NowPublic Gets $10.6 Million For Crowd Sourced News

“Crowd sourced” news network NowPublic.com has closed a $10.6 milion series A round of financing led by Rho Ventures with seed investors Brightspark and the Working Opportunity Fund participating.

Crowd sourcing is part of the widely expanding “citizen journalism” category, which encompasses all the new ways non-professionals can participate in the news reporting process. Examples range from commenting, voting on stories, to full out blogging. News commentator Jeff Jarvis has written extensively on the subject. NowPublic is a website that provides these tools to the public so they can report on what is going on around them. Many other news startups also incorporate these tools in different ways, such as NewsVine, OutsideIn, Digg, CitizenBay, recently Topix, and the now defunct Backfence.

On the spectrum of citizen journalism, NowPublic is considered a “crowd sourced” news network since stories rely on many bits of contributed content instead of a small group of users.

On NowPublic, anyone can sign up for the site and start contributing to stories in the usual categories (politics, culture, entertainment, …) or even local news. Users can write their own stories and upload their own photos (mobile), or simply submit a story from somewhere else on the web. Each of the submissions ranked in the category based on the number of votes they get. Editors can also come in and adjust the rankings based on breaking news and spamming.

Traction is one of the hardest things to build in community based startups. Citizen journalism startup Bayosphere was shut down after it couldn’t attract enough contributors. However, NowPublic reports to have over 118,000 members from over 140 countries and 3,800 cities. The site does over 1 million uniques per month. They have a hardcore audience of about 15 – 20,000 exceptionally active contributors that put up anywhere from 2 to 5 stories each month.

NowPublic seems to work best in times of crisis where it can serve as a hub for reports from people on the ground. During Hurricane Katrina, the site received over 2,000 people writing and posting about what was going on. NowPublic also reportedly broke news in the Virginia Tech shooting, the grounding of an Alaskan ferry, a bombing drill gone wrong in New Jersey and a murder in Vancouver.

The ability to be places where news media aren’t always present has led to a partnership with the Associated Press. AP has started purchasing stories and photos from the site based on the submitters asking price. NowPublic can cover areas AP’s 4,000 staff members aren’t and will be particularly focused on hurricane prone parts of the country as hurricane season approaches. While they are currently not taking any portion of the proceeds, in the future NowPublic plans on taking 25% cut. They have 7 to 10 other major partnerships lined up as well.

The Vancouver-based company was originally started in 2005.

Cisco and Click.tv?

I picked up a juicy rumor this weekend that Cisco may have acquired Click.tv, a video annotation and deep tagging service that launched in 2006 and then shut down last month. When Click.tv closed down last month they said in an email to users “While I regret this shutdown, I am very excited by the reason behind it. You’ll be seeing Click.TV technology very soon doing *much* bigger and better things.” Thiscertainly suggested a complete relaunch or an acquisition.

Was it Cisco? Maybe. They’ve been making some interesting plays in the web space, with acquisitions of Five Across, Tribe and WebEx. Five Across and Tribe are both in the social networking space. I’m not sure how Click.tv would fit into those plans. So for now I’m going to label this as possible but not more. I’m digging for additional sources.

BuddyTV Takes $2.8 million Series A

Seattle based BuddyTV (Advanced Media Research Group Inc.) has taken $2.8 million in Series A funding in a round led by Gemstar-TV Guide International.

BuddyTV is a television focused content network with a team of dedicated entertainment writers producing content that is complemented by users. The service also provides broadcasting tools. See our previous coverage here on the space.

NASDAQ listed Gemstar- TV Guide is best known in the United States for its TV Guide publication. Their involvement in the round is significant due to Gemstar – TV Guide’s background; this is a serious long term player in the television industry investing in a new media TV related startup. The expertise and depth of knowledge BuddyTV will now have access to should bide them well in an increasingly competitive vertical.

Meebo Hits The Live Music Promotion Road

Web based instant messaging platform meebo has announced a new partnership with Live Nation and The Firm to promote “Family Values,” a series of live music events billed as “this summer’s biggest tour.”

The partnership includes concert promotion and concert presence. Music fans visiting meebo.com, the Family Values Tour website and featured band websites have a chance to win 2 free concert tickets and backstage access to every day of the tour.

At the live concerts, fans can share videos and pictures in the official Family Values “Circle Pit” meebo room and win prizes based on their submissions.

Meebo follows in the footsteps of Buzznet, who is promoting their service on the Vans Warped Tour. It would seem that live music events are becoming fertile ground for promoting startups and networking related sites.

The 2007 Family Values Tour is co-headlined by Korn and Evanescence.

Alibaba.com IPO Confirmed

Chinese ecommerce group Alibaba has confirmed preparations for an IPO of Alibaba.com.

Alibaba.com shares will be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the third quarter and the IPO is expected to raise HK $7.8 billion (US $1 billion). Alibaba has said that they would be using the additional capital to expand their international footprint.

The IPO will see the partial spin-off of Alibaba.com from the Alibaba Group, the China based holding company that owns sites including Alipay, Taabao.com and Yahoo China.

Yahoo Inc is currently the largest shareholder of the Alibaba Group, having acquired a 40% stake in 2005.

iPhone Class Action Lawsuit

A Cook County, Illinois resident has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple and AT&T over the iPhone.

Jose Trujillo is claiming that Apple and AT&T misled iPhone buyers by not clearly informing them that the iPhone battery was sealed, and could only be professionally replaced.

According to the papers:

Unknown to the Plaintiff, and undisclosed to the public, prior to purchase, the iPhone is a sealed unit with its battery soldered on the inside of the device so that it cannot be changed by the owner…The battery enclosed in the iPhone can only be charged approximately 300 times before it will be in need of replacement, necessitating a new battery annually for owners of the iPhone.

The suit would appear to have little credibility; the sealed battery issue was reported extensively prior to the iPhone being launched and was certainly never kept as a secret.

Looking at the phone prior to buying it and noticing it was a sealed device was would also appear to have been a difficult task for Mr Trujillo; perhaps it needed a sticker warning of the fact, something along the lines of “Presuming nothing, ask questions first” or “Not to be purchased by people chasing a quick buck and 15 minutes of fame.”

Dear Podtech: I’m Not Your VP Marketing

So Podtech is apparently unhappy with the post I wrote last evening – What’s Really Going On With Podtech? First Podtech subsequeCEO John Furrier emailed me repeatedly this morning asking for changes, then later Robert Scoble wrote on Twitter that much of my post was incorrect. It may well be incorrect, but it is certainly what I believe to be true after the extensive research I did on the company.

This is a post that Podtech pleaded with me to write, to counter the massive negative publicity they’ve been getting around the blogosphere. I agreed to write after two phone conversations with Furrier and some independent digging suggested that the whole story was not being told.

Much of Furrier and I talked about in our two conversation was off record at his request. But if Scoble, and executive with the company, is going to publicly state that the post is inaccurate I’m not sure its appropriate for me to keep that information non-public. Also, I’ve kept most of my personal opinions about Podtech to myself so far. I haven’t for example, said that I personally find 90% of Podtech content just slightly more entertaining than watching paint dry.

I stand by my opinion that Podtech is on the right track by focusing on aggregating third party content under its Flash player and advertising network and moving away from the highly-competitive content creation game. I assume that’s what they are focusing on, since John told me that repeatedly.

I write stuff how I see it, which is not always what the companies involved want to see. Never confuse TechCrunch with your PR or marketing team. And if your messaging isn’t clear, don’t shoot the messenger. Clean up your own mess first.

How Much Is A Facebook User Worth? At Least $0.30

People aren’t wasting any time trying to figure out how to monetize all those thousands of Facebook apps that have sprung up over the last couple of months. At least three advertising experiments have launched – the most promising, by far, is RockYou.

fbExchange

The first out the door was FBExchange, a copycat of the LinkExchange idea from the nineties. It was created by the 30Boxes Calendar team – Narendra Rocherolle, Julie Davidson and Nick Wilder. Display others’ ads on your facebook application and build up credits, which can then be used to run your own ads on other apps. It’s a cheap and easy way to get exposure for your application, should the viral Facebook machine not create enough growth to keep you happy. See GigaOm for more. The company says they’ve booked $200k in revenue after just two weeks live.

Lookery

Lookery, founded by serial entrepreneur Scott Rafer, is a straight up advertising network targeted solely at Facebook applications. They say they’ll have access to deep demographic data on users and can therefore target ads to users with very specific characteristics – a woman between the ages of 20-25 in New York, for example. That theoretically will lead to much higher advertising rates. I like the idea, but Facebook itself has access to the same data and more and has had trouble selling high CPM ads at scale. Lookery needs big scale to be successful, and so will likely struggle in the early days. For now, Rafer says, they are passing 100% of revenue to content providers and will start to take a cut in a month or so when the economics support it.

RockYou

RockYou has been quietly testing their own idea of an advertising network – selling “users” to other applications. They’ve had a tremendous amount of success building viral applications on Facebook so far. Their Super Wall app, for example, has nearly 3 million users and is adding hundreds of thousands of new users each day. It’s basically what it says – a better “wall” where friends can leave messages. With Super Wall, people can add pictures, video and other rich media.

They’re offering to promote third party applications on Super Wall, and charging on a per-user-acquired (CPA) basis. When a user is signing up for Super Wall they are asked if they’d like to also add a additional application (the advertiser). See the screen shot to the right (click for large view).

The test so far are going very well. CEO Lance Tokuda told me today that they moved $30k in inventory in just four hours. They are testing various price points, but the low end seems to be around $0.30 for each user they sell to another application, and they believe they can get as much as $1 over time. The effective CPM (or revenue per 1,000 pages) is a “multiple of $20″ he says. This make them possibly the first Facebook application to have found a real way to monetize users and pageviews.

Tokuda also says they have developed an API for Super Wall and will give free access to other applications to build their functionality into it. This can make your head spin a bit – Facebook is now widely considered a platform, and now Super Wall is a platform on top of a platform. It’s a good thing I guess that no one is slowing down long enough to really think too hard about how quickly the online world is evolving. Instead, they’re experimenting wildly. And some of this stuff is going to stick.

eSwarm: Group Buying Online

Boulder, Colorado based eSwarm aims to bring buyers and sellers together with a model that is similar to bulk buying clubs.

Buyers register for a free account then join current swarms (groups of buyers) or create new ones. Swarms can be focused on any consumer good, debt refinancing, pre-paid gift and debit cards and even insurance products. Sellers then bid for the business.

The theory is that the larger the swarm, the more attractive it will be to sellers. Once a seller lodges a first bid, membership to the swarm is frozen and other businesses have 48 hours to counter bid.

eSwarm also provides charities and organizations with a fundraising tool; creators of swarms can stipulate that a percentage of the total sale is donated to their charity of choice.

There is not a lot of activity on the site as yet, but it is growing. CEO Tim Newcomb says that eSwarm is a “global economic revolution;” it’s not, but it does have potential.

Validas to Help You Understand Your Cell Phone Bill

It’s sad to say it, but it’s true: most cell phone bill are so complicated that it is nearly impossible to understand exactly what you are being charged (and perhaps over charged) for. A new site called Validaspromises to make sense of the chaos, help you understand where you are spending money, and what you can do to lower your bill. It hasn’t launched yet, but there is an overview video on the site.