What if a search engine knew who your friends were and delivered results based on their actions and content across the Web? Today at the DEMO conference, an Israeli startup called Delver (formerly Semingo) is coming out of stealth and announcing its upcoming launch as a semantic social graph search engine.Delver is attempting to solve two key search-related problems. The first is that current search engines do not take into account the identity of the searcher. For example, a teenager and a senior citizen performing the same query will get exactly the same results. The second is that current search engines do not allow users to search for information created and referenced by their own social graph. This is an important point because, let’s face it, social networking doesn’t offer much functional value beyond allowing people to connect with one another. The fact that you have 300 friends on Facebook, 200 on MySpace and 100 connections on LinkedIn doesn’t actually help you locate information. This is where Delver comes in. Search for “New York,” and the results that will pop up will be blog posts from people you know that mention or are about New York, or Flickr photos, YouTube videos, Delicious bookmarks, and the like.

The technology, which has been in development since 2005, combines search technologies, semantics and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Delver begins by crawling the Web in order to map users’ social connections. The information it finds on social networking profiles, blogs, bookmarks, photo and video-sharing sites is then cross-linked to the searcher’s social graph, which is built on-the-fly. Delver then prioritizes its results based upon the searcher’s social graph, thereby improving the relevancy of the results. Since every person’s social graph is unique—much like a fingerprint—the same Delver query will produce significantly different results for each person—as reflected through the collective experiences of each person’s contacts.

Using Delver doesn’t require users to sign-in, they can just enter their names (and some additional identifying details such as city, in the case of a common name). An email address will also allow Delver to leverage the popular social networks to locate users’ social graphs.

Registered users can claim their profile and authenticate the sources they want to associate with. This means that if I provide the username and password of my Flickr account, Delver considers this account to be mine and will not allow any other user to claim it. Placing authentication aside for the moment, users can indeed claim to be other people. The information Delver crawls is public so there’s no privacy issue here. There is also no real benefit to users who would do such a thing, in fact, it would be rather pointless. For example, I can Delver Michael Arrington’s social graph, but that would generate results that are relevant to him and not to me. However, as mentioned above, Arrington can easily claim his profile and that would be the end of that.

Founded in June 2007, Delver is currently based in Herzelia, Israel and is due to open a US office in the spring. The 20-strong team is headed by Liad Agmon who was co-founder and CTO of Onigma, a security company in the Data Loss Prevention space, and sold to McAfee less than two years after inception for $20M.

Delver will launch its private beta in March and we will make sure TechCrunch readers will be among the first to take it out for a spin.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

I’d like to share with you that I’ve joined L Capital Partners, a US fund with $165M under management.

My prime objective is to assist the fund in locating quality Internet investments. In terms of investment criteria, here’s couple of things to note: First, we are not looking for Seed stages–unless there’s an exceptional team behind the venture. Second, the target companies will immediately become US companies with a plan to have the majority of the funds and the headcount in the US within a few months.

If you are aware of ventures that fulfill these criteria I’d appreciate a connection.

Also, I’ll be company-hunting in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Feb. 11-14. Drop me a note if you’d like to meet.

Feel free to email me with any questions.

That’s right–iMedix wins “Best New Startup” at the Crunchies!

Congratulations to Amir & Iri and the entire iMedix team for a job well done!!!

Uri Shinar is looking for a hit. But the CEO of animation website aniBoom (see earlier TechCrunch coverage here) thinks he can find one by creating a platform for talented, aspiring animators worldwide. A former Israeli-TV bigwig, Shinar is credited with helping to establish Israel’s No. 1 commercial TV station. Now he is trying to lay the foundations for a Web-based animation studio with aniBoom, and move it beyond the “YouTube-of-cartoons” pigeonhole it occupies today.Shinar has produced quite a bit of television programming and along the way gained a hands-on appreciation for the cost, complexity and luck needed to develop and execute a financially lucrative success. This is why he sees the Web as the ideal incubator to form an animation studio driven by user contributions. On Monday, he is planning to announce an advisory board that includes John Mass (head of corporate development and new ventures at the William Morris Agency), Peter Hirshberg (chairman of Technorati), and Barbara Corday (the TV producer who created Cagney and Lacey).

Shinar is molding aniBoom with an eye towards the best that Web 2.0 has to offer when it comes to content creation, collaboration and production cost. But he wants to marry that with a more traditional pipeline for mainstream media distribution, including merchandising. I recently spent some time with Shinar, who explained to me that an animation studio such as aniBoom needs one big hit to get a snowball effect going. But these days hits can come from the most unexpected places. As he sees it, the hit aniBoom is hunting for is best exemplified by a frog, and no, it’s not Kermit…

A Goldmine Called “Crazy Frog”

The charming creature pictured at right is none other than Crazy Frog, aka, “The Annoying Thing”. Check out this video to get a taste of the frog and to hear the sound that launched an international merchandising bonanza, especially in Europe, Australia, and Japan. It is not an aniBoom animation, but it the type of content Shinar wants to help discover or produce.

When the worlds of animation, licensing, and merchandising collide, a big hit translates to big, big bucks. In this sense Crazy Frog embodies everything that aniBoom is striving for.

In 2005, the Crazy Frog franchise made over $79M through the sale of mobile ringtones alone. Now look at the cumulative merchandise sales estimates on the left (Source: AT New Media)  and it becomes evident just how much money a single hit can generate. Do the math and ask yourself how many startups you can name that generate such sales figures? I bet many of you are scratching your heads real hard right now.

The crazy thing about crazy frog is that there was no master plan behind its making: In 1997, a Swedish teenager recorded himself impersonating a two-stroke engine and then uploaded the recording to the Web where it began spreading virally. In 2003, another Swede added the animation featuring the Crazy Frog character. A year later, a German company called Jamba! licensed both sound and animation and the phenomenon was scaled to a sensation.

Incubating a Pixar

Shinar recognizes there is no shortage of artists with the talent, creativity, tools and technology to create first-class animation. However, what these artists don’t have is industry access and the ability to scale. In essence, aniBoom has created a “digital pipeline” that bridges the gap between the need for cost-effective development and production, and a global pool of resources—to date, aniBoom has recruited a couple of thousand animators from 70+ countries. It’s this digital pipeline that allows aniBoom to find, develop, test, produce and distribute at a pace that is far faster than the traditional (offline) animation production process and at a much lower cost of course.

Take “The Race for the White House”. The series was produced by creators from the US, Bulgaria, India, Croatia and Israel, with the scriptwriting and vocal talent of Gabe Abelson who was the head monologue writer for the “Late Show with David Letterman”. Another series titled “Animal Nation” which I’ve been shown but has yet to debut, was produced by a single creator from Mexico. He pitched the idea to aniBoom which then assisted with the concept, writing and animation-to-music work. Or check out Mr Coo, a surreal video created by a 22-year-old animator from Barcelona, Spain (embedded below).

For a co-produced series, aniBoom pays creators $20-25K for a development deal and 30% revenue-share across all platforms, including television. Revenue-share for merchandising is negotiated on a case-by-case basis. In 2008, aniBoom plans no less than 20 co-produced series.

But Shinar is still looking for his first big hit. AniBoom’s website only attracts 770,000 unique visitors a month. Yet Shinar seems somewhat indifferent to his site’s lack of traction so far. Unlike your typical traffic-obsessed 2.0 CEO, Shinar is focused on increasing the value of aniBoom’s content depot, rather than its immediate ad revenue potential. Content is truly king to him and the distribution channels are just interchangeable conduits. That said, aniBoom has struck distribution deals with the likes of YouTube, Joost and Yahoo.

The history of Crazy Frog is important here because to a large degree aniBoom is attempting to morph a series of lucky accidents into a pitch-to-production methodology. Back in 1986 when Steve Jobs bought Pixar, few could foresee that it would become an animation powerhouse. On the Web, incubation periods are accelerated and it is easier to test the waters with animation shorts. If the stars line up just right, aniBoom could become a real player in animation much quicker. But first it will have to find its frog.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

Eze Vidra has a great review of 16 Israeli companies participating at CES.

Also, if you want to keep up on the Israeli Startup/VC scene, a must-read blog is Eze’s VC Cafe, make sure to subscribe!

Yoav Leitersdorf of YLVentures and American investor Robert Goldberg are in Tel-Aviv, seeking startups with funding needs.

They’re setting up meetings for the first half of this week so you need to move fast…

If you want to meet them, email me and I’ll help in making the connection.

Only three days into 2008 and we’ve already seen two monster exits in Israel. Yesterday it was XIV with a $350M exit on a $3M investment. Today, Israeli financial media is reporting that Network Appliance purchased Onaro for $120M (although, Onaro’s official headquarters are in Boston).Onaro develops storage-management software that allows Storage Area Network (SAN) to “be mapped, predictively tested, and monitored.” The company was founded in 2002 and in 2005 was courted by Cisco. NetApp is a leader in network-attached storage (NAS) devices. This acquisition should help it strengthen its SAN offerings.

This is a great exit for investors Cedar Ventures and Newbury Ventures which pumped a total of $10M into the company.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.

A couple of weeks I posted that I was looking for some help in redesigning my blog. At the time I was using a WordPress theme called Riaz, but felt I needed a custom design that better suited my personality and my professional services.

A few designers reached out to me, but after seeing his portfolio and several email exchanges, I chose Jonathan Fren of 31CW.

Working with John couldn’t have been better… He understood what I wanted, iterated perfectly and delivered W3 validated code–all in under a week!

Here’s what John had to say:

“This was a great blog to work with - and it’s nice to see someone as enthusiastic about what they do as Roi. The final design is easy on the eye, easy to navigate, and has a professional, clean vibe. Keep blogging ;-)”

Jonathan Fren - Head of Development @ 31CW.

If you’re looking for a professionally delivered WordPress theme, John’s your man :)

So how do you like my new design…?

Tel Aviv, Israel based MeeMix, which we first covered in August, is kicking-off the New Year by moving their taste-predicting Internet radio service from closed to open Beta.Internet radio is already a very crowded space dominated by entrenched startups like Last.fm and Pandora. Smaller players and recent entrants such as SpiralFrog, Jango and Slacker are not increasing the breathing room. MeeMix wants its share of the pie, too, and is keeping its crosshairs focused on the U.S. market and its dominant revenue potential.

MeeMix’s public beta launch is marked by the addition of new features:

• Meeps: Comment-based conversations users can have regarding a song, album or artist.
• Station Home: Every MeeMix station now has a dedicated page allowing users to interact in its context and shape its playlist.
• Mee Feeds: This is basically MeeMix’s version of Facebook’s News Feed. The feed indicates songs favorited, stations rated, friends added, etc.
• Mee Journey: Users can see other members’ public log or “journey” of actions in MeeMix.
• Station Gift: Users can now send other members a station as a gift. The station is then the “property” of the recipient who can customize it without affecting the original station.
• Twitter Integration: Users can update their Twitter accounts with songs they’ve listened to, their favorite stations, etc.

MeeMix claims to have doubled its music catalog, but a search for my personal favorites ‘John Coltrane’ and ‘Miles Davis’ came-up empty. The same searches on Jango and Slacker both came-up positive.

I would like to have seen the addition of “genre” to the channel creation wizard which is still limited to artist and song. A widgetized player also would have been a welcome addition, especially the desktop kind.

In my original post, I hypothesized that licensing its engine could become MeeMix’s core business. Looks like this might not be far fetched as the company says they have been approached by a mobile operator for the purpose of powering a taste-based cellular music streaming service. The company has also shared with me some interesting offline deals on the horizon that should keep MeeMix’s potential on a positive note for 2008. We’ll post another update soon. In the meantime, let us know how you think MeeMix compares to the competition.

This post was originally posted on TechCrunch.com where I cover the Israeli startup scene.