Loomia raises $5 million to spread social-recommendation widgets

San Francisco-based Loomia, maker of personal-recommendation plug-in SeenThis, plans to announce Wednesday that it has brought in $5 million in a first round of funding from investors including Asset Management, Peacock Equity, and Telefonica Capital.

In late 2006, the company raised less than $1 million from a group of angel investors that included Ron Conway, Jeff Clavier, and Aydin Senkut.

Loomia, originally founded in 2005 as a recommendation service for podcasts, makes a downloadable application called SeenThis. The plug-in, which was introduced in late January, connects news, retail, and social-networking sites in such a way that users can learn what their friends are reading or buying on third-party sites. For example, SeenThis users can view what their friends from Facebook have been reading on the sites of The Wall Street Journal, NBC Universal, and CNET Networks, publisher of News.com. (These sites are partners of Loomia.)

The company plans to use the money to hire engineers, as well as sales and marketing staff. It currently employs less than 20 full-time people. Dave McMurtry, Loomia's CEO, said that Loomia will be announcing new partners soon, including social networks apart of Facebook.

[free_people]

Yet one more useless Web 2.0 company!

Great, yet one more San Francisco / Silicon Valley company that raises capital from the same Gang of VCs, who live in $20Mill houses, that funds all companies in San Francisco / Silicon Valley to put out yet another web service that does little real good and which easily can be duplicated by 2 software developers working from anywhere.

Instead Japanese give us Prius that gets 50 MPG, saving us 75% on Gas bills per month, French give us, well Europeans, TGV that goes center city to center city in lap of luxury while costing a fraction of air travel, Germans give us
Wind powered generators that generate electricity at a fraction of burning Coal or Oil, etc., etc., And what do we get from US San Francisco / Silicon Valley investors, yet one more Web 2.0 company that makes nothing cheaper or better!
As a result of which it generates NO sales what so ever, except to other portfolio companies of the same VCs and whose ONLY hope is to be bought out.

[gonumber2539]

Your are spot on Sir!

While there are some genuinely useful or fun 'Web 2.0' servies out there (let's not forget Web 1.0/3.0, such as Amazon and something my company is working on), this firm has come up with something that is a massive infringement on privacy. What if someone is reading about a sensitive medical subject or business competitor? Their friends will know of the medical issue (AIDS/Cancer etc) or if they are in business, a business colleague will be able to spy on their colleagues business interests - if you understand what I mean. This is terrible! Makes one want to cease using the Internet altogether. You are so correct about the technologies you mention. TGV etc. To be fair, some Silicon Valley VCs have invested in such tech, for example, Nanosolar and others.

[5errr]

widgets really seem to be everywhere these days