fluently! Bottom line - innovation has given way to trying to satisfy headcount and strict revenue goals.” He also says Yahoo broke up the best teams, losing its lead in SEO and not keeping pace with Google. Oh and add to that list, missing out on the financial comparison marketplace which MoneySupermarket capitalised on. Let’s hope Phil’s friends keep talking to him, despite being turned into corporate drones, poor things.

• Some news you already know, but here’s a link anyway: MSNBC.com, the Microsoft/NBC joint venture, has acquired social news site Newsvine for an undisclosed sum, the first acquisition in the firm’s 11 year history. Queue screams from thousands of unpaid Newsvine editors.

• And finally… Is Blackberryvip.com new? It looks like it might be. I guess I better check…

The Facebook backlash? No, but funny all the same

Facebook has overtaken MySpace in the UK not just in numbers but in general mind-share in the media and water-cooler conversation. We appear to be obsessed with it. Even to the point where deleting your Facebook profile is actually equated with something as serious as suicide.

But there comes a point when too much is too much. And it’s reaching that point where being bitten by Vampires, poked, super-poked, asked to ‘friend’ someone you’ve never met or to join a group which means nothing to you could well be that point, at least for some people. This is nothing new to the social software gurus, bloggers and online veterans out there who are used to main-lining feeds and detritus of incoming information. To them, all this is water off a duck’s back. But to the mass of the population who never bothered with MySpace, but somehow thought Facebook was going to be more manageable it is all rather a new experience, and there are signs they are getting very tired of it all.

Evidence comes in today via Guardian Technology editor Charles Arthur of this tiredness. It’s a mocked-up Facebook page (see picture) doing the viral email rounds which would probably more accurately reflect how we all feel when being poked, bitten or ‘asked to answer a question’ feels utterly pointless.

Some tamer quotes include:

• Someone you barely know was farted on by someone else’s Mistress Vampire
• God and the Devil are now friends
• Another pissing Vampire attacked another Vampire
• Updated: Someone you hate and someone you’ve never met added the PissingUpTheWall application
• One of your best mates is attending a party that you can’t afford to go to
• You have 746 Zombie invitations
• 1 ‘TV Shows You Hate’ invitation
• Updated: Nothing is happening. Click refresh. Again.

The reality check is that I don’t think this kind of thing is going to be a serious issue for Facebook’s growth. All publicity is good publicity, right? And let’s no be po-faced about a little fun like this.

But it does go to show that the unbridled growth of the platform, and the cultural differences in other parts of the world (in the UK, the US Frat-house sounding applications and groups often don’t sound attractive to UK users) remain a hurdle to Facebook’s quite serious localisation strategy. It also shows that the new features of being able to classify your Facebook friends into groups like ‘business’ or ‘family’ or perhaps ‘people I only know online’ can’t happen soon enough for some.

AIM adds further social networking features; borrows from Twitter and Facebook

AIM, AOL's Instant Messenger client, continues to add social networking features, with the latest update encroaching on some of Twitter and Facebook's stomping ground.
Read more [zdnet social]

BT buys into the FON WiFi network

The UK’s top fixed-line telco, British Telecom, has partnered with with Wi-Fi startup FON which will allow its three million UK broadband customers to roam across eachother’s WiFi hotspots, and those of FON users across the planet.

As part of the deal BT has also taken a stake in FON, which already counts Google, eBay, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures among its investors, in a bid to create “the world’s largest Wi-Fi community”. Argentine entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky (who also blogged the announcement), founded Spanish-based FON in February 2006, and it has signed up telcos including Russian conglomerate AFK Sistema and France’s second largest fixed-line telecoms operator Neuf Cegetel.

BT members will now be part of a community of 500,000 members and will have access to more than 190,000 FON hotspots worldwide. BT’s ‘Total Broadband’ retail customers will also be able to use its existing 7,000 Wi-Fi hotspot network and its 12 “Wireless Cities” around the UK. Crucially, BT’s WiFi boxes (such as the BT Home Hub) can be used for FON, so it’s no longer necessary to get a physical FON device, as in the past.

That’s nice, but it must be pointed out that customers need to opt in to the scheme to share a small portion of their home broadband connection first. So the network doesn’t actually exist right now - it still needs BT’s marketing muscle. And although it’s a relative no-brainer - opt in and you get free wireless elsewhere - I can’t see all three million of BT’s customers suddenly signing up and sticking their WiFi box out the window.

And BT clearly isn’t just doing this for fun.

This essentially a customer acquisition, retention and defensive strategy. Being able to pay for broadband at home, but getting access to what is in effect ‘free’ wireless outside the houses of other BT customers in the UK - and other FON subscribers around the planet - is a good sales story. Plus it’s a reason to stay with BT, which is struggling to launch other customer retention services like it’s IPTV play BT Vision.

The ‘defensive’ bit is perhaps as much about attack. With mobile data usage rising, consumers - especially geek types, it must be said - are experimenting with things like VOIP and Skype on the mobile. If BTs customers can roam across the UK both with a WiFi laptop AND, say, IP-enabled mobile handset, BT will be in a position to add a mobile data feather to its cap.

Facebook “friends” grouping confirmed

A recently discovered upcoming feature of Facebook: the ability to organize "friends" into different groups, with each category assigned its own privacy settings, has now been confirmed by the social networking site itself.
Read more [zdnet social]

More on Google’s social networking plans

TechCrunch reports that Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. The result would be that third parties (as well as Google themselves) will be able to build applications that leverage the social networking data that Google already holds about ourselves.
Read more [zdnet social]

Digg gets more social and advertiser-friendly

If all goes to plan, later in the day Digg will roll out a major update to the social news site, to add a number of new social networking features: enhanced user profiles, private messaging, discussion boards, and privacy settings. Users and advertisers rejoice.
Read more [zdnet social]