Several years ago, I had a chance to talk to Satish Dharmaraj, the CEO and cofounder of Zimbra. He told me that the company spent two years building a sophisticated email system (in stealth mode) – and was using some cool Web 2.0 capabilities.

Since then, the company has continued to innovate. More importantly, Zimbra has been picking up a lot of customers (the current count is over 1,300). Some include Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA), Embarq Corporation (NYSE: EQ), Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN), H&R Block, Inc. (NYSE: HRB), and Century 21.

Well, the hard work has paid off; that is, Zimbra has fetched $350 million in a buyout from Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO).

No doubt, Zimbra's messaging platform has some slick features. But it's also sturdy enough for intense enterprise environments. For example, Zimbra allows for archiving and on-site deployment – which are essential capabilities in the Sarbanes-Oxley world.

Yahoo is a dominant player in email, with about 250 million registered users. Now, with the power of Zimbra, Yahoo can expand into corporate environments. In other words, there will be even more pressure on Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT)'s Office franchise.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

Those of you who have been interested in blogs for several years are probably well aware of the company Technorati. This website made a splash by becoming the first market-share dominator in the entire Web 2.0 space, especially in the blog search engine space. But times have changed and Technorati is struggling to hold on.

The situation in Technorati is quickly shifting to more difficult, seemingly by the day. As TheDeal.com reported on Friday, the founding CEO of the company recently stepped down. In addition, the company has been forced to recently slash eight jobs to adjust the company's expense structure. Perhaps the most startling of it all -- Technorati is quickly losing its dominant market share position.

According to research firm Hitwise, Technorati's number one market share position is now just secured by 1%. The company currently stands at 34% of the blog search market, while Google's blog search product is a strong and growing 33%.

As you can see from the chart below (courtesy of Alexa.com), Technorati's page views figures are well off of their peak. Understandably, this traffic decline has been a huge catalyst to a weakening position in the blog search market, as well as financial difficulties, because for most internet companies, traffic is everything.

Web 2.0 is not just for consumer websites. In fact, corporate America is warming up to it.

One of the software players in the space is Jive Software, which recently snagged $15 million in its first round of venture capital. The investor is Sequoia Capital, which has backed biggies like Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Basically, Jive develops web-based software that allows employees, partners, and suppliers to collaborate. There should be lots of growth -- although, the competition is tough. For example, one of the biggest players is Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT).

Over the years, Jive has had a stunning record of success. Apparently, there are more than 2,000 customers and revenues are over $15 million (and growing nicely). But, with backing of Sequoia, it's a good bet we'll be hearing more about Jive and its competitors.

To see more venture capital fundings, click here.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

A couple years ago, Suranga Chandratillake started Blinkx. The goal was to make it easier to search for online videos. Interestingly enough, he got a lot of pushback.

Of course, things are a lot different now -- especially with Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ: GOOG) purchase of YouTube.

Well, this week, Blinkx took another important step: The company went public on the London-based AIM exchange and raised about $50 million.

On the first day of trading, the stock price surged 40% to 65 pence, and the company has a market cap of roughly $355 million.

So far, Blinkx has deals with 130 media partners and has indexed more than 12 million hours of videos.

Because of the "quiet period," I can't talk to Suranga. But when it expires, it will definitely be interesting to get his observations on the process.

Check out the recent BloggingStocks interview with Suranga.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Web 2.0, a web for sharing content among individuals, attracted over a quarter of a billion worth of venture capital in the first half of 2006 alone.

Some Web 2.0 start ups have made serious money for their founders. YouTube's founders pocketed $1.65 billion in 2006 when they sold out to Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG); Flickr's founders took home an undisclosed amount -- estimated between $15 million and $35 million -- selling to Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) in 2005; and in 2005 MySpace's founders made $580 million selling to News Corp. (NYSE: NWS).

Here are some questions that came to my mind about Web 2.0:

• What is Web 2.0?
• How popular is it?
• Who is making money off it?
• How is it leaping the synapse from start-up to incumbent?
• What are its risks and opportunities for business?
• Where is it heading?

Click here for some thoughts on these questions. What am I missing? What do you think?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in the securities mentioned in this post.

Lately, Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA) has been pushing its dot-com agenda. For example, the company is putting together a major video portal and even purchased Fandago to help make this happen. It's part of a strategy to become like Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) or Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO).

Today, Comcast generated some more buzz. That is, the company is developing SmartZone, a web-based system for customers to manage email, voice mail, address books, video clips, instant messages, and so on. It will certainly be a big point of leverage for Comcast's 12 million broadband users and three million digital phone users.
A critical part of the system is Zimbra's platform. "We spent a year working on this deal," said Zimbra's CEO, Satish Dharmaraj, to me in an interview last week.

Zimbra is no ordinary email/messaging provider. Rather, it is a highly versatile Web 2.0 system that allows for drag-and-drop and easy integration with many web services (such as Wikipedia, Salesforce.com and so on).

The Comcast service will be free. It should also be a nice value-add to get new customers -- and retain existing customers. It's also a big validation for the Web 2.0 community.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Not all that long ago Prosper.com set out to change the way people got and lent out loans. Inspired by eBay Inc. (NADAQ:EBAY) and other companies that were creating peer-to-peer networks, Prosper founders set out to create peer-to p-peer lending, theorizing that there were many people seeking loans for small amounts that fell outside finance company's interest areas.

Basically you can invest in Prosper by buying part of a loan that looks interesting to you. The loan's interest is actually competitively determined by how many bid to lend you the money, the more people who like your stats and story, the lower your interest rate goes, something I've found intriguing as I signed up six months ago with a dubious 'let's see how this works' expression.

Now I'm pleased to see that Prosper.com has refined its site. Even better, it has some new features. Payments clear a bit earlier, as well as transfers. Prosper is using better address verification for loan borrowers, to help make the process of lending money to a stranger a bit more secure. An API has been released, which means developers of software may yet roll out a program to let you access your Prosper account. Even better, recurring funds transfers now allow you to take money out automatically from your bank.

Peer-to-peer lending is certainly cutting edge finance, and risky. But so is stock investing. Do your research, but if you're interested in a new way of thinking about making interest on your money, consider Prosper. And if you're looking for a maverick way of expanding your company, or consolidating some debt, you might also consider Prosper.

When Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) purchased YouTube, a lot of people wondered if it would cause YouTube's death, as media companies who'd had content reposted on YouTube without permission would have a large cash cow to sue. And if they were successfull in getting their proprietary content off the site, would YouTube still be able to grow and thrive?

This morning Google faced the large issue head on at the Web2.0 Expo in San Francisco when CEO Eric Schmidt talked about larger media concerns about copyright protection. According to TechCheckDaily.com Google will be rolling out a "CYC," a claim your own content tool so that IP owners can worry about YouTube a lot less.

Details are sketchy right now, but it does make for an interesting twist as Google uses its coding skills to try and fix a problem media companies have used litigation for.

Andrew Struthers, an individual who spent a great deal of time and effort to record a million hit wonder YouTube sensation had his video Spiders on Drugs stolen and repurposed by another YouTube user (and even sold to Ebaum's world when that person didn't even own the rights to it) instead of that person just linking it or embedding it. You can read his story and imagine that someone like him might have enjoyed having a Google CYC system he could have used, as the Andrew Struthers of the world can't afford million dollar lawyers with bevies of takedown notices working for them.

The Web 2.0 conference is revving up in San Francisco.

An interesting panel was one about the bleak future of traditional journalism (original, huh?) Well, the co-founder of Topix.net, which is an aggregator of news, thinks that falling revenues and profits will mean fewer jobs for journalist – and, less content.

While there may be fewer jobs, I still think the content will be there. After all, if you go to Topix.net or Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), you will see a ton of articles – from major publications – that look alike. Perhaps, the reduction in overall revenues will just mean fewer copycats? Isn't that what markets are supposed to do and the Internet is really just facilitating this – which it has in other sectors?

Somehow, he thinks that mass media is dead and that we will move towards micro media.

Again, I'm not sure. In a noisy marketplace, I still think brands have tremendous power.

Despite the success of Web 2.0, there are still only a handful of online mega brands, such as YouTube and MySpace. Basically, it's extremely tough to make a brand – but it's still something traditional media giants still have as an asset.

And, the funny thing, when I talk to Web 2.0 companies and ask about their latest deals, they usually talk about the ones they strike with traditional media companies.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

I recently talked to a former big-wig at MySpace. He said he was very impressed with the online video/mashup site, Photobucket.

Well, maybe Photobucket was getting too big. According to a piece in CNET, MySpace has blocked Photobucket users from posting on the site.

Why? Well, users were placing ads in the videos. And that's apparently a violation of the MySpace terms of service.

From what I understand, Photobucket gets a big chunk of traffic from the News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) site. So there's probably incentive to get a deal done, right?

Maybe not. Photobucket is trying to rile up its community against MySpace's actions. You can check it out on its blog.

I had a chance to interview Mark Sigal, the CEO and co-founder of vSocial, an online video site. According to him:

"There is no question that Photobucket hugely benefits from it's plug into MySpace, although I don't know the specific percentages. It speaks to the paradox of MySpace on the one hand benefiting from the rise of social media, which is fundamentally about openness and ease of viral distribution (so-called "embed and spread"), and on the other wanting to maintain control of it's ad inventory. Similarly raises the question of how services like Photobucket, which rely on being able to monetize viral traffic, build a business."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

Last Friday, I had coffee with a VC. His focus is on the consumer Internet market and has made a variety of investments in the Web 2.0 space. He said to me: "I'm looking for Web 3.0 investments."

What's that? He really didn't give a good explanation. Basically, he said Web 3.0 is making-up for the problems of Web 2.0.

A report from Ernst & Young and Dow Jones VentureOne has some numbers on it. That is, in 2006, there were $850 million in Web 2.0 investments in 167 companies. This is double the results in 2005. The big investors in the category include Benchmark Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Sequoia Capital and Omidyar Network.

The study defines a Web 2.0 company as one that has a business model "that revolves around a dynamic interface facilitating participation through such methods as user-created content, networking, and collaboration."

Business model? I'm pretty sure most of the companies aren't making much money. Even the poster child of Web 2.0, YouTube, is not cranking in the cash.

Maybe we'll need to wait for Web 3.0 for that.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

In viewing all of the new features that one can access as an Amazon.com(NASDAQ:AMZN) customer, I am actually quite amazed that Amazon.com has released such a plethora of new features for its customers to access. Wikis, Ajax features, blogs entries by customers, etc. -- all these Web 2.0 features make sense for the evolution of the web -- but do they make sense for the world's largest online retailer?

While all these whiz-bang features make sense for early adopters, the majority of the Amazon.com audience do not even know what their value is. Add to that the amazing variety and "all over the map" customer reviews at Amazon.com, and I find some of these features to be quite worthless as a customer. Do you?

Customer reviews are great -- when there is an objective viewpoint given without a lot of "this feature sucks" language and emotional rants that so many reviews have. If this is what we can expect from the Wikis and Blog entries at Amazon.com, I am not sure of the inherent value these new features will bring to an admittedly jaded audience member like myself. Maybe, even, millions of other customers.

[Disclosure: I own AMZN shares as of 1-30-06]

Billed as a sort of Myspace for investors, stockpickr.com is a great way to view other investors portfolios, or set up your own list of picks to find other investors with similar investment strategies. You can even view the portfolios of investment icons like Carl Icahn, Warren Buffett, George Soros, and Mario Gabelli. The site was created by TheStreet.com columnist James Altucher, who is also the author of several investing books.

The site can be a great way to look for stocks that are similar to what you own. For example, if you are bullish on an obscure tech company, you could find out what other holders of the same stock tend to have in their portfolios. Check it out here.

This morning, I met with a CEO of a Web 2.0 company. He's a veteran of the tech world and a proven operator.

Despite having great technology, his company is getting little traction. True, he has a variety of deals with big companies. But, simply put, the revenue is very minimal (last quarter, the company generated less than $1,000 on the top line).

Another problem: One of his VCs has closed shop. His other VC may be following suit.

Yes, except for a couple standout companies -- such as Google Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG) YouTube and Facebook – there is not much good news in the Web 2.0 universe lately.

Actually, there's a interesting article on this topic in Redherring.com. Despite a surge in venture capital, there have been no Web 2.0 IPOs and only four acquisitions (during 2006).

The article also points to a variety of companies that might be in trouble, such as Browster, FilmLoop, RawSugar, Guba and Insider Pages.

No doubt, this probably only scratches the surface.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.

As a self-proclaimed Web 2.0 geek (those who know me will agree with that label) I am constantly reading about the next wannabe MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube. On Wednesday, TechCrunch profiled Stockpickr, "the stock idea network" targeting the financially inclined and boasting a new partnership with TheStreet.com (NASDAQ: TSCM). I have to say it was a breath of fresh air. A rarity for Web 2.0 (although certainly not the ONLY Web 2.0 finance company), Stockpickr is proving to be very helpful for those of us who have a hard time choosing stocks and funds. The site allows users to create a profile of the stocks that they normally track and then generates stock ideas based on publicly available investing information.

I haven't had the chance to fully demo it (I do, in fact, have a full-time job) but I did navigate through some of the community profiles on the left side of the page, such as Warren Buffett's holdings. It not only showed me who else bought the stocks Buffett owns, but Stockpickr also told me what else they might recommend for buyers of said stock. For example, if you were interested in Costco Wholesale (NASDAQ:COST), Stockpickr shares what other people who own this stock also bought -- such as, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), Starbucks (NASDAQ:SBUX), or Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO).

Read more of TechCrunch's review of Stockpickr here.