Users have the opportunity to meet new people and make friends within the context of a flirting environment. Features include an online chat facility, personal profiles, photos, and videos. Flirtomatic also offer a viral video game, FlirtQuest. Users make public challenges for other users to film and submit.

Also on offer is a comprehensive test of flirting skills. The “flirt test” was specially developed by Dr. Lenny Kristal, author of ‘The Great British Sex Survey’ and allows members and casual users the opportunity to assess their flirting skills based on a number of criteria.

Flirtomatic also features an online search engine and both web and 3G gateways for access to the service. The 3G gateway is currently only available to users with a UK mobile contract.

Partners

On the 12 February 2007, as the result of a new partnership with the British newspaper, the News of the World, Flirtomatic launched a re-branded version of its service, News Of The World Flirtomatic.

Through a growing network of partnerships with UK mobile operators, such as Hutchison Whampoa’s 3, Flirtomatic offers regular mobile operator portal integration.

Flirtomatic were first to partner with Microsoft UK’s on their AdMob text-advertising service.

Links

• visit Flirtomatic

OkCupid users are presented with questions (most of which are authored, submitted, and vetted by members) about various topics such as politics and tastes page by page, and given a list of up to four answers per question to choose from. They are also asked “How would your Ideal Match answer this question?”, and then “How important is their answer to you?”, with degrees of importance for the latter listed as “irrelevant”, “a little important”, “somewhat important”, “very important”, and “mandatory”, each respectively assigned a greater numerical value. The site uses the numerical values to calculate “friend”, “enemy”, and “match” percentages between any two members of the site based on how many answered questions those two users have in common (referred to as their “intersection”), with higher intersections supposedly producing more accurate percentages.

There is a very active journaling/blogging community on OkCupid as well. Members have the option of saving favorite users’ profiles and then “stalking” them, which allows them to view all of their new journal entries, as well as comments on others’ entries. The journaling community frequently arranges meet-ups of OkCupid users in various areas of the world and people travel, sometimes from as far away as other countries or continents, to meet. Sites of past meet-ups include London, New Orleans, San Francisco, New York City, and Ann Arbor.

OkCupid is a service of Humor Rainbow, Inc. OkCupid’s founders, (Chris Coyne, Christian Rudder, Sam Yagan, and Max Krohn) were students at Harvard University when they gained notoriety from their creation of TheSpark and, later, SparkNotes. Among other things, TheSpark.com featured a number of humorous self-quizzes and personality tests, including the four-variable Meyers-Briggs style Match Test. SparkMatch debuted as a beta experiment of allowing registered users who had taken the Match Test to search for and contact each other based on their Match Test types. The popularity of SparkMatch took off and it was launched as its own site, later being renamed OkCupid. The current OkCupid Dating Persona Test is still largely identical, in question and text blurb content and order, to the original Match Test. In 2001, they sold SparkNotes to Barnes & Noble, and began work on OkCupid.

In 2008 OkCupid spun off its test-design portion under the name Hello Quizzy (HQ), while keeping it indelibly linked to OkCupid and reserving existent OkCupid users’ names on HQ.

Links

• visit OkCupid

Drop.io is rooted in a model which highlights trust and transparency with the intent of minimizing the amount of information needed to share privately based on private URLs, passwords, and expiration settings. The model of privacy, which is known as Simple Privacy or Casual Privacy has been described by Kellan Elliott-McCrea of Flickr as “a design pattern for sharing non-public information using out-of-band exchange of unguessable tokens.” Another service following the same basic model is Flickr Guest Pass.

The service does not require embedded accounts, identity, search, or any other social elements. Its core philosophy is to create a simple, private system based on inputs and outputs. Users send “in” files (documents, images, videos, audio files, archives, and more) via various methods (web, mms, email, phone and fax) into their “Drops”. Once in the drops, users can view their content and move it “out” via the web, email, mms, and fax.

Drop.io was founded by entrepreneurs Sam Lessin and Darshan Somashekar in August 2007. The company was originally located in Manhattan and moved to its new office location in Dumbo, Brooklyn in 2008.

In November 2007, Drop.io completed a $1.2 million Series A round of financing lead by RRE Ventures to support the company’s development efforts and infrastructure growth. In March 2008, the company closed $2.7 million in series A-1 financing led by New York venture capital firms DFJ Gotham and RRE Ventures.

Drop.io was nominated for the Technical Achievement Award at the South By Southwest 11th Annual Web Awards in 2007.

On June 10th Drop.io and Scribd, the leading platform for online document publishing, announced a partnership to offer rich conversion and viewing within private “drops”, to make it easier for people to share private information online. As of 2008, users can find Drop.io on a number of social networking sites, including: Facebook and Twitter.

Between March 2007 and November 2008 drop.io released a series of feature improvements to their platform including ‘inputs’ and ‘outputs’ via various interfaces like phone and fax, a twitter ‘subscription’ mode, and a Firefox plugin that allows users to ‘drag and drop’ files into new or existing ‘drops’

In September 2008 drop.io released a very simple API which allows other applications to use drop.io’s file sharing ability in their own applications. Several early applications were built, including usend.io (a simple file transfer app like senduit or yousendit). Arstechnica appears to have built the first fully operational third party application on the API.

In November 2008 drop.io announced having moved 100% into ‘the cloud’ having switched away from all owned and rented physical hardware/servers and claimed to be the largest 100% in the cloud application in the world.

Also in November 2008 drop.io released a major design overhaul which completely changed the front end of the product, but maintained the core service.

In December 2008 drop.io was one of the first services to release a Facebook Connect integration, which allowed users to publish updates of any sort made to any drop directly to their facebook feed.

Drop.io is an account-free service that offers:

• 100 MB of free non-searchable storage with ability to upgrade to an infinite amount of storage for a fee
• Password protection and expiration settings
• Formatting and design customizations
• The ability to store and share images, documents, video, audio, and other digital content
• Free faxing
• Free e-mailing into and out of drops
• Free custom phone number and extension to add more information via e-mail, mms or phone
• Free voicemail sent into drops
• Custom expiration dates for each drop

Links

• drop.io

Socialcast brings many powerful, first-time features, offering a simple and quick way for colleagues to learn about each other and share knowledge. The platform enables project managers to monitor work in progress, regardless of geographic boundaries, and document milestones and day-to-day achievements of employees. Specific features include:

• Mini user profiles – highlights name, latest status post, connection, links to external services and co-worker’s contacts

Self Service Solution Sign Up Online

* First 5 users are always free
* $5 per user, per month for additional users
* No set up fees, contract, or cancellation fee

Links

• Visit Website

The company strengthens the online community through off-line events at nightclubs, bars, restaurants, and cultural venues in various cities for its most prolific and loyal contributors, named “Elite” members on the site. These members must provide a photo and their real name, and in return receive a special indicator on their personalized page for every year they author a specific number of reviews. The concept is meant to indicate that the user is a trusted author of business reviews.

The site also has a forum for online socialization and to discuss local businesses and events.

A number of competitors emulating these Yelp concepts have failed or were acquired.

Content

The Yelp sites have listings for businesses throughout the United States and Canada and accept reviews of any business or service. Listings vary widely in nature with the site including listings for storefronts such as restaurants and shops; service businesses such as doctors, hotels, and cultural venues; and non-business locations such as schools, museums, parks, and churches.

San Francisco, the home city, remains the most active as of 2008, with significant adoption in 18 metro areas including Boston, Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., San Diego, and Los Angeles. San Francisco usage has earned the site over 4000 reviewed restaurant listings, some with 100s of reviews each. The site boasts of having over 2.3 million reviews overall as of February 2008. Reviews trend 85% positive as estimated by the CEO and are thought to come primarily from the 26-35yo demographic.

API

Yelp released a free REST- and JSON-based application programming interface (API) in August 2007. The API provides access to business listing details, reviews, photos, and ratings and can be used to add business information to a website, widget, or mobile application. The API has been used to integrate business reviews into existing Google Maps applications such as on Zillow.com and HotelMapSearch.com.

Facebook Beacon integration

In December 2007 Yelp implemented Facebook Beacon. Changes to the site privacy policy were made to accommodate this feature, which experienced some negative press at the time.

Advertising program

Businesses may advertise with Yelp for preferred search result placement and extra listing features. For the advertising fee, the business may include an individualized message and photo slide show onto the web page for its listing as well as receive reports on listing traffic. Additionally, these advertisers, called “Sponsors” on the site, are allowed to highlight a specific review and communicate with reviewers.

Criticism

As with many review sites, Yelp has been criticized over the fairness of negative reviews on the site. Some business owners have even posted “No Yelpers” signs in frustration. Yelp defends its practices and states that it will not censor user comments, although it does remove favorable reviews that are considered “suspicious”. Criticism has also been levied by business owners who believe that the ordering of reviews is controlled and used to pressure businesses into advertising, with salespersons suggesting negative reviews can be placed last for a fee. Yelp rejects these charges and believes there is possibly confusion around the highlighted review offering.

Other Information

• Founded October 2004
• Headquarters San Francisco, CA
• Key people Jeremy Stoppelman, Co-founder/CEO, Russel Simmons, Co-founder/CTO, and Geoff Donaker COO
• Industry Business ratings and reviews
• Products Yelp.com
• Employees 150+
• Website www.yelp.com
• Crunchies 2008 winner

Best Application Or Service

Google Reader (winner)

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.

MySpace Music (runner-up)

MySpace Music section differ from normal profiles in allowing artists to upload up to six MP3 songs. The uploader must have rights to use the songs (e.g. their own work, permission granted, etc). Unsigned musicians can use MySpace to post and sell music using SNOCAP, which has proven popular among MySpace users.

Get Satisfaction

Get Satisfaction is a direct connection between people and companies that fosters problem-solving, promotes sharing, and builds up relationships. Thousands of companies use this neutral space to support customers, exchange ideas, and get feedback about their products and services…

Minted

Minted is an online stationery store. They crowd-source designs from the professional design community to create high end templates for invitations, holiday cards, and all kinds of stationery.

Meebo

Meebo is a new communications and media company that’s re-writing the way people have conversations and communicate on the Web. We provide instant messaging and group chat to over 40 million people at meebo.com and via partner sites across the Web. At meebo.com, millions of people every month keep in touch with friends on an any IM network (AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk and Gmail, MySpace IM, Facebook Chat, and more!) and chat with people in Meebo Rooms.

Yelp

Yelp combines local reviews and social networking functionality to create a local online community. Adding social web functionality to user reviews creates a de-facto reputation system, whereby site visitors can see which contributing users are the most popular, respected, and prolific, how long each has been a member…

Best Technology Innovation/Achievement

Windows Live Mesh (winner)

Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. Live Mesh consists of a software component that allows synchronization relationships to be created among different devices. Once a folder is set for synchronization, it will be available in all devices, and any changes made to the content of the folder will be reflected across all devices.

Facebook Connect (runner-up)

Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website’s name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other

Google Friend Connect

Google Friend Connect is an Open Social application offered by Google that started in May 2008. Google Friend Connect main focus is to simplify the connection between social and non-social websites and standardize the handling and presentation of social applications and content. It uses a blend of open standards, such as OpenID for signin, oAuth to control data, and Open Social for applications.

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a free web browser developed by Google that has about 1% share of browser market. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or “chrome”, of web browsers. Chromium is the open source project behind Google Chrome, and is released under the BSD license. It implements the same feature set, but has a slightly different logo.

Swype

Swype creates text input technology for screens. The patented interface enables users to create words with one continuous finger motion across an on-screen keyboard. This approach provides a faster and easier way to write. Swype delivers single-tap, multi-tap, predictive and “swype” motions for both stylus and finger based input. In addition, the application is designed to work across a variety of devices such as phones, tablets, game consoles, kiosks, televisions, virtual screens and more.

Yahoo BOSS

Yahoo! Search BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is a Yahoo! Developer Network initiative to provide an open search web services platform. The main goal and idea of BOSS is to give users, in this case developer’s free access to the Yahoo! Search index. The results can be supplied into the developer’s website or program so that they can manipulate the resources according to their product’s requirements…

Best Design

Cooliris (winner)

Cooliris, formerly known as PicLens, is a web browser plugin that provides interactive full-screen slideshows of online images. The plugin is available for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. At present, the software is compatible with Google Image Search, Yahoo! Image Search, Ask.com Images, Live Search Images, AOL Image Search, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Fotki, FotoTime, deviantART, SmugMug, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Friendster, YouTube (for videos), Gallery, and any web site that implements mediaRSS <link> tags in their HTML pages. The software places a small icon in the corner of an image thumbnail when the mouse moves over it, which launches into a full-screen photo viewer when clicked.

Animoto (runner-up)

Animoto is a web application that, with the click of a button, produces videos using images and music that a user selects. Using their patent-pending Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor & director, the resulting video has the emotional impact of a movie trailer and the visual energy of a music video.

Friendfeed

FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed. Users can use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share (and comment) with friends.

Infectious

Infectious creates and sells self expression stickers for your car. The stickers, which are made to be durable yet removable, are made out of the same materials as ad wraps used on cars and buses. The company recommends 18-24 months of usage per sticker, but says they will likely last a lot longer.

Lala

Lala is a hub for online music discovery and purchasing. Users can listen for free music, adding tracks to their playlist as they surf. members who download a plugin can turn Lala into an online music locker that syncs their desktop music libraries to their Lala account. Long uploads aren’t necessary. If Lala already has the song in their library, they simply unlock the file to you online.

Sliderocket

SlideRocket is a rich internet application (RIA) that provides for every part of the presentation life cycle. It integrates authoring, asset management, delivery and analytics tools in a single hosted environment that allows you to quickly create great looking presentations, store, tag and search your assets, collaborate with your colleagues, securely share your slides in person or remotely and measure the results.

Best Bootstrapped Startup

GitHub (winner)

GitHub is a project hosting service for projects using the Git revision control system. It is written in Ruby on Rails, being developed by Logical Awesome (Chris Wanstrath, PJ Hyett, and Tom Preston-Werner). GitHub operates a pastebin-style site at gist.github.com

12seconds.tv (runner-up)

12seconds is the best place online for video status updates. It’s a super easy way to share what you’re doing with your friends and family using short video clips. You can use your web cam or mobile phone. Show your friends where you are, share your thoughts, or tell them how you’re doing. We are building a video status platform that will help you keep up to date with your friends 12 seconds at a time.

• BackType
• Socialcast
• StatSheet

Most Likely To Make The World A Better Place

GoodGuide (winner)

GoodGuide™ strives to provide the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of products and companies. GoodGuide’s mission is to help you find safe, healthy, and green products that are better for you and the planet. From our origins as a UC Berkeley research project, GoodGuide has developed into a totally independent “For-Benefit” company. We are committed to providing the information you need to make better decisions, and to ultimately shifting the balance of information and power in the marketplace.

• Kiva (runner-up)
• Akoha
• Causes
• CO2Stats
• Better Place

Best Enterprise Startup

Amazon Web Services (winner)

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) offered over the Internet by Amazon.com. Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.

Google App Engine (runner-up)

Google App Engine is a platform for building and hosting web applications on Google Web Servers. It was first released as a beta version in April 2008. During its preview release, only free accounts are offered. According to Google, a free account can use up to 500 MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5 million page views a month. Google has also indicated its intention to eventually provide additional resources for a price. During the preview stage, Google App Engine tries to accommodate sudden surges in traffic, but errors will occur if the quota continues to be exceeded.

• Force.com
• Yammer
• Zoho

Best International Startup

eBuddy (winner)

eBuddy is a web & mobile messenger which supports various instant messaging services including Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo!, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ, Facebook, and MySpace IM. eBuddy is a web browser-based instant messaging service that originally started as e-Messenger in 2003. It combines MSN, AOL, Google Talk, ICQ, Facebook and MySpace IM into a single web based interface. It is also available via mobile phones, independent of carrier or device via WAP or mobile internet browser.

• Wuala (runner-up)
• Fotonauts
• OpenX
• Vente-privee

Best Clean Tech Startup

• Project Frog (winner)
• Better Place (runner-up)
• Boston Power
• ElectraDrive
• Laurus Energy

Best New Gadget/Device

• iPhone 3G (winner)
• Android G1 (runner-up)
• Ausus EEE 1000 Series
• Flip MinoHD
• SlingCatcher

Best Time Sink Site/Application

• Tap Tap Range (winner)
• Texas Hold Em (runner-up)
• Mob Wars
• iBowl
• Zivity

Best Mobile Startup

Evernote (winner)

Evernote is a software application that allows users to capture information of various types, including text notes, mobile phone snapshots, printed and handwritten text within images, web clips, and digital ink. All data added to Evernote are run through a series of recognizers that make any text within the various note formats searchable. The application uses a continuous “roll of paper” metaphor for its user interface. Additionally, users may create folders, categories and notebooks.

• ChaCha (runner-up)
• Posterous
• Qik Skyfire
• Truphone

Best Mobile Application

imeem mobile (winner)

imeem for Android helps people easily discover music that matches their tastes. The application enables users to create custom Internet radio stations by searching for specific artists, discover new music through personalized recommendations and listen to the most popular artists in the imeem community. .

Google Mobile Application (runner-up)

Google’s mobile application is available for the Android, iPhone, Blackberry, and numerous other mobile phone solutions. The application supports websearch, directions, maps, business listings, GMail, YouTube, and phone contact search. Google Mobile also supports an SMS search system..

• Pandora Radio
• rolando
• ShopSavvy
• Ocarina

Best Startup Founder

• Linda Avery and Anne Wojcicki (23andMe)
• Michael Birch and Xochi Birch (Bebo)
• Robert Kalin (Etsy)
• Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone (Twitter ) (winner)
• Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh, Bret Taylor (FriendFeed ) (runner-up)

Best Startup CEO

• Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) (winner)
• Jason Kilar (Hulu) (runner-up)
• Tony Hsieh (Zappos)
• Elon Musk (SpaceX)
• Andy Rubin (Android)

Best New Startup Of 2008

FriendFeed (winner)

FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed. Users can use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share (and comment) with friends.

Dropbox (runner-up)

Dropbox is a storage application and service operated by Evenflow, Inc. The service enables users to store and sync files online and between computers. Dropbox has a cross-platform client (Windows, Mac and Linux) that enables users to drop any file into a Dropbox folder that is then synced to the web and the users’ other computers with the Dropbox client.

• GoodGuide
• Tapulous
• Topsin Media
• Yammer

Best Overall Startup In 2008

Facebook (winner)

Facebook is a popular, free-access social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region to connect and interact with other people. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profile to notify friends about themselves. The website’s name refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of a campus community that some US colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other.

Twitter (runner-up)

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.
Updates are displayed on the user’s profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, or email, or through an application such as …

Amazon Web Services

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) are a collection of remote computing services (also called web services) offered over the Internet by Amazon.com. Launched in July 2002, Amazon Web Services provide online services for other web sites or client-side applications. Most of these services are not exposed directly to end users, but instead offer functionality that other developers can use. In June 2007, Amazon claimed that more than 330,000 developers had signed up to use Amazon Web Services.

Android

The Android platform is a software stack for mobile devices including an operating system, middleware and key applications. Developers can create applications for the platform using the Android SDK. Applications are written using the Java programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use, which runs on top of a Linux kernel.

• hulu

The Crunchies 2008

From TechCrunch

At the beginning of each year I traditionally publish a list of my favorite startups and products. This is the fourth year I’ve done this – previous lists: 2006, 2007, 2008. You guys get to pick the winners of the Crunchies – this list is all mine…

1. 800-Free-411 – 1-800-FREE411 was created to provide callers with a free alternative to the skyrocketing rates being charged by phone companies for directory assistance (411).
2. Animoto – Animoto generates custom, professional-looking slideshows from user-uploaded music and photos. Their “patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology and high-end motion design” drives the web app. They say the Cinematic A.I. analyzes users’ photos and music like an actual director and editor. For instance, to analyze music the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals are all taken into consideration.
3. Delicious – Social bookmarking site Delicious has been on the list for three of the four years (I took a brief detour in 2007 to a competing service called Blue Dot, then switched back). Delicious 2.0 is finally stable and the Firefox add-on is the reason I keep using it. Also, they long ago switched away from the annoying del.icio.us domain name, so I don’t have to look up where the dots go every time I visit the site.
4. Digg - Digg is a user driven social content website. Everything on Digg is user-submitted. After you submit content, other people read your submission and “Digg” what they like best. If your story receives enough Diggs, it’s promoted to the front page for other visitors to see.
5. Facebook – On February 4th, 2004 Mark Zuckerberg launched The Facebook, a social network that was at the time exclusively for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the student body at Harvard had signed up. Other schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.
6. FriendFeed – FriendFeed is a feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS/ Atom feed. Users can use this stream of information to create customized feeds to share (and comment) with friends.
   Bloggers writing about FriendFeed have said that this service addresses the shortcomings of social media services which exclusively facilitate tracking of their own members’ social media activities on that particular social media service, whereas FriendFeed provides the facility to track …
7. Gmail – Gmail is the Google approach to email and chat. Practically unlimited free online storage allows you to collect all your messages, and Gmail’s simple but very smart interface lets you find them precisely and see them in context without effort. POP and powerful IMAP access bring Gmail to any email program or device.Gmail puts contextual advertising next to the emails you read.
8. Google Reader – Google Reader is an online RSS feed reader.
9. Hulu – Hulu is NBC Universal and News Corporation’s online video joint venture. The site focuses exclusively on professional content and does not take on YouTube directly as a viral video destination. The site raised $100 million in financing from Providence Equity Partners.
10. MySpace Music – MySpace Music is a joint music venture, with equity stakes from major labels, that allows users to stream music on demand, create playlists, and add widget music players to their profiles. The streaming will be advertising supported – at first via display ads (like Imeem), and later via in-stream audio ads. DRM-free downloads will also be available, either advertising supported or on a pay basis like Amazon’s Music Store.
11. Pandora – Born out of a love for music with 99% of its employees at one time or another working as musicians, Pandora is truly a company wholly dedicated to music. With a database of more than 600 thousand songs, each digitally annotated with musical characteristics from a list of 400, the company generates personalized streaming radio for your computer, mobile phone or home entertainment system.
12. Scribd – Scribd is a social document sharing site that borrowed a lot of the basic design principles from YouTube.
13. Docstoc – Docstoc is the premier online community to find and share professional documents. Docstoc provides the platform for users and businesses to upload and share their documents with all the world, and serves as a vast repository of documents in variety of categories including legal, business, financial, technology, educational, and creative. All documents on docstoc can be easily searched, previewed and downloaded for free.
14. Skype – Skype is a peer-to-peer Internet telephony service that is free for Skype-to-Skype calls. The service also allows Skype users to call mobiles and landlines, and vice-versa. Skype has special charge plans for non-Skype-to-Skype calls. Skype is expanding from its traditional computer-based calls to mobile applications. Skype was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis who were also the founders of the file sharing application Kazaa and the peer-to-peer television application Joost. Skype is different than other VoIP services in that it uses a peer-to-peer model instead of a server-client model.
15. TechMeme – the site that is considered by many as the blogosphere’s daily tech newspaper was later renamed Techmeme (pronounced “tech-meam”). Stories often hit Techmeme days before the New York Times and other newspapers cover them.
16. TripIt – TripIt is an intelligent travel organizer that helps do-it-yourself travelers manage their travel plans so that their trips go more smoothly. Travelers simply forward their purchase confirmation emails to TripIt and TripIt automatically creates…
17. Twitter -  Twitter allows users to post text updates via SMS, instant messaging, email, Twitter’s website and third party applications. Users have their own profile page that displays their latest updates. In addition, users can become “friends” with one another, or simply be a “follower.” Other than reading another person’s profile page, a user can also receive others’ updates through text messages, RSS or third party applications.
18. WordPress – WordPress is a blog publishing system written in PHP. All data is stored in a MySQL database. WordPress is the official successor of b2\cafelog, developed by Michel Valdrighi. The name WordPress was suggested by Christine Selleck, a friend of lead developer Matt Mullenweg.

The latest release of WordPress is version 2.6.2, released on 08 September 2008. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 2.

19. YouTube – Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community, allowing millions of people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform, and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small.

YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and e-mail.

20. Zoho – Zoho offers Office Suite, which includes Writer, Projects, Sheet, CRM, Show, Creator, Wiki, Planner, Suite, Notebook, Chat, Meeting and Mail. All products are offered through dynamic webpages that allow for rich online applications.

Source: TechCrucnh

1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. WordPress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million) – Freewebs
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)

Top Social Media Sites of 2008 (Facebook Still Rising)

Bloggers writing about FriendFeed have said that this service addresses the shortcomings of social media services which exclusively facilitate tracking of their own members’ social media activities on that particular social media service, whereas FriendFeed provides the facility to track these activities (such as posting on blogs, Twitter and Flickr) across a broad range of different social networks. Some (but not all) bloggers are concerned about readers commenting on their posts inside FriendFeed instead of on their blogs, resulting in less page views for the blogger.

The founders are all former Google employees who were involved in the launch of such services as Gmail and Google Maps. They include Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh and Bret Taylor. Venture capital agency Benchmark Capital is involved with the investment funding.

FriendFeed is based in Mountain View, California.

A user can configure their FriendFeed account to aggregate content from the following services:

Blogging

* Ameba
* Baidu
* Blogger
* Tumblr
* Live Journal
* Skyrock

Bookmarking

* Delicious
* Diigo
* Furl
* Google Shared Stuff
* Hatena
* Ma.gnolia
* Mister Wong
* StumbleUpon
* Twine

Books

* Goodreads
* LibraryThing

News

* Digg
* Google Reader
* Meneame
* Mixx
* Reddit

Photos

* Flickr
* Fotolog
* Photobucket
* Picasa Web Albums
* SmugMug
* Zooomr

Status

* Brightkite
* Facebook
* Gmail/Google Talk
* identi.ca
* Jaiku
* Plurk
* Twitter

Music

* iLike
* Last.fm
* Pandora

Video

* 12seconds
* Dailymotion
* Joost
* Seesmic
* Smotri
* Vimeo
* YouTube

Comments

* Backtype
* Disqus
* Intense Debate

Miscellaneous

* Custom RSS/Atom
* Amazon.com
* LinkedIn
* Netflix
* Netvibes
* Polyvore
* SlideShare
* tipjoy
* Upcoming
* Wakoopa
* Yelp

Other Information

• Type of site Social aggregator
• Available language(s) English
• Owner FriendFeed Inc.
• Created by Bret Taylor, Jim Norris, Paul Buchheit and Sanjeev Singh
• Launched October 2007

Links

• Source: All web 2.0
• Visit friendfeed.com
• Check out sharealink on friendfeed

On OneSeason.com users build a “Sportfolio” as they trade shares, called Synthetic Ownership Interests (SOIs), via a free market system that is driven solely by supply and demand. Users determine who is issued, when they are issued and the valuation of every issue. While blue-chip stocks fluctuate based on earnings, OneSeason.com’s SOIs change based on public perception in the market; which could include game performance, off-field activity, legacy prospects and fan opinions.

“OneSeason.com quantifies all potential inputs to public perception in real time,” explains CEO Mike Sroka. “It is a virtual goods marketplace that can be considered the modernization and merger of traditional collectible cards, the next generation of fantasy sports and a fun way to learn about market dynamics.”

The network provides licensed and user generated content, including sports news, data and statistics, allowing users to keep up on sports activity and drill down on comprehensive athlete assessments. OneSeason.com SOI prices range from $0.50 to $20 using an intelligent splitting mechanism, making the trading system readily available to all sports fans.

OneSeason.com has issued Initial Player Offerings (IPOs) for popular athletes and teams across the four major U.S. sports (Football, Basketball, Baseball and Hockey) and expects to expand to other sports as users demand. Unlike fantasy sports, trading on OneSeason.com occurs for all sports on a year round basis — hence the name OneSeason.com.

OneSeason.com also provides extensive social networking features allowing users to set up profiles, display their “Sportfolio,” add friends to their “Sport Cartel” and share their sports acumen via a “Shoutbox.”

“Today, there isn’t an established vertical social network that brings together sports fans,” said CTO, DJ Burdick. “OneSeason.com offers a starting point, destination, distribution channel, and transaction conduit for online sports activity.”

All news, data, statistics and social networking features on OneSeason.com are free. Participation in the trading system, however, will require a user-funded account to complete transactions.