Dow Jones Web Ventures Press Release

Ten Start-Ups Picked As Web Ventures’ BestBy Zoran Basich 3/21/2008Redwood City, Calif.–Ten companies were given top marks by attendees and expert panelists at VentureWire’s Web Ventures 2008 conference this week.The conference, held in Redwood City, Calif., and subtitled “Making Internet Investments Click,” featured two days of panel presentations and keynotes by venture capital professionals and company executives, and breakout sessions in which start-up companies presented their business plans.Here are the top ten companies from the breakout sessions (in alphabetical order), chosen through a combination of audience voting through a text-messaging service provided by Zuku; popularity of the presentations as judged by the number of attendees in each session; and voting by the expert panel of VCs:BuzzLogic Inc., San Francisco, a provider of online advertising technology within social media. The company allows advertising to tap the ongoing conversations taking place on social networks and blogs and leveraging contextual advertising to engage those audiences. http://www.buzzlogic.com

ChaCha Search Inc., Carmel, Ind., a service that allows users to text questions to human guides and receive the answer within minutes. The name is derived from the number users can text to: 242242, or “chacha” on a mobile keypad. http://www.chacha.com

Get Satisfaction Unlimited Inc., San Francisco, a connector of customers and companies. Companies can use the service - which allows for feedback, idea generation and brand-building conversations - as a complement to their traditional customer service or even the primary conduit to its customers. http://www.getsatisfaction.com

Gigya Inc., Palo Alto, Calif., a company providing free technology for content publishers and widget developers. Through Gigya, content can be installed on a users’ social network profile page, blog, bookmarking site or desktop, or it can be e-mailed to friends. It also features a widget ad network designed to guarantee installs on a pay-for-performance basis. The company is targeting large brand advertisers and helping them create and distribute their widgets. http://www.gigya.com

Komli/PubMatic, Palo Alto, Calif., a provider of online advertising services, with an online ad network in India, as well as a system to help Web publishers identify appropriate ad networks and improve the layout of their ads. http://www.komli.com

Lending Club Corp., Sunnyvale, Calif., a social lending network where members borrow and lend money among themselves. Borrowers can receive an interest rate on average 25% lower than bank loans and credit cards, and lenders have been earning a return of 12%. http://www.lendingclub.com

Meebo Inc., a Web instant message service in more than 50 different languages that allows users to access multiple IM accounts within one Web page. Third party developers can also create applications that run on the service. http://www.meebo.com

RealTime Content Ltd., Ipswich, England, a developer of technology to tailor video ads to individual Web users. Video ad segments are tagged with data that can later be matched to personal information existing within a users’ computer. The completed, personalized videos are assembled in real time as a user clicks on a Web site. http://www.realtimecontent.com

Triggit Inc., San Francisco, a developer of technology that enables long-tail publishers and bloggers to source and optimize ads from multiple networks and integrate a variety of ad units with a drag-and-drop interface and track and optimize the results. Normally small publishers would have to set up these advertising relationships separately. http://www.triggit.com

WidgetBox Inc., San Francisco, a provider of free tools for developers to create widgets out of RSS feeds, blogs, images or Flash files, as well as the means to easily distribute the widgets. The company says it has 26,000 developers, 33,000 widgets in its gallery, 12 million daily widget-views, 15% of Facebook Inc. applications and 60% of Bebo Inc. applications. http://www.widgetbox.com

The panel of venture capitalists that helped select the top ten companies included: David Feinleib, partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures; David Hornik, general partner, August Capital; Will Price, former managing director, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, and CEO, WidgetBox Inc.; Barry Schuler, managing director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson; Chi-Hua Chien, partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers; Doug Pepper, partner, InterWest Partners; Scott Raney, partner, Redpoint Ventures; and David E. Siminoff, general partner, Venrock.