CrowdFusion Picks Up $3 Million for Web Publishing [CenterNetworks]

Rafat Ali at PaidContent is reporting that Web publishingt startup CrowdFusion has raised $3 million in their first round of funding. The investors include Velocity Interactive Group, Greycroft Partners, and Marc Andreessen. CrowdFusion was founded by former Weblogs Inc CEO Brian Alvey.

Rafat notes, "The new company is an online publishing platform that will own and develop a series of vertical content sites, not very different from the Weblogs Inc-Blogsmith model that Alvey developed before, and sold to AOL (NYSE: TWX) three years ago. In fact, the new company’s COO Judith Meskill and CMO Steve Friedman are former Weblogs Inc employees."

Earlier this year I met with CrowdFusion CTO Craig Wood and he took me through some of the CrowdFusion technology. Wood tells me today that their first content site will be launching soon. When it does, we will have a full review here on CenterNetworks.

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Magnify.net Partners With Userplane for Chat and IM Services [CenterNetworks]

Earlier this week, NY-based KickApps announced their partnership with Userplane for chat and IM. Today, Userplane and another NY-based startup have announced a similar partnership. Magnify.net has integrated the Userplane Webchat2 and Userplane Webmessenger2 services.

Magnify.net is a white-label social networking provider that the company describes as, "online video discovery and broadcast platform for websites". The tool allows site owners to add custom video channels to enhance the overall user experience and keep users on the site longer, thereby allowing for more chances to monetize the user.

Both the Userplane Webchat and Userplane Webmessenger tools will carry advertising and publishers can also use a buyout option to remove or control the ads within the widgets.

Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage and the nextNYers interview with CEO Steve Rosenbaum below.

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Evri Launches Public Beta of Semantic Discovery Search Engine [CenterNetworks]

Semantic search provider Evri is moving into public beta today. Evri debuted at the D6 conference last month and I've embedded the presentation below. Founder Neil Roseman explains the Evri mission as, "(to) help users make more sense of the content on the Web." In the launch blog post tonight, Roeman continues, "Evri is building a data graph of the web, using our technology to understand the People, Places and Things in the web content read every day-and the actions that connect them to each other."

Dan Farber was on location at D6 and has a good overview of the service. Evri seems like it's in the same sector as NY-based Hakia.

Update: Frederic over at RWW has more details on the semantic side of Evri.

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Centernetworks-/~3/319401148/evri-semantic-content-search

Glam Acquires Online Ad Sales Company Monetise [CenterNetworks]

Glam Media has announced the acquisition of UK-based Monetise today. Monetise is an online media sales company founded three years ago. Monetise currently represents companies including: Flixster.com, TVGuide.co.uk, and ARTISTdirect.com. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The WSJ has more details on the acquisition which include a note that the company expects to bring in $25 million to $45 million of U.K.-based ad revenue next year. Overall, Glam expects $100 million in revenue in 2008, growing to $250 million to $350 million next year.

Back in February, Glam Media launched Glam International to focus on markets outside the U.S. Today's acquisition fits nicely with their plan.

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Centernetworks-/~3/313830297/glam-media-acquires-monetise

When Good AdWords Ads Go Bad [CenterNetworks]

The fine folks at Web monitoring service Pingdom are out with their latest list. This time it's Goole AdWords ads that have gone contextually wrong. From a new brain on eBay to visiting Hell with Kayak, these ads are a hoot.

Here are a couple of my favorites from the list:

Here we find that selling on eBay is like selling your soul - with all of the fees they charge and the PayPal fees, I guess it makes sense.

We already know that the Germans make the best knives (see latenight tv), now we know they make the best AdWords ads. I just love these ascii ads -- too bad Google has banned them. I've watched that second car for hours and it never gets any closer to the car in front of it.

Source: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Centernetworks-/~3/296581384/google-adwords