Jabber Inc. announced a new version of the company's flagship product: v 4.2 Jabber Extensible Communications Platform (XCP) and Instant Messaging Advanced (IMA). The company continues to mature XCP as a XMPP transport mechanism that can form the basis for any sort of real-time messaging architecture.

Thought provoking take on Google's grand scheme from Mathieu Balez:

[from The Good God Google]

What we're talking about here is the eventual creation of a perfect digital record of your entire memory, at your fingertips and searchable, all emblazoned with the Google logo and, certainly, some pertinent and unobtrusive advertisement. Scary? Maybe a little.

It is also most likely developing a Google-branded version of Firefox -- the up-and-coming Web-browser. There is no dearth of well-supported evidence on the Web pointing to this fact. Having its own browser out there grants Google the opportunity to package all of its services in one tidy delivery channel. It also further encroaches upon Microsoft's territory.

Most significantly however, it will be the opening move on the chessboard of next-generation desktop computing. I believe Google is vying to dethrone Microsoft as the potentate of PC dominance by pulling the rug out from underneath its feet, by changing the very rules of the operating system game itself. Not unlike its e-mail and mapping software, which are entirely Web-based, Google will release an operating system that will be completely networked and centralized on its servers. You will literally no longer need any software running on your local computer (except the Google Web-browser of course, and a network connection). The computing experience will involve booting your computer, logging into the net, and having access to all your programs (and most of your data) which will reside happily in the ether -- all protected and secure, we will be assured, by the good god Google.

He also hypothesizes the acquisition of Skype or Teleo by Google, which is an advance that I favor, as an end user, personally. I have junked my Vonage contraption, and gone over wholeheartedly to Skype: I now have SkypeIn and SkypeOut capabilities, and use it many times everyday. Integration of Skype with other Google services -- like search, Gmail and so on -- would be a natural. Not to mention Google could then presence enable search results. Imagine you do a search on some topic "google skype rumors" and you find that Stowe Boyd has blogged about it. Then you see that Stowe is online (via Skype), and you opt to read the piece, and then IM Stowe via Skype for clarification on something he stated in the entry. He clarifies. You then could post the result of the IM as a comment in Stowe's blog, or email it to a friend via Gmail. Even more cool if you could post Skype voice-over-IP as comments or podcasts. Pretty compelling vision, and one that would make the apparent low rate of innovation around Blogger sensible, since they may be waiting for a large number of pieces to fall into place before doing anything radical.

[pointer from Robin Dindayal]

[tags: Google Skype Rumor]

Interesting to hear a VC analyst's take on Del.icio.us: [from alarm:clock] "Classic guy-in-a-room venture. Schachter has been running this as a side project, with no stated intention of making money. Rather, he reaps the karmic rewards of creating a nice Web tool and clearly draws the adulation of many Web 2.0 geeks. We think he's wise to emerge from his bedroom - a little investment can go a long way in the current market, as can a loyal user base."

Yesterday's post -- Blogging 2.0 -- caught the eye of Jason Calcanis, who commented on my comparison of Always-On Network and Corante:

Jason Calcanis

Stowe,

Come on, beating Always on means nothing we both know that (sorry Tony). always on is one tiny niche B2B blog... it's not a network. :-)

Take a look at Corante vs. just two of the Gawker and Weblogsinc.com blogs--it's not even close! These charts show just two of each networks blogs... I'm leaving out a dozens of other domains! I'd be surprised if Corante had 5-10% of the traffic WIN or Gawker have.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&
compare_sites=engadget.com%20corante.com%20&y=t&url=weblogsinc.com

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&
compare_sites=gizmodo.com%20gawker.com&y=t&url=corante.com#top

Technorati links are way overrated when determining the value of a business. Media business are--and have always been--driven first by traffic. Traffic=influence... not links.

All this mumbo-jumbo, Dave Sifry, new age, "links=a business" is just silly--for real. People are gaming Technorati all day long, and technorati ranking are more a function of how long you've been blogging then how popular you are.

Show me the traffic! :-)

Also, Tony Perkins raises the question "what do the numbers from Alexa mean?":

Tony Perkins

Everyone who makes over 33% profit margins on their network selling to IBM, Sun, Accenture, Audi etc. raise their hands!

BTW, Our biggest month ever was January, up 100% for a year earlier, so I am not sure where those numbers are coming from.

Be sure to watch for our blogozine due March 1st - it is pretty kick-ass (and profitable).

Love to all my *friends* in the blogosphere.

We are actively searching for a media-savvy "executive producer" who can negotiate deals for us with the Suns, Audis, and Xeroxes of the world. (Please contact me if you are that person, by the way.)

This discussion comes at a great moment for me, since I am in the middle of working with Hylton (my partner at Corante) on a business plan -- which is why I had the graphic handy for Always-On. These guys are helping me with data and justification for Corante's growth projections!

Here's the graphic contrasting Corante and Weblogsinc, once again using an Alexa graph:

What this shows is Weblogsinc growing by about 2X over the period, and Corante growing 3X since October. We are speeding up, and given this rate we should catch up pretty quick -- even leaving aside the new wildly new cool things we are planning to launch in the next few months.

Bambi Francisco profiles Jotspot, a wiki technology company:

Bambi Francisco

[from Excite founders re-emerge on tech scene with JotSpot]

JotSpot's Kraus said his technology is more enhanced than prior wiki versions because JotSpot wiki documents are integrated with e-mail, real-time news feeds from the Web and wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) editing and publishing tools.

The software, which will be sold as a hosted software application, is designed to enable small groups collaborating on a project to work together by using one shared space. For instance, correspondence between a human resources staffer and a division head about a potential job candidate can be captured in a wiki document by copying the wiki document e-mail address in the e-mails. The wiki document would then store the correspondence in a section of the document. That wiki document could also include the candidate's resume and real-time news related to the candidate or the specific job.

It's been 15 months since Kraus and Graham went to work on JotSpot. Eventually, Kraus and Graham used their connections with Geoff Yang, a partner at Redpoint Ventures, who a decade ago had met the two founders when he led his firm's investment in Excite. At the time, Yang was at IVP.

Two months ago, JotSpot raised $5.2 million from Redpoint Ventures and Mayfield, said Kraus, now in his early 30s.

Kraus said he plans to make money by selling a subscription and charging on a per-seat basis, much like Salesforce.com (CRM: news, chart, profile). He didn't comment on how much he thought he could charge. Indeed, there are other free wiki technologies, like OpenWiki, that are available.

More to follow when my beta app is processed.

[Marc Cantor and others have made similar noises]

Judith blogs about Imeem:

The only description Ms. Glassberg [who wrote the PR] gives us of stealth-mode Imeem is: ”...The software will provide social networking capabilities and other features along a distributed network…”

Also mentioned in this venturewire is Ted Malone, a new member of the Imeem team formerly from TiVo, who is quoted as saying that a beta version of the Imeem software will be released before the end of 2004.

I reviewed WiredReach some time ago: a peer-to-peer based social networking approach. But this area is ripe for competition, especially with regard to presence and real-time communication opportunities.

Trust me; I have talked these ideas up with literally dozens of the existing competitors, and NO ONE IS LISTENING. They continue to be focused on email and portal based approaches, because they are easy and "everyone has email" and "we don't want to create a new client."

I believe the company that dreams up a cool integration of buddy-lists, mobility, proximity, meetup-ish blending of on and offline interaction, and RSS aggregation of people's online persona (profiles, blogs, comments, dossiers composed of the stray bits we leave behind everywhere) will really be onto something, and will make today's out-of-content, portal-based solutions look immediately ancient and unweildy. The right critical mass of features could induce the mildly interested early adopters to drop what they are doing at LinkedIn or Tribe.net, and stream onto a better paradigm of online networking: namely, real-time.

I gotta talk to these folks. Anyone out there in a position to introduce me?

I was contacted last week by representatives of a new entrant to what is generally called enterprise social networking, Leverage Software, Today, the company is announcing its new product suite, Relationship Intelligence, and its positioning of the company and product around the concept of "Relationship Capital Management."

[from press release] Leverage Software Enters into Relationship Capital Management

As a New Market Segment, Relationship Capital Management Enables Sales Organizations to Gain Insight, Access and Influence of Trusted Relationships to Accelerate Sales Cycles

October 4, 2004 – San Francisco, California – Leverage Software, a leading provider of Relationship Capital Management™, today announced its entry into the business applications market of social networking. Relationship Capital Management (RCM) is recognized by many of today’s leading industry analysts and industry pundits as technology that will profoundly impact the sales processes across both emerging and Global 2000 companies. Leverage Software’s RCM solutions are quickly becoming a strategic ally for leading sales organizations; empowering them to discover, analyze and leverage their collective enterprise relationships to gain access and influence to decision makers through a trusted introduction.

• Leverage is a partner of SalesForce.com (like Visible Path, Spoke, and perhaps other competitors).

  Integration with SFA and CRM apps is the clear trajectory in this niche, and in a real sense, the final analysis for utility will be the degree to which these solutions meld with the business processes that SFA and CRM apps automate. To the best meld will go the spoils.
  

• Leverage is going head-to-head with the more well-established Visible Path. Their target market and their pitch is very similar. In particular, Visible Path has been pushing the "Relationship Capital" message very effectively, supported by their very assiduous attention to privacy and security.
  
• I sense a coming price war in the wind, where Leverage seems open to aggressive pricing with the intent of gaining market traction. Depending on your viewpoint of possible endgames for this sector, gaining heads and growth may translate into an attractive acquisition proposition for SFA/CRM vendors who may (in the not too distant future) may be casting about for acquisition candidates. This consolidation is to me inevitable, once the value proposition for these technologies is clearly proven by uptake and ROI.

The appearance of Leverage makes me wonder how many more of these competitors are going to pop out of the woodwork, and are there any serious first mover advantages? The barriers to entry are low, but the cost of implementing the underlying analyses that Visible Path and more well-established players have invested years of effort and millions into may be problematic, but it is clear at the same time that these are early days, and it is not always the first, or even best engineered products, that win in the long run.

Its a horse race, and its way too early to call.

Dotomi, a advertising technology company that I have been watching with interest, has closed a round of funding.

[from Dotomi Closes $10.5 Million Round of Funding press release]

Boston, Mass. -- September 27th, 2004 -- Dotomi, the leader of online customer retention for permission-based messaging between marketers and consumers, today announced the closing of $10.5 million dollars in funding led by Investor Growth Capital ("IGC"), a new Dotomi investor. Existing investor U.S. Venture Partners ("USVP") and new investor Velocity Equity Partners also participated in the round. The funding will be used to grow the Company's sales force and marketing programs to continue to position Dotomi Direct MessagingTM as the best one-to-one communication channel for building and retaining strong online marketer-consumer relationships.

[...]

Jupiter states that over the course of 2003, the average U.S. online consumer received 3,920 unwanted commercial e-mail messages. This number will grow to reach an outrageous total of 6,395 by the end of 2008. However, contrary to popular belief, spam is not the greatest barrier to reaching consumers. Rather, it is the volume of messages sent by legitimate marketers. Dotomi solves this communication problem by providing the benefits of data-driven messages similar to e-mail marketing, but delivered unobtrusively in the ad banner space – finding customers as they surf the Web.

You heard it from me. Keep your eyes on this. Just like the email and Internet open addressing models led to the woes of spam and pop-up ads, presence and permission-based advertising offers us a way out.

New version of Parlano's MindAlign product announced. MindAlign was originally developed on contract with UBS, and relies on the venerable IRC model. But with this release Parlano has adopted a new openness, with a Microsoft Live Communications Server integration, and a suite of APIs for integration with third-party IM management tools.

[from Parlano Introduces MindAlign Version 6.0 press release]

MindAlign version 6.0 includes:

-- Increased Infrastructure Integration: MindAlign version 6.0 extends the integration capabilities of previous releases by introducing support for presence and one-to-one instant messaging capabilities from third-party solutions including Microsoft Office Live Communications Server.

-- MindAlign Web Client: The MindAlign Web Client, a Java applet running either in a web browser, as a stand-alone application or as a portlet within a third-party portal, allows for the complete integration of real-time group discussion forums and private, one-to-one instant messaging sessions within other thin-client applications and/or portals, including Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server. The MindAlign Web Client provides the advanced intelligent message management, real-time notification and alerts capabilities of the existing Microsoft Windows 32-bit client for thin-client environments, enabling easy connectivity to key external customers and business partners.

-- Increased Administration Integration: Version 6.0 introduces complete end-user provisioning and administration through Microsoft Active Directory. This simplifies the process of configuring and administering the application. For users of Active Director, enterprise-wide login, authorization and authentication occur 'out of the box,' minimizing administration costs and significantly reducing implementation and system configuration times for large, global enterprises.

-- Enhanced Management & Control: Version 6.0 provides enhanced system management, administration and control by delivering secure, tiered administration rights and permissions enabling discussion forum management control at the most appropriate and efficient level in the organization. Distributed management of day-to-day system configuration requests minimizes help desk support resources and lowers total cost of ownership and increasing system flexibility.

-- Third Party Support for Chinese Walls: Utilizing new server-side APIs, MindAlign can be integrated with third-party systems responsible for enforcing communications controls across Chinese Walls. A key requirement for meeting compliance regulations within the Financial Services industry, MindAlign version 6.0 integrates with permission, enforcement and control applications rather than duplicating existing processes, procedures and applications.

Socialtext raises a series A round as Ross explains, with existing investors (Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus and Freedom Technology Ventures) -- and new investors (Jun Makihara and Omidyar Network):

This is a major milestone for Socialtext, positioning us to build upon our market leadership and fulfill a mission we began in 2002. When Pete, Adina, Ed and I founded Socialtext we saw an opportunity to build a great company that did great things for its customers as well as society. The epiphany was that this could be done with simple easy to use tools and we could foster a way of working openly that builds trust between users.

It's particularly interesting that Ross says he met Pierre Omidyar through blogging, rather than the traditional VC meet-and-greet route.

Charles Barrett has been named Friendster's new VP of sales, overseeing all advertising sales at the social networking concern, it was reported this week. Barrett was formerly a SVP of sales for AOL Media Networks.

I spoke with Joe Hildebrand, Jabber's CTO, about the recent press releases from the company: today's news regarding an integration of Jabber technology with Webex, and last week's announcement around an XMPP/SIMPLE gateway.

The biggest take aways:

• Jabber's integration with Webex technology represents another turn of the wheel on the inevitable integration between traditional text based (and soon video and audio based) IM and full-up web conferencing. There will be no hard distinction in thvery near future between these two modalities.
• Jabber's push into integration with enterprise applications -- like the Foreign Exchange traders example mentioned in the linked case study (see here) -- is an enormously important area of infrastructure, and the Jabber Forms protocol is a big step forward.
• The XMPP/SIMPLE gateway represents the awareness by Jabber that it is a multi-protocol world, and stonewalling by saying that XMPP is "better" doesn't help customers. Instead, simply providing the gateway sidesteps the issue, and lets customers make headway until technical standards converge on something, some time.

I have heard from several recently separated employees of Ikimbo, that the instant messaging application pioneer has recently decided to close down. CEO Glen Hellman has been unavailable for comment.

The company's Agenda product won the coveted Gold Lotus Advisor Editors' Choice Award in February of 2003.

AGENDA is tightly integrated with Lotus Sametime, which handles the real-time notification and coordination of a response to a critical situation. Organizations can define an "agenda" to follow when a crisis occurs, and AGENDA monitors systems, such as ERP systems, for conditions that warrant a crisis. If a crisis condition exists, the "agenda" for that crisis is followed and the person(s) responsible are notified via Sametime of the situation. More importantly, AGENDA allows people to reach out to underlying systems once a decision has been made and tell the system(s) what action to take. This key step is called "closing the loop" on critical events.

The demise of the company is an emotional blow for me, since I served most recently as EVP there, leaving just after the receipt of the Lotus Advisor award, although I continued on as an occasionaly advisor.

Ikimbo is a company that was simply too early for the market. A product like Agenda would make sense once some form of interoperability is available to the enterprise customers that it targetted. [Note: I will be interviewing various folks at Microsoft in the next few days about their recent announcement about interoperability with AIM and Yahoo networks. Such a platform will lead to the re-emergence of the ideas that motivated Ikimbo and Agenda.]

I had a series of conversations recently with Peter Quintas, who has assumed the newly created role of CTO at Silkroad Technology. Silkroad, which was founded by Flip Filipowski, the founder of Platinum and divine, has grown very quickly, and part of their strategy is the acquisition of a variety of complementary technologies.

In a nutshell, Silkroad has a vision of the socialized enterprise: the business animated and accelerated by advanced and integrated social technologies. The central pivot of their vision is blog-based content management as the core mechanism for enterprise information management and distribution. This is the company's Silkblog technology. To that, they are adding other elements of the vision: mobblogging, instant messaging, real-time conferencing, voice-over-IP, and soon, streaming video.

Peter Quintas

[via email]

I wanted to drop you a note and give you an update on SilkBlogs and SilkRoad technology...

In the last month, we have developed and acquired technology that has helped form a more complete solution of our social collaboration suite centered around our flagship and focal offering, SilkBlogs. Back in February, at DEMO 2004, when we announced SilkBlogs and were attributed with coining the term ‘Enterprise Blogging’, we really had a more grand picture in mind where blogging was a central piece (but not the only a piece) of a larger collaborative suite.

I am excited to tell you that last week we completed the acquisition of Pendulab, a provider of world-class collaboration and community solutions led by ChatBlazer: a multi-party chat solution also featuring one-to-one instant messaging and voice/video chat capabilities. Through the end of the year we will follow on with a multi-party voice and web conferencing solution that will yield a robust single platform for communication and collaboration through multiple mediums, devices and channels. This is surely the most innovative and robust collaborative suite on the market today.

This acquisition follows another recent development of the addition of SilkBlogs Mobile to our capabilities. SilkBlogs Mobile allows the publishing of content from mobile devices anytime, anywhere, including text messages, pictures, and video or audio clips.

For more information on these developments visit my weblog at http://tourniquet.on.silkblogs.com.

Also for more information on ChatBlazer visit http://www.chatblazer.com.

And finally to try out SilkBlogs Mobile, visit our mobile community website at http://www.silkmob.com.

I have written a lot about the convergence of various social technologies into a seamless suite of capabilities that allow us to easily change tempo (from synchronous to asynchronous) and channel (video, voice, text). Silkroad is pushy very hard to integrate these components for enterprise application, and I expect that technologies such as theirs will rapidly become the infrastructure on which the next generation enterprise will operate.

Gregory Bateson once observed that "a business is best considered as a network of conversations," and Silkroad is perhaps the best example of a company that is building its product strategy around that metaphor.

I guess things are going well at the Microsoft TheSpoke and Channel 9 blog projects: Bill Gates has announced that blogging is going to change business.

Reed Stevenson

[from Microsoft's Gates Touts Blogging as Business Tool

Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates often takes the stage to talk about the future of software technology, but on Thursday he also told top corporate executives that Weblogs and the way they are distributed can be used as business communication tools.

"What blogging and these notifications are about is that you make it very easy to communicate," Gates told executives gathered at Microsoft's headquarters for its annual CEO Summit.

Gates' comments on blogging technology were the most extensive thus far from Microsoft's chief software architect, signaling that the world's largest software company is waking up to the potential of blogging as a potential threat and also as a new business opportunity.

Blogs, short for Weblogs, have been around for several years, serving as online journals for Web-savvy disseminators of information ranging from personal ramblings, product reviews, to social commentary.

The growth in the number of blogs, and those who read them, however, is attracting greater attention from businesses as a means to communicate more directly with their employees, partners and customers.

Ross Mayfield pointed out that Red Herring is hosting 100 CEOs blogging (see Red Herring Spring), which includes a number of companies I've blogged about, including IMlogic, and Knownow.

The content looks fairly tame.... until I got to Xplane, a company that seems to consult to others to help explain complex issues more simply through the clever use of visuals (check out the "ow, wow" graphic), and that led me to look at the Xplane corporate blogs(see http://xplane.com/xblog/ and http://xplane.com/bblog/). I love the whole "VP of No" angle.

Surprising me not one bit, IMlogic has announced that the company has raised an additional $16M in venture funding (see Boston Business Journal). This is (I believe) the third round of money in IMlogic.

Francis Desouza, the CEO, is one of the more visionary leaders in the IM Management market -- companies that are providing the infrastructure for enterprise management of instant messaging and related real-time collaboraiton technologies. I expect great things from IMlogic, over and above the company's existing product lines and already announced plans.

The company posted 300 percent growth in revenue in fiscal 2003, the partnership with Reuters (gateway between Microsoft Live Communication Server and the AOL and MSN public IM networks), and international expansion.

In a transition that seems to be going on below the PR radar, Chris Tolles has been replaced by Michael Trigg at Spoke Software as vice president of marketing. Chris has taken on the role of VP of sales and marketing at Topix.

I haven't yet had a chance to meet with Michael, but his background (VP of corporate marketing and vice president of product marketing at E.piphany, positions at MCI and 3Com) indicate Spoke's increased orientation toward the enterprise end of the social networking space.

Andy Halliday, Spoke's VP of business development, suggested that I use Mike's Spoke profile to get a handle on his background, and that experience reconfirmed what a good job Spoke has done in the 'dossier' department. I particularly like the feature where web entries related to the indivicual are brought up for you automatically (click image above for full size image)). [Note that the 'Alerts' functionality is just another example of where instant messaging should be integrated into social networking.]

Jabber Inc. has been selected as a "2004 Company to Watch'' By Network Computing magazine:

"Editorial accolades put an exclamation point on the success we have enjoyed over the past year," said Tony Bamonti, acting president of Jabber, Inc. "We are thrilled to be recognized by an organization of Network Computing's caliber as it appropriately reflects the exceptional effort of the entire Jabber, Inc. team."

Kubi Software has announced their $8M series C round, with finds coming from previous investors Lazard Technology Partners and VIMAC Ventures, LLC, and North Bridge Venture Partners, a new investor.

I reviewed the company's Kubi collaboration technology earlier this year, contrasting its approach -- embedding a collaboration client in Outlook or Notes clients -- with the peer-to-peer model offered by Groove. Here's a few comments:

"Kubi is not point for point equivalent to Groove -- it provides no real-time communication capability, for example, and its toolset is not as large or as obviously extensible as Groove. However, the capabilities it offers are a great advantage for people trying to collaborate on a peer to peer basis using Outlook.

The technology is based on the creation of specialized Outlook folders which contain more-or-less normal looking Outlook forms, such as tasks, calendar entries, contacts, discussions, and documents. However, these Kubi folders are in fact being shared by members of a project team, in a manner equivalent to Exchange sharing and replication, but without an Exchange server. This is done by sending specialized messages from one Kubi user to another, exploiting the fact that Outlook is an email client. These messages are intercepted by Kubi's client software and translated into updates of the shared content. Note also that Kubi has a Lotus Note client. As a result, I can collaborate with dozens of folks on dozens of shared projects, none of whom have to share Exchange or Notes server technology.

The invitation process is simple and intuitive. I did encounter a few well-known limitations and bugs in the current beta, but I managed to get around them. In one case I had to update from an older version of Windows 2000 and Outlook, and then encountered a very slow initialization of a project that included several hundred emails, but in the end, everything has worked as advertised.

I have created over a dozen Kubi spaces in my Outlook client, and because the interface is Outlook, I have found the interface obvious. Kubi has provided a number of dashboards to make managing shared work easy. When you click the folder icon associated with a Kubi space, you see a collection of the most recently updated information, as well as upcoming tasks and calendar entries associated with the space. When you click the root Kubi icon, called 'Kubi', you are presented with a cross-project dashboard, displaying hot items from all spaces."

I recommend that anyone interested in team collaboration solutions, and who has already made an investment in Exchange or Domino mail servers, take a look at Kubi.

I finally was able to connect with Matt Smith regarding the status at Presenceworks, a company that pioneered the notion of embedding presence from the public networks into applications. Presenceworks is the first company to have an AIM business partner relationship in place, but the company has changed its plans. In response to questions about the company's future, Smith said, "PresenceWorks has trimmed to down to skeleton staff, who are overseeing a possible IP sale, and we are not actively selling product on the street."

It seems like a strange twist of fate, since the IM market continues to explode, and interest in presence-enabling applications is growing. Perhaps the reality is that -- while Smith & Co made the right bet on presence technology -- the company was too early relative to enterprise adoption of instant messaging. All indications are that 2004 will be a banner year for enterprise uptake of IM, so Presenceworks could be an attractive acquisition for other software groups trying to make a play in this market.

Smith is now working at AOL, in a group working on licensing presence. His brother and business partner, Paul Smith (recently back from Thailand), is overseeing IP sale opportunities.

ActiveBuddy has changed its name to Conversagent to better reflect the company's product orientation toward "conversational software solutions."

Akonix announced this week that the company had closed a second round of financing, raising $11M for the San Diego-based company. Akonix is one of the leaders in instant messaging management solutions, and competes directly with IMlogic and Facetime.

The funding follows strong sales growth in Q3, which more than doubled over Q2: the company added over 50,000 licensed customer seats in the period as well.

Recent press report on AOL's newest round of layoffs which is likely to "reach into the hundreds by the end of the week." Many of the cuts are projected to take place at the Netscape unit in California, but some will be targetted at the Dulles, VA headquarters. The company's revenues and stock price have rebounded slightly, in the recent past, from a historical low early in the fall.

I have long maintained that AOL is not really a software company, but a media play. Should a media company be building its own software? Sure, AOL's software seems to be what they peg their value on, but its not really true. The cold reality is that selling ads and aggregating content has become the core value proposition for the firm, not connecting to the Internet.

AOL could potentially outsource all software development, and deliver a better product. Of course, they bought Netscape so Netscape could be their software company, but they are effectively pruning that company down to nothing, and Netscape hasn't built anything except for the once-upon-a-time Netscape browser. Its time to cut the cord, and not by half steps, which is what Time Warner CEO Parson seems to be doing.

Relative to the company's instant messaging services and software, the company has already gone through a reorganization and downsizing of folks earlier this fall, and is adopting a partnering strategy for marketing and support of its enterprise instant messaging product. Probably a sound strategy when confronted with competitors like Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle.

In response to several inquiries yesterday, I called Matt Smith of Presenceworks regarding the fact that the company's website was down, and is still down this morning. This is the result of a snag in transitioning servers and web site providers, Matt tells me, and the company hopes that the website will be up and running later this week.