NY-based Hakia is announcing the launch of their white-label semantic Web search (they call it Syndication Web Services) today. The idea is simple - you can now add Hakia's services to your site offering more intense search functionality for your visitors.

The business model is welcoming; offer 30,000 searches per day free of charge and free of advertising then they will discuss a relationship with you past the 30,000. What this means is that small social networks may never pay anything for using the Hakia service but provide a great benefit for their users.

The Syndication Web Services include Web search, News search, Vertical search, Summarizer, Categorizer, Characterizer and Text Meaning Representation. The services provide an XML feed, and options to customize the feed. The first company using the new service is Berggi. Berggi has created a worldwide mobile search application.

This month Hakia added PubMed to their search index and also checkout our comparison of Hakia and Powerset.

The New York Times* just soft-launched "Times People," a simple and compelling social networking tool. By following other Times People users you can see stories they recommend, their ratings of movies and restaurants, and their comments on stories and blog posts. In turn people following you can see your Times activity. I've been using it for a few weeks, and I love it.

It's available right now as a Firefox plugin; support for other browsers may come later. There's also a Facebook app, which ties Times People into your mini-feed.

While I applaud the decision to keep this first release dead simple, I hope it evolves into a proper profile system for the Times, and replaces the existing "member center," which needs to be put out to pasture.

The Times has launched some cool stuff lately, and this is by far my favorite. It's elegantly straightforward and truly useful. Unlike most social networks, where adding to your contact list doesn't give you much more than the queasy sense of being an acquisitive stalker**, your Times People network gives you something immediately useful, in the form of great stuff to read.


*I work at the Times, but wasn't involved with this, other than as fanboy. The project was lead by Derek Gottfrid, the same guy who wrote TimesMachine.

** One reason Wordie doesn't have 'friends.' Everybody stalks everybody.

Appointment planning and physician review service ZocDoc continues to expand their offering. Today they are announcing that dermatologists are now available in the ZocDoc system. From what I understand, getting an appointment with a dermatologist can take weeks. ZocDoc shows you who is available same-day and next-day along with booking appointments with your normal dermatologist. The service is currently offered in NYC only.

Dermatologists are an important part of the ZocDoc system because this is one of the areas they are monetizing. They don't charge any fees for primary care doctors, only for specialists. Some of the services include: skin cancer examinations, acne treatment, mole inspections, and laser hair removal as well as Botox and collagen injections.

When I signed up for the Freelancer's Union insurance recently, I used ZocDoc to help me pick a primary care doctor. The reviews are really solid and I feel more confident with them since the reviews come from actual patients so there's no padding. If you are new to ZocDoc, check out their video demo below.

Hakia announced yesterday that they have added 10 million health articles from the U.S. government run PubMed search engine. You can now search PubMed from a special PubMed Hakia search or any nornal Hakia search will also return PubMed results. This announcement comes after Hakia announced the launch of the "credible health search".

The Hakia blog post on the PubMed announcement is well worth a read if you are into semantic search. Apparently the PubMed search has holes that may return incorrect or no results. Hakia uses their intelligence to return relevant results.

Check out our comparison of Valley darling Powerset vs. NY-based Hakia.

As Father’s Day approaches, it is the perfect time to reflect on the fundamental shift in the role of men in parenting. As father’s continue to take back paternity and become empowered in the raising of their children, four dads from Austin, Texas have made their mark in the complex world of parenting and online video. The parenting video network DadLabs – Taking Back Paternity has rapidly become the father go-to site for parenting tips, advice and a healthy dose of humor.  With a blend of video, social media and fatherhood, DadLabs has built a strong parenting community and their fans stretch from coast to coast proving that our dads know dads.

So who are these super dads? Whether expecting, new or veteran, these socially networked fathers play a more active and creative role in the lives of their children, than the average father. The most active online fathers are expecting fathers, called “due dads” by DadLabs, they are almost thirty years old. Most of these due dads are college grads and, according to demographic data retrieved by TubeMogul from onsite Viddler video plays on dadlabs.com, live in cities like Astoria (NY), Austin (TX), New York (NY), Louisville (KY), Houston (TX), Chicago (IL) and Washington (DC).

When it comes to the health of their families, most of the DadLabs dads are actively involved in keeping up to date with all the current issues and ways to improve their children’s health. This is particularly evident in the grocery shopping with half the DadLabs dad becoming the primary grocery shoppers for their families. Grocery shopping has been a mother exclusive domain for quite some time.

“Working and stay-at-home dads are all becoming much more active in the lives of their children and are interested in learning what it takes to be a great dad,” says Clay Nichols, co-founder and co-host of DadLabs. “We want to provide dads with the most honest, informative and entertaining information and support all through our guy-colored lenses.”

These fathers are not your typical men when it comes to media consumption. The DadLabs dad watched less than 15 hours a week of television compared to the average of 40 hours. When it comes to Internet usage most spend at least 10 hours a week and up to 20 hours on average. A lot of this time is spent doing research on parenting topics, and getting sports and financial information and watching videos on dadlabs.com. By far the most popular DadLabs video of all time is a very informative Lounge episode called, “What Makes a Great Babysitter”, in which a panel of parents talk about what they look for in a baby sitter while enjoying a cold beer.  

The websites that have sent the most traffic to dadlabs.com are mega-parenting sites like babyzone.com and babycenter.com, which offer a wealth of parenting information but lack the understanding of fathers. A  many of the DadLabs dads visit is parenthacks.com, a collection of practical parenting tips and, of course, hacks.

 “DadLabs is the most focused and unique online video resource that is for dads by dads,” says Paul Kontonis, CEO of For Your Imagination, executive producers of DadLabs. “They are everymen and are smart about how they approach their site, their audience and their content and we’re proud of the network’s value to fathers.”

Most importantly, DadLabs gears their resources and social community for a Web audience, serving up content in small, easily digestible pieces, perfect for the dads that are spending less and less time watching traditional television.  With over 250 short form online videos, DadLabs has covers the most important and frequently discussed parenting issues for fathers. DadLabs videos have been viewed over 2 million times and won the 2008 Yahoo! Video Best New Uploader Award since its relaunch in late 2007. New episodes can be seen on www.dadlabs.com as well as popular online video sites such YouTube, Viddler, Yahoo! Video and iTunes.

Daisy Whitney from TVWeek and the New Media Minute wants to know how to fund a Web 2.0 startup, especially a video startup. She points out that bootstrapping and self-funding are sexy terms to reporters like herself and that sometimes venture capital cash works as well. For Your Imagination is cited as an example of a company which not only produces original content that can be monetized through advertising and sponsorships but a company which also produces web video series for TV networks and brands.

The Advertising 2.0 conference was one of the central events of Internet Week New York. Mochila CEO Keith McAllister participated in a panel on Publishing 2.0 and ‘re-imagining of the newspaper and magazine industries’.

The next gathering of the fabulous online video content creator's Meetup, BigScreen LittleScreen, will be on Tuesday, June 10th at 6:30pm at For Your Imagination's studio during Internet Week. Get ready for hot one, with New York City temperatures forecast to be almost 100 degrees and with great videos from Zoom In Online, Break a Leg, Mediocre NY and The Underminer in Yoga plus a quick demo by Pond5. The cold beer will be provided by the best online TV guide, Tilzy.TV, so register today, come early, kick back and enjoy the videos. 

I wrote in the past that sometimes you can take too much money - doing so creates certain expectations for an exit that might not be achievable and limits your flexibility. In the context of the discussion last week, I think it's important to highlight that these economics are not always the fault of the venture capitalist. For example, Jason Calacanis said you should take as much money as you can get and Marc Andresseen said “in general, [you should raise] as much as you can”.

Billions or Bust

Another one of my favorite recent examples is Slide, founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame. Slide recently raised $50M from T-Rowe Price and Fidelity - giving up 9% for a pre-money valuation of roughly $500M. Granted, T-Rowe Price and Fidelity probably aren't quite expecting the same kind of returns over the same time frame as a VC, but it still sets a ridiculous high floor for an exit.

That is, in part, the plan. As Sarah Lacy put it, "Levchin, who co-founded and later sold PayPal, wanted to prove he could do it again - this time, generating more than the $1.5 billion PayPal fetched from eBay in 2002." Lacy defends that valuation not because of what the company is worth today, but that it's a "swing-for-the-fences play" which requires a lot of money - and if their plan works then it will be worth far more.

But, as one commenter on the BITS article points out, "the idea that Slide and RockYou 'add the bulk of perceived value to the consumers of these Web platforms' is misguided and should be a warning sign to Slide’s investors. Facebook only opened up to 3rd-party applications in May [2007], and it was doing just fine before that."  (Still many others would say that some of the applications that Slide and competitors put out detract from the value of Facebook, but that's a separate argument).

Regardless of what you think of Slide, they've basically taken a lot of otherwise attractive exits off the table. They truly have forced a "$1.5B or bust" strategy - the possible end game here is either an acquisition by a very select group of players or an IPO.

The downfall of taking too much

In discussing how much an entrepreneur should raise, Mark Davis lays out four important goals: avoiding bankruptcy, achieving milestones, minimizing time spent on fundraising, and minimizing dilution. On a separate post, he also highlights a few other reasons why you might not want such a high valuation. In short, Marc says that you limit access to sophisticated money in both the short- and long-term.

This got me thinking, so I'm just going to throw it out there: When you think of smart, sophisticated money in the Internet space, do you think T-Rowe Price and Fidelity? And - let me preface this by saying I don't have any details or context here - but isn't it at least a little interesting that The Founders Fund and Mayfield - funds you would consider sophisticated in this space - didn't participate in this round?

Why do they do it?

All three of the guys I've discussed here who have raised "too much money" or are talking about getting as much as you can have all been successful entrepreneurs... but for the most part didn't need this kind of money to do what they did in the past.

There are a few thoughts that come to mind.

At some level, because they can. You might make the argument maybe the serial entrepreneur has transcended the need for sophisticated money. If they no longer need the guidance from the VC, T-Rowe's money may come cheaper and more plentiful. Or, if you want to look at it more cynically, the entrepreneur can take advantage of less sophisticated investors who maybe don't quite understand the space but do understand their previous successes.

Raising the stakes. Some have suggested to me that it’s just that these guys have the luxury of betting big now; that by raising this kind of money, they are just upping the ante. The thing is, unless you intend on buying a lot of other companies, it’s not clear how some of this money helps beyond a certain point. And, as I mentioned, these guys bet big in the past with more modest purses and won.

After having done it once, these guys may be better able to deploy the money quickly. Hiring will be easier for them since they have a track record and past employees. They know where wish they could have put more money last time and will in theory be able to scale up more easily. (Of course, as we know, the mythical man-month applies here - throwing more resources at developer talent doesn't necessarily translate into better output.)

Ego. Neither of the three guys I mentioned need the money. These companies aren’t about getting rich, they’re about creating a legacy – and legacies are not built around reasonable successes.

I think these things all factor in at some level, along with many other issues. Maybe Jason is just stockpiling for a coming recession, but I would have to think his investors are not intending on having that money sit around for a rainy day. He had to have had a plan to spend that kind of money and show how it can grow the company accordingly.

And in case it wasn’t obvious: for the record, I'm certainly not calling any of these guys out. They have all had greater successes than I have, and I have immense respect for them - I just find this pattern very interesting.

What are your theories? Any serial entrepreneurs want to chime in?

NY-based Sense Networks is launching their initial public alpha today around their Citysense product. The idea for SenseNetworks came to founder and CEO Greg Skibiski while he was traveling in Barcelona. I spoke with Skibiski to learn more about SenseNetworks and the CitySense product. The alpha is available for San Francisco and a variety of other cities are collecting data for later availability.

The company started operations on their technology in 2002 and the idea was to build a system which leveraged all of the data that is generated in the background. For example, as you travel from point a to point b in your car, your mobile knows where you've gone. It also knows where 100,000 others have and can create matrices from the data to see what areas are busy.

Skibiski explained that the system works in a similar way to Google's PageRank. Using the most basic definition, PageRank works by ranking sites with more inbound links higher. SenseNetworks rates locations by how many people are there. The system also tracks where people come from and where they go from a location. It's pretty freaking sweet and a data lover's dream.

There are over 100,000 mobile devices sending data to SenseNetworks and the CitySense system then generates real-time maps (see example below) that show how "hot" a location is. The system becomes more intelligent over time as more data is fed into it. If your goal is to go to where the action is, CitySense will tell you that. The application works with Blackberry and iPhones currently. The application only monitors your data if you opt-in and all data that SenseNetworks receives is anonymous. For example, they can't do a "ladies 28-35" filter so I know where to go tonight. :)

The business plan is pretty interesting -- SenseNetworks sends the aggregated data out to other companies who monetize the data and pay SenseNetworks for the data. For example, if there is an unusually large number of people visiting 14th and K, a cab company might want to know this so they can send cabs that way. If you were at the Diggnation event last week in Brooklyn, you know how great it would have been to have cabs lined up after the event was over.

NYC is coming soon and Skibiski explained that there are over 13,000 taxis in NYC all sending data back using GPS. Wouldn't it be great if cabbies knew when the bridge was backed up and took the tunnel or vice-versa? There are many potential applications for the data and it will be exciting to watch the user adoption and service expansion for CitySense and the entire SenseNetworks product family.