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As a part of its tactful market penetration strategy, AOL has acquired the Israeli Q & A start-up, Yedda.Yedda was founded in the Israeli city, Tel Aviv in 2006.

According to AOL, the key driver towards acquisition has been Yedda’s path-breaking concept, the semantic technology that “automatically matches questions to other related questions and topics, while choosing the best available users to answer the question.” Although the financial terms of the deal are yet to be disclosed, Yedda would very soon begin appearing on AOL’s sites over the next few months.

AOL has been on a bit of roll in terms of its acquisition strategy. In an effort to position itself as an advertising-focused media company AOL purchased advertising-technology company Quigo, and in later in the spring, it acquired cell phone advertising firm Third Screen Media.

Will the site’s user base would change or the kind of questions raised on the site would differ? Only time can tell, what would happen with the blending of American flavor into Israeli curry. For the moment, you can enjoy searching for answers to some teaser questions like: ‘Whats Yiddish’, ‘What is the speed of light’, How do I contact Bon Jovi’.

The latest news piece on Yahoo about Bootstrappy startups triggered me to connect with Landy Yung, co-founder of 8coupons.com. Landy and her boyfriend, Wan Hsi Yuan, are the co-founders of exciting new startups 8coupons.com who are running their business from a 500-square-foot studio apartment. 8coupons.com is a simple service providing its users great deals on coupons provided by local businesses. With 8coupons.com, Landy and Wan have proved that starting a new company is actually much cheaper than most wannabe entrepreneurs thought. Yep! That’s the new definition of startups in the 2.0 world

In an exclusive e-mail interview with Rev2, Landy shared her thoughts on 8coupons.com and the challenges of a new-startup.

While I understand that 8coupons.com is a single place to review the best deals on offer in the NY region for restaurant, shopping, can you guys briefly tell us it all works?
The “Top 8 Deals” are based on a simple algorithm of clicks, clips, texts, and of course, the ratings themselves. It’s sort of a Digg for local coupons and advertisers cannot “pay to play” or pay to be one of the Top 8.

$88 for referral that isn’t bad for sure, how does this process work?
It’s completely user driven. $88 for referral that isn’t bad for sure, how does this process work.It’s a very simple process. Basically you sign up on 8coupons.com and get your own personalized “coupon code.” Then next time you go to your local salon, restaurant, dry cleaner, etc. you tell them about 8coupons and get them to try it. Your coupon code gives the merchant a 1 month free trial or the “credit” for one month’s fee. If the merchant signs up for more than the free trial period, then you automatically get the sale amount up to $88. If they do the free one month trial, then you get $8.

How are the coupon deals sent to cellphones?
Everything is all automated. As a consumer, you click on the “send to phone” icon, then the coupon gets sent to your cell phone as a text message in which you later redeem by showing the cashier your phone. So on the back-end, there’s not much that we need to do.

What forms the core of a marketing strategy for a startup like 8coupons.com?
Well the trick in any startup, especially the self-funded ones, is getting traction with no budget. And one way to do that is to leverage existing platforms out there such as a Facebook.

Tell us something about your revenue model, your future plans including coverage of other areas in the U.S. and elsewhere.
We’re currently generating revenues through ad fees from the merchants. It’s a straightforward “all-inclusive” flat fee that advertisers pay for unlimited coupons, a mini-website, the mobile feature, the SEM & SEO that goes with it, etc. There’s no PPC, pay per redemption, etc. Our goal is to keep it as simple as possible for local businesses. However, 8coupons’ revenue model 6, 18, 24 months down the road will inevitably adapt and grow as one of the greatest things about our platform is that it’s extremely monetizable - everything from the search-based and e-mail ads to the mobile coupons.

What’s your advice to the future entrepreneurs who are looking to jump into the Web 2.0 pool?
Don’t be afraid to tell people your ideas, as it’s all in the execution. The more feedback you get from all perspectives - users, customers, investors, vendors, legal and financial service advisors, etc., the better off you’ll be. Build your network and partnerships before you even get started on the plan. Oh yes, get started on a blog and other SEO long before you launch

Thanks for the great interview, Landy!

It’s official now! Opera has gone out of beta and has at last launched the version 4 of its Opera Mini Web browser for cell phones. I think from the strategic point of view its a wise move, goes ‘beta’ tends to keep you under the impression that a particular application or service is under test period.

The version 4 has come after three beta releases. The entire development team for Opera Mini 4 has rewritten the full code to include new features and make the mobile phone browsing experience better. Its been hard work all around from the entire team.

The latest version includes browsing capabilities which are similar to iPhone and enable users to see the entire snapshot of the page and zoom in to particular parts of the page. I think this is a cool feature from usability perspective. Infact there is another feature which cuts down on horizontal scrolling.

Another new feature is Opera Link, a place for sorting out all the bookmarks and the user data through Opera’s social network - My Opera. Other notable features include context menu, scrolling shortcuts, improved search and support for new standards. To top it all, Opera Mini is twice as quick as any other mobile browser.

Excited by the news, I tried to download it on SE K750i. But guess there were some problems. Nevertheless, you guys go ahead and give the new Opera Mini 4 a shot, incase it is compatible with your cellphone carrier and phone.

One of the fastest global social networking communities for youngster over 18, VOIS (pronounced as “Voice”) has released the Beta version of its website.The site has been redesigned from scratch, there are new groups, blogs. The search functionality has been improved and focus has also been given to make the site more secure. Social networking phenomenon is biting the world at a rapid rate and according to the research reports Asia is going to account for almost one-third of social networking users worldwide.

Infact the other continents have some healthy numbers too. Europe, Africa and Middle East’s share of users by the end of this year would be 28%. The whole of America (North, Latin & Caribbean) would be at about 37%. Amongst this group there are four nations which are expected to witness extremely fast growth. These fastest growing economies are more popularly termed as BRIC standing for Brazil, Russia, India and China. Then there is an elite group called N-11 (stands for Next-11) for future economies such as Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.

The Social Networking site VOIS, does seem to be doing well in many of the BRIC and N-11 nations. It is already placed inside the top 15,000 websites in BRIC and N-11. I think VOIS is now looking to strengthen its position in the market by taking its ranking amongst the top ones in these nations. Essentially that is the reason why VOIS is planning to launch localized language-specific/content-specific versions of its website in each of the BRIC Countries and the N-11.

VOIS, headquartered in Florida, enables its members to create their own online identity to connect with friends, do business or search for romance. VOIS is different from others as it encourages its members to promote themselves and their businesses by using VOIS social commerce tools.

Jiglu is a recently launched tool for bloggers which enables the linking of web content by intelligent tagging. A free widget is also offered to help site visitors dig deeper into content. The process is quite simple and involves three steps: register your blog, install the Jiglu widget, and let Jiglu do the tagging.

Nigel Cannings, Jiglu CEO spoke to us about the service.

What does Jiglu mean?
It’s a combination of “Jigsaw” and “Glue”, the idea being that we are helping piece together lots of otherwise unstructured information.

What kind of bloggers does Jiglu look to appeal to? Do you guys imagine it being integrated to the scale of, say, an Engadget of the world, or are you going after the personal types?
We see it as encompassing the whole range, from small personal blogs to large commercial publications. We have built the system so that it can self-tune depending on the amount and type of content. Anyone who wants to have more of their content read by more people can benefit.

Why would someone use a service like Jiglu, as opposed to tagging their content themselves?
We are able to read and remember everything you have ever written, and find the connections between every single post. That is not something an individual can do themselves. We do not seek to replace manual tagging, as you may want to manually categorize posts as well, but we feel that we are able to give a completely new way of indexing and navigating blog posts.

Jiglu is being pitched as a service primarily for the enterprise users?
No. We see a strong demand for it in the personal space. Tools of this power and sophistication have not been available in the consumer market until now. That said, the fact that we have an ultra-lightweight deployment will make this attractive in the enterprise as well.

Do you think tags are useful in a much broader sense — moving away from blogs?
Certainly in terms of the way we define it, yes. The web is full of silos of information. You may have a blog and a wiki and your own web page, maybe even a discussion forum as well. At the moment, these don’t talk to each other. By aggregating the content, and linking and tagging them together, it doesn’t matter where you keep your content, it will always be linked to other relevant material.

What do you think is the single most important aspect that differentiates Jiglu from other services?
A very pretty, very intelligent, tag map

The big three seem to be catching up fast with the social networking movement. Yahoo looks to be on a bit of roll with the launch of its new social networking site called Kickstart. This is the second experiment by Yahoo in less than than 60 days after the launch of Yahoo Mash, which seems to be a disappointment so far.

According to Scott Gatz, senior director of Yahoo’s Advanced Products Division the site won’t really compete with Facebook because of its focus on career advancement, but isn’t exactly LinkedIn. While testing the application the first thing I read was “10 Reasons to use KICKSTART“. Those 10 reasons give an indirect message that Kickstart is essentially for recent graduates/college students who’re looking out for a job or trying to establish industry connections.

The navigation menu (I’m sure guys at Yahoo! would add basket of features here) at the top has 4 links currently: Home, My Profile, Connections, Inbox. The search functionality is comprehensive and it allows you to search by People, Colleges, Companies and Affiliations. The sign-up process is pretty simple and you can create a new college network or join an existing one if it has been created already.

My initial thoughts on Kickstart is that it looks promising. It’s a great attempt by Yahoo! to get into more niche markets, and will prove an essential tool to its targeted audience of recent college graduates. Check out Kickstart now

Consider this: you buy your favorite fiction novel on Amazon.com and some-time later when you check your Facebook account to see latest activities happening in your profile, you find out that the purchase made by you on Amazon.com appears as a news feed.

How would you feel? Cheated? Perhaps, you’d think it is O.K. to be social, but why would Facebook be sharing my personal information? Later on, you’d realize that at the point of sale on the Amazon.com (or any third party site in-fact), there was a “toast” popup which took your approval for the sale information being included in their Facebook News Feed.

Whatever be the case, much of speculation around Facebook’s advertising network does seem to include such an idealogy. The project is apparently called “Beacon” (meaning a fire [usually on a hill or tower] that can be seen from a distance, guess in this case it is about seeing an individual’s information from distance sites ), and an announcement is set to happen on Tuesday.

The crux of this project is to get more data in about what users when they aren’t actually using Facebook, allowsing targeted/focused advertising. For this international project Facebook has collaborated with third parties to gain gain access to that very specific and very special user data.

What would Facebook do with this data? The strategy is simple, it would use the information for purchases made out of Facebook for internal advertising (i.e. within Facebook). For users, it could simply be an opportunity to flaunt their purchases on Facebook profile.

Essentially it all depends on whether a user would be actually interested to share such kind of details with their friends or not. If they’re Beacon would mean definite business for opportunity seekers in Facebook.

AOL users are now being given the power to restrict unwanted ads. The latest news announcement from AOL comes as a big respite for its users who have been plagued by the marketers since the inception days of "internet advertising".

According to the announcement, AOL’s newly developed program will take the consumers to the correct place which will enable them to block/opt out of ads.

So who is behind this and how does this work? Apparently, the company behind the development opt out mechanism is Tacoda, the same company which was bought by AOL very recently.When the user selects opt-out a cookie is sent out to his computer which blocks the ad from appearing.The deletion of opt-out cookie is ensured by AOL’s strong system.

Majorly these ads have been dependent on "cookie" to target the internet users. These cookies monitor online activities of users and keep a track of the places they visit,figure out their daily online activities and on the basis of that send commercial messages.

AOL’s Executive Vice President stated, "Our goal with this program is to engender greater trust for targeted advertising by communicating with consumers in a more visible way, and by providing them more information about their choices,"

The timing of AOL’s announcement is critical as this Thursday the American FTC(Federal Trade Commission) has a meeting to address various issues related to tracking of consumer activities.

Yahoo! has announced the beta release of its leading IM service Yahoo Messenger 9.0. The new version is powered with intuitive design and functionalities like integrated media player and user-friendly tools which enable people to connect with their friends in an easy manner. The new Yahoo Messenger comes with a localize language support in new markets including Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, India (in Hindi), and Vietnam, which takes Yahoo Messenger’s international base to over 25 nations.

The new features have been designed keeping the needs of Yahoo’s existing users in mind. Apparently, Yahoo messenger users spend approx. an hour daily which exceeds the time spent on any other IM service. The power-packed connectivity options include IM, Voice and SMS support.

So what’s new in this Beta version?

For a start, the friends list interface is revamped. Now a user can easily see the online presence indicator, display image and status all in one go. All it takes is a single-click to connect with users via voice, text message or instant messages.

In-line Media Player: The media player enables users to send image,video and map URLs to their friends and family members. File transfer becomes safe and secure than ever with scan support being provide by Symantec Norton AntiVirus.

The call forwarding option (similar to VOIP giant Skype’s) allows users to stay connected while they’re are away from their desktops. Moreover, all voice mails are sent as email attachments in MP3 format. Extensive personalization empowers users to add their personal touch to the way Yahoo Messenger appears. So they can play around with skins customize their designs and do more. In line with web2.0 the new beta comes with Flickr integration so users can share their Flickr photos with IM buddies.

On the occasion of news announcement, Sabrina Ellis, Yahoo’s Vice President said, “We’ve punched up Yahoo! Messenger to make keeping in touch with friends and family even more fun, with features like the in-line media player that helps people easily share their favorite videos, images and photos right in the IM window”.

Yahoo Messenger is the default communication tool which connects over 94 million users across the globe. Don’t waste your time go and grab the beta of the new Yahoo! Messenger can at http://beta.messenger.yahoo.com.

October seems to be a dream month for Facebook. At first it was the Microsoft funding news and now it is about the path-breaking number of registered users on Facebook. The number has exceeded 50 million now.

The beauty of this news is that the numbers have come in super-quick time. It is estimated that the Facebook’s new user graph goes up by 200,000 users per day (huge isn’t it?). If we go by those numbers the total users would almost double up by the end of this year.

So what is driving users to group? Statistics show that it is largely via referrals that users keep coming to Facebook. This goes way beyond than the press/media attention that Facebook has generated.

Talking about last month Facebook had 34.5 billion page views which positioned it at fourth position in terms of the overall traffic among global websites.

Not only that, according to comScore, Facebook is also one of the largest photo sharing application with a total of over 14 million daily photo uploading amounting to about 1,400GB of data at a rate of 16MB per second. On an average users spend an average of 20 minutes on the site (daily) and overall there are 5,000 applications built for Facebook platform.

The Social networking giant has come a long way since its launch in 2004 which was initially meant only for Harvard University students. For more on stats, click here.