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11 September 2003
 Despite popular reports, the Web isn't dead and the search for the next generation of killer applications is well underway. If you're just rolling back from your summer a bit weary of geo-political tensions and wishing you had a better tan, then it's time to realise that some significant fundings happened while you were away. The Wall Street Journal led the way with an article on 1 September appropriately titled 'Hi-tech bets are on again as new ideas bubble up'. I'm averaging three Plaxo requests a day to update other people's address books these days. However irritating it is, I find at least 50% of the time I feel compelled enough to modify a changed phone number or update an address. What's either amazing or encouraging, depending on your point of view, is that the company secured $8.5m (£5.4m) in funding on the 28 July, with Sequoia Capital in its investor base no less. Rumour has it the pre-money was $12m (£7.6m). The company was founded by Sean Parker, a co-founder of Napster, and two Stanford engineers, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ring. Plaxo's board of directors includes Tim Koogle, former chairman and CEO of Yahoo!; Ram Shriram, formerly of Netscape, Amazon and Jungle and a director of Google; Jon Callaghan, Globespan Capital Partners MD; and Michael Moritz, Sequoia Capital partner. And going back a bit, while the world was consumed with the Iraq war Spoke Software landed $9.2m (£5.8m). A Palo Alto enterprise software company, Spoke combined its Series A and B with investors that included Sierra Ventures, Partech International and US Venture Partners, which incubated the company with CEO Ben Smith. As a registered user of Spoke, I've been impressed with the personal welcome and tight new customer wrap it's given me. The social and business networks space is ripe for growth and consolidation, and the smart ones are going with the P2P trend, by demonstrating that the power of any network is in its distribution ability. Spoke, for example, touts its ability to help you manage your relationships for the purpose of getting sales done more easily and efficiently. The current craze of online dating relates to Match.com being able to help you sift remarkably quickly through the masses to find your soulmate. And what discussion of networks would be complete without a reference to the blogging phenomenon? Closer to home, business and social network Ecademy, founded in February, has 30,000 members, of which 3,000 are paying a subscription of £100 a year. Rival network Ryze, by comparison, has 30,000 members of which 3,000 are paying subscription fees of $60 (£38) a year. Ecademy founder Thomas Power's vision is to have 10,000 subscribers in each of 1,000 cities around the world. He's willing to achieve that organically or by consolidating other business (and people) networks that are out there. He essentially runs an ASP model business where forums are run online. Power - and I might have to agree with him here - believes that the Chardonnay is just as important as what goes on online. And what growth. A year ago, Ecademy had 11,000 subscribers; today roughly 50 new members are joining daily. The site had 9m hits and 3m page views in July. Ecademy is second to Friendster in this metric, which doesn't charge for its services. Those of us who have money to invest are looking to put it into some pure-play deals, as Round 2 should be at least as lucrative and exciting (and tiring) as Round 1. Julie Meyer is CEO of Ariadne Capital; julie@ariadnecapital.com New Media Age is the UK's leading weekly
on the Internet, iTV and wireless, comprising the latest news and
analysis on digital media developments, Internet market research,
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