Connected is similar to Xobni/Smartr, but it’s more of a dashboard than a plug-in, and it costs $9.99 per month. The company had raised a seed round of $500,000 led by Trinity Ventures in June. The service has been called “bloody awesome” by Tim O’Reilly.

Connected, which should announce the acquisition later today, consists of the husband-and-wife team of Sachin and Ada Chen Rekhi, who will both be joining LinkedIn. Sachin was previously co-founder of Anywhere.FM, which was acquired by IMEEM, while Ada was director of product at Mochi Media, which was acquired by Shanda Games.

In an email thread last month, I’d asked Sachin to suggest some Connected features that I should check out. Here was his reply:

-Try the search drop-down to find specific people in your network by name, company, title, or location. Curious if anyone in your network works at a new startup? Just do a search by Company which will find all relevant contacts across email, social networks, and address books.

-Click on a given contact to drill into their contact profile. From there you can take notes on the contact, annotate who introduced you, and set contact reminders that will automatically notify you when a certain amount of time has passed since you last contacted them.

-Search for a contact that is not already in your network. Say a new startup founder. If the person is not already in your network, Connected will search across LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter for that person. If one of the resulting search results is the person you are looking for, just press “Create” next to their profile and Connected will automatically create a profile with all their public profile data (without having to connect with them). Once you are in the profile, you can also press “Bookmark” next to their other appropriate social profiles and that data will also be pulled in. This is how I was able to create a comprehensive profile for you.

-In addition to the above functionality, there are a set of relationship management apps that try to make this data useful to you on a day-to-day basis. You can explore those apps here: http://connectedhq.com/apps/overview/

The company, which was previously called Answerly and which has made various online Q&A products over the last two years, has now moved its focus to figuring out who expert tweeters are and helping other Twitter users find them.

InboxQ co-founder CEO Joe Fahrner called the new InboxQ Profile tool the inverse of his company’s previous product, which helped companies find tweeted questions about their products.

It does seem logical that people with questions are easier to come by than people who want to install a browser extension to go answer other people’s tweeted questions.

Some 100,000 questions are asked per day on Twitter, with the majority of them going unanswered, according to InboxQ. (Maybe some of them are rhetorical?) With the new tool, users can find others who are qualified to answer their questions and compose @mentions to ask them directly on Twitter.

The top categories of questions asked on Twitter are product advice, tech support and local recommendations, according to Fahrner. His team of five has worked to identify one million subject experts — see for instance the InboxQ listings for Amazon AWS and Bikram yoga.

A start-up called PeerPong recently tried to do something very similar, but ended up shutting down and being talent-acquired by Formspring. Fahrner contended that PeerPong was too much of a black box — it took user questions into its system and then tweeted them via company accounts to identified experts. By contrast, InboxQ connects the questioner and answerer, and then let’s things happen from there.

San Francisco-based InboxQ was a Y Combinator start-up, and raised angel funding a year ago from investors including SoftTech VC, Lowercase Capital and Trinity Ventures.

As the name indicates, the company is playing around in the gamification space, helping companies increase loyalty and drive engagement through the use of social rewards and analytics.

The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners and El Dorado Ventures with participation from existing investors Trinity Ventures and Webb Investment Network. In total, the company has raised $15 million.

Badgeville CEO Kris Duggan would not disclose the company’s valuation, but said that the funding comes after two seven-figure sales quarters in a row and growth of 40 percent quarter over quarter. He expects the company’s revenues to hit $5 million to $10 million this year.

The capital will be used to grow Badgeville’s team from 30 to 50 employees by the end of this year. It is looking to hire people in sales and marketing, customer service, and product and engineering.

Duggan said that while there are other companies in the space, they aspire to offer a platform that can easily be plugged into any business. “Some companies require lots of customization, and other players offer low-end, do-it-yourself tools. We are right in the middle and don’t require a lot of customization,” he said. “We want to be the Salesforce.com of gamification.”

Some of Badgeville’s customers include Discovery Communications, NBC, Bluefly, Interscope Records, Major League Gaming, Livemocha, Active Network and Deloitte Digital.

Bluefly, for example, is using Badgeville to add game mechanics to its e-commerce site, rewarding shoppers who watch videos, create wish lists, write reviews or read blog posts.

Tim Chang, Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, said gamification is like the modern-day United Airlines mileage program. What he likes about Badgeville is that it is taking a software-as-service approach, which will build a scalable business with recurring revenues.

Other players in the space include BigDoor; Bunchball, which recently raised $6.5 million; Novel, a stealthy Redmond, Wash.-based start-up; and likely more.

This morning, Milyoni said it raised $3 million to help brands build storefronts on Facebook to sell products and monetize fan pages. Had they announced the two fundings at the same time, and if there were also a third company, I could have called it a trend!

Unfortunately, things don’t always work out that easily.

Here’s the scoop: Founded in 2009, ShopIgniter is based in Portland. The round of funding came from new investor Trinity Ventures and existing investor Madrona Venture Group. The cash will be used to grow sales and to increase marketing and product development.

Already, it works with retailers and brands such as Nike Golf, CafePress, and the Portland Trail Blazers.

ShopIgniter’s software includes a platform to track promotions and loyalty incentives, a Facebook product app and other social commerce tools.

To be sure, ShopIgniter and Milyoni are not the only start-ups dabbling in this space. There are many others that have also received funding (just not today).

ThredUP works by sending USPS flat-rate boxes out to its members, who fill them with clothes for kids of the same size, gender and season. Then they list them on thredUP for another family to claim, which pays $5 plus $10.95 shipping. The San Francisco-based company says it will soon swap its millionth item.

ThredUP is part of a trend toward what some call “the sharing economy” or “collaborative consumption,” along with other companies like AirBnB and RelayRides.

Here’s the release:

thredUP Adds $7M Series B round to support rapid user growth

San Francisco, CA – thredUP Inc, the nation’s leading online platform for swapping kids clothes, toys and books, today announced that it has completed a series B round of funding, bringing total committed capital to $8.7M. Redpoint Ventures led the round with Trinity Ventures and former eBay CEO Brian Swette participating. Tim Haley of Redpoint Ventures will join Patricia Nakache on the thredUP board.

This new funding comes just one year after thredUP’s launch and significant company milestones. thredUP will swap its millionth item this month and is now adding over 1,000 moms a day.

“We’ve spent the past year building a remarkable swapping experience for moms across the country. thredUP couples the simplicity of traditional hand-me-downs with a massive online network like eBay. We connect strangers in meaningful ways, to share things they no longer need and become better citizens of the planet,” said James Reinhart, CEO at thredUP. “We’re excited to have such a great group of investors on board who share our vision. I think this infusion of capital will help us bring thredUP to the homes of millions of families everywhere. We’ve just scratched the surface of what the peer-to-peer space can become.”

thredUP will use this new funding to expand its development team, refine the core product offering and grow its membership base. The company plans to expand swapping categories such as toys, books and maternity. The team is also exploring international opportunities and loyalty partnerships with major retailers. This funding comes just in time for significant customer acquisition pushes around ‘green’ summer reading and back-to-school campaigns.

thredUP’s swapping platform brings a new level of affordability, convenience and eco-consciousness to a highly fragmented, billion-dollar market. thredUP connects thousands of moms across America to swap gently used children’s goods online. For the first time, parents can exchange boxes of stuff their kids no longer use, for boxes of stuff they actually need – all without leaving the house.

About thredUP
thredUP.com is the brainchild of co-founders James Reinhart, Oliver Lubin, and Chris Homer. Both Reinhart and Homer are recent graduates of the Harvard Business School and all three developed the idea in the Spring of 2009. The company is based in San Francisco, CA and is advised by current Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and former eBay CEO Brian Swette. ­­­­­

The lightweight blogging company Posterous volunteered to open its books recently, coughing up every product stat NetworkEffect asked for during a recent visit to the company’s oversized San Francisco Mission District office situated below a yoga studio whose clientele is way more clompy-footed than I might have thought.

The Posterous team, led by CEO Sachin Agarwal, was pimping its new groups product, launched Dec. 15, that’s kind of like a nice-looking Web interface for an email product like Yahoo Groups, turning messages into blog posts and smoothing photos and other attachments into easily viewable form. Used mostly for private communication (like a neighborhood group or a small business team), the groups tool supports users who participate by email without opening a Posterous account.

First of all, Posterous Groups is still quite small: Posterous has 12.3 million total blogs, and only 134,000 of them are groups. About 3,000 groups are created per day, or about 20 percent of total daily sign-ups.

Overall, Posterous has 9.2 million monthly visitors on its own site and on custom domains, according to Quantcast, which measures the service directly with its permission. That’s up from 6 million in September, but still quite a bit less than competitors like Tumblr and WordPress, which have 59.6 million and 517 million people, respectively.

The new groups product sends a ton of email (with user permission, and with the help of SendGrid): 230,000 messages per day. Half of Posterous group distribution is over email rather than the Web, and 30 percent of users are not registered.

As I mentioned earlier, most groups–76 percent–are private. And a quarter are for corporate groups–an alternative to business collaboration tools like Yammer. Business groups have an average of 15 people, while family groups have about 10.

As for revenue numbers? Negligible. The company is only starting Google AdSense revenue sharing and talking about business accounts.

Posterous has raised about $5 million in funding from investors including Redpoint Ventures, Trinity Ventures, SV Angel, Founder Collective, Lowercase Capital and Y Combinator.

That pitch has been enough to raise $19 million for the Pasedena, Calif.-based company, and now it has added another $9 million in a round led by Comcast’s venture capital arm. Earlier investors Idealab, Rustic Canyon Partners, Tribune Company and Trinity Ventures have all re-upped as well.

Perfect Market‘s main offering is a service that hosts big publishers’ old stories in a Google-friendly way, and sells ads against the archived content. The very short pitch: Why let Demand Media and its ilk get all the search ad dollars?

Things are getting more interesting now, though, as the company rolls out analytics and a dashboard that is supposed to help writers and editors figure out how to make the stories they’re writing now make more money in the future, via SEO-like tips.

And they’ll get very interesting down the road, as Perfect Market gives writers and editors the ability to help choose stories that are more likely to generate ad revenue down the line.

That’s either cunning or creepy, or maybe both, but the company isn’t there yet. It has been testing a version of its analytics package with the Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel, and says it is working on a 2.0 version of its software for release this year. We’ll check back with the company later on….

Last week, BoomTown paid an economically-minded visit to the Redwood City, Calif., offices of BillShrink, a Silicon Valley start-up aimed at helping consumers find cheaper prices on gas, cellphones and plans and credit cards via a Web-based comparison and alert system.

Launched about a year ago and armed with about $9 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures, it has aims of moving into a range of other money-saving arenas too.

But today, it got a major boost in its existing business by inking a deal to be part of a huge national advertising campaign by T-Mobile aimed at boosting price awareness among consumers, an apt message for these econalyptic times.

The ads will start tonight in a big way on the finale of “American Idol” and will star Catherine Zeta-Jones, who asks consumers in high-profile television commercials if they want a “mobile makeover.”

Cue BillShrink, even if it does not end up recommending T-Mobile’s service.

It is the first time the mobile carrier has recommended a third-party Web site and one that is independent. T-Mobile must, given it is the No. 4 player and has to beat the bigger players with a curve ball.

While BillShrink does make money from referrals of vendors, BillShrink CEO Peter Pham said the service it delivers to consumers must remain unbiased to render the right comparison results to consumers.

I sat down and talked with Pham, a former Photobucket exec, about all this and also where BillShrink is headed next.

Here’s the video interview:

And here is the T-Mobile commercial:

Finally, here is the press release from T-Mobile about the campaign:

T-Mobile Aims to Help Wireless Customers Save Money by Offering ‘Mobile Makeovers’

BELLEVUE, Wash., May 20, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE)–T-Mobile USA, Inc. announced today a new campaign dedicated to helping people save money on their wireless service, and unveils a familiar face to inform customers that T-Mobile has “the coverage you need at the price you want.”

T-Mobile is prompting wireless customers to compare the value they are getting with their current wireless provider against other national carriers. People can visit T-Mobile retail stores or http://www.T-Mobile.com for a Mobile Makeover(SM), at no charge, by linking customers to BillShrink, an independent third-party service that provides people with free, unbiased and personalized savings recommendations for everyday bills such as wireless plans, credit cards and gasoline.

“Providing great wireless coverage at a great price is at the heart of what T-Mobile offers,” said Denny Marie Post, chief marketing officer, T-Mobile USA, Inc. “We’re so confident that T-Mobile provides the best overall experience for a majority of Americans, we’re willing to put our value to the test by pointing people to an independent source. And while we may not come out on top each and every time, we believe a majority of people will see T-Mobile offers them the value they want, and the best experience in wireless.”

According to BillShrink, as many as eight out of 10 people unknowingly overpay for their wireless service.* BillShrink analyzes a customer’s wireless usage, along with wireless coverage in a customer’s area and service price, to provide recommendations to help people find the best value options. “Wireless customers need quality cell phone coverage at the best available price so BillShrink helps people easily navigate through millions of wireless plan combinations to provide a personalized recommendation,” said Peter Pham, CEO, BillShrink. “BillShrink shows people how to save money on their everyday bills and still get the best level of service.”

To help drive home the message that millions of Americans could save money on their wireless service, a familiar face and voice, Catherine Zeta-Jones, is again featured in T-Mobile’s television advertising. In the ads, she prompts people to get a Mobile Makeover in order to help determine if they are currently paying too much for their wireless services, and where to find the best value, based on their individual needs.

“As an avid T-Mobile customer, I’m delighted once again to help T-Mobile carry its message to millions of Americans about the great value they deliver,” Zeta-Jones said. “The Mobile Makeover campaign is a smart way to show consumers that they could save some serious money.”

The first television spot featuring Ms. Zeta-Jones will air tonight during the American Idol season finale on FOX. It features a group of Ivy League economists trying to educate homeowners they’re paying too much for their cell phone service, only to have door after door slammed in their face. Finally, a homeowner is pleasantly surprised when he opens the door to see Zeta-Jones standing on his doorstep asking, “Do you have time for a Mobile Makeover?” Zeta-Jones will be featured in two additional Mobile Makeover television spots in the coming weeks.

Online advertising, local radio, out-of-home advertising, retail collateral, and online video opportunities also will carry T-Mobile value and Mobile Makeover messaging.

For more information about Mobile Makeover and T-Mobile’s products and services, please visit a T-Mobile retail store, or go to http://www.T-Mobile.com. More information about BillShrink can be found at http://www.BillShrink.com.

*8 of 10 claim based on January 2009 sample of consumers who used BillShrink.com to analyze their reported usage. BillShrink.com is not operated or controlled, and the information/results provided on this site are not verified, by T-Mobile. See T-Mobile.com for rate plan information.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20090520/billshrinks-pham-speaks-about-the-t-mobile-deal-the-econalypse-and-more/feed/ 1 http://allthingsd.com/20080519/the-real-news-of-wetpaints-25-million-funding-fidelity-kicked-in/ http://allthingsd.com/20080519/the-real-news-of-wetpaints-25-million-funding-fidelity-kicked-in/#comments Mon, 19 May 2008 09:56:49 +0000 Kara Swisher http://kara.allthingsd.com/20080519/the-real-news-of-wetpaints-25-million-funding-fidelity-kicked-in/

While Wetpaint‘s $25 million new round of funding was leaked to one and all under embargo until 12:01 am EST today–including BoomTown, so don’t assume any of us report our little hearts out on all these bits of news–what the press release did not disclose, sources said, was an intriguing new investor: Fidelity Investments.

What’s interesting about this wrinkle is that it is yet another validation in the Web 2.0 world from a large traditional institutional investor.

Fidelity, with T. Rowe Price, already plunked down big bucks to invest in widget king Slide in January.

Seattle-based Wetpaint, which allows users to make wikis and social-networking sites easily, has raised about $40 million in total so far. New investor DAG Ventures led the current round, which included investors from two previous rounds (Frazier Technology Ventures, Trinity Ventures and Accel Partners).

BoomTown could not determine exactly how much Fidelity kicked in to Wetpaint in this round, although it did pony up almost half the new $50 million Slide investment.

Wetpaint, which also announced a new embeddable product called Wetpaint Injected today that sounds cool, says it will use the additional funds to goose its collaborative–or as we like to call it: wikified–social publishing platform.

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