A coalition of non-profit organizations, technology developers, designers, marketers and others has unveiled the alpha version of a new Web service dubbed All for Good in an effort to build some sort of ‘Craigslist for volunteer services’. The metaphor stands, and not only because Craig Newmark from the popular free classifieds service is one of the backers of the project (Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post is also said to be on board).
All for Good basically lets you browse volunteer activities and find related events based on your geographical location and/or interests. The site brings together listings from organizations and local groups to help you find volunteer activities that fit your time and talent. If you ‘like’ a certain item, you can share it with your friends across various social networking services, hopefully spawning more attention and the possibility for the activity or event to spread virally within your network.

Conservative political pundit Tucker Carlson is planning to launch a political news competitor to the Huffington Post, reports The Hill today. The site will be called TheDailyCaller.com and will be focused on reporting news about the Obama Administration but will add “facts to the conversation.”
Implying that the Huffington Post’s coverage is biased, Carlson said that The DailyCaller will be dedicated to “telling the truth and be accurate.” The site’s reporters will share in the profits of the news site based on how much traffic reporters get for their stories. According to Carlson the site’s motto is “every seven minutes,” and will be speedier than its competitors, including HuffPo and The Drudge Report.

After showing hockey-stick growth leading up to the U.S. Presidential Elections, Twitter took a breather in November. According to comScore, unique U.S. visitors to Twitter.com grew less than one percent sequentially from October to 1.466 million. U.S. pageviews declined more precipitously to 19.7 million, from 37.2 million in October (a 47 percent decline).
These numbers suggest that about the same number of people are still visiting Twitter, but without all the election Tweets, they are only finding half as much to keep them interested.
We already knew The Huffington Post was looking for capital, but it turns out to be a little more than the $15 million the Times of London projected earlier. Kara Swisher says the political uber-blog network has in fact raised $25 million from Oak Investment Partners and will announce the news later this morning.
This third round brings the total amount of funding raised to a whopping $37 million. When The HuffPo raised its $5 million Series B round in September last year, we wondered how much it was worth. Kara’s source indicates the valuation is ‘just south of $100 million’.

The elections were good to the HuffingtonPost, the political uber-blog. It’s audience in the U.S. rose fivefold in the last year to 5 million monthly uniques in October, according to comScore. In what may turn out to be perfect market timing, the Times UK is reporting that the company is close to raising $15 million. In the past, it has raised a total of $12 million from investors including Softbank Capital, Greycroft Partners, Bob Pittman, and Ken Lerer.
As with all political sites, it is likely that the HuffPo’s traffic will dip now that the election fever is over. The question for investors, though, is whether its current levels represent a peak or, whether it can take advantage of its new-found audience to establish a solid, new traffic floor from which to keep growing. If you look at the HuffPo’s chart from Google Trends (above), it looks like traffic is at the very least plateauing so far in November, as you would expect.
Where does it go from here?
The Huffington Post hired CBSNews.com’s general manager Betsy Morgan as its new CEO. Current CEO Kenneth Lerer moves up to chairman. All the pieces are falling into place just in time for election season.
This should be fun to watch.
Can you say IPO?