Clearspring, a fairly well-financed widget platform and advertising network has announced today the purchase of AddThis, the producer of one of the most popular widgets for allowing Web content to be easily shared on a variety of services like Digg, Del.icio.us, and Facebook. The terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed.

Clearspring’s mission is naturally to serve as large an audience as possible, and the acquisition of AddThis certainly helps to expand the purview of its newfound parent and proprietor. AddThis is a bookmarking and sharing utility that has been adopted by a range of third parties, including media outlets such as Time, Fox, ABC, and CBS. MySpace is also listed as a client, making its reach quite notable indeed.

Of course, in buying AddThis, Clearspring itself now faces the competition of ShareThis, a service with a similarly broad base of use. And, as Kara Swisher of BoomTown notes, the fact that neither Clearspring, with a claimed $10 million in annual sales, nor AddThis, with “negligible revenue,” together make a profitable collection of services, it’s not yet certain where where their businesses stand.

Market share is clearly the key pursuit at the moment, with hopes that advertising revenue, grouped with data gleaned from interaction with Clearspring’s widgets and the AddThis component, will follow in kind.

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Creator of the most complete online office suite out there, Zoho, has a new product out: Zoho Marketplace. It’s a catalog of business applications for users to try out and purchase directly from the developers; on the other end of the equation, users can post specifications for an app they need and then the developers can create an application tailored to their needs.

Applications can be free or with a price tag; in the latter case, a demo is provided for the users to try out. This is where the pricing system becomes interesting; from the press release:

“When a user purchases the app, the application is installed in that user’s account. The developers will be paid in full with no Zoho commission. Based on the user’s usage, Zoho Creator applies its pricing. If you have less than 10 Apps that you share with less than 5 users, Zoho Creator is free.” So, Zoho earns money based on usage, which is a slightly unusual business model; it will be interesting to see how it will work for them.

The applications available on Zoho Marketplace are created and deployed on Zoho Creator, which brings us to another announcement from Zoho, because the Creator has been updated to version 3.0. It enables “regular folks” as they call them at Zoho to create business applications which can be kept private, shared, published, or sold through the marketplace. You can read an overview of the last iteration of Creator here; version 3.0 brings the following enhancements and features:

- developers can now create dynamic, fully customized HTML pages that are part of an application and embed forms, views, widgets, videos and more.
- layout customization with a wide choice of layouts and themes, plus the possibility to create your own layouts
- stateless forms, which allow developers to take advantage of all the Creator tools and environment, but gives them full control over where their data is stored.

See the introductory videos for Marketplace and the new version of Creator below.

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If you aren’t automatically logged in into Facebook, you may have noticed that the home page is a bit different. It’s nothing too dramatic; they’ve rearranged the login a bit, moving it to the top of the page, and changed the copy into “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.” Social networking is never mentioned, probably meaning that the folks at Facebook think they’ve outgrown the concept. The rest of the Facebook seems intact.

There’s more: if you’re an iPhone owner, you’ll be happy to know that Facebook’s iPhone application has reached version 2.0; you can get it through the iPhone app store. New version brings all the ‘new’ overviews of what’s happening on Facebook: News Feed, Live Feed, Events, Notifications and so on. Furthermore, those tabs from Facebook’s new design are also visible in the iPhone version. Finally, you can post (and tag) photos from your iPhone. And, the coolest feat yet: you reload the page by shaking your iPhone!

If you don’t own an iPhone then you’ll probably be disappointed, because the “regular” mobile version, available at m.facebook.com still lacks most of this functionality. Oh well, if you want a decent mobile version of a web application these days you need to get an iPhone; there’s no way around it.

BTW, if you’ve noticed bugs in the 2.0 version of the iPhone app, you’re not alone. According to some reports, there’s bugs a plenty, and lead developer of Facebook’s iPhone app Joe Hewitt, has already promised a quick fix.

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We’re wrapping up the interview series from the Austin leg of the SummerMash stop, and one of my very favorite interviews and very favorite startup ideas I came across during my night in Austin is the coworking space Conjunctured. 

In case your unfamiliar with the term “coworking,” it’s a variant on the idea of an office incubator, where small startups can pool their resources to get office space and all the accoutrements of an office without paying the high price tag it can take to acquire all they myriad of electronics, furniture and physical space. Back in the late nineties, there was another form of the idea, we called them geek-houses.  A slightly more intense version of the concept, it was where anywhere from four to nine (or more) industry geeks would pool their resources and create what ended up looking like something from the movie Hackers and calling it home.

There’s an interesting dichotomy for a lot of us in the tech sector - we like being our own bosses and setting our own agendas, but we miss some of the trappings of what the corporate world can offer. A coworking space can give that added benefit of providing a sense of community for startups to belong to when their company may only consist of one or two employees. As someone who’s coded for companies with no other programmers on staff, I know how difficult that can be.

John Erik Metcalf, one of the founders of Conjunctured, sat down with Aaron Novak during the Austin SummerMash stop to chat about the history of the company. The interview could essentially serve as a step by step way to bootstrap your own coworking space in your area (something I’m actually considering in a few months, after I move back to the DFW area).

It’s an interesting peek into a company that took the time to design an execute a growth based business model (something that’s rare these days) as well as an intriguing glimpse into the burgeoning Web 2.0 culture of Austin, Texas. You can watch the interview via the embed below, or download the MP4.

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Mark Evans wrote a post a couple of days ago that asks a simple question that as far as I am concerned every single web service start up should be asking: “What’s In It For Me?”

While his central point was more about developers asking this question to see whether they were creating something because they could or whether it actually served a real need,I was struck by something else he said. In his post he notes that developers need to watch how people are actually using the site.

The reason for this is that in a great many cases what you thought would be the killer aspect that everyone would want to use the site for turns out to be exactly the opposite. Instead they find some other way that - as Mark says - resonates with them.

The best example of this of course has to be Twitter. Twitter was never intended to be what it is today. Where the company saw a mini-CMS application, the users discovered a dead simple real time communication tool and this almost killed Twitter.

The only thing that really saved them was that what they - or rather what the users saw was something totally new and they were willing to put up with all the problems that Twitter had as it made what turned out to be a massive transition. I don’t think that something like that will be repeated again as users are being geared to the idea that companies can basically turn on a dime and provide what the users want and have it work.

I also saw this same sort of thing happen on FriendFeed but they had the benefit of the Twitter Experience and very quickly added; or improved, features that the users wanted as they began using the service for something beyond what FriendFeed may have envisioned. Where FriendFeed had thought that a well featured personal lifestream aggregator with a very simple way for people to be able to leave comments on other members posted items, the users found something much more important to them. 

What the users discovered was that FriendFeed was another communication community. While FriendFeed had  thought the simple comment system would be enough the users suddenly began using the service as a meeting place where they could all hang out with friends and chat up a storm.

This wasn’t something I believe that the FriendFeed team believed that their service would be used for; but to their credit when they saw it happening they very quickly started reacting to feature requests that the users were making in order to make the service an even better communication hub.

However it is not just the new boys on the Web 2.0 block that can take this kind of lesson to heart. Even the companies that have been in the software business for as long as the web has been around need to listen and watch - maybe even more so. One company that many people might not expect to do this is Apple and before anyone starts laughing too hard, stop and think about their whole iTunes and iPod infrastructure for a moment.

When the iPod first came on the market it was meant as strictly a music player and iTunes was to be its supplier of those music files. However at some point podcast producers figured that this would be an excellent way to get their podcasts out to a wider audience and the users liked the ease by which they could keep up to date with their favourite podcasts.

Apple could very well have put a stop to the whole idea as quickly as it started. After all it’s not like they are known for anyone using their products for ways that Apple doesn’t want them used for. In this case though Apple went with the flow and now podcasts are an integral part of the whole iTunes/iPod ecosphere.

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Jaxtr is unveiling premium memberships this evening, making it easier for users of the web-based VoIP service to make long distance and international calls. The service – which includes widgets that users can put on their social networking profiles to enable friends to call them – previously employed a credits system, requiring users to reload their account each time it emptied.

While the credit system isn’t disappearing, the new premium memberships will offer most users a better value according to CEO Konstantin Guericke. In an interview last week, Guericke noted that “in exchange for users committing to us, they will get rates that are 20-30% lower than buying calling credits a la carte.”

For example, the lowest level Jaxtr plan, priced at $2.95/mo, gets you 350 minutes of calls per month, while when buying a la carte, 400 credits will cost you $5.00. Jaxtr is also introducing two other membership levels – $7.95 for up to 1,000 mins/mo and $19.95 for up to 2,500 mins/mo.

In turn, Jaxtr gets more predictable subscriber revenue, which it projects will make the company profitable in the second half of 2009. Jaxtr currently claims more than 10 million members, and also generates revenue through advertising via its Café Jaxtr social networking product.

Overall, Jaxtr is emerging as one of the better positioned companies in the social networking space amidst the current economic slowdown. The hybrid business model of subscriptions and ads is akin to that of LinkedIn – where Guericke was a co-founder – and provides Jaxtr with flexibility should advertising revenue slow down significantly. Meanwhile, the service saves customers money through its low cost international calling – something more and more businesses will be looking to do as budgets get trimmed.

On the other hand, web-based VoIP hasn’t been a slam dunk for everybody. Earlier this year, we witnessed the implosion of one of Jaxtr’s biggest competitors – Jangl – the team of which has since been absorbed into Jajah. Nonetheless, Jaxtr appears to be executing well, and adding premium memberships is a logical step in the often elusive march towards profitability in the social networking space.

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Acquia has announced the availability of Acquia Drupal, a free and commercially supported distribution of the popular Drupal open source social publishing system. They also unveiled the Acquia Network, which offers subscription-based access to technical support and remote network services that simplify the development and operation of Drupal Web sites. Entry level subscriptions to the Acquia Network will be free of charge through the end of the year.

For those that aren’t overly familiar with Drupal, it’s an open source web development and content management platform that publishes, manages and organizes a wide variety of content on websites. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal.

With the release of Acquia Drupal with its streamlined packaging of Drupal and a support system via the Acquia Network, there will definitely be a tremendous increase in Drupal developers and websites powered by this Drupal.

All subscribers to the Acquia Network will gain access to the Acquia Network’s subscriber forums, remote network services such as software update notifications, uptime monitoring, Mollom spam blocking, and Acquia Drupal documentation.

What all this means is that many more companies, especially enterprise class entities, will be much more willing to dip their toes in the Drupal pool now that there’s a commercial grade package available that includes tech support. If all this sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking about Linux and how similar its path has been to the corporate world. At one point, only extreme geeks used Linux, until some big names like IBM and Novell started proving technical support plans with their Linux offerings. That allowed larger companies to try Linux much the same way they will try Drupal thanks to the Acquia partnership and support offering.

It seems like the natural evolutionary progression for all open source projects to go from a handful of geek’s using it in their basement to the corporate enterprise once a commercial package with tech support is distributed. It will be interesting to see what kind of websites and social networks are born from this marriage between Acquia and Drupal.

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Were you pleased with the online coverage of the debates? I’m not talking about the punditry, the live streams and the drunkblogs. I’m specifically talking about the much-vaunted live coverage on Twitter and FriendFeed. You know, the stuff that was overlayed on Current’s channel, talked about on CSPAN and probably used in at least a dozen other bits of news coverage.

The usage was certainly there, and Biz shows us some interesting usage graphs, showing not-insigificant spikes during some key phrases in the debate.  Definitely, when looked at in terms of aggregate use, there are some interesting patterns that emerge. For those that are looking for a civilized general debate though, well, it definitely left me feeling a bit empty at the end of the night.

A couple of weeks ago, I penned a piece called “Wisdom of Crowds isn’t the Answer for Everything,” and it’s in the context of those points that Sean and I talked today about the suitability of most social media platforms for political discourse.

Check in on the discussion below (or download the MP4).

Oddly, I think we both agree that there are ways out of this problem, but there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight currently for the lack of elevated discussion. The question becomes, then, what useful purpose during this election can FriendFeed and Twitter serve?  It certainly isn’t substantive discussion or a place for distilled truth (like the blogosphere was four years ago). Is it simply statistics on when people are intrigued or moved by widely heard statements?

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MotionBox has announced several video tools that will support the HD format AVCHD (Advanced Video Codec High Definition) which is used by most of the leading HD camcorders on the market today including Panasonic, Sony, Hitachi, Canon, etc.

AVCHD video quality is excellent, but it has been very difficult to view or edit this type of video on your computer. It’s been even more troublesome to share AVCHD videos online due mostly to the sheer size of the files and the time required to upload them. Because of these reasons, Motionbox will provide a new Motionbox Express Uploader (MxU) tool that’s based on Adove AIR. It will be able to upload just about any size video file and resume large uploads if/when connections are disrupted. This will be a big time saver for sure.

Motionbox also announced native AVCHD support which means after uploading these large files directly to your Motionbox account they’ll transcode it on their server - then you can use Motionbox web-based editing to edit the video. You won’t need to purchase expensive video editing packages like Pinnacle Studio or Sony Vegas. You can also embed your videos on your blog straight from your Motionbox account.

The Motionbox HD player features high-quality widescreen capable playback up to 720p, full screen option and an easy to use interface. Premium users ($29 per year) can download videos and watch them at resolutions up to 1080p. They can also embed these videos on their blogs or websites.

Basic membership now provides a 30-day trial period to evaluate all of the premium services so you get a chance to see the quality that these tools and services offer. If you’re serious about HD video and you’ve invested a great deal of expense in HD equipment, the low-cost premium account might be the way to go.

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Fuser has just launched a major update to their email aggregation service. This evening, members were introduced to the new and improved Fuser, which sports a fresh look and feel.

The welcome page is the first sign that things have changed for Fuser members. There’s an entirely different design, which visually explains what the services does: Aggregation of email, social networking messages, and even Twitter messages.

By far, though, the biggest change besides the user interface is the performance, which has been sometimes sluggish because of the intense processing that’s required for connecting to so many different services at one time. They’ve redesigned the entire backend to vastly improve the speed and stability of their service.

For the purpose of this review, we set up several different accounts in order to test the new service, with something an average user would actually use. For example, accounts for Gmail, Yahoo mail and Hotmail, as well as MySpace and Facebook.

Once you’re logged into the new Fuser you’ll see an entirely different inbox setup. There’s a tabbed navigation system for access to email and Twitter messages. Here’s a glimpse:

Notice the checkboxes next to each service under the Add/Edit Accounts tab. That’s the new way to filter which messages you want to appear in your universal inbox. For example, because all of the checkboxes a