Demand Media, a big buyer and operator of Internet domain name companies, completed negotiations to acquire Austin-based Pluck last night after about two months of negotiations. The price is not being disclosed but is rumored to be in the $50 million range. Update: We’ve confirmed the number from an inside source – $75 million, all cash. Pluck revenues are around $10 million/year.

Pluck raised $17 million in three rounds of funding.

Pluck never really lived up to expectations and the price paid is certainly less than investors had hoped for when writing their checks. The team certainly is scrappy, though, and quick to adapt. They had a promising RSS reader in the early days but eventually discontinued that product. They also released a Delicious-like social bookmarking site called Shadows that was also discontinued. Their most recent strategy is a suite of products that brings social networking features and blog content into big publishing sites. USAToday is a high profile customer.

Los Angeles based Demand Media was founded by former MySpace CEO Richard Rosenblatt. The company has been buying content sites and is said to be preparing for a 2009 IPO, economy permitting. Their last round, $100 million, was announced in September 2007. They’ve raised a total of $320 million to date.

Less than twelve hours after I posted that USAToday’s traffic appears to be going the wrong way, they issue a press release saying traffic is way up.

USATODAY.com, recorded a 20% year-over year increase in traffic for the month of July 2007 and a month-over-month growth of 24% according to Nielsen/NetRatings. It was also reported that more than 10.6 million unique visitors came to USATODAY.com in the month of July.

Much of the increase was attributed to the Simpson’s Movie (the site held a contest around it) and an exclusive interview with Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

This was issued way too fast to have been a response to my post, so the timing is coincidental. I also received an email from Pluck CEO Dave Panos, who says that their social networking tools are doing very well on USAToday’s site. He says “The results that USA Today has received from our social media tools has been absolutely phenomenal and usage continues to skyrocket each and every month. I wish I was a liberty to give you the specific metrics — but they are staggering.”

Well, if the results are indeed “staggering,” (in a good way) the Comscore data must be pointing the wrong way. That’s good news for USAToday, and even better news for Pluck.

But the situation isn’t certain. The Comscore data I posted only went through June. The data released today is for July. A 24% traffic increase from June to July is too much of a jump, too. As they said in the press release, the Simpson’s contest and the Rowling interview probably helped drive most or all of the gains.

What would be ideal is if USAToday or Pluck published a case study on the results of the social network experiment to date.

When USAToday relaunched its site in March as a social network around news, I and others thought it was big news.

They integrated Pluck’s new Social Media Suite, a group of social networking products that a number of high profile news sites have adopted. Overnight, USAToday went from being an old school news site to something much different. Readers could now create profiles, comment on articles, vote to recommend articles to others (very Digg-like), etc.

On Pluck’s Social Media Suite product page, the number one selling point to publishers is “Drive site traffic and increase page views.” Given the insane ability of social networks to drive traffic, this seems like a fairly safe promise to make. But so far, the data we have says it hasn’t paid off in terms of unique visitors or page views for USAToday.

Here’s the Compete.com data, showing monthly visitors down from 14 million in March to about 10 million today, a 29% drop in unique visitors. I added in the New York Times and Washington Post for comparison purposes – both are at about even levels with March.

Comscore also shows a decline, although a smaller one. March unique visitors were 7.3 million; June was 6.3 million – a 14% drop. Total pageviews were 70 million in March v. 59 million in June – a 16% drop.

Neither Comscore or Compete are perfect, but the trend seems to suggest the relaunch isn’t performing well. At the very least unique visitors and page views aren’t spiking upwards, perhaps as USA Today and Pluck anticipated. There is no doubt that the Pluck products are very solid products, but perhaps news and social networking just don’t mix.

Update: USAToday issues a press release saying traffic is, actually, way up.

A few weeks ago we posted 9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network, a review of several hosted, do-it-yourself white label social networking solutions. Conspicuously missing from that round-up were many additional companies that specialize in the creation of social networks. These companies were intentionally overlooked in the first post because we wanted to focus on self-service websites. In this second post, we cover these remaining companies, all of which offer either made-to-order solutions or downloadable software.

When reviewing Ning, KickApps, et al., I was able to test the products first-hand by creating social networks from scratch and for free using online wizards and tools. Testing this second post’s solutions was more difficult because they all require the formation of business relationships and/or local installation and configuration. But we were able to test many of the launched social networks that actually use these solutions, and we also interviewed several of the companies.

Detailed information about the companies is presented in the interactive chart to the right, which features additional information in popups and the ability to select only particular companies for comparison.

The following companies are included in the chart: Affinity Circles, AlstraSoft, Blogtronix, Boonex, Broadband Mechanics, Converdge, Crowd Factory, DZOIC, GoLightly, introNetworks, Kwiqq, Leverage, Lithium, LiveWorld, Neighborhood America, Omnifuse, Pringo, Prospero, SelectMinds, Small World Labs, Social Platform, Sparta Social Networks, Telligent, ThePort, VMIX Media, Web Crossing, Web Scribble Solutions, and Webligo.

(Update: Awareness has been added to the chart, raising the total to 35)

Not included are Dave Networks, Five Across (absorbed by Cisco), PHPizabi, Pluck, and Village Engine because they did not respond to our inquiries. phpFox responded but opted not to fill out our questionnaire.

Your initial reaction may be “wow, this market sure looks overcrowded.” In the longer run, competitive pricing may force many of these companies to drop out of the business. However, I was surprised to hear several of them say that current demand for social networking services is overwhelmingly high. One of the representatives I spoke with half-kiddingly said that he did not actually want TechCrunch coverage of his company because he already has to turn down multiple project requests per week. It will be interesting to see over the next few years whether this demand further intensifies as potential customers realize the value of niche social networks, or whether it slackens as people get over the hype surrounding this aspect of Web 2.0.

Many of these companies are targeting large, well-established organizations with deep pockets. Scan the chart and you will see big-name media companies, educational institutions, and corporations such as Reuters, Campbells Soup, Harvard Business School, Citrix, Oracle, HP, Microsoft, Fortune, Cingular, Comcast, Land Rover, American Express, ABC News, ESPN, and HotMomsClub.com (okay, so they’re not all big names).

The companies in this round-up have some advantages over those in the first round-up when it comes to providing for well-established organizations. First, these companies can protect and enhance their clients’ brands by delivering highly-tailored social network components that integrate seamlessly into existing websites. This is especially true for the subset of social networking companies that provide made-to-order solutions rather than downloadable packages. However, even downloadable software can (at least theoretically) be retooled by the clients’ developers to match an existing look and feel.

Secondly, many of these companies provide greater ownership of social network data and/or software. While a groupie running a Smashing Pumpkins fan network on Ning does not care that the network’s data is locked up in Ning’s system, Wells Fargo and Ernst & Young prefer to keep their communication systems much closer to the vest. Corporations often need to know that their data is safe and trackable for both dependability and legal reasons. Social network ownership is often ensured by putting the software and data management entirely on the client’s servers, or as is the case with Blogtronix, delivering the hardware and software together as an appliance, if demanded. However, even the hosted solutions among these companies eagerly emphasize that they respect their clients’ ultimate ownership of data on their servers.

Thirdly, several of these companies claim to develop closer, longer-lasting relationships with their clients. They provide information sessions at the beginning of their relationships, collaborate during the design process, and may even help market the social networks and provide ongoing content moderation support.

Fourthly, these companies can be very flexible when it comes to how much of the work their clients want to take on themselves. While they all provide complete social networking packages, many also support the widgetization of their features so clients can embed social networking functionality in regular pages. Some, such as Crowd Factory, also allow for the client to take complete responsibility for front-end programming and use an API to plug into a full-service back-end.

While all of these companies provide social networking functionality, they differentiate themselves in several ways. AlstraSoft, Blogtronix, Boonex, Broadband Mechanics, DZOIC, phpFox, PHPizabi, Telligent, Web Scribble Solutions, and Webligo form the minority that provide non-hosted solutions (although Blogtronix and Broadband Mechanics provide software as a service, or SaaS, solutions as well, and others might be willing to locally install their traditionally hosted platforms).

Some of them, such as Crowd Factory, Prospero, and Neighborhood America mostly concentrate on serving media companies. Affinity Circles provides job-oriented social networking solutions for alumni networks and trade associations. SelectMinds exclusively builds private networks for the employees of corporations. And Kwiqq aims to become a long-standing technology partner with the companies it serves.

A few provide unique features not found in your average social network. Leverage and introNetworks both have strikingly similar visualization features that enable network members to easily locate other members who share their backgrounds and interests. DZOIC’s Handshakes Professional product allows members to save their searches and get notified when new members match search criteria. ThePort, which has been around since 1999 and focuses on creating niche communities, differentiates itself by integrating its social networks with its own news aggregation and start page services.

Speaking of older companies, the players in this market also vary significantly in age (at least when considered in light of other Web 2.0 companies). The oldest of the group, Web Crossing, was founded in 1986, and others were originally born as Web 1.0 companies: LiveWorld in 1996, and Neighborhood America and Sparta Social Networks in 1999, for example. As representatives for Prospero (founded in 2000) attest, these older companies have needed to changed their focus in the last couple of years to accommodate a new preference for “me” technologies over “we” technologies. However, these companies also claim that their experience, business relationships, and internal structure have prepared them well for this transition and equipped them to deliver mature products.

Check out the chart for more detailed information about these companies. If you have personally dealt with any of these companies, please share your experience in the comments below.

USATODAY relaunched its website yesterday with a parade of new features that will add a significant social layer to the site that wasn’t there before. The website is no longer a simple hose spouting news at readers. It has become a full on social network, integrating user generated content in intelligent and interesting ways.

The list is sort of ho-hum at first – bigger pictures, better tabs, etc. But then there are a whole bevy of social feature as well. A few of the features are below. A full list is here. They’ve also integrated various Ajax components to the site – nothing over the top, but enough to make the interface a lot more pleasant to navigate.

New Features:

• User Comments: Every article now has user comments.
• Most Popular: Read articles based on popularity rather than in the order assigned by USATODAY editors. Articles are ranked by Most Read, Most Commented, Most Recommended (see below) and Most Emailed.
• Digg-Like Article Voting: Click “recommend” on an article and the vote tally increases by 1. Highly recommended articles appear under the “Most Popular” tab.
• Profile Pages: Registered users have their own page that aggregates their comments, recommended articles and other content.

Unlike some of the tepid experiments tried by other major publications, these show an intelligent commitment to building community at the site. Steve Rubel says they haven’t gone far enough, and suggest additional features. I don’t disagree, but this is a big commitment already by one of the largest mainstream media publications in the world. Let’s hope the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and others follow soon.

Update: Allen Stern has a good video overview of the new features.

In a blog post yesterday, Flock’s Mike Dosik announced that they will no longer support the Shadows bookmarking service (Shadows is a product of Pluck) in the upcoming Flock 2.0 release. A number of angry Flock users commented on the post, wanting to know why.

Co-founder Geoffrey Arone stepped in with an explanation:

“Shadows is owned by the Pluck Corporation, who is doing quite well in their core business focused around social media. However, they have decided to de-emphasize the Shadows bookmarks product to focus on their other products.”

This looks to go beyond a simple partnership expiring – Pluck has been phasing out consumer facing products for some time (they announced their RSS reader will be shut down in January 2007) in favor of its new Blogburst publishing platform. In an email exchange this evening, Pluck CEO Dave Panos told me that Blogburst is “getting 100% of our attention” and “we haven’t added any new capabilities [for Shadows] since this Spring.”

That leaves Flock users with just one choice for social bookmarking: del.icio.us. Something tells me they’ll make do somehow.

And Shadows, which we note seems to have a 20 second load time this evening, enters the TechCrunch DeadPool.

More Flock coverage here.

Syndication is undoubtedly the heartbeat of the web 2.0 movement. A feed reader, the most common solution to consuming synidcated content, saves the user time by monitoring countless sites and sources and providing near real-time updates to one location.

There are a number of different types of readers: web-based, desktop, Outlook based, etc… This post is focused solely on web-based feed readers. I’ve included the big guys plus some up and coming readers with outstanding features and/or performance like News Alloy, Gritwire, Attensa and FeedLounge.

All the web-based feed readers reviewed are free except for FeedLounge, which charges $5 per month.

The Web-based Feed Readers

I examined nine web-based feed readers (for previous reviews of each of these, see the TechCrunch Index):

• Attensa Online
• Bloglines
• FeedLounge
• Google Reader
• Gritwire
• News Alloy
• NewsGator Online
• Pluck Web Edition
• Rojo

I did not evaluate MyYahoo, the most widely used web-based reader, or similar products like Live.com, Google IG and Netvibes because these are more virtual desktop applications or portals with RSS reading built in. Heavy RSS users need a more industrial strength application like the ones I have listed above. I believe MyYahoo is a great option for a quick read of your feeds or for on the go feed readers viewing the Internet via cell phone or handheld device, but this service does not have the feature set for a heavy information consumer.

Researching these nine readers further underscores the extremely competitive atmosphere surrounding this industry’s development. On a feature-set basis only, two companies stood out: Rojo and Bloglines.

Google Reader and FeedLounge won my subjective feed-load test, which determines how well the application pulls up a particular feed. The test consisted of loading five feeds and taking the average of the load times and rating the reader on a five-point scale. Interestingly, FeedLounge is the only premium service of the group at $5 a month. Aside from the exceptional performance rating, I wonder what else sets FeedLounge apart from its free competitors. However, many users are religious about readers with a three pane display that FeedLounge, Attensa and Gritwire all offer.

Web 2.0 Features

Rojo, a San Francisco-based company which was reviewed previously on TechCrunch, has the most prominent web 2.0 swagger. News Alloy offers a close second though with itís tagging, rating and other content repositioning (i.e. add to Digg, add to del.icio.us).

User Ratings: Several of the readers offer rating systems, but I think Rojo’s “Mojo” is the most appealing. Mojo, a term reflecting user-generated reviews, mirrors a feature on the popular social news aggregator digg. After entering an item in the feed you can Mojo it to boost its relevance. NewsGator Online also offers a user generated content feature called “Latest Buzz,” which determines and displays the number of people linking to items in NewsGator. News Alloy employs a rating system similar to Rojo that tallies the number of times someone rates an item.

Tagging: Rojo generates a tag cloud from user-generated tags. Google Reader offers the same feature under a different name, “labels.” It seems FeedLounge uses tagging as the sole search and discovery mechanism. News Alloy also allows tagging of posts.

Social Aspects: Rojo and Gritwire feature “contacts,” which adds a social aspect to the reader, allowing a user to share information within a network of contacts.

Feed Discovery & Recommendations: Pluck, a Texas-based social media company, built a feature called FeedFinder into its Web Edition, which improves feed discovery. Rojo recommendations feeds in the top right corner of the layout while you browse.

Up and Coming Readers

Attensa, a Portland-based company, offers a reader that has a very professional and clean interface. While lacking many features the rest of the pack has, it pulls feeds up very quickly. In talking with Matthew Bookspan, Attensa’s Director of Product, I learned Attensa will be launching a new and improved version of the web-based reader that should fare better on the comparison chart. Additionally, Attensa will soon offer a mobile-enabled view of its reader, rendering nicely in handheld devices or cell phones.

Gritwire, a company based just north of Chicago, boasts a Flash-based feed reader that performs very well and offers integrated social networking features similar to Rojo. Gritwire uses a contact-list approach that allows you to share feeds among friends. I spoke with Ian Carswell, Gritwire’s co-founder and COO, who said Gritwire has more web 2.0 features in store, and I am curious to see them in action.

News Alloy, offers an Ajax driven reader with lots of power user bells and whistles. Though it underperformed in the subjective feed-load test Mike reviewed it previously on TechCrunch and found it to be extremely fast in other operations.

Feature Comparison Chart

The chart summarizes the research conducted in comparing these readers. I was not able to speak with every company directly so I may have missed some details. Consider this chart a living document to be updated if additional information becomes available. Also, I have left a number of competitors off this chart – there are so many web-based readers and I had to limit research to what I consider the main players in the field.

Summary

If you are looking purely for performance, Google Reader and FeedLounge are the fastest in our tests. Bloglines and Rojo are the best choice if you are looking for a feature rich application (and Rojo blows Bloglines away on “web 2.0″ type features).

None, however, yet approach the speed and agility of the best desktop based readers like NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.

Editor’s Note: Frank Gruber, who writes the excellent blog Somewhat Frank, accepted our offer to write this research piece on TechCrunch. Thank you, Frank.

Update: March 31, 2006 (updates to chart)

Pluck demo’d a new product called BlogBurst at our party last night. The service is live but Pluck has not pushed it out for publicity yet.

BlogBurst is a service that takes topical content from pre-approved blogs and provides it to publishers (online newspapers, etc.) for republication. Blogs that apply and are accepted are categorized (TechCrunch would be “science and technology”. BlogBurst editors choose great content from those blogs for republication. For more information on how BlogBurst works with publishers, see this page. Bloggers must provide a full text RSS feed to participate, with no included ads in the feed.

Participating publishers have “workbench” tools to map content to specific areas of their site. Integration is “via simple JavaScript calls or robust SOAP or XML APIs“.

BlogBurst charges publishers for this service. They do not share revenue with bloggers, although each post has a byline and attribution/link back to the blog. For most bloggers, this extra traffic and attention will be very welcome.

BlogBurst already has a number of top publishers signed up, including the SF Chronicle, Washington Post, Houston Chronicle and San Antonia Express-News.

Disclaimer: I am an unpaid advisor to BlogBurst, and have done paid consulting work for Pluck in the past.

I had an early peak at Shadows while it was still in beta, back in July. Shadows is a Pluck product.

Last week, Pluck took the beta tag off of Shadows and released v 1.0. Dave Panos, Pluck’s CEO, gave me a walk through of the new functionality last night.

Shadows is a social bookmarking site with good features, and all of the expected bells and whistles. But the reason I like it so much is that they’ve come up with a really interesting application for all the bookmark data they collect – shadow pages.

If you choose to install their toolbar, you can click on “Shadow Page” from any web page and be redirected to that page’s Shadow Page. This page is a collection of metadata gathered from user bookmarks.

For instance, here is the Shadow Page for Apple’s iPod Nano. The Shadow Page includes notes from users who have bookmarked the iPod Nano web page, a tag cloud of tags used to describe the page, users who’ve tagged it, etc. A user can choose to make any bookmark private, but any public bookmarks are included on the Shadow Page.

It’s a really unique product and a good twist on social bookmarking.

Shadows also has set up groups, like this one for Web 2.0. Links are automatically collected here by users who tag pages with “web2.0″. There is also a tab for a general discussion that any user can participate in.

The fact that all of this metadata for websites is being collected is not that interesting. What is interesting is that anyone can access this site metadata (and only that site’s metadata) by simply clicking a button in a toolbar.

Shadows has been slowly building up a loyal user base, many of which are interested in highly niche content. An example is this Shadow Page on Harry Potter. An entire community has emerged around this page, with users writing their own Harry Potter fiction, thousands of discussion items, etc. As more groups are formed (and users will soon have the ability to create a group on the fly, based on how they tag a page), more of these microcommunities will sprout, generating lots of page views for Shadows.

Pluck (previous profiles) is quietly building a very nice suite of web 2.0 products (see Shadows as well).

They announced two new products on September 12 – InSite RSS and InSite Blogging. Both products are aimed at online content publishers, particularly online newspapers. Both can generate significant revenue for Pluck, as they charge for these services. Pluck also announced their first customer for these products.

I spoke with Dave Panos, the CEO of Pluck, via email about these products and their first customer deal.

InSite RSS

InSite RSS is a tool to allow sites to integrate RSS feed content directly into their websites, adding significant stickiness to their users.

InSite RSS: Allows publishers to provide their readers with personalized news services that leverage millions of available RSS feeds. With InSite RSS, portals can deliver a “My News” style offering, giving users control over feed discovery, subscription and consumption. InSite RSS keeps sites on par with major web portals and ensures that all feed source providers are referenced and linked to appropriately. InSite RSS leverages Pluck’s award-winning consumer RSS technology and Pluck’s FeedFinder service for RSS feed discovery.

InSite Blogging

With InSite Blogging, site users/readers can create their own blogs. For sites with a local focus, like online newspapers, this can be a very effective tool for adding stickiness, as well as increasing content creation on local issues. While editorial control can be an issue (as the LA Times found out quite painfully), this can be a way for newspapers with an online presence to stop the customer bleeding they’ve had to suffer over the years.

InSite Blogging: A hosted, managed solution that enables publishers to offer community blogging as part of their web sites. The service allows publishers and web portals to offer readers a fully-featured citizen journalism program complete with photos, community tools, tagging, categorization, management and reporting. Once embedded into a web site, the service opens new sources of content and contextual advertising space while building reader loyalty and page views. InSite Blogging is built on technology Pluck acquired earlier in 2005 from EasyJournal, a third-generation community of hundreds of thousands of active bloggers.

First Customer

Pluck also announced their first customer for Insite Blogging – The Austin American-Statesman, a Cox newspaper and Central Texas’ leading daily newspaper (it basically owns Austin).

The blogging sites can be seen here and here. An example blog (lots have sprung up after only a few days) can be seen here (see screen shot also).

Library Clips and Outsell Now also blogs about Pluck’s new products.

Congratulations to Pluck. If they can get traction in this space, there is a real revenue opportunity for these products.

Company: Pluck
Previous Profiles: July 16, 2005 (Pluck for Firefox), July 18, 2005 (shadows)

Pluck Launched Three Product Updates:

Pluck announced three product updates on August 9, 2005 – Pluck 2.0 for Internet Explorer, Firefox and their Web product (web product image on left). A key new feature is that all of these products syncronize feeds (and will hopefully syncronized read/unread posts in the next version).

Pluck also does an excellent job of explaining what RSS is, and how to subscribe to feeds for new RSS/Atom users. See, for instance, the Pluck tour here and “What is RSS” here.

An excerpt of the press release follows:

Pluck Version 2.0 Delivers Cross-Platform Suite of RSS Readers for Firefox, Internet Explorer and the Web

AUSTIN, Texas (August 9, 2005) Pluck Corp. unveiled Version 2.0 of the industry’s #1 browser-based RSS reader for Internet Explorer and extended the product line with RSS readers for Firefox and the web. The product suite is the first in the RSS space to allow users to synchronize important web information, such as RSS web feeds and bookmarks, between different computers, web browsers and operating systems. Pluck is available for free at www.pluck.com.

The product suite released today includes a major upgrade to the Pluck Internet Explorer Edition and the Pluck Web Edition, and also introduces a new product called Pluck Firefox Edition for use in the popular and fast growing Firefox web browser. Pluck Firefox Edition offers advanced RSS aggregation and management within the Firefox browser, enabling Firefox users to easily organize, view, store and share RSS Web feeds, Internet search results, web pages and other information in easy-to-view folders. Like all Pluck RSS readers, Pluck Firefox Edition includes the ability to search on topics of interest for relevant web feeds, and imports existing collections of bookmarks and Web feed subscriptions.

The new Pluck 2.0 upgrade to all three products in the suite provides active Internet users with a rich set of features and capabilities that enhances the way they find, access and manage web information. Features available with this release include:

* Synchronization: Enables users to automatically access and synchronize their bookmarks and RSS web feeds between multiple computers (PC, Macs, etc.), different web browsers (Firefox, IE and more) and Internet enabled devices so RSS content is always available at work or at home.
* Significant UI improvements: Improved user experience in all aspects of RSS reading, bookmark organization and subscription management. This new experience is designed to ease the RSS learning curve and increase adoption rates for RSS.
* FeedFinder: This new feed discovery engine from Pluck dramatically improves the relevancy of feed searches and opens new ways for users to discover web feeds. With FeedFinder, users can find feeds of interest by browsing a feed taxonomy, reviewing featured RSS web feeds and submitting keyword searches across Pluck’s large cache of feeds gathered from around the Internet.
* Power Search Tools: Allows users to send search queries to multiple search engines via one click and in one view, saving time and improving the quality of results.

All Pluck products are free of charge.

Pluck made TechCrunch a “featured feed” today (Link). For new subscribers (and there have been a bunch – thanks Pluck), we apologize for the slow review day today. We are still recovering from the AlwaysOn conference. Tomorrow’s weekly wrapup will be a great one, though, and we have a ton of great reviews coming up!

For those of you looking for the best RSS aggregator on the market, check out Pluck’s new Firefox extension (our profile). And Shadows (our profile), their brand new bookmarking service with the awesome shadow pages functionality was definitely the buzz at AlwaysOn.

Thanks Pluck!

Editor’s Note: Today is Social Bookmarking day, with profiles of Simpy and now Shadows. Simpy went out on TechCrunch today because they’ve been releasing new functionality that we really like. Shadows has only been out for a couple of weeks, and will make a public appearance at the AlwaysOn conference at Stanford this week (say hello to me if you are there), and so we thought it was the right time to profile them as well.

Service: Shadows

Launched: Two weeks ago

Located: Austin, TX (this is a Pluck company)

What is it?

Pluck is up to something, and we like it. Last week they released version 2.0 of their Firefox extension (see our profile), which we are still drooling over (it’s fast). Two weeks ago they very quietly launched Shadows, which is a social bookmarking site. Our understanding from Dave Panos, their CEO, and Andrew Busey, the co-founder, is that they will be publicly announcing Shadows this week at AlwaysOn in Stanford.

As we mentioned with Simpy, Shadows should be compared to other social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, Furl, Yahoo My Web 2.0, and others.

Shadows has a single drawback: they absolutely require an IE or firefox toolbar installation in order to bookmark pages on the fly. This takes up valuable screen real estate and is generally annoying.

However, the functionality more than makes up for the real estate loss – this is a toolbar we are going to keep, and there’s a good reason. Not only does the toolbar allow saving and tagging of pages, but it also allows you to view a “shadow page” of the current URI. The shadow page shows tags added by users, comments and other meta-data, which is very useful. Here is content from the shadow page for Techcrunch (which is somewhat biased since as of now we are the only user to have added meta-data for Techcrunch:-)):

Link

Shadows seems to have all of the high end functionality of the other social bookmarking services (with the exception of a server cache of the site?). One thing we haven’t figured out – there is an ability to add friends but we don’t know what functionality comes with adding friends since users set bookmars as either public or private. We like the delicious and furl-like popup up when bookmarking a page:

They also have shadow pages, as mentioned above, and a nifty feature called “ubertags“, which are pre-defined tags like experts, cool, etc., many of which we have attributed to TechCrunch, of course.

Overall, Shadows is very cool and we look forward to the official launch.

Management:

Dave Panos – Chief Executive Officer (co-founder)
Andrew Busey – Executive Vice President (co-founder)
Link

Investors:

Austin Ventures
Mayfield
Link

Relevant Links:

FAQ, SurfersSurf, Texas Venture Capital Blog, Somewhat Frank

Tags: shadows, delicious, del.icio.us, simpy, furl, socialbookmarking, socialbookmarks, bookmarks, techcrunch, web2.0, rss, pluck

Company: Pluck (For Firefox)

Launch Date: June 13, 2005 (2.0 Beta for Firefox)

What is it?

Pluck has a number of excellent products, including a web based RSS reader that competes with Bloglines, NewsGator and others (see our Bloglines v. Newsgator post) as well as an IE plugin that is very popular.

They’ve also quietly launched a social bookmarking site called Shadows that will have increased functionality added next week.

Pluck has been testing a plugin for Firefox for a couple of months, and released the 2.0 Beta on Wednesday. It has been very well received (over 3,000 downloads so far).

It’s this product, the Firefox 2.0 beta, that is being profiled here.

Quick Summary: Its awesome because it is feature rich and faster than any aggregator I’ve seen. It also seems to update feeds quite fast. I will switch to permanently this from Bloglines as soon as the updated features are launched.

This is a Firefox extension, so the download is quick and, unlike their IE plugin, most of the work is done at the server level. The product is therefore much more like their “web edition” than “Pluck for IE”.

Importing feeds via OPML was a snap. I was able to quickly organize them into folders and generally get set up.

I spoke with Matthew Bookspan at Pluck about the product yesterday (Pluck was also nice enough to offer for us to be a beta tester a month ago but we failed miserably in following up). See Matt’s blog post on the release of the product here.

Matt assures us that those few features that we found lacking are on the bug/feature list to be added soon.

Features:

- Syncronizes feeds automatically accross all Pluck Products
- easy feed import via OPML
- works well with tabbed browsing (open feeds in tabs)
- publish/share folders
- bolds feeds with new content
- choices on RSS feed updates
- seems to run very, very fast
- easy to save posts/clippings
- notification of feed updates – a little toast window above the pluck icon in the status bar:

Upcoming Features:

- show number of subscribers per feed
- show number of unread items within a feed
- check all as “read”
- syncing of read/unread accross Pluck Products (one of the biggest problems in the industry right now)

Additional Screen Shots:

Management:

Dave Panos – Chief Executive Officer (co-founder)
Andrew Busey – Executive Vice President (co-founder)
Link

Investors:

Austin Ventures
Mayfield
Link

Relevant Links:

Pluck Blog, About, New Features, Discussion Forum, Trevor’s Blog, Feed Readers Watch

Tags: Pluck, Firefox, RSS, Atom, RSSReaders, Techcrunch, Web2.0