Foreign Investment in China Tech Grows - Despite the economic slowdown, investors seem to still be bullish about Chinese technology companies.  From the Wall Street Journal: Tudou Raises $57 Million

Pluggd CEO to Speak at Digital Hollywood - Alex Castro, CEO of Pluggd, a StartUp Beat featured company, will be a part of the "Online Video": TV-Broadband Programming, Content & Advertising Innovation" panel at next week's Digital Hollywood conference.  Pluggd enables advanced online video search.

How Bad Will it Get for Tech Startups? - It has been well established that we are in the midst of a worldwide economic downturn, and know one really knows its ultimate duration and severity.  Founders of tech startups naturally have nervous flashbacks to 2000, when the tech sector, especially the dot coms, experienced a steady decline that put many startups out of business.  BUt this is a completely different climate from 2000, and most tech startups are built on a much more solid footing than eight years ago.  Verne Kopytoff of the San Francisco Chronicle addresses the issue today, doing a good job of finding some balance and highlighting the differences among tech startups then and now: Economic deja vu hitting tech startups

Web Site: www.collegetonight.com
Headquarters: Los Angeles
Year Founded: 2005
Founders: Zach Suchin, President & CEO; Jason Schutzbank, Executive Vice President & CTO
Investors: Publicly held (result of a reverse merger with Simex Technologies)
Employees: 6 full-time; 40 part-time; hundreds of campus representatives
Company News: www.collegetonight.com/press

By Zach Suchin, Co-founder, President & CEO 

College Tonight, Inc. owns and operates the web site www.collegetonight.com, an interactive service and networking platform for the college market that targets both active students and alumni.  As the antidote to “anti-social” networking, College Tonight differs from other social networks by promoting active social interactivity in the "real world" rather than the sedentary lifestyle nearly all competing social networks relegate their users to behind a physical computer screen.  College Tonight fosters in-person communication and activities with an emphasis on nightlife and other social events both local to the user's college campus and beyond that area for more broadly-based communities.  The web site provides an online forum for students to exchange information on social activities happening offline, serving as a catalyst for real-life relationships and interaction among users.

Founders' Story:

During college, I provided marketing and branding for several different companies and organized high-profile nightlife events for college students and celebrities.  It was a very unique situation because the celebrities loved hanging out with the college students and obviously, the college students were thrilled to party with their favorite artists.  It was a rare melding of the two worlds. 

Toward the end of college, I started developing the College Tonight concept with my partner Jason after a microcosmic success story in a conference called “Emory Nightlife” on the school’s server.  While the server was meant for strict academic and school sponsored extra-curricular, what was started as a conduit of communication between me and my small group of friends, quickly turned into the most populated group on the school server, with hundreds of “add-me” requests being processed each day.  The conference eventually reached about 85 percent of the undergraduate populous at Emory University with a strictly opt-in population.  There was even a practical sub-module in the group called “Drunk Lost & Found” meant for those who lost items at various events around town, which ended up becoming more relevant than the official school’s lost and found conference.  Since November, 2005, my partner and I have been developing College Tonight.

College Tonight was started completely organically, through a natural need at one school in Atlanta.  Jason and I realized that this was by no means an isolated vacuum in the market and we both put all of our money from our previous businesses into creating version .5 of the service.  This beta version of the service was meant to test with the Emory community exactly what features were going to be utilized and would be worth expanding upon.  In September of 2006, we held a beta launch event that attracted many people, including the largest periodical in the South, the Atlanta Journal Constitution.  We started to get press that no one expected.  At this point Jason and I knew it was time to take our knowledge of what worked and what didn’t, and we started to raise funding for a more official version of the service.  We hustled and finally achieved enough funding to develop the current version of the site.

Web Site: www.adooga.com
Headquarters: Santa Monica, California
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Perrin Chiles and Chris Sherrill, Co-Founders
Investors: Privately funded
Employees: 6
Company News: www.adooga.com/media.html

By Perrin Chiles and Chris Sherrill, Founders

Offering more than 250 contests and over 19 million dollars in cash and prizes, ADOOGA is the powerful search engine that connects creative, Internet-savvy fans with content-seeking brands by aggregating online contests in one user-friendly site.

At ADOOGA, our mission is to simplify the discovery and entry process for anyone who wants to participate in online contests.  There are hundreds of photographers, filmmakers, musicians and writers out there waiting to be discovered and receive recognition (or cash and prizes) for their work.  Now, ADOOGA is here to help expedite the realization of those dreams.  Check it out; hone your skills to enter a contest or two, and win money to fund your next record, indie flick or photo exhibit.

Talent agencies are scouring sites like MySpace, Facebook and YouTube looking for the “next big thing”—ad agencies and corporations should be doing the same thing by viewing the growing list of contest winners, dubbed ADOOGA All-Stars.  The Internet is such a powerful way to connect creative people with bold brands.  We wanted to simplify the process of putting talent in touch with the brands looking for fresh ideas.

Along with the growing popularity of social networking sites where members can share music, videos and other content they’ve created, the web is seeing a surge in blue chip brands tapping the creativity of the Internet generation to create their next big campaign through contests on sites such as YouTube, MySpace and BrickFish.

Overlay.TV Featured in Wired – Overlay.TV, a StartUp Beat featured company, was recently featured in Wired’s Listening Post blog, where its advertising 3.0 technology is featured.  The post includes a demo using the Beastie Boys “Sabotage” music video:  Overlay.tv Adds Links and Easter Eggs to Music Videos

Miscellaneous…

Who doesn’t want to avoid traffic?  Bill Gates wants to help:  Microsoft introduces an enhanced tool for avoiding traffic jams

Speaking of MSFT... they’re involved in what may be the most interesting takeover battle of the decade.  TechCrunch’s take on the latest developments:  Yahoo Goes Scorched Earth

Web Site: www.pluggd.com
Headquarters: Seattle, Washington
Year Founded: 2006
Founders: Alex Castro, CEO; Jonathan Thompson, Chief Architect
Investors: Intel Capital and Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Employees: 13
Total Capital Raised: $6 million
Company News: www.plugged.com/news

 
By Alex Castro, Founder and CEO

At Pluggd, we are bringing a new slate of products to market this year that we hope will mark significant advances in the way consumers experience web video and in the way that advertisers can monetize that video. 

For starters, we have invented technology that allows web users to “search inside” a web video (or audio) file, before consuming the entire file.  This allows the consumer to find the section they want, then “surf” directly to that part of the video.  In this way, we hope to make video browsing much more like web page browsing.

Our patent-pending “Heat Map” technology is an innovative user interface that guides users to the content topics they wish to see or hear in an audio or video file.  The goal is to make multimedia search as easy and intuitive as general web search.

When a user clicks “play” on an audio or video file, Pluggd processes the file through our Content Publishing system, which essentially generates a transcript of the words and associated topics that are present in the file.  When a user enters a keyword search term, the query flows through our Transcript and Concept databases, generating a color-coded heat-map.  The heat-map shows relevancy of sections of the file to the search term.  Red indicates a direct match, orange a near-match, and blue a non-match.  Intuitively, a user can advance the “scrubber bar” to the part of the file that he or she wishes to see (or hear).  The system works for files of any length, enabling a new kind of viewing experience that puts the navigation of the video or audio file directly into the hands of a user who can browse according to their interest in topics they choose.

Not so long ago, popular video was the exclusive province of movies and television.  These programs were characterized by the following:

*High cost of production

*Established channels of distribution

*Monetization through direct purchase or attached advertising

Let’s take the popular situation comedy, “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as an example of the realities of video production by Old Media.  Each episode cost over five million dollars to produce.  The network, CBS, ordered 26 episodes for a standard season.  The program ran for nine seasons.  The high cost of production reflected the considerable talent of the writers, actors and unionized production crew of a hit show, which could only have been brought to life under a mature television production system.

After a brief hiatus, we're back and ready to bring you more pitches from some of the world's most innovative and interesting technology startups.  Tomorrow, we're featuring Pluggd, an online video startup from Seattle, Washington, that is bringing an unprecedented level of control over viewing to users.  

Remember, if you have or know of a startup you think should be featured on StartUp Beat, drop me a line -- editor@startupbeat.com
 
-Brian

Web Site: www.overlay.tv
Headquarters: Ottawa, Canada
Year Founded: 2007
Founders: Rob Lane, CEO; Tyler Cope, Chief Architect; Nadav Zin, Vice President Products and Services
Investors: Celtic House Venture Partners, EdgeStone Capital Partners and Tech Capital Partners
Employees: 20
Total Capital Raised: $4.6 Million
Company News: blog.overlay.tv/press/

By Tyler Cope, Founder and Chief Architect

Overlay.TV is an interactive media company that provides a video commerce platform that enables Internet users, content owners and e-commerce sites to monetize and customize their video assets by overlaying contextual information directly onto online video content and linking to external websites.

Choice - Opt-In 

The original idea for Overlay.TV was conceived while watching my wife watch TV.  She would sit down to a line-up of shows that had been PVR’d the night before and be delighted with the fact that the next few hours of her evening would be spent happily viewing the shows she had selected.  Of course, there would be the occasional commercial interruption that she would fast forward through but at least it wasn’t like the bad old days where she was forced to sit through several minutes of advertisements.

My wife wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary.  Everyone I know has their own variation of on-demand content consumption.  Some people pause a show when it starts, make dinner and then resume viewing when dinner is done, allowing them to skip past all the commercial breaks.  With the Internet-oriented method of viewing content, users also shun the “traditional” advertising.  Banners, pop-ups and the like have very low click through rates and the minute that a video sharing site introduces the television model of interrupting content to show an ad, many of their users become upset and simply move on.  The common attribute among these viewers is that they are watching content without paying any attention to the advertising.  Traditional advertising models have not kept up with advances in technology and are severely broken.  Any new model would need to work in the world where the user expects to watch what they want, when they want it. This was the first ingredient for the idea.

The Content is The Ad

The second ingredient was this: Although people will choose to disregard the interruptive type of advertising that has been chosen for them, product placement is still partially working. My wife will watch a video or show and make a comment about the shoes, handbags, hairstyles or the lifestyles of the rich and famous. She might simply be curious about what an item is or she may actually be interested in buying something just like it.

Given the right timing, the right mood and the opportunity to dig deeper into what is being shown, these people would most certainly either read more about or purchase items on the spot. If the mood or timing isn’t perfect, they might just set the thought aside for another day. If only they knew exactly what thought to set aside. 

Users

Assuming that you could come up with an unobtrusive system that allowed people to delve into what they were watching, how would that system know what the objects in the video are? Artificial Intelligence isn’t even close to being able to identify objects in video at the detailed level required. Viewers want to know what brand, where it can be purchased and what is comparable. To do that, you need either the people that were involved in creating the content or people who know about the subject matter. That leads me to the third ingredient: the users. 

Users would be able to identify, classify, tag and comment on objects inside the content.

Web Site:  www.circleup.com
Headquarters:  Newport Beach, Calif.
Year Founded:  2006
Founders:  John Payne; Doug Tung; Jim Jonassen
Investors:  Sid R. Bass Associates and early angel investors
Employees:  15
Total Capital Raised:  $3 Million
Company News:  www.circleup.com/my/cu/info/press/

By John Payne, Co-Founder and CEO

The evolution of emailing has been incredible to watch since its inception.  From a techie tool used by engineers, academics and scientists to the defacto method of communication for hundreds of millions of people, email has transformed the way that people from all walks of life communicate.  Instant messaging has been hot on its heels in the younger demographic and is now reaching critical mass even in the enterprise.  With emails worldwide totaling almost 100 billion messages daily, an almost unmanageable torrent of information flows every single day.  And with the emergence of the social platforms and their proprietary messaging and publishing systems at places like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5 and others, the problem of group collaboration and communication across these heterogenous messaging systems has continued to grow.

It is no surprise that although Internet communications among groups is the most widely used collaboration tool in existence, the messaging systems themselves have proven to be relatively inefficient when it comes to group communication and information gathering.

For a year now, CircleUp has turbo-charged group communication via email, instant messaging and social networking services already in use around the world today.  Where messaging has failed, CircleUp has taken the lead in creating an innovative communications tool that allows users to gather information, make plans or decisions and collaborate more effectively.  CircleUp is a social communications service for real world groups that is built to make people’s lives easier and reduce information overload.

Web Site:  www.answerbag.com
Headquarters:  Santa Monica, Calif.
Year Founded:  2003
Founder:  Joel Downs
Investors:  *Answerbag is owned by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media, which acquired the company in 2006.
Company News:  www.demandmedia.com/news-media.asp

By Joel Downs, Founder and CEO

What is Answerbag?

Answerbag.com is more than a leading, independent social knowledge platform and online destination.  To the many users, Answerbag is a community of people helping others.  Users can ask questions, share answers and collaboratively evaluate information, while building a permanent archive of knowledge and experience.  Other sites that share the Answerbag platform—bloggers, web publishers, etc.—leverage the company’s knowledge platform to provide live, social Q&A to their audiences.  Answerbag’s mission is to help people find and share knowledge.

As of February 2008, Answerbag has 236,000 registered members who have asked more than 500,000 questions.  The site receives over 10,000 answers per day (totaling 2.1 million answers to date since the site’s creation) that are provided in response to the 1,500 daily questions that are received across 6,000 categories.  Additionally, Answerbag serves Q&A to 5-and-a-half million unique visitors per month.

What is Social Q&A, and How is Answerbag Different?

Web Site:  www.thinkpassenger.com
Headquarters:  Los Angeles
Year Founded:  2005
Founders:  Andrew Leary and Justin Cooper
Investors:  Shelter Capital Partners

By Justin Cooper, Co-Founder and Chief Innovation + Marketing

Most forward thinking marketers would agree that the advertising and marketing landscape has changed dramatically over the past few years with the dawn of web 2.0 and the powerful influences of social media.  As more and more consumers embrace social media as a way to communicate with each other, marketers are clamoring to tap into this relatively new medium and its vast influence.  Perhaps the greatest marriage of social media and marketing can be found in the engagement of targeted consumers with an established brand in a collaborative process of “co-creating.”

Passenger has built upon the idea of co-creating by redefining collaboration to bridge the communication gap between businesses and their most valued customers.  This rich, interactive experience is about meaningful relationships that turn dialogue and on-demand access to opinions into actionable insight.  The ability to capture and gain a clear understanding of the human context in which these collaborative activities take place will drive business innovation and growth while empowering your customers.  Passenger’s mission is to make these collaborative relationships possible through an incredibly user-friendly platform.

Web Site:  www.ehow.com
Headquarters:  Santa Monica, California
Year Founded:  1999
Customers:  More than 13 million per month
Investors:  *eHow is owned by Santa Monica, Calif.-based Demand Media, which acquired the company in 2006.

by Gregory Boudewijn, eHow General Manager

eHow is a rich content web site where professional experts and people with expertise can come together and share their knowledge to create and contribute to a growing library of “how-to” information.  Every month, more than 13 million people visit eHow to learn how to do just about everything.  eHow has more than 150,000 articles and is growing by the thousands each month thanks to its easy-to-use publishing tools, which enable professional experts and members to express their knowledge through text, images and video.  Video is becoming an increasingly important medium for how-to information and eHow continues to focus on building its user tools and video library.  In the near future, video will become a prominent part of the eHow experience and compliment the text articles.

The eHow web site is more than just a reference library where users can find comprehensive and useful how-to information.  eHow fosters a conversation between readers and experts through a robust set of social network tools that launched in April 2007.  Readers share their thoughts and expertise through ratings, comments, person-to-person messaging and community forums.  They can also build a network of friends around their interests.  Putting a face behind each piece of content lets eHow add depth to the readership experience.  Finding useful how-to information is important, but connecting readers to experts and creating a dialogue is invaluable.

Thank you for your readership.  I have decided to take StartUp Beat in a new and exciting direction, starting tomorrow.  The focus of the site will no longer be news from companies based in the greater Los Angeles area.  Instead, it will now be a forum for technology startups from across the U.S. to pitch their ideas in a free forum to a large, national (and even international) audience.  Basically, carefully selected technology startups based anywhere in the U.S. will be able to submit a pitch, bylined by a founder or CEO, that describes what the company does, value proposition, investors, product, goals, and other key items that are key to providing an understanding of the company.

All companies that submit their pitches to StartUp Beat will be indexed and fully searchable.  Their indexed pitches will also include a consistently updated profile that includes key information like founders, executives, employees, etc.  We tried this for companies in the Los Angeles area for a limited time last year, and I was impressed with the sheer number of technology startups from across the U.S. that were seeking to have a voice in a forum like this where they could tell their stories.

You will still be able to access our archive of articles from the past year of news from startups in the Los Angeles area, and all permalinks to individual articles will remain live.

I hope you will find our new format valuable, interesting, and stimulating.  As always, I welcome and encourage your comments and feedback.

Sincerely,

Brian Kovalesky
Editor & Publisher
StartUp Beat
brian@startupbeat.com

-Break.com Debuts New Properties as Part of Ad Network Launch – Los Angeles-based online video company Break.com has launched its new Break Men’s Ad Network and three new web properties—Cage Potato, Chickipedia, and Holy Taco.  Here’s a link to the announcement: Break Launches Three New Branded Web Properties and Men’s Ad Network

-Dayton Steps Down as Helio CEO – Entrepreneur and Helio founder Sky Dayton will step aside as CEO and move to non-executive chairman of the Westwood-based mobile virtual network operator.  Dayton will be replaced by Helio president and COO Wonhee Sull.  Here’s TechCrunch’s take on the move: Sky Dayton Steps Down As CEO of Helio

-Gumiyo to Deliver Mobile Carfax Reports – The Woodland Hills-based startup that develops e-commerce solutions for mobile devices has announced that it has partnered with Carfax to make Carfax Vehicle History Reports available on mobile devices.  GUMIYO, Inc. First to Deliver Carfax Vehicle History Reports Through Mobile Devices to Consumers  

-2008 Local Entrepreneurship Awards Finalists Announced – Entretech today announced the finalists for the 5th annual awards.  Presented by both Entretech and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the honors will be given at a breakfast on January 31st.  PricewaterhouseCoopers and Entretech Announce Finalists for 5th Annual Entrepreneurship Awards 2008

-Demand Media and the Lance Armstrong Foundation Announce Agreement – The Santa Monica-based social media company says that it will build ‘Livestrong.com’ for the group, a site that will provide professional health, wellness and fitness-related content.  The company says that as part of the deal, the Foundation and Lance Armstrong will become shareholders in Demand.  Demand Media and the Lance Armstrong Foundation Announce Agreement to Build LIVESTRONG.com 

-Integrien Adds to Advisory Board – Here’s more on the appointment, from the Irvine-based provider of integrity management solutions: Fred van den Bosch Joins Integrien’s Strategic Advisory Board

-The Rubicon Project Raises $15 Million – The Los Angeles-based Internet marketing startup today announced the completion of a series B round, led by Mayfield Fund with participation from IDG Ventures Asia; Stanford University; University of California Berkeley; Matt Coffin, founder and former CEO of LowerMyBills.com and Clearstone Venture Partners.  the Rubicon Project Raises $21 Million With New Financing Led by Mayfield Fund