Blogs

Editor's note: Dan Zarrella has put together a viral content sharing report and below is a small part of the report focusing on content types and online content sharing.

When most people think of viral content, one of the first things they think of is humor, silly Youtube videos, hilarious cartoons and toungue-in-cheek articles, but as I discovered with my viral content sharing report, the most savvy and prolific viral sharers prefer spreading news more than humor.

When I looked at the profile segments I constructed out of the survey data, I noticed a pattern among those respondents who frequently used new and geeky social web technologies, like Twitter and Digg: they prefer sharing funny content less than their less-social-media-savvy counterparts. The same pattern appears for frequent users of less bleeding-edge technologies (like blogs and Facebook), but it is far less accute.

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Below are some of the latest jobs posted on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the latest Web industry jobs delivered directly to you.

Featured Jobs:

• Inside Sales Representative - Yodle
• Regional Sales Manager - Yodle
• Business/Optimization Analyst - Yodle
• Production Director - Yodle
• Online Marketing Manager/User Experience Manager - Yodle

More Fresh Jobs:

• Director, Web Analytics, iVillage - NBC Universal
• Web Marketing Manager - Petrossian
• Web Content Manager - Tweegee
• Manager, E-Business Direct-To-Consumer/Natural - Kellogg Company

Employers - Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs now - $79 for 60 days

Found via Mark Davis, Ty McMahan at the WSJ has a look at the NY venture capital scene. Ty begins by noting that, "a total of 67 New York-based start-ups received funding in the first half of this year - the highest amount since 2001 - and investment jumped to $828 million from $480 million in the first half of 2007". He says this is down from $4.24 billion invested in 2000.

The article looks at DoubleClick, Facebook, Clickable, DFJ Gotham and a variety of other companies either based in NYC or with a heavy presence here. It's well worth a read.

One of the biggest things holding back NYC from shining is the fact that so many products and services are developed in the dark. When I ask people at events who raise their hands saying they are working on a startup, no one wants to talk. I go to the west coast and they can't stop talking about what they are working on. My hope is that our city starts to open up so myself and the other writers here can show off the great work that happens here. I want to write about more NYC-area companies!

AOL has announced the launch of a new flash-based instant messaging application today. AIM Express allows you to do everything you can in the normal AIM client inside of a Web browser. In my testing this morning, I found it to work very well. As you chat with more people, tabs show up on the top of the application so you can jump back and forth. Everything is contained inside of the one Flash application.

I wonder if they could port this to a desktop app using Adobe AIR as it would allow everything to be contained inside the app instead of opening windows for each current chat. The new AIM Express also allows for text messaging using SMS for friends that are offline.

AOL also announced the launch of an updated Windows Mobile client. The new client includes ads from AOL's Platform-A division.

Other companies in the Web IM and chat space include current CN sponsor eBuddy and Meebo.

Moreganize is a Swiss-based startup that looks to help you organize groups using surveys. Example uses would be to find the perfect time for a group meeting or which movie everyone in the group is interested in viewing. There are also some basic project management services including a to-do list.

The site is easy-to-use and if the survey is used for an event, schedule invites can be automatically sent to the attendees. The service is available in German and English although I would suggest they make sure all of the content is available in English. I see a good bit of words and phrases in German even on the English version.

They also need to look at making it easier to create a survey. There's no link to create on the homepage and while the text says "no registration required" the only link to get started is for "free registration".

Update: Our Switzerland connection Corsin Camichel tells me that the biggest competition for Moreganize comes from switzerland itself: doodle.

Here's a Moreganize sample where John Sample attempts to get feedback on which type of movie his guests would like to watch:

Check out Mark Gibbs' review of Moreganize at NetworkWorld. And check out our coverage of other event-planning services including MyPunchbowl, Renkoo, Center'd, Coordinatr and GoLark.

The Web 2.0 Expo will be held in NYC this year and is just a month away. CN is a media sponsor of the event and I was able to get the O'Reilly team to give me one full conference pass to give away to a CN Reader. If you would like the pass, submit your information and on August 26, 2008 we will pick a winner.

You know CN will be at the event in full force and I look forward to meeting everyone and learning about your products and services. I have some exciting surprises in store for ya'all as well.

Enter Here for the conference pass.

TravelMob is a new startup doing for group travel what Evite does for group events. TravelMob CEO Adam Smith notes that the service includes customized trip homepage, the ability to invite people and manage RSVPs, upload important trip-related files, create a photo gallery, see top tours for your destination, and plan via message board. Going with the 2008 flow, TravelMob has a Facebook-style newsfeed so that trip attendees can be updated as others add information to the site.

I planned a trip using TravelMob to Las Vegas and found it the service easy-to-use. TravelMob is tied into the Sabre travel booking system so you can book air, hotel, car directly inside of TravelMob. If you book outside of TravelMob, there's an option to add booking details. There's an option to, "Jump on this Flight" so you can fly with other members of your travel group. I love Web apps that launch with a business plan. Selling bookings is just one way TravelMob can generate revenue.

TravelMob needs to go through the app and spell check and tidy up -- no reason to lose points on the dismount when the execution was good. I would also vote for linking to other sites for information on the selected destination. This will help the entire group get familiar with the location before arriving plus it can help with marketing as well. I'd also recommend that TravelMob work with conferences - this would be a great tool for people to coordinate conference trips.

Last week I booked my first doctor appointment using the ZocDoc service. Yesterday the company announced their first round of funding. And today I actually went to the doctor so I thought it was a perfect time to share my ZocDoc experience. The service is only available in NYC so move here if you want to use it.

When you load the ZocDoc page, you can select which type of doctor you want to see, ZIP code, and type of service (general appointment, botox, enlargements, reductions, etc.). You can also enter your insurance information and then ZocDoc returns doctors who accept your insurance first. This is a huge timesaver over calling doctor after doctor to find one that accepts my insurance plan.

The next screen displays the doctors that match your selected criteria. Open appointment slots are displayed so you can easily find a doctor that meets your schedule. Each doctor has a page that displays their training and education, any customer reviews, languages spoken, board certifications, etc. Reviews only come from patients who used ZocDoc so you know the reviews are real (or as real as they can be).

After selecting the appointment time, you are asked to login or create an account. The account creation process is similar to any other ecommerce system though ZocDoc does ask for more personally identifyable information than other systems. I don't think they really need my birthdate or social security number so I entered fake info. I knew that I would still need to fill in the forms at the doctor's office anyway.

Once you complete the signup, finalizing the appointment requires a telephone call in which a recorded message provides you with a code you must enter on the ZocDoc page. I think you can get the code by SMS too.

That's all there was to it. You get an email confirmation plus a reminder the day before the appointment. After the appointment, ZocDoc sent me an email to provide a review of the Doctor. I was treated like any other patient at the actual doctor's office.

At the end of the day, ZocDoc made it simple and easy to find a doctor that matched my schedule and insurance and took care of booking the appointment. I had to make a followup appointment which the doctor made directly at the office. ZocDoc should work on figuring out how to integrate that into their system as well.

I still hope they put up a pricing chart so you can get a basic idea for charges that are outside an insurance plan. They should also look at a reminder service for scheduled checkups.

Check out the ZocDoc founders demo'ing the service at a recent NY tech meetup.

Glogster has announced a few service updates today. Glogster is like blogging but it's glogging. No seriously. Basically you create "posters" using a Flash application by combining pre-made and user-generated content. Josh has a good review of Glogster from earlier this year. Josh notes, "Glogster has no inclination to go after people who want to write something every day. Instead, the site is geared toward the tween crowd, or anyone else who enjoys partaking in glitter graphics, or those strange greeting cards with dogs and cats that have been Photoshopped to have enormous eyeballs. That being said, using the right tools, Glogster users can create classy looking stuff with a distinct visual style, even if it's got a single-use, disposable life cycle of something like an e-card."

Today's announcement allows Glogster users to add YouTube videos to their glogs to bring more life to them than they could previously. The other major update offers users the chance to add live webcam videos into their glogs. Both of these additions should help Glogster to let their users show off their own personality more than before. While I can't see myself creating any glogs, for the right target and demographic, Glogster could do well. Compete has Glogster at 50k monthly visitors (U.S. only) and Google has Glogster at 120k monthly visitors (worldwide). Both charts show the numbers increasing month over month.

Here are a couple of the most popular "glogs":

Lotame has announced that they have raised $13 million in a Series B round of funding. Emergence Capital Partners, led the round with support from previous investors Battery Ventures and Hillcrest Management. Lotame notes that the new funding will be used to support product enhancements, marketing and business development efforts.

Lotame offers engagement advertising instead of the traditional online advertising. Sites using Lotame report user and usage data back to Lotame which in-turn Lotame uses to find advertisers to match the users and the social networking site engagement. We've seen lots of chatter about engagement advertising and getting away from ad buys based solely on raw numbers. This type of online advertising typically pays more because the advertiser is getting closer to the actual intended customer instead of blasting a message to everyone on the network.

Don over at Mashable has a lengthy look at Lotame. He notes, "I can’t fault Lotame’s intent on innovation. For the first time, advertisers can capture real data in real-time for a specific demographic that they really want to target. And although Lotame would be best-served working with larger organizations, it thinks it has found its niche and as it continues to grow, will continue to create a value proposition for advertisers that want to capitalize on the social networking space."

I am always excited to see companies challenge the current online advertising model and over-time it can help move the advertising conversation forward.