MyThings is a service that allows users to create an online portfolio of valued belongings.

We reviewed iTaggit earlier this week; MyThings operates in the same space. Both provide personal asset management although MyThings is the more extensive offering of the two; MyThings took $8million from Carmel Ventures and Accel Partners in May 2006 and the funding shows.

MyThings offers a integrated one stop shop for collectibles. Items can be included in the database, with tags and pictures. Once listed users are able to obtain a valuation for the item, buy (or extend) the items warranty, purchase insurance, sell the item on eBay and even donate am item to a worthy cause. MyThings also includes an extensive database of items reported lost and stolen from the world of art, antiques and collectibles; MyThings users are able to add stolen items to the database at any time and likewise the service is able to screen new submissions for items that may have been stolen.

The company has offices in Menlo Park, London and Tel Aviv, delivering a global product with a lot of appeal. Perhaps my earlier assessment of the space (in the iTaggit review) as being niche was unwarranted; the extensive user collections listed on MyThings would indicate that listing collections online may actually be a hot vertical.

In an interesting move, Google has come out against controversial documentary film maker Michael Moore’s latest documentary “Sicko” in a post titled “Does negative press make you Sicko?“.

Lauren Turner of the Google Health Advertising Team writes:

“While legislators, litigators, and patient groups are growing excited, others among us are growing anxious. And why wouldn’t they? Moore attacks health insurers, health providers, and pharmaceutical companies by connecting them to isolated and emotional stories of the system at its worst. Moore’s film portrays the industry as money and marketing driven, and fails to show healthcare’s interest in patient well-being and care.”

Apparently there is a cure to the Sicko ailment, and it involves spending money with Google:

“We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message.”

Google targeting Michael Moore is probably not a wise move. Whilst there may well be reasonable grounds to attack anything Michael Moore puts together, antagonizing Moore may well see Google become a larger target at a time the search giant is in the spotlight over its Double Click acquisition.

The focus and experimentation on IPTV is switching away from watching short clips on YouTube to watching full length shows on downloadable TV applications like Joost, Babelgum, Veoh TV , Netflix (which now has a Silverlight application) and others. YouTube continues to grow, but people are not looking to find full length TV shows there.

That isn’t stopping the competitors from trying to get a piece of the action, though.

YouTube has a slew of direct competitors, but the network effect kicked in long ago for YouTube and its unlikely that loose copyright policies or higher quality videos are going to make any kind of dent in their market share. But the networks are still goggling that $1.65 billion price tag for YouTube, and they want their pound of flesh.

Competitors Running In Circles

Hitwise published some statistics earlier this week showing that YouTube has 60% market share of the U.S. video sharing sites – they have more visitors than all of their competitors combined. They continue to grow at a fast clip even after the networks started massive litigation against them.

Comscore worldwide data is nearly identical, showing YouTube with a 66% market share. See the chart to the left for the side-by-side numbers.

It’s clear that the market is probably big enough for a few competitors to be successful, but no one is knocking YouTube off the thrown any time soon.

Clown Co. Still Clowning Around

In March we saw the dramatic introduction of a new service, backed by News Corp. (owner of MySpace) and NBC. They dubbed it “NBC Universal and News Corporation’s Online Video Joint Venture,” which isn’t exactly catchy. When rumors started that Google execs were referring to it as “Clown Co.” the name stuck. Until they name this thing, there’s really nothing else to refer to it as.

Lack of a name hasn’t stopped them from making some bold steps, though. This week they named Jason Kilar, a Harvard MBA and former Amazon executive, to lead the unit. And now there are reports saying they’ve been out trying to raise $100 million in venture capital on a billion dollar valuation. YouTube raised just a fraction of that.

To be fair, Clown Co. isn’t supposed to be a direct competitor to YouTube, and has promised a more distributed approach. And they’ll have (legally obtained) content from both NBC and News Corp. properties, a big advantage over competitors. We’ll have to wait and see once it launches. But the naming problem, as well as the fact that the parent companies described it as “the largest advertising platform on earth” in a media call, suggest it is off to a very bad start.

News Corp. Places Another Bet

News Corp. which owns MySpace, is placing a second bet beyond Clown Co. This week they announced the launch of MySpace TV, a direct competitor to YouTube. MySpace has been collecting video clips from users for well over a year, and their recent $300 million acquisition of Photobucket adds more to the library.

Having the MySpace property behind MySpace TV is a great competitive advantage, although Google’s search engine is behind YouTube, which more than evens the playing field. And since MySpace has shown a willingness to block third party videos if there is even a hint of advertising, YouTube may, over time, find it can’t do much there.

For that reason, MySpace TV is the biggest direct threat to YouTube. But in my opinion it won’t be enough to knock them from the top spot even in the long run. YouTube is now firmly entrenched in the mainstream user’s head as the site to go to see user generated videos and copyrighted video clips, and they are backed by Google. No one is taking that from them any time soon.

An interesting thing happened during yesterdays iPhone launch and it wasn’t just observing Robert Scoble’s mastery of self promotion (in a good way of course). Thousands of people* who were not lining up for an iPhone, be that because they simply weren’t interested in doing so or as in my case were unable to due to geography, experienced the highs and lows of iPhone day vicariously through live streams.

The day wasn’t without issues, Kristopher Tate’s Zooomr/ Ustream feed had technical issues at times, but on the whole the experience was something special. From the interviews on the street, through to the screams of those entering the Apple store to applause, through to the first addition to America’s Funniest Live Video Streams 2020 when Tate had his credit card declined.

The difference on iPhone Day was that instead of turning to blogs or waiting for the mainstream media to report the facts hours later, we were all able to watch it all in first person. The promise of user generated live media was delivered. The seed of a revolution was planted.

Lifestreaming has been covered before on TechCrunch; I remain unconvinced about the likelihood of Lifestreams such as Justin.tv (the man, not the service) being anything more than a niche pursuit, yet what we saw on iPhone Day was different: this was Eventstreaming.

Eventstreaming is the missing link in Web 2.0’s challenge to network television.
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No surprise really: iPhone buyers are flooding eBay with their new iPhones with bids starting from $1 and buy it now prices as high as $1500.

For those outside of the United States desperate to get their hands on an iPhone, a number of listings offer worldwide shipping; this listing for example posts to Australia for $50. However be aware that the iPhone does not support simcards and today no one has worked out how to unlock the phone from AT&T, although you could always buy it now and work that part out later (or use the iPhone as an expensive video iPod). MacNN has screenshots on the iPhone’s innards for those interested in hacking it.

If you do sign up for an AT&T plan and live outside the US, be warned that AT&T’s international roaming rates would make a drunken sailor blush.

A 3G iPhone for Europe will be announced Monday, according to an unconfirmed report from Guy Kewney at Newswireless.

Engadget points out that Kewney was recently eWeek.com’s European wireless editor and would be well placed to know.

The European 3G iPhone is said to be distributed via Carphone Warehouse with Vodafone in the UK and T-Mobile in Germany the European carriers. No word yet on other European countries. The phone is said to go on sale in Europe before the end of the year.

If the rumor is true (and it is just a rumor at this stage) it’s a positive sign for the rest of the world, particularly Australasia where the slower 2G systems are being phased out as 3G coverage is already ubiquitous. It would also create two tiers of iPhone users: Americans with the slower 2.5G versions and the rest of us with much faster 3G versions; as the saying goes: all good things come to those who wait.

Thousands of people are eagerly waiting in line to get their hands on the iPhone. However, for those of us tied into long term contracts or who just find the high price tag too much cash to part with, we’ve compiled a list of how to emulate iPhone’s features on your everyday handset.

Visual Voice Mail

Perhaps the most talked about feature, visual voice mail easily lets you play your messages out of order with more detail about who called and when. There are a couple of startups who offer this feature, Callwave and Gotvoice. Both of these programs also have other features like voice-to-text, or voicemail-to-email.

Browser

People have been gushing over iPhone’s browser, which lets you surf the “real” internet through a zoom and scan interface. Opera has recently come out with Opera Mini 4 Beta that has the same zoom navigation feature controlled by your number pad. Microsoft has their own version for Windows Mobile called Deepfish in limited beta.

Email

iPhone offers a rich HTML email interface including attachment support. Microsoft Exchange support stirred up quite a bit of controversy, but that may be resolved. Email has been offered on cell phones for a while now. Either Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live mail will work on your phone. Of course, Blackberry users need not apply.

Maps

iPhone is featuring a version of Google Maps that takes advantage of the touchscreen interface. A simpler Google Maps version is available for the rest of us and Yahoo is expected to release a mobile maps product on its Go platform soon. For voice and maps integration, readers should check out TellMe as well.

Music

Apple is claiming the iPhone is the best iPod to date. We’ve covered several other mobile solutions for playing music on your phone. The most recent player has been MusicStation, which mimics iTunes and plays songs with accompanying album art. If you’re only interested in playing the music you already own, you should also check out MyStrands, Avvenu, and Pandora.

Widgets

iPhone also lets you get information like weather and stock quotes through widgets. There are several companies already offering content widgets on a variety of phones. You should check out Bluepulse, Widsets, and GetMobio for ways of getting the content you crave to your phone.

Of course, if you’re willing to spend a couple days installing all this software, you might as well wait in line.

Since all you people seem to want to hear about is the iPhone, here’s a pretty good parody ad from CollegeHumor. They say they’ll have two more up on the site today – check here.

Collaborative communications tool, Foldera, is going into public beta today with the release of their 3.0 version (Note: Michael Arrington is on the board of directors of the company). Foldera is aimed at small to medium sized businesses looking to aggregate all of their project related communications into collaboratively managed folders – think of it as Outlook online, but self-organizing by topic. It competes with Outlook/Microsoft Sharepoint, Live Office, and recently profiled Orgoo.

We covered last year’s private beta. The 3.0 version features simple search across all your content (contacts, emails, events, tasks, and files), contextual help, and an intuitive drag and drop interface.

Once your organization is on Foldera, you can trade information and bundle your projects into discrete folders. You get your group started by each signing up for accounts and importing your email and contacts from Outlook, Gmail, or Yahoo contact list on to the service. Editing and access to contacts can be managed through permissions. Foldera’s user interface looks very similar to Gmail’s AJAX interface. On the left hand side, you have a list of folders by subject containing your calendar, email, files, and tasks tied to that subject. The main pane on the right shows the content.

Folders are permission controlled workgroups, where you can send emails, assign tasks, trade files, and plan events on the calendar. All activity from that folder can be commented on by other users and is tied to that folder and the contacts it’s shared with. When you receive email replies to messages you sent from within the folder, they’re automatically filed in that folder for all members to see.

Within the folders you can also plan events, assign tasks, and share files (1GB of storage). When tasks are completed, the person who assigned them is notified by email. The calendar is a lot like Google calendar, with the ability to easily overlay events from other folders or users, but doesn’t allow exporting or importing feeds. The file system tracks versions of files as they are uploaded to the service and lets you easily attach them to emails.

Google’s addition of folders to Google Docs generated a great deal of conversation yesterday over the benefits of tags and folders. However, Foldera’s folders are a bit more flexible than traditional folders because they do allow files to linked to multiple projects (folders) in their drag and drop interface.

Foldera is Free for 5 users, but charges an extra $6 a month for each user beyond that.

Foldera is very late to launch, and some users who expressed enthusiasm over a year ago may now have moved on to other solutions. Give it a try and let us know what you think.

Our intrepid intern Ilya is down at the Apple Store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan shooting live video of people waiting in line. Watch as he watches the folks watching for the iPhone (click “more” below to see the stream).

For our complete coverage, click here. Only a few hours left before this news-cycle hog dissipates and we can all go back to thinking about more important stuff.

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MySpace founder Chris DeWolfe has indicated that MySpace will likely open its platform to 3rd party developers, according to a report at FT.com

The move will see MySpace following in the footsteps of Facebook; Facebook’s wildly popular F8 release has seen in excess of 1000 additional applications made available to Facebook users and has driven enormous growth.

MySpace still maintains leadership in the social networking space based on user numbers and traffic, and has continued to grow; however there is little doubt today that the hearts and minds of the people who count have abandoned MySpace for Facebook. The moves to an open platform also comes after reports earlier this week claiming that DeWolfe was asking for a $12.5 million annual salary to stay on at MySpace. If DeWolfe can successfully play catch-up with Facebook he may end up being worth it.

For the sleepless or bored, and who can think of nothing but the iPhone: the iPhone queue Live from Palo Alto, staring Robert Scoble and friends. The broadcast is said to continue until the iPhone goes on sale later today.

To join the chat, visit the Zooomr page at Ustream.

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As iPhone anticipation reaches a fever pitch, we are getting flooded with reports of people lining up to nab their own wonder phone. A quick trip down to the valley’s Apple store in Palo Alto shows the fervor taking over the valley.

CrunchGear even caught blogger Robert Scoble, second in line only to his son, looking to trade in his $750 N95 3G 5MP camera phone for the $600 2MP camera edge-only iPhone. He was joined by Zoomr CEO Thomas Hawk and founder Kristopher Tate, who were running crowd control by handing out numbered tags. They were later joined from Diggnation’s Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, who were also covering the controlled chaos.

You can see live coverage of the iLines on Ustream and Justin.tv. They’ll all be waiting in line until the iPhone goes on sale today, June 29, at 6:00 p.m.

Here are some photos:

Image credit, Gabe Rivera of Techmeme

Google Answers, famously shut down by Google in November 2006 after losing the Q&A war to Yahoo, has risen from the dead in Russia.

Google Questions and Answers (Вопросы и ответы in Russian) allows users to ask a “difficult question that is interesting” and receive an answer from other users. Users earn points based on the quality of answers given and can gradually become an expert in a particular field. According to Alex Moskalyuk every new user starts off with 100 points, and can spend those points asking a question. The cost of the question can be 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 or 100 points. Logging in daily earns a user 5 points, every answer to a question is worth 2 points, and rating a specific answer if worth 1 point. The best answer gets all the points paid by the user who asked that question, providing motivation for answering higher-priced questions first. Whether these points can be purchased or redeemed for cash or something else of value was not clear from the translated version of the site or the post announcing the service on Google’s Russia Blog.

The Google Russian team notes that they are particularly pleased to announce that Russia is the first country “where we are launching this service”, a sure sign that Google is planning on rolling out the new Google Answers to other countries, possibly worldwide in the future.

Google Answers was an innovator in the online Q&A market and yet its model of paid experts answering questions failed dismally against free and open competitors including Answers.com and Yahoo Answers. The new Google Answers will still face that same competition today. Google must have something planned for the service to help it compete this time around; it’s not clear from the Russian version what secret recipe Google has planned but it surely wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice. Yahoo has nothing to fear quite yet, but it does look like the Q&A space may well get interesting again in the near future.

iTaggit aims to change the way people collect, organize, and enjoy their personal items and collections by providing a service to catalog collections online.

iTaggit provides an online environment for cataloguing, managing, and sharing collections of items, while preserving user and data privacy. The site features community resources, where users can connect and interact with friends, like-minded collectors, and experts. Recent upgrades include an Add Item Wizard, a Flickr-like picture uploader, an Amazon import tool, and Item Publisher.

The best way of describing iTaggit is as a personal asset management service. If you’re a hobbyist or someone who likes cataloguing collections then iTaggit will appeal; although notably this would likely be a relatively small vertical.

iTaggit took $1.04 million Series A financing round in August 2006 and makes revenue from eBay and similar affiliate advertising programs.

I just posted on the Swaptree private beta and upcoming launch. You can actually join right now, and there are no limits on signups. Just go to swaptree.com/techcrunch.htm and follow the instructions. Let me know what you think.

I was sure trading site Swaptree had been abandoned. After a flurry of press about them over a year ago, they went very quiet. Potential investors told me they’d just stopped returning calls completely. My own emails went unanswered as well. They had the smell of death about them.

But it wasn’t so. It turns out Swaptree had merely gone quiet and was focused on building out the product. They are now in private beta and say they will launch to the public in just a few days, on July 4.

Like Peerflix and LaLa, Swaptree is focused on letting users trade certain stuff with other users. Users can trade CDs, DVDs, video games and books.

To use it, you build two lists. The first is a list of items you are willing to trade. You can simply type in the UPC code or ISBN of the item – Swaptree will then add a picture and other important information. The second list is made up of things you want. This list can be created by clicking on items on the Swaptree site, or even easier ways like importing your Amazon wish list or using a plugin to click on items on Amazon directly and have them included on your Swaptree “wish list”.

Swaptree will then look at your demand list and supply list and try to set up trades for you. To make things simple, Swaptree assumes you’re willing to give up any item on your trade list for any item you want. They will then set up a trade, using as many as four users to make it happen. That way, the person with the item you want doesn’t need to want something you have.

The only way the model will work is if Swaptree gets a lot of users who each add a lot of items they want, and are willing to trade. To help things, Swaptree doesn’t charge anything for trades – you only have to pay the outbound postage on the item you are sending. The company will make money from advertising on the site.

There’s a subset of viral video sits that have been popping up focusing on verticals. One of the more recent entrants was the comedy site Funny Or Die, which made waves when Will Ferrell’s short sketch “The Landlord” exploded across the net (over 36,539,017 views). Monster Dare joins DareJunkies in bringing dares to social video. The idea is a bit like a softer version of MTV’s Jackass Mixed with the competition site Bix.

Monster Dare is a social network where you can wager money on daring your friends or the general public. Each of the dares is broken down into categories like romantic, challenging, or even x rated. When a dare is declared, members can donate to a money pot to entice anyone or a specific person to carry it out. They can collect on the dare if they provide photographic or video proof for the audience. By contrast, Dare Junkies has a large pot that users are competing over, which goes as high as $5,000 for any of the challenges they put on the site.

Since Monster Dare’s payments are made through PayPal, they are somewhat bogged down with transaction fees that may kill the service. They charge 50p if you deposit £5, but nothing on depositing higher amounts. They also charge a flat £1.50 for removing money and take 10% from winning dare funds.

You don’t hear the name “Feedster” very often any more, other than the occasional joke about how they managed to execute even more poorly than Technorati. I frankly assumed they were among the walking dead – the place startups go when they don’t have pressure to shut down but don’t have enough money or human assets to do anything interesting, either. The last time we wrote about them was February 2006, more than a year ago.

But it appears that Feedster is alive and kicking – they launched a major redesign today, and a new widget product that allows searchers to quickly add search results to any website. They also have a new search engine, they say, that helps reduce spam.

It looks like there are a few hiccups with the widget – I created and embedded one but it won’t load properly.

My opinion: When a company gets this sick and falls this far behind, and the market they are in is now dominated by Google, it’s generally a good idea to return what’s left of capital to shareholders and let the employees move on to more interesting projects. Nothing good is going to happen with Feedster. I’m not particularly impressed with their search results (this will not pull users from Technorati or Google Blog Search), and few people will be interested in the widget (not that Technorati releases stuff like this all the time, they just don’t talk about it).

Read this excellent post by James Hong, co-founder of the nearly seven year-old startup HotorNot. He talks about the history of the startup, and touches on where it might be going in the future.

A lot of this I wrote about last month after interviewing Hong, but there’s lot of additional information that people will find fascinating. The company never raised venture capital, and was throwing off a significiant amount of cash early on. As free dating competitors emerged, however, the popularity of the site declined. They responded by going free as well (killing a $500,000/month revenue stream), and traffic has doubled to around 20 million daily page views.

HotorNot is now looking more like a traditional startup – they’ve converted to a C corporation and are giving stock options to employees. That suggests a sale or venture financing might be coming up in the near future. Of course, the amount of fun that Hong and cofounder Jim Young are having.

My favorite stat about HotorNot: Up to ten marriages per day can be tracked to couples who originally met at the site.