Meebo.com, the finest way to communicate with friends and family via the internet, has just announced that it will be sporting a long-requested feature. You can now seamlessly transfer files to your IM buddies, on meebo or off meebo, regardless of which IM network they’re on, no software or download required.
“We’re so happy to be debuting file transfer on meebo. This answers a huge feature request from our users,” said Seth Sternberg, the founder and CEO of Meebo.
For its backend, Meebo uses the affordable, scalable and fault-tolerant solution
for file storage from Amazon — the old web app buddy Amazon S3 — and Amazon EC2 to prevent downtimes. “Meebo has a record of innovating for its customers – our suite of web services helps them stay singularly focused on that goal,” claims Steve Rabuchin from Amazon Web Services.
This brings the meebo platform a lot closer to the feature set of single-computer old-school software apps Google Talk, MSN Messenger, and AOL Instant Messenger. Is the next generation IM on the web? That’s for users to decide.
Hearst Corporation, not satisfied with UGO, has acquired the “social shopping community” Kaboodle. The site is very Web 2.0 as it combines a social network and an e-commerce platform. The site launched in 2006 and now attracts over 2 million visitors a month. Terms were not disclosed.
“With this acquisition, Hearst will gain one of the leading sites specializing in social shopping, a combination of online shopping and social networking. Kaboodle’s social shopping community is changing the landscape of online shopping by connecting people with similar taste, and tying together the entire shopping process, from product discovery to purchase.” Kaboodle’s blog is rife with all kinds of interesting product discoveries like the image to the right, “Pet Fish” soap.
Kaboodle launched sometime last year and has managed to gain some amount of traction in the space. The rumoured price of the acquisition goes as high as $40 million. While, in terms of traffic, the site hasn’t yet managed to gain critical mass, one can guess the sales number on it had to be going uphill.
The site has so far raised up to $4 million in VC funding (early stage + series A), including from three high-class Google executives. If the rumoured price is correct, that could be upto a 5-8x return for them. Nice!
Yesterday, Pickle.com announced that it’s parent company, Incando Corporation, was just gobbled up by the new media hungry Scripps Networks. Pickle is a sharing service that has proprietary software that helps you upload images and videos from your desktop and cellphone to share with the world. They claim, “This ain’t your mother’s player” right on the homepage.
“We are committed to our strategy of owning the food, shelter and lifestyle categories online as well as on air,” said John Lansing, president of Scripps Networks. Scripps Networks currently owns the following huge websites (among others) HGTV.com and DIYnetwork.com (ranked No. 1 and No. 2 respectively among content providers on the Web in the Home & Garden category), FoodNetwork.com (the top-rated content provider on the web in the Food & Cooking category).
We profiled Pickle in depth last year.
Google announced that its news site will start allowing unedited comments from those the story is written about. So if it is a story about how terrible Rev2.org has been lately, we’ll be able to comment in the form of “Go shove it! - Rev2 staff.” Paris Hilton could respond to her latest issues with a drunken drawl about … well we’re not sure we want to know. The point is, Google News just got a lot more interesting in a real unique way.
Michael Arrington pointed out that this could be an interesting idea, but since they are hosting original news content there is a problem with them not allowing other news sources in on the content. There is currently no actual comments to view, but we’re hopeful it will be soon. Note that not just anyone can send in a comment — it has to be someone legitimately involved in the story. Find your article, and then follow the posted regulations.
This, however, brings up an interesting debate. Google News is a search engine, and the job of a search engine is to help people find content — and take them there. Infact, Google itself has said that it is a complete technology and no intention of being in the content business. This addition, though, leads Google in the other direction. Google News will soon no longer only display the ‘title and two sentence’ snippet from the New York Times, but really go further to build a complete compilation for that piece of news — essentially, its own content based on others’.
And this questions the advantages for a news source of having their content listed in Google News. What’s the point in feeding a monster when you know it’s eventually going to eat you? With a title and snippet, you know you’re guaranteed that clickthrough because nobody is going to be able to decipher a piece of news just by reading those — and if you have the most eye-catching one on the page or one amongst the top few, you’re gonna get that clickthrough. But now, users have a reason to do something otherwise, and this is pushing content creators to weigh their options.
The environmentally friendly/world-changing social network, Zaadz just found themselves becoming a “child company” (avoiding the word ‘acquisition’) to the lifestyle media company Gaiam. No price was disclosed.
According to the Zaadz founder, “I had a vision of creating the most inspiring and empowering community in the world: an online oasis where we could support one another in discovering and living at our highest potential—learning to use our greatest strengths in the greatest service to the world…a community of individuals committed to changing the world by being the change.”
Gaiam, Inc., Zaadz, Inc., Revolution, LLC, LIME Media and Conscious Enlightenment, Inc have all essentially partnered together to launce a new Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability network at Gaiam.com. There really weren’t any magical beans, but the Zaadz homepage stated this partnership was like watching a cute little plant grow up.
So now we know: green likes green. 
What? A web 2.0 “simple app” that does something without a beta release or a blog? What does this mean? How do we anticipate the newest version? How do we complain about perpetual betas if there are companies who ignore this important part of web 2.0′ness?
BillShare is a “simple app for people who share bills.” That’s it. Of course there are a number of features which can be summed up in about four sentences. They do it so well on their front page, I’ll just copy and paste. Use this app. These people are geniuses.
“Create receipts to divide shared expenses. Track spending habits with detailed statistics. Email alerts keep you updated on amounts owed. The group wall and messaging allow group members to communicate effortlessly.” Of course, it’s ad-supported, so no worries on their bill coming your way.
Club Penguin has been acquired for $350 million cash and $350 million in the next two years by Disney. Sony lost the bid in May when they only offered $450 million (according to paidContent.org).
“One of our long range plans has always been to open the Club Penguin experience up to a broader range of users by offering Club Penguin in languages other than English. That is now a much more immediate goal, and it’s just one example of what this partnership will mean for Club Penguin. With Disney’s backing, our creative and talented staff will be able to innovate and produce new content much more quickly and efficiently, making the website more fun, exciting and safe than ever before.” via their own website announcement.
Check out Club Penguin, if you haven’t already.
Delib, a company that specializes in communicating not-for-profit messages, finally acknowledged they are developing an interesting environment widget called MyAbodo. The widget itself hasn’t been finished, but the web community has ALREADY adopted the widget and it’s starting to appear all over the web. So what is it?
MyAbodo is a flash-based toy (aimed at 12-16 year olds, though I found it extremely addicting) that lets you create an eco-friendly home. You can modify floor plans, outside services, colors, you name it.
Once you have created a home, it’s community time. Join an abodo neighborhood that others can visit. Also, you can share it on your blog or webpage as a “live camera view” (complete with sweet animation). The idea behind this toy is to raise awareness for energy and water use.
Pass what? Simply the coolest, most secure place to store the thousands of passwords you generate per day: PassPack. Currently in a stable beta v4, they opened up their beta v5 on Wednesday and within a few hours they closed the doors. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take full advantage of the their service today–for free.
PassPack claims to be the first “Online Privacy Manager.” That’s certainly the first time we’ve come across that phrase. The key to their security measures is in their name. Your information is encrypted within a “pack” using government-grade AES encryption. To access your account you sign on, and then to access your information, you must “unpack” the data with a predetermined pass-phrase of your choosing. There are more security features than your average software password program understands.
So, this isn’t “one password to rule them all” — it’s more like, “one password, a p ass phrase, and Government encryption to rule them all.” Another killer feature is that they give you a “disposable login” that works only once and then expires. This allows you to login from an insecure location and not worry about it. And that’s just version 4. Version 5 promises much more.
Enjoy your Friday and happy password keeping!
Paul Birch, the London-based creator of BirthdayAlarm.com who also happens to be the brother of Bebo founder Michael Birch, is at it again. The name is Cominded and the idea is something he won’t talk about until September. As Birch describes:
“We are building a technology infrastructure here at Cominded using Ruby on Rails to allow us to rapidly develop, launch and manage multiple ‘Web 2.0 style’ websites. These services will deliver social benefit through empowering people to collaborate successfully online and offline for the common good. Their design will reflect people’s fundamental and innate need for human connection and the progression from a mechanistic world to an emergent one. We are also now building our first Web 2.0 service. It’s in stealth mode so we can’t say what it is but plan to launch at the end of September.”
So, we’re asking Rev2 readers — what is it? It sounds like a mix of Ning, Pipes, and Google Gears to us, but we’re willing to accept more detailed answers. And yes, there’ll be a prize involved to the closest guess — that is of course, when we find out in September.
