Google may be good at many things, but people search is not one of them. For that you’ll have to use a more specialized search engine.  Spock and Wink (merged with Reunion.com) are the people-search destinations most TechCrunch readers could probably name off the top of their head. However, slowly but surely—and mostly, very quietly—a new player has been making serious headway in this search vertical, and it’s name is Pipl.com.Going by ComScore’s December numbers, Pipl is leading in the US with 557K unique users to Spock’s 260K, but is trailing internationally with 1.35M uniques to Spock’s 2.38M. How has Pipl pulled this off? Matthew Hertz, the company CEO, tells me it’s mostly word-of-mouth. It’s a simple answer but it rings true. Just take it out for a spin and you’ll see why—it’s just good. In fact it’s so good it’ll probably scare some people’s pants off when they see what information it is able to—legally—drudge up.

It produces not only links to all of your profiles on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, blog mentions, and photos on Flickr. It finds mentions of your name in public records, including property records, SEC filings, and birth databases. It also finds e-mail addresses and summarizes “quick facts” about the person. For instance, a search for “Roi Carthy” turns up quick facts like these:

Roi Carthy is an Israeli-based entrepreneur and startup consultant…

Unlike most search engines, Pipl crawls the Deep Web. I’ll explain.  A general purpose search engine typically crawls the Web by following links to URLs found in other pages. By contrast, the Deep Web is made up of pages that no other pages link to. Dynamic pages are a good example of these sorts of pages. This means that if an engine wants to index pages located in Deep Web repositories it has to “guess” possible URLs. Just how big is the Deep Web? No one really knows but it’s generally accepted that it is vastly greater (orders of magnitude greater) than the Surface Web—the pages which are easily indexed by search engines.

The folks at Pipl were hesitant to discuss their “secret sauce” with me, so their explanations were on the vague side but here it is in broad strokes: First, Pipl’s crawlers hunt out Deep Web sources and URLs. Special algorithms they developed then perform the “guesswork” of possible inputs. The ensuing pages are then parsed for various types of data and images (Pipl even augments with meta data that appears elsewhere). Finally, using advanced language analysis and ranking, Pipl floats the most relevant portions of information about an individual. Remember, all of this is very tricky because in the Deep Web there is no real way to rate a web page based on its importance, for the simple fact that no other page is linking to it.

Obviously, Pipl is designed for people search by name, but it also just debuted the ability to search emails, usernames and by reverse phone number lookup. The results page is designed as a “one page report” that categorizes information in an easy to read manner. Results are displayed based on accuracy, relevance and importance, particularly useful for results for common names (”John Smith”).

Pipl’s business model is pretty straight forward: Sponsored links and results, all in the form of text ads, displayed on the results pages—there are no banners, keeping the look and feel clean. Most if not all ads are linked to background-report providers, which are far more relevant to US users than the international ones, but hey, revenue is revenue.

So next time you want to search for your former high school sweetheart or a long lost relative, try Pipl, it seems like the best place to start.

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

Israeli startup Jogli, the music search engine we previously covered, is now making all of the 12M albums it streams easily embeddable, even on MySpace (example).Beyond albums, the widget (embedded at the end of the post) also allows the embedding of playlists, artists’ best hits and radio stations. It’s color customizable (think YouTube’s player) and if you want to play with the embed parameters, its size can also be altered. Jogli makes heavy use of YouTube’s API to power its service.

I asked the for company’s perspective about all that has gone about lately with Project Playlist getting banned (here and here) and Warner pulling out of YouTube.

David Schwartz, Jogli’s CEO:

Our position is simple – all sides should do their best to solve the issue: Project Playlist should either pay royalties or find creative ways to find legal content around the web. It is possible although it is hard; once they do that – MySpace and Facebook should decease the blocking – as this blocking hurts their users eventually.

But - most importantly - content owners should be flexible in their negotiations with various web sites – as an example – Warner canceled their agreement with YouTube – why? In this time of financial crisis demanding more money is absurd, and, the users’ community uploaded all the popular music to Youtube hours after it being removed anyways, so nothing really changed – the offering in Jogli, as an example, was hardly effected at all. Trying to remove the sound is yet another futile effort as users will upload replacements.

Jogli’s experience with the sound muting underscores the futility of tactics on the part of record labels. Schwartz claims that alternatives to most muted videos were uploaded within days. Jogli also uses other music sources, and says the muting delivered a negligible effect on the service itself.

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

Prologue:

Three years ago when Web 2.0 began proliferating, Israeli startups used eSnips as the poster child for their case that a successful social network could be founded in Israel.  Based on the criteria in those days, eSnips was in fact delivering: It was able to convince top tier VCs to buy into an advertising-based business model, it leveraged user-generated content (the main activity is sharing personal media), used free storage as a hook, traffic was rising steadily, and it became a press darling domestically and internationally. As we say in Israel, “It was all honey”.

Now fast forward to Q4 2008. A shell of its previous self, eSnips is now a startup train wreck: Founders divorced and dismissed, threatened by litigation courtesy of a record label and, with no possibility for further funding, the company was unloaded for approximately $750,000 to the Logia Group.

In the past three months I have spoken to a number of sources close to the company and have managed to reconstruct the circumstances that brought the company from its zenith, to its nadir.

The fall of eSnips is a story of heartache that is intertwined, unfortunately, with the destruction of a marriage.  All startup co-founders feel like married couples from time to time, but when they actually are married it can add to the level of stress and the complexity of running the business.   As I relate the events that led to the company’s current situation below, I’ll do my best to stick to the business issues at hand.  But the line between what is business and what is personal can sometimes get messy, especially with startups.

Episode I: Heartbreak Hotel

One of the worst kept, but most respected secrets in the Israeli startup scene was the marriage that fell apart between eSnip’s CEO Yael Elish and her CTO husband Alon. When Yael left the company, the local press didn’t publicize the real story. We also covered the drama, noting the explanation given for her departure was “personal reasons”.

The trouble at eSnips began around October 2007 when Yael began to spend more and more time out of the office. Employees perceived this as having to do with activities related to a second round of financing. By December it became evident that this had more to do with a deterioration in the couple’s relationship. (I have tried to contact her for comment and will update the post if she responds).

The meltdown had the greatest impact on Alon, who as one source close to the company put it “was clearly unable to work after the mid-December announcement [with media coverage alluding to the personal crisis] and some days came in, others not.” An awkward situation ensued and confusion among employees grew in regards to the company’s future. This had a clear and immediate effect on the company’s day-to-day operation. As the same source put it “All work just stopped.” Technologically no one picked up the slack and no new development took place. eSnips entered a maintenance “steady state”.

Between October and December the company re-ignited its fundraising activities to correspond with the release of its “Social DNA” feature. I happened to have attended the release party and clearly remember a very odd vibe on the part of the employees. In retrospect, I can best describe it as the collective anticipation of watching a house of cards about to fall upon itself.

As word began leaking out, VCs interested in participating in the Series B funding backed off as it became clear that Yael would be walking away. In mid-December 5 to 7 employees were let go and Yael notified the remaining employees that she was leaving eSnips. The company then embarked on an unsuccessful hunt for an external CEO, interviewing candidates from both the US and Israel.

In mid-January 2008 another group of employees were let go, leaving eSnips with a couple of engineers and a content manager in place. It was around February that Dr. Nahum Sharfman, the company’s Chairman (formerly one of the founders of Shopping.com), stepped in as CEO, cutting loose both Yael and Alon (who were still full time employees). The goal was now to cut losses and sell the company.

Episode II: Disco Inferno

In a fascinating—and until now unknown—twist in the eSnips story, the personal drama may have eclipsed a major business threat. Record label EMI may in fact have played a considerable role in the company’s demise.

While eSnips was taking measures to police content uploaded by users, certain copyrighted material ended up online. In mid-October 2007 EMI called the company on it. This could not have come as a real surprise because eSnips knew for well over a year that users were sharing a great amount of copyrighted music with each other through the service. It was right around this time that it began cracking down on the behavior by using Audible Magic’s music fingerprinting technology. As a consequence, doing so eventually had a negative impact on the site’s traffic. EMI though remained steadfast in vocalizing its discontent.

This is where things get a bit murky… I was unable to ascertain whether EMI actually sued or was just aggressively threatening the company. I was however able to learn that somewhere in the area of a quarter to a third of the final purchase price of the company was paid to EMI. This to me indicates that EMI’s role in eSnip’s implosion was not a minor one.

Episode III: A New Hope

It took nearly nine months for the investors to unload eSnips to the Logia Group which took it over on November 1. According to the individuals I spoke with, the purchase price did not exceed $750K. Now subtract a quarter to one third piped to EMI to settle its beef with the company. This leaves the investors recouping around $500K of the $5.5M poured into eSnips.

The Logia Group’s purchase of eSnips came out of left field as it is a collection of companies that mostly have to do with mobile content (see image below). If for no other stakeholder, the purchase could at least spell some new hope for eSnip’s users.  ComScore estimates the site still attracts 5.7 million unique visitors a month worldwide (as of November, 2008), down from a peak of 9.1 million last March.

I spoke to Itai Aaronsohn who will head the new eSnips about what Logia has in store for it. He communicated to me that eSnip’s basic functionality will not change. It will remain a free service with media sharing as its foundation, but will see new mobile and content layers added—both of which are Logia’s expertise.

In the short term users should expect an enrichment in the video and music departments, as well as the addition of casual games. Premium content and possibly original production will be added down the line. Users should also expect the addition of a mobile experience where access to personal media will be provided from handsets.

Epilogue:

Clearly, all was far from honey at eSnips.

There were fundamental flaws in the role that UGC, copyrighted material and advertising revenue held in the company’s overall strategy.

Then of course there was the personal drama. Some investors are principally against investing in husband-and-wife teams. eSnips sure strengthens the case. However, one can always use contrary examples such as Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield of Flickr, Ben and Mena Trott of SixApart, or Ruth Parasol and Russ DeLeon of PartyGaming. It doesn’t always have to go awry.

One thing cannot be argued though… Many of eSnips’ users are loyal and have stuck around through the company’s rollercoaster ride. For a great while they received the short end of the stick with no new features and little attention. Logia promises this will change, and that is as much of a silver lining as one could hope for in an otherwise sad story.

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

Deloitte recently released the results of its VC Indicator Survey (PDF), conducted among Israeli VCs this past month. The complied results are so pessimistic they paint a warm and fuzzy aura around Sequoia’s Doom & Gloom presentation.Participated by approximately 80 Israeli venture capitalists, the survey predicts 2009 will be an extremely painful year for the Israeli startup industry in most every respect.

Here are some of the highlights:

• 92% of those surveyed predict at least 3000 people will be laid off.
• 92% also believe that companies who do not lay off employees will slash salaries.
• 74% predict that at least 10% of venture backed startups will be shutdown.
• 95% foresee harsh times in the fund raising department.
• 54% expect a slowdown in seed investments.
• 87% expect a decrease in company valuations.
• 26% are confident that commitments by limited partners will not be withdrawn, while 51% believe they might.

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