Yes, I know I've been covering a lot of conferences and events lately and haven't had a chance to do any in-depth startup profiles recently. But I've got to say a lot of the events we've had lately have been fairly top notch, and remind me more of the scene up in Silicon Valley, then the typical scene down here in Socal. CommunityNext I thought was pretty good, particulary the Robert Scoble and Pete Cashmore conversation. Then the MashMeet after party with Pete and crew was one of the best LA mixers we've had to date. This is all further proof, of how hot the southern california scene is; clearly starting to organize in a meaninful way, now that we are largely recognized as being the largest area for venture capital in the country, second only to silicon valley.

Anyways, in the next couple of days, I'll be catching up and be back to digging into a bunch of companies in the socal 2.0 scene, but for now heres a list of a couple more local companies that I ran into this weekend that are worthy of some mention:

Medmania: a new media company with a network of vertical media web properties.

Girlgamer: an online community and zine for girl gamers.

Mego: digital expression by way of an interative portable profile (basically cool avatars).

Streamy: social news aggegator with a great interface.

Last week one of the bigger web 2.0ish conferences was in Southern California: The Oreilly Graphing Social Patterns, held in San Diego. I had some passing involvement there and after digesting it a bit, one of the things that I came across thinking was that it never ceeses to amaze me how traditional companies are clueless to what the social web is all about.

So many companies are not sure that they "get" social, but are being told by people in the know that they "need" social. What this often means to them seems to be two extremes: either you must be a company knee deep in community by becoming some up and coming niche social networking site (enter pitch for online community of garbage men here) or that social should just be haphazardly bolted onto the top of your existing product (your chair company makes a vampire biting facebook app that eats chairs). But clearly neither extreme is a way to add value to your product/service. And maybe even more importantly, social on its own, doesn't necessarily monitize.

What does add value AND monetizes, is the notion that social is the new and obvious enabler, of existing markets. Most business are not likely to fundamentally change by being social, they just become better at the business of connecting with and between customers. Movie sites like Blockbuster or Netflix are great examples of this. The companies are still fundamentally about movies, but social takes the customer experience to a different level because you can show off the movies you're watching, connect with friends who have similar taste in movies, review what you've seen so you get better suggestions for new movies, etc. Regardless of whether you are on one of their facebook or opensocial apps, or you are in the community section of their own site, the social graph has become a core enabler of movie watching. These activities enhance the entire video business because you now are not just watching the movie, but you also are stay engaged before and after. In this way community doesn't change the business, but instead drastically creates more value to the lifecyle of the business.

In this way as we move forward, social to me becomes less about being the next cornerstone block of a company, and more about being a fundamental component entrenched in nearly all online activity.

Social Vibe, recently closed over $4 Million in their series A funding round last month. They are located in Hollywood and have the two things every good web 2.0 start up needs; 1) a slick looking site and 2) a very interesting idea.

The main premise behind their idea is having users of Myspace and Facebook get their social networking pages sponsored and in return they get a chance to win prizes or give money to charities. You get points according to how active you are on a social network, how popular you are, and how many people you get to join the social vibe community. If you think about this for a second you will see that if you have a very active social vibe community it would be very very viral. Also on the plus side they did a good job of making the ads or "sponsorships" cool looking (ie they are not blinking banners for saying you are the 837,487 customer and have won and new laptop), and as a bonus they allow you to donate your points to charity.

I do reserve some questions for their business model the first being; why entries to win a prize? I get offers to enter contests for free all the time, whether it is dropping my business card in the free lunch bowl or the previously mentioned ad for my chance to win a laptop and I know one thing...I don't go near any of them. I realize that here the odds are better, but I do not like working for a chance to win a prize, I think it would be more motivating if this worked in a fashion where you can exchange your points for definitive prizes even if it would take longer to get to the good prizes. Or maybe an even more novel idea just let the people exchange their points for some cool hard cash (although I do realize this could be difficult to implement legally if minors wanted to use the service).

My next bone to pick is with the charities, people love all sorts of charities for different reasons whether it is Save the Whales or Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land (click the link I did not make that up). The point here is that people like charities for different reasons, I am sure Socialvibe knows exactly how much a point converts to monetarily so why not just let the user donate to whatever charity they desire. However I will admit that they do have a wide range of quality charities covered.

My overall impression here is that this could be huge, everything Social Vibe does looks slick and I could really see people adding these advertisements, widgets, and videos to their social network pages in order to gain a chance at some prizes. Furthermore if this does catch on and people are not as anti-raffle type contests as me the whole scheme is viral enough to spread all over the most popular social networks in no time at all.

PreCYdent is a legal research tool that I am very excited was submitted for review. The idea behind the site is to enable everyone (not just the legal community) to search and find both case law and statutes for all matters. They are headquartered in San Diego, CA and have recently opened up the early alpha version of their software. Funding for the company is undisclosed.

The current state of legal research has two major players Westlaw and LexisNexis, Westlaw being the dominant force. It is practically necessary to have access to one of these two software programs to do useful legal research and both of these services individually license their product using heavy price discrimination which is downright exorbitant at times (often). Furthermore while the traditional software of Westlaw and LexisNexus is great at looking up cases which you have the citation to (a citation is generally how you find a case) as well as following the cases subsequent history (was the ruling upheld?, overruled?, is there conflicting law?) it is borderline useless in a generic word search (i.e. it is difficult to type in "lemon vehicle private party" and find out cases or statutes pertaining to lemon laws and private sellers of automobiles). In summary most lay people could not afford or efficiently use the major tools for legal research.

PreCYdent seems to be running on 2 main platforms, making their service able to effectively understand searches for words and to be free for all. These are both lofty targets to set your site on for this industry, with that said they both need to be accomplished ASAP. To make their word search tool understand what you are looking for they use a combination of an algorithm and user response (almost like Mahalo but with a defined niche for legal cases and statutes). In the few searches I ran I had significantly better search results with PerCYdent than that of Westlaw or LexusNexis, however my results were far from perfect. This can probably be attributed to PreCYdent only having indexed U.S. Supreme Court cases, and Court of Appeals cases.

There are other features offered on the site such as "finding lawyers," and "answering legal questions," but the community does not appear to be developed enough to make this useful, yet (they are still in Alpha mode so I will give them time). In short PreCYdent offers a very innovative idea and a useful tool which could enable all people to find the law and use it themselves. However if they are to become a dominant player in the market they have a lot of hard work ahead of them (including the active indexing of ALL cases). If PreCYdent can make legal searching both better and free they will have the ability to revolutionize legal search as we know it not to mention monetize their search traffic rapidly. All in all they have a great concept the only question will be if they can pull it off.

The hype and popularity of sports is something I may never understand but that being said I hear coworkers, friends, strangers, family, and the guy who sits next to me at the bar drone on and on about their favorite sports team. Moreover it seems that everyone of them can give me a detailed analysis why Shaq going to the Suns is a good/bad trade, comments on Joe Torrey's weight, and a strong opinion with reasons why Rodger Clemens should/should not be let into the hall of fame. So needless to say I realize this market is huge and there is a huge potential for growth with anything that allows sports nuts personalize, customize, and shout out their opinions to the world.

Jacked is taking a stab at this by making customizable widget pages so you can keep your eye on all of the sports games going on. The widgets vary from play by play to you tube videos of the teams playing. They are VC funded with at least $6.5 Million and are based in Santa Monica, CA.

The Good: There web site is about a slick as it gets and even better than that the whole site is very easy to use, navigate, and customize. Also to their credit they have a ton of money and make it apparent that they have more sports related offerings (besides the widget platform) on the way. Most importantly the widgets they offer are rich in information and gave me more than I ever wanted to know about the games I was widgeting in on.

The Bad: I understand that this is supposed to be something you look at in addition to watching TV but why does it have to be that way? I would find Jacked much more useful if they had a live stream of the game(s) you are receiving information on. My idea here is that when I am watching a game on TV I really do not want to be checking my computer for other information, however if I am on my computer watching sports (ie no TV) I would gladly watch the game on my computer surrounded with the loads of data that all of these widgets can give me. Bottom line is that I want to see the actually game live broadcast along with the widgets!

Also there should be some sort of communication with other fans that getting the same information so there is a meaningful interaction going on. Let everyone share their so called sports knowledge and see what unfolds. This seems natural to me, most people have strong opinions about every aspect of sports so let them let loose, I could see a very dedicated (and violent) community developing from connecting sports users.

Overall: There is certainly room for some money to be made in this arena and Jacked.com might just be the one to do it, but until they add more user interaction and live streaming videos I do not see their idea gaining significant traction.

is what I would call an enhanced social Q & A site, the idea is that you ask questions to the community and get answers back. They are based in Santa Monica, California and are part of parent company Demand Media. If Demand Media does not ring a bell their CEO Richard Rosenblatt has had a hand in some major internet acquisitions in the last 10 years including but not limited to Myspace and iMall.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a site with an extremely active community dedicated to answering one another's questions? It is a great idea that answerbag is executing as well as I can imagine but that being said answerbag is far from perfect.

The Good: Well if you are an investor or just a speculator Answerbag has just about everything going for it, they have money from their parent corporation, strong management (see above), and a very strong growth pattern. As for the site the utility is high, they do a nice job of letting everyone rate both the questioners and the answerers so you get a sense of who you can trust on the site. More importantly they only archive unique questions with good answers which means that you do not have to sift through 15 similar posts to find the best answer. Finally the community responds to most questions rather efficiently (however I have been waiting over and hour with no answer to my question).

The Bad: To harness the power, energy, and utility of their many thousands of users there will be some evil and this evil takes the form of endless opinions. One thing I do not want on a site dedicated to answers are endless opinions about religion and politics. If there is factual information that one can contribute to a political or religious question that is great but there is a whole lot of annoying (and useless) opinions on the site about democrats, conservatives, immigration, and everything in between.

Summary: Although it can be a pain sorting through all of the opinions when I am looking for an answer they do a good job of having an easily searchable archive of questions and answers which can provide a high level of utility to just about anyone (I found out the best way to remove dog poop from a carpet in seconds!) so I will not be surprised if Answerbag's strong growth continues.

Los Angeles based Uber.com is yet another social network that tries to bring Myspace's artistic base in to the "uber-cool" web 2.o world.  Uber focuses on using the social graph to make your own website.  Which to me seems like doing nothing more then rewording customized profile page to make you think your getting something special.  

Los Angeles based Geni (who we profiled here), has moved another step closer to being the Facebook for family social profiles. They essentially took the Facebook concept of the news feed (ya the one with all the controversy) and the Facebook timeline and put it in Geni.  Sure its nothing revolutionary, but it does continue to round out Genis service as a social network for people who aren't looking for a social network.  And although, many continue to think Geni's 100M valuation is high, we should remember that LinkedIn is valued a 250M and Geni is basically doing for family connection what LinkedIn has done with business contacts.  

As a follow up to last week breakdown of shopping 2.0 sites, Ben from SocalTech, was kind enough to point out a Santa Monica based shopping site we missed. ThisNext is a "shopcasting network where you can recommend, share and discover products." They've been around since August of 2006 and are well funded (they've been backed by Western Technology Inc and Clearstone Venture Partners).

Upon first glance, you'll find ThisNext has a real clean design, something we've come to expect from web 2.0 companies. Their site is an interesting mix of traditional shopping recommendations, social networking, and the buzzwordtastic "shopcasting". What is shopcasting? Well its basically a way for bloggers to integrate via a badge their recommendations from their own blog into the greater ThisNext network. So basically its mashing up shopping and broadcasting. Personally I think the buzzword, is dumb, just an attention play on podcasting, but none the less, the concept itself is both cool and useful. ThisNext's network of recommendations actually works pretty well, and is probably a product of good engineering and a solid algorithm, as I'm sure sorting through crap blogs and recommendations, to find the good stuff to recommend for people is not trivial.

Despite my general like for ThisNext, when I actually tried to use it for real holiday shopping, it came up rather short. I was looking for a new webcam to get my mother and law for Christmas, so I figured I'd give ThisNext a spin. Searching for "webcam" yielded about 20 results, none of which were very good recommendations. Searching for other products also produced results that weren't exactly spectacular. I did however find that browsing for products works well. So I suppose it depends on your intentions, if you are looking for something specific ThisNext possibly needs more traction before it will really can be super useful, on the other hand if you are more generally looking for just some cool product in an overall category ThisNext works pretty well.

At the end of the day, ThisNext is funded well, and has a great look, so it could become a leader in the land of social shoppping. It is a category that is rather crowded, and ThisNext isn't a total homerun (yet), so whether they can earn their valuation still remains to be seen. But at this stage in the game, ThisNext is off to a pretty decent start.

Website: http://www.thisnext.com

Screenshot:

A Los Angeles based company has just announced the reception of an angel round of funding. TechCrunch reports that the funding is in at right around $750,000. The main idea of the company is to have not only book reviews but to base the book reviews (via social network) around friends.With the main premise that you would find a book review from a friend more useful than from a stranger.

The Good
There premise makes sense, in taking the time to read a book these days I couldn't care less what random people think about it, I would only take advice from friends, family, or just pick a book out of my own choosing. Secondly we all know the possibilities when 2 Stanford Graduates get together on an online project. In all seriousness there are some real good signs for this company; in around one year they have over 600,000 users and 10,000,000 book reviews, they are close to profitable, and best of all they have done all this without any formal funding.

The Bad
GoodReads has some stiff competition in Shelfari and Library Thing, and while I cannot claim that I am a member of any of these book networks I actually think that Shelfari looks a bit sleeker in terms of design. However that could easily be attributed to their association with Amazon and there plethora of funding. Also while I did find Goodreads easy to use I did not like seeing the reviews being pulled directly from a data base and having no personal oversight of this. What I mean by this is that you will have "Old Man and the Sea" reviews separated because some people are reviewing the paperback and others the hardcover even though they are the same book. What I found annoying about this is to get a good number of reviews you have to take the extra step of looking up 2 "different books" even though the story is identical.

The Overall
All in all GoodReads shows a whole lot of promise, they have accomplished more in one year without funding than many companies with years and millions. They are rapidly growing and I believe that if they use their funding wisely they will be in an excellent position to be the dominant book review social networking site.

It's the holiday season, which means family, family and more family.  

Last week the LA Times and Mixx announced an alliance of sorts (Venture Beat), that while not necessarily revolutionary, adds interesting insight into the direction both old and new guard media are headed.  

Buzznet, a social media network, originally founded in 2005, is certainly not a brand new startup, but this 3 year old Los Angeles based company is really beginning to take off. 

At the end of the day though, what makes us have the most faith in Buzznet is the adaptability they've shown.  They've evolved their site from a photo sharing community to a much more diversified social media platform.  If they continue their impressive growth, and management continues to show a pension for flexibility, they may be phased to take on the big boys soon.

Website: http://www.buzznet.com

Screenshot:

Early this year, serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis (of Weblogs fame) launched Mahalo, based in Santa Monica, Ca.  It's been in alpha since May, and I figured it was about time to give it a good rundown.

Marina Del Ray based Guidance, recently released a survey saying that nearly half (41%) of all holiday shoppers consider price the single most important factor in choosing where to buy online.  Obviously.  So while we chalk the PR they sent us up as sad link bait, I'll give in and make note of it because its a good season to brush up on shopping 2.0.

San Diego based startup Loopd.com has recently lanched as the "raddest sports social network ever".  Yes the tag line is lame, but we've got a bit of a soft spot for this startup.  Social Network me-toos are popping up everywhere, but Loopd has the potential to carve out a nice little niche.  The action sports industry has been experiencing rapid growth and while southern california may not be the tech powerhouse the valley is, it is the action sports hub.  Loopd is well located to bring in some great clients, and they have already brought in a respectable list that includes: Surfer Mag Hot100, PacSun, Oakley, and Monster Energy Drinks.  

All that said, Loopd will have stiff competition from much bigger social networking platforms like Flux or Ning.  Particularly with the weight of Viacom behind Flux, one has to wonder if building a semi walled garden of action sports social communities, will be enough to keep Loopd's partners from moving to a larger, more general social network platform.  I for one hope not, but I wonder what Loopd will be able to offer it's content partners to keep them onboard.  

At the end of the day, if Loopd can successfully carve out a niche of bringing web 2.0 type social networking capabilities to the rapidly growing action sports industry, they might be one of those startups that end up being in the right place at the right time.

Website:

http://www.loopd.com

I recently had the opportunity to watch one of the TutorLinker founders (a student from UCLA) pitch to a group of angels in southern california.  The pitch was rather rough in a couple ways: it didn't address what their market was, how they were going to bring any return on the investors capital, or really what their product was.  They assumed many of the angels were well versed in web 2.0 and how that applied to finding a tutor.  Needless to say the angels weren't and thus Tutorlinker didn't make it past the first round of pitching.

While technically a Korean company they are partnered with K2 Network located in Irvine, CA (Orange County) and they are hiring and basing their U.S. activity out of Orange County as well.

While Storyblender isn't live yet, they are already building some early buzz leading up to their December release by their inclusion in the TechCrunch Top 40. What they've demonstrated so far is a service that allows users to collaborate in editing and "blending" their text, audio, video, and image clips online. Once the blending is complete people will be able to share their "blended stories" with their friends in the Story Blender online community.

The Good
It just sounds fun being able to turn a fat kid with a baton...