Webware

Accel Partners, a longtime investor in social network Facebook, has created two new funds that add up to just over $1 billion, according to The New York Times.

One of the funds, totaling $525 million, will be used to invest in European start-ups.

But the interesting part, at least where juicy tech gossip is concerned, is the other $480 million, which is going toward a new late-stage venture fund. A few speculative bloggers have connected the dots and taken this to mean that Accel may be looking to pump more cash into Facebook.

The firm first invested in Facebook in 2005, and partner Jim Breyer sits on the social network's board of directors. With the recession starting to hit social-network ad spending, and some critics expressing concern about whether Facebook's revenue can keep pace with its wild growth, there's a legitimate question as to how effectively Facebook has battened down the hatches for the economic storm.

Raising more money would be an obvious solution, given the social network's repeated insistence that it's more important for the company to focus on expansion rather than profits for the next few years.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg recently confirmed speculation that his chief financial officer, former YouTube exec Gideon Yu, has been attempting to drum up interest in more venture cash.

Accel has also invested in Glam Media, Metacafe, Etsy, BitTorrent, Trulia, Wetpaint, and a whole host of others. But Facebook, unsurprisingly, is front and center right now.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA-- At 1 p.m. PDT, I'm kicking off my sessions at the Under the Radar conference on social-media companies.

First up, we have a few established companies, showing us what they're doing and what they've learned getting there: Shift Control Media, SocialMedia, and Wetpaint.

At 1:30 p.m., I've got my first group of start-ups, the media tools CrowdSpring, Ffwd, Lil'Grams, and PutPlace. The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher will be one of the judges in this session. Watch the video here.

There will be a break from 2:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m., and then we'll see four social-content creation tools: Animoto, Aviary, Big Stage, and Overlay.tv. Robert Scoble will be one of the judges in that session.

Update: The video stream from my laptop isn't working, so I'm removing it from this post. Sorry about that.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--At 10:45 a.m. PDT, the Under the Radar conference (all stories) here recommences with two demo tracks. In the Content track we'll hear from Comedy.com, Curse, Hollywood Interactive, and PluggedIn. In Publishing, we get AudioMicro, GumGum, Keibi, and Loud3r. You can watch the live video streams below.

And be sure to tune in at 1 p.m. PDT, when I will be moderating the presentation and judging of several companies (Shift Control, SocialMedia, Wetpaint, CrowdSpring, ffwd, Lil'Grams, PutPlace, Animoto, Aviary, Big Stage, and Overlay.tv). I'll have The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher as one of my judges during my first start-up session, at 1:30 p.m., and Robert Scoble in the second, at 3:15 p.m. Don't miss. I will put up a post with links to the video, and I'll be taking reader questions for my presenters via Twitter (Follow me and then post a message starting with @Rafe, so I see it).

Room 1: Content, moderated by Jeremy Toeman
Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Room 2: Publishing, moderated by Ellen McGirt
TV Show hosted by Ustream

(Click for event info.)

On Tuesday I will be moderating part of the Under the Radar: Social Media and Entertainment conference in Mountain View, Calif. Several of the 47 young companies presenting at the event have never been seen in public before, so this should be an interesting show.

Of the companies I haven't seen, these are the five I'm most interesting in learning about:

• CrowdSpring: Another piecework job marketplace for creatives, but this one is focused on illustration and design. What makes it a bit weird is that bidders submit actual mock-ups to get job, not just proposals.
• Ffwd: This is a video content site with "social awareness and predictive recommendations." Its first public showing will be at the conference.
• Lil'grams: An online baby book. Somewhat more sophisticated than just e-mailing yourself cute reminders. As the father of a two-year-old, I have a vested interest.
• SocialMedia Networks: Attempting to build an advertising network for social platforms and apps.
• Xumii: A utility that gives you access to your social network contacts on your mobile phone.

Some of the start-ups that will be pitching at Under the Radar have already been covered on Webware. I'll be curious to see how they have developed since we last saw them:

• Animoto
• Aviary
• BigStage
• Jacked
• Loomia
• Mochi Media
• Wetpaint

The full lineup of Under the Radar start-ups is here.

We've covered the wiki company Wetpaint's experiments in expanding its products several times over the past two years. The company has had a solid wiki service for consumers since 2005. It has continued to improve the core product by layering in the capability to embed widgets in wiki pages (now pretty much a standard feature), and it's even tried to meld wikis with social networking through a Facebook app. Today the company is heading off in yet another direction with Wetpaint Injected, a service that enables content sites to not just embed wikis in their sites, but to integrate wiki content and community deeply into their architecture. It's a smart model.

Wetpaint Injected is a simple concept. It lets users create content in Web site, and it lets the site's publishers make sure that the new content fits in their look and feel. For example, if we wanted to have a database of company info for each product we cover, but didn't want to actually have Webware editors write that content, we could create a Wetpaint Injected form that collected structured data (company name, list of execs, location, description, etc.), and embed that in our reviews. Users could edit that content using Wetpaint's tools, which are quite good, and add Wetpaint widgets or even additional pages. Wetpaint maintains wiki-style revision histories so changes can be rolled back, argued over, and so on.

Web publishers can turn their readers in to contributors with Wetpaint Injected.

Wiki content is no substitute for forums or blog comment threads. Nor is it a suitable replacement for a content type like user reviews, where you want users to see multiple opinions, not just the one that the site's user-editors agree on. But it is a strong way to get users involved with any site; Wetpaint co-founder Kevin Flaherty says the service, "helps any site become a social publishing site," and I agree. I will look forward to seeing this capability even on commerce sites; I imagine my favorite computer hardware site NewEgg using this capability for building out a robust specs and capabilities pages for the products it sells, for example.

Wetpaint Injected content is not hosted at Wetpaint, it is actually embedded in customer sites. This means the site owner gets all that user content indexed by search engines, which is a big plus. For comparison's sake, some plug-in comment systems, like Disqus, host all content on their site, depriving customers of SEO benefit. Also, since the content is integrated into the site, any of the site's native social features can tap into it. Again, in contrast, Google's new Friend Connect service is not actually hosted on the site itself, but appears on a site via an i-Frame, so cannot interact with a site's user database.

The downside of this deep integration is that implementing Wetpaint Injected takes a bit of work. It's got to be embedded in site's content management system; it is not a simple drop-in service. It requires hands-on participation of Wetpaint engineers, at least at launch. The company does hope to make Wetpaint Injected self-serve in the third quarter, with plug-ins for popular blog platforms like Wordpress and Movable Type. Wetpaint's default business arrangement is that it takes a portion of advertising revenues on Wetpaint Injected pages.

Customers at launch include Flixster and IGN. The company is also announcing that it just closed a third funding round of $25 million, bringing the total funds raised to almost $40 million.

Short version: Wetpaint might be one to watch.

Long version: TechCrunch's Michael Arrington has alerted us to a dark horse candidate in the race to dominate the land of wikis. It's Wetpaint, a Seattle-based service we haven't heard a whole lot from lately. The reason, Arrington says, is that it's positioning itself to be a player in niche social networks, not just mini-Wikipedias.

The easy-to-create wiki service pulled in 3 million page views in March, according to ComScore numbers, compared with 3.8 million for Ning, the well-funded social-network creator helmed by Marc Andreessen. Wetpaint also claims 900,000 wikis have been created, far more than the 263,000 that Ning counts (though who knows how many of those are legitimate and/or active). While Ning's way ahead in traffic, a few months ago Wetpaint released a set of features to ramp up social-networking activity on the site, with friends lists, news feeds, member profiles, and Yelp-style "compliments" now in the mix.

There are also 70 "sponsored" Wetpaint wikis, like the fan wikis created by cable network Showtime for each of its programs.

This week on the Real Deal podcast, Tom and I tackle wikis. Using lessons from the giant Wikipedia, we look at how to set up a wiki for your own business or interest, and what to expect from its users.

Related links:

• Wikipedia
• Wikia
• Lostpedia
• PBWiki
• WetPaint


If you want to join the ongoing discussion, come on over to the Real Deal forums.

Real Deal subscription links:

• For RSS readers: http://www.cnet.com/i/pod/realdeal.xml
• iTunes: Subscribe

Wetpaint is officially launching their whiteboard wiki app for Facebook tomorrow morning, although it's been alive and kicking in Facebook's apps directory for the past two weeks. The idea behind it is about as simple as it gets--just stick an entire Wetpaint wiki inside of Facebook, and edit things with your Facebook friends. In addition to a blank canvas to do whatever you want with, the service has also included student-geared templates to get you going, including a notes tool, party planner, and dorm hall wiki. The real draw here is that you'll be able to start making and sharing Wetpaint wikis without the need to sign up for the service, and be able to be share any of your creations via URL to people outside of Facebook. The only catch is that your Facebook-created wikis won't show up on Wetpaint's main site, at least not yet.

Make widget-filled wikis right inside of Facebook using Wetpaint's Whiteboard Wiki app.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

What I don't get about the whole app is why you'd want to use some of these templates inside of Facebook. For example, the selling point of the party invitation app is that you can set up RSVPs and upload photos and videos. You can already do all these things in Facebook using the first-party events app that everyone's got by default. The same thing goes for class notes, which encourages grouping and discussion forums--something which is also available for everyone right off the bat with Facebook groups.

Speaking of groups, Wetpaint also goes a step beyond, by auto-creating a wiki for every group you're a member of. On the surface, this might seem like a handy way to help you get started in your wiki indeavors, although it feels more like the service is attempting to drag participation and interaction away from Facebook's group, and into their own domain.

The real saving grace of this app is that you can add third-party widgets onto one big page along with the rest of your content--something I had wanted after taking a look at the Amnesty Hypercube Facebook app last week. The fact that you can drop any old embed code to create a new widget means you're getting a lot of extensibility with one app. This is the kind of thing that can open up creativity and participation. Trying to piggyback on Facebook's successful, and easy-to-use features with a whole other system--not so much. Hopefully Wetpaint can find a balance.

SideReel is a new video fan site. I talked to the site's co-founder, Bart Myers, at the SF Beta mixer last night, and he convinced me to check it out. What I found is, at its heart, a wiki. There are a few major video categories (Television, Movies, and "Video" for everything else) as well as a catchall category for nonvideo entries, such as actors. Pages for the video assets, like TV shows, have special fields. For example, each show has a "Watch it now" box, where you should be able to find links to a show's Web broadcasts, iTunes downloads, and BitTorrent files. SideReel isn't in the business of creating the content, so anything goes on these pages, wiki-style. Users are ultimately left in control of the content.

A show page on SideReel.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The SideReel wiki uses "smart fields" to put data in the specialized boxes. Users can code text and links as destined for the Watch it now box, for the cast section, or for other breakout boxes. SideReel takes the user-generated information and uses it as a launching point for automated searches that feed data back into the pages. For example, if a user starts a page on a new TV show or a movie, SideReel will scan the Web and update show info, cast and crew notes, and so on, in order to keep the page up to date. I can't vouch for the quality or the accuracy of the data this routine returns, but it's a clever idea to take user-generated information and let the machine correct it.

The SideReel editing interface needs work.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The team plans to create an API for SideReel so other sites and devices will be able use it. In other words, Myers and his team are trying to build an open IMDB competitor whose data eventually show up on connected devices like set-top boxes.

Keeping in mind that SideReel is in early beta; there are a few things missing right now. There's no chat or structured discussion around a show, although each page gets an open forum for discussing edits. And the wiki editor itself is all text, which is old-school. Especially considering the number of custom fields on every page, the site desperately needs a more approachable editor, like the ones PBWiki or Wetpaint have.

SideReel reminds me in concept of the specialized comic-book wiki ComicVine (preview), except it's not nearly as pretty. And ultimately it will probably compete with Wikia, the Wikipedia offshoot company that hosts hundreds of specialized wikis.