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The co-founders of Skype, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, are raising about $450 million for their London-based venture fund Atomico, according to a report from GigaOm.

Zennström and Friis, who also co-founded Joost and Kazaa, are heavily invested in European media companies through Atomico. The venture fund has put money into video upstarts Deca, WooMe and Seesmic, as well as the music site Last.fm, which sold to CBS for $280 million.

HopStop.com, an online and wireless guide to New York City transit information, said Monday it raised money from a group of private investors, including Yaron Galai, co-founder of search-advertising company Quigo. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The New York-based company also said that it now draws 8 million monthly page views and 1.5 million monthly visitors. Galai, who sold Quigo to AOL last year, will join HopStop's board of directors.

MeeVee, an online directory of TV listings and Internet video, has run into trouble in the crowded Web entertainment market.

The Burlingame, Calif.-based company announced in a press release late Monday that it is looking for an acquirer; and that it's already in talks with several potential suitors. The company would likely need to fetch a sizable price, considering that it's raised as much as $25 million in the last three years from venture capitalists including Walden Venture Capital and Labrador Ventures.

"Due to accelerated development of the online entertainment market, the board of directors at MeeVee has determined that combining with an established player will maximize the potential for the community, technology, and content relationships the company has built," according to a statement from the company. It included a contact e-mail for interested parties.

The sale could signal a coming shakeout in the online video business, which has seen tens to hundreds of YouTube wannabes surface in recent years. Already a handful of video-related companies have closed shop, and there will likely be many more in down economy. Stage6, for example, an online video-sharing site, shuttered its doors in February. Revver, another video sharing site, was sold to LiveUniverse for pennies on the dollar in recent months.

A call to MeeVee for comment was not immediately returned. The company's other investors include Bay Area Equity Fund and Edmond de Rothschild Venture Capital.

According to the company's statement, MeeVee.com drew more than 1.1 million unique users in March, more than double its numbers in August. It employs 7 full-time people in products and engineering.

Better World Books, an online retailer that resells used books and donates some of the proceeds to fund global literacy projects, has brought in its first outside investment to branch out into publishing, book rentals, and international do-gooding.

The 5-year-old company said Monday that it raised $4.5 million in its first round of financing led by Good Capital, an institutional investor that specializes in social entrepreneurship. That money included $2 million from a group of 18 private investors, whose names were undisclosed.

(Credit: Better World Books)

"Like a lot of start-ups, if we want to continue to accelerate our growth and scale, we want to invest in new business units," said David Murphy, CEO of Better World Books. Murphy said that the company plans to use the money to improve its own Web site and efforts to bring in new books. But future projects include expanding overseas, building up a young book-publishing division, and offering a book-rental service from its Web site.

"It would be like taking a Netflix approach to the text book market," he said.

Better World Books collects books from university bookstores and libraries and resells them, donating an average of 10 percent of the price of the book to nonprofit literacy groups--Books for Africa, Room to Read, World Fund, and National Center for Family Literacy. Some of the books are shipped directly to Africa. The company sells its books on its own site Betterworldbooks.com, as well as retail sites like Amazon.com and Half.com.

The company also offers carbon-neutral shipping, adding 2 cents to 5 cents onto the cost of each book to buy credits to offset the carbon used in the distribution.

Good Capital has offered Better World Books $2.5 million as one of the first investments within its Social Enterprise Expansion Fund. Kevin Jones, co-founder of Good Capital, will join the company's board.

Marin Software, which makes a browser tool for managing paid search advertising campaigns across Google and other search sites, has brought in $7.25 million in a second round of funding led by Benchmark Capital, according to the company.

Bruce Dunlevie, a general partner at Benchmark, will join the board of the San Francisco-based company. Marin Software plans to use the money to boost its sales and marketing efforts.

Since its founding in 2006, Marin Software has raised just more than $12 million. In its first round in October 2006, it brought in $2.5 million from Amicus Capital, as well as some private investors. Amicus invested another $2.5 million the following year.

Christopher Lien, Marin's CEO and co-founder, said that the company plans to use the latest funds to get to break even by the end of the year. And the money could come in handy in a financial downturn, even though the paid search market is growing. "One needs to plan for rainy days," Lien said.

Marin Software sells its software to advertisers and agencies that spend more than $50,000 a month on paid-search ads. Its clients include Razorfish, Zip Realty, and Zappos.

Attributor, whose software helps publishers like Associated Press and Reuters track down digital thieves of their content, said Wednesday that it raised $12 million in a third round of funding led by Jafco Ventures. Its earlier investor, Sigma Partners, also participated in the round.

The Redwood City, Calif.-based company, whose tagline is "publish with confidence," develops so-called fingerprinting algorithms that help publishers trace where their articles, images, and videos are disseminated online. It also will help notify third parties to either take down the content or pay appropriate licensing fees. With the money, Attributor plans to build out its service and expand sales operations.

Joe Horowitz, a Jafco Ventures partner who will join the company's board, said that for publishers to succeed, they need technology to monitor their content online. "Attributor provides critical infrastructure that enables publishers to maximize the value of their digital content," he said in a statement.

In late 2006, the company had raised about $10 million from Selby Venture Partners, Draper Richards, First Round Capital, and Amicus Capital.

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.

Venture capital is still flowing steadily for online media ventures. Here are several deals from the last day.

Reality Digital, a provider of white-label online video services to MTV Networks and Lonely Planet, said this week it raised $6.3 million in a second round of funding from OpenView Venture Partners. OpenView partners Scott Maxwell and Mark Barry will join its board of directors. The San Francisco-based company plans to use the funds to expand in Europe and the United States.

Razz, a San Francisco-based company that lets people record voice ringtones or put comments on photos, has called down $1.87 million of its $2.5 million Series B round of funding. Its investors include Mayfield, Garage Technology Ventures, and Greenpark Capital. Founded in 2002, the company has previously raised an estimated $10 million.

And German company Metaversum, which runs the virtual world Twinity, has drawn a new investment from Balderton Capital, formerly Benchmark Capital Europe. The company did not disclose terms of the deal, but characterized it as a multimillion-dollar deal in euros. Balderton had previously invested in Bebo and MySQL, which both recently sold to AOL and Sun Microsystems, respectively. With the funds, the company plans to launch Twinity globally. The virtual world is still in private beta.