Menlo Park, California-based August Capital was founded in 1995. Focusing on early stage technology companies, the firm currently has more than $1.3 billion under management. Mr. Rappaport serves on the boards of Atheros Communications, Broadlogic Systems, Luxtera, Magnum Semiconductor, MicroDisplay, Scintera, Tzero, Unity Semiconductor, and Ubicom. Along with his wife, Deborah Rappaport, he founded Skyline Public Works, which takes a venture capital approach to political philanthropy by investing in progressive entrepreneurs.

August Capital partner Andy Rappaport spoke with Red Herring about his presidential pick for 2008’s Super Tuesday.

What would you like the next U.S. president to do to benefit tech companies?
Technology companies depend upon a stable, educated, healthy work force. So to the extent that we have increasing concerns around healthcare, poverty, education, etcetera, this is affecting our ability to find, recruit, and maintain a suitable work force.

We have a crumbling infrastructure. We’ve been shortchanging investment and infrastructure in the United States to a terrific degree—whether it’s energy infrastructure for greater energy independence or physical infrastructure for moving things around, roads, airways, etcetera.

What’s something a president could do that would harm the U.S. tech industry?
The things that I would want the next president to not do are not necessarily things that narrowly affect the technology companies, so much as, 'Gee I would hate for the next president to not think about a different mode of international engagement for the country; I would hate for the president to not think about addressing the issues of increasing income disparity and poverty and affordability of healthcare.'  My belief is that tech companies are now far more powerfully affected by general things that are happening than by the narrow items that have formed our agenda for the last twenty or thirty years.

Do you have a favorite candidate?
My favorite candidate was John Edwards. We were working fairly aggressively for him because of his position on the issues that I mentioned and our belief that he would do the right things and not do the wrong things. With him out of the race, I’m a very enthusiastic Obama supporter.

Which candidate are VCs are most excited about?
It’s been hard to discern a trend. I think that the VC community has become increasingly heterogeneous and so I have encountered supporters of all of the candidates on both sides among my peers.

Prediction?
I predict that McCain will be the Republican nominee. I think it’s very hard to predict at this moment who the Democratic nominee will be.

My feeling is that Obama stands a far better chance of beating John McCain. In fact, I think that if the general election was held today Obama would beat McCain in a landslide. If it’s Clinton and McCain, I think it’s going to be an unpredictable fight.

Has your company made any campaign contributions?
August Capital has not given any financial support to the candidates. This would be prohibited by law, as only individuals and PACs can make contributions to Federal candidates. August capital, as a matter of policy, does not make any political contributions, even when they are allowed, leaving that to us partners as individuals.

I have given the maximum $2,300 to Obama for the primaries, the same as I gave to Edwards for the primaries. I also gave Edwards $2,300 for his general election campaign.

San Mateo, California-based Tioga Energy is a renewable energy startup with more than $14 million in investment capital from Nth Power, NGEN, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, RockPort, and Capital Partners. Founded in 2007, the company operates its own solar electricity facilities. Through long-term power purchase agreements, the company wants to provide affordable renewable energy.

Tioga Energy executive Preston Roper spoke with Red Herring about his presidential pick for 2008’s Super Tuesday.

What would you like the next U.S. president to do to benefit tech companies?
The biggest thing that I would want to see is a cap and trade mechanism that brings the market forces to bear in a way that levels the field with traditional energy sources. The true cost of oil and its use are not accounted for today. Climate change, health issues—nobody is paying for that. A cap and trade policy would allow companies within the renewables sector to flourish, because then we are actually at parity or below parity with traditional fuel types.

What’s something a president could do that would harm the U.S. tech industry?
I don’t want to see what President Bush just did with the Energy and Security Act. We can’t have a policy which is constantly changing or up to the whim of the political winds. We need something long lasting. That’s the only way that you can make the proper investments.

Do you have a favorite candidate?
We need somehow to capture people’s imagination, and it’s not only policy and paper and legislation. But it’s also having people believe that there is longevity to policy and that there is also a vision. And I do see a slight advantage in the Obama campaign on that front.

Which candidate are VCs and tech execs most excited about?
In general, I think that it would be on the democratic side that there would be a little bit more openness to innovation and new businesses. I definitely get that sense from everybody I talk to in the clean tech and the renewables area. Specifically, which of the candidates that they look for, I’m not sure.

Prediction?
I think it will be McCain and one of the other two. At this point, I would give a slight advantage to Obama. I wouldn’t have said that a month ago. I would have said Clinton for sure. I think Obama is a slightly better candidate against McCain.

Has your company made any campaign contributions?
We’re a startup in a stage where we’re not actively engaged. So no, we’re not supporting any candidates directly.

Redwood City, California-based Education.com is an online educational resource for parents of children in preschool through grade 12. Founded in 2006, the Azure Capital- and TeleSoft Partners-backed site gives parents the ability to search reference articles, browse editorial content, and share advice with other moms and dads. Prior to Education.com, Mr. Fortune served for ten years as CEO of Computer Curriculum, which became the largest educational software company in the United States.

Education.com CEO Ronald Fortune spoke with Red Herring about his presidential pick for 2008’s Super Tuesday.

What would you like the next U.S. president to do to benefit tech companies and education?

I’d like to see a greater emphasis on the part of the federal government to continue to contribute to the funding of technology and education. We need to do more in terms of staff development. We need to do more in terms of access. Progress has been made, but more needs to be done.

What’s something a president could do that would harm the U.S. tech industry and education?

What would be a mistake is to throw out No Child Left Behind. It’s very controversial. There are indeed lots of negatives with No Child Left Behind, but I think we should not forget some of the positives. Putting the spotlight on the country’s underserved children is huge.

Do you have a favorite candidate?

I happen to like the direction that Obama is moving. I think it’s good for education, but I also think it’s good for gaining respect outside of the United States’ borders. The economy is very critical, and I think where we are with the war is also very critical, but I think the biggest challenge is where we stand with the rest of the world. And I think he probably has one of the better opportunities to make that contribution to the country. 

Which candidate are educators, VCs, and tech execs most excited about?

It’s well-known that teachers tend to vote democratic as opposed to republican. As to who teachers favor, one candidate over the other, it’s very close.

In business, we put a lot of emphasis on economics, and I think that’s one reason that the republican ticket is often attractive, just because people tend to vote with the pocketbook.

Prediction?

A year ago, I thought McCain would be in this position. I also thought Al Gore would get the democratic nomination. I believe the race will be too close to call. I also believe that external conditions such as Iraq, Iran, Korea, and McCain's health can influence the election.

Has your company made any campaign contributions?

It’s on an individual basis.

“We’ve extended the universe of users in both directions,” CEO Alex Blum said. The new interface makes it possible for “even a small editorial staff to manage a very successful social media site … and hardcore developers can go self-serve.”

The company, which launched version 2.0 a year ago, currently powers more than 13,000 web sites and counts ABC Family, CW Television, Vibe magazine, and the Phoenix Suns among its customers.

Backed by SoftBank Capital and Spark Capital, the startup closed an $11 million second round of financing back in August. The company has no plans for future funding rounds.

Focused on the rapid launch of social media tools, the New York-based company has opened up its API to developers. The site has also added a dashboard that provides customers with real-time data on how their social network is performing and suggestions on how to grow it virally.

According to a recent Forrester Research survey, two thirds of U.S. online teens and 29 percent of adults visit social-networking sites monthly, and marketers are scrambling to get their brands in front of those eyeballs.

This demand has led to an almost overwhelming number of startups—including Palo Alto, California-based Ning (known for its consumer platform) and San Francisco, California-based Leverage Software—vying to be the platform of choice. The growing list of white-label social-networking platforms has become unsustainable and partnerships and consolidations are likely in the near future, said Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang.

For companies trying to reach a community within an existing social network, it may make sense to simply develop a presence on that particular site. However, there are advantages to developing social media features within a branded site, noted Mr. Owyang. For example, marketers are able to easily glean customer insight by essentially creating an online focus group; companies can lower support costs by developing a place for customers to support each other; and corporations can work with their customers to come up with product ideas, as in the case of Dell’s site, IdeaStorm.

While KickApps’ social media platform is great for creating widgets, the company could improve its community offerings with more discussion and content rating capabilities, said Mr. Owyang. “They’re letting information fly off the site, rather than getting people to stay and discuss.”

MySpace may claim 137 million more members than Facebook, but when it comes to third-party applications, it has some major catch-up to do.

While MySpace bided its time waiting for Google to perfect OpenSocial, Facebook saw its traffic almost double in 2007, from about 12 million unique U.S. monthly visitors in January to 23 million in December. This jump in traffic has been pinned on the popularity of the nearly 15,000 applications that began spreading across the site after it launched its developer platform last May.

In December, Facebook also opened up its API for use on other social networks—essentially, beating OpenSocial to its purported punch.

These widgets, ranging from helpful birthday reminders to scam crushes, have caught the attention of VCs as well as bored office workers. Earlier this month, application developer Slide raised $50 million in institutional financing.

With money like that behind social networking applications, MySpace members can count on having thousands of timewasters to choose from soon.

“We’re creating the world’s largest ad sales team by leveraging ad networks,” said Frank Addante, CEO and founder.

The bulk of the additional capital will go toward international expansion as well as acquisitions and further infrastructure development, said Mr. Addante.

The Los Angles, California-based startup helps web sites manage and optimize multiple ad networks in order to generate higher ad revenue. The free self-service site simplifies the sometimes confusing online ad landscape for publishers, providing them with consolidated billing across ad networks and an online dashboard that lets them see earnings, reporting, and click rates.

“If a blogger writes about flowers and makes 300 dollars, and then writes about chocolate and makes 1,000 dollars, that blogger might want to write more about chocolate,” said Mr. Addante. We’re giving web sites “visibility about ad space that they never had before,” he said.

Still in beta, the site claims to have signed up more than 3,000 web sites since its October 2007 launch. Customers range from small blogs to Reunion.com and Beliefnet. According to the Rubicon Project, customers have seen revenue increases from 33 percent to 300 percent.

This is not Mr. Addante’s first foray into online advertising. Along with other members of the Rubicon Project team, he created the successful ad platform L90/adMonitor, which was later acquired by DoubleClick.

The success of Mr. Addante’s previous ventures, along with the growing advertising market, helped attract investors, said Raj Kapoor of the Mayfield Fund.

There are “few solutions helping publishers maximize inventory,” said Mr. Kapoor. According to Mr. Kapoor, 80 percent of ad inventory online is not sold directly by web sites. “What’s left goes to ad networks, but they may not be able to monetize it the best,” he said.

With Yahoo’s acquisition of Right Media and Google’s plan to acquire DoubleClick, the large ad networks appear to be aligning with big internet players, which may or may not be optimal for publishers and advertisers.  “Rubicon is a neutral party,” said Mr. Kapoor. “Google may be conflicted by wanting to keep a publisher on their network.”

The complexity involved in choosing the right ad network also poses a problem. For small companies, learning “how DoubleClick works is a bit bewildering,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, a senior analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. And for companies who hope to reach an international audience, figuring out the best ad network option can become even more confusing.

Given this situation, “there is a role there for an intermediary…to identify advertising opportunities that would be difficult for a company to do on their own,” he said. “This is very far from a crazy idea.”

GPSed’s application is an outgrowth of the Stuttgart, Germany-based company’s core business as a cross-platform software developer for mobile devices.

Similar to tracklog competitor MobileTracker (which costs about $24), GPSed’s free application allows users to track their trips in real time from their mobile devices and then share their trips and photos with friends online. Routes are traced onto Google maps and include altitude and speed data as well.

In about a month, members will be able to add photos to their trip tracks, said company representative Helen Khais. The geotagging feature will assign the precise latitude and longitude to the photos according to synchronized time stamps from members’ digital cameras and GPS enabled devices.

A frequent traveler, Ms. Khais said that this technology is great for sharing pictures with family members. “When I visit a place my family would never be able to visit…I can share with them exactly where I’ve been.” The so-called GPSed Photo Take ‘n’ Pin is also great for avid photographers who want to log the precise time and location a photo was taken, she said.

Nanomatic’s Myrimis, Loopt, bbPlaces, and Trackut are among the other internet and mobile social networks focusing on the location-obsessed.

According to the web site, GPSed is compatible with mobile devices equipped with internal GPS receivers, including N95, latest BlackBerry models, and Windows Mobiles. It’s also compatible with mobiles that can connect to external GPS receivers via Bluetooth and with any GPS receivers (like Garmin, TomTom, and others) that can record tracks in GPX, PLT, KML and other formats.

Social Sciences Net, a social media startup focused on health care, launched the targeted social network Wednesday.

After the loss of a close friend and former business partner to testicular cancer, Jack Brandt, Social Sciences Net founder and president, wanted to create a place for cancer patients, survivors, and their friends and family to collaborate and research treatment options.

“You’ve already gone to WebMD…now you want to ask someone, ‘what’s it really going to feel like when I go to chemo...’ I don’t think you can get that with MySpace or Facebook,” said Mr. Brandt.

Akin to other social networks, the cancer-focused site hopes to connect people in similar situations through profiles, chat rooms, email, instant messaging, friend lists, and blogging. A recently diagnosed cancer patient can search for other people living in their area with the same type of cancer and then “shoot them an email with a couple of silly questions,” said Mr. Brandt. This can lead them to chat and connect as friends online, and “the network builds virally from there.”

The Montclair, New Jersey-based startup is not alone in trying to bring the benefit of support groups online. The American Cancer Society Cancer Survivors Network, My Cancer Place, CancerMatch, and Not Defeated are among the other social networking and health information sites aimed at those dealing with cancer. Startups such as Redpoint Ventures-backed DailyStrength, which hosts more than 500 support groups, CarePages, and PatientsLikeMe take a broader approach by offering community features under multiple categories, including HIV/AIDS and depression.

Although the basic human need for connection predates the Internet, patients are no longer limited to their geographical location, noted Susannah Fox, a researcher with the Pew Internet Project. “You might be the one person in town with a certain rare form of cancer, but online you can connect with 50 other people and make sure that you are all up on the latest research,” she said.

According to a 2006 Pew Internet Project report, “eighty percent of American Internet users, or some 113 million adults, have searched for information on at least one of seventeen health topics.”

“Health care doesn’t always happen during office hours,” said Ms. Fox.

Analysts anticipate that health-focused social networking sites will continue to grow.

As Gen X and Gen Y move into care-giving for the boomer generation, and as they face more personal health issues themselves, they are likely to turn to these sites for advice and support, said Forrester Research analyst Chloe Stromberg.

In addition to providing a benefit to the greater community, there is money to be made here.

“If these sites are successful in providing social support, people feel gratitude and loyalty,” said Ms. Stromberg. Advertisers have an opportunity here to transform that gratitude to their advantage. This could be particularly attractive to pharmaceutical companies that often struggle with consumer trust issues, she said.

Currently ad-supported, Mr. Brandt plans to bring in additional revenue with local search features, such as an oncologist database. Oncologists could then add detail to their business profiles for a small fee.

Social Sciences Net is currently funded by Mr. Brandt’s “back pocket,” but he plans to seek venture capital or angel investors after proving the business model.

The startup plans to launch similar sites related to diabetes, asthma, depression, and HIV/AIDS in the months to come.

“Thousands and thousands of videos are posted every day and 99 percent are terrible,” said Jim Louderback, CEO of Revision3. “It takes too much time to go through even that 1 percent.”

Hosted by Tekzilla cohost Jessica Corbin, the 10-15 minute show will feature 7-10 of the most dugg videos from Digg each week. The preview episode ranged from the intellectually stimulating “Absolutely Brilliant Explanation of the Workings of the Mind” to the appropriately titled “Dumbest Cop Ever,” in which a police officer phones 911 out of fear that he and his wife have died from a marijuana overdose.

Corbin also highlights insightful viewer comments like Digg member greendalek’s response to the “Dumbest Cop Ever” video: “And they didn’t send a squad to his house to taser him?”

Louderback hopes that the Digg community will tune in to see if their comments are singled out.

The show also plans to interview the filmmakers to discover the motivations and methods behind their video work. We want to ask the “Will it Blend” guy why he keeps sticking things in the blender, said Louderback.

Louderback equates the current state of online videos with the birth of cinema. First cameramen were just filming people on walking on the street, he said. Then someone got the idea to make The Great Train Robbery. “Any new media goes from spectacle to story. Right now we’re in the spectacle stage,” said Louderback.

Despite the often inane nature of user-generated video content, “the audience for…internet video sites has risen sharply over the past year,” according to a January 2008 report from the Pew Internet Project. “Nearly half of online adults now say they have visited such sites.”

Venture backed by Greylock, Revision3 was launched in 2005 by David Prager and Digg founders Kevin Rose and Jay Adelson. According to Louderback, the site delivers 4 million videos per month across all its programming. Given the popularity of Digg’s video section, as well as user-generated content in general, Louderback expects The Digg Reel to be “very, very popular…It’s a fun watch with a built in audience from Digg.”

Future episodes will become available every Wednesday at 4 p.m. eastern time.

Gigya, backed by Benchmark Capital and First Round Capital, provides tools for distributing and tracking widgets. The startup wants to help advertisers and widget publishers make money off the popularity of widgets, or web-based software applications.

“Because of the dynamic of what happens on social networks, user-endorsed advertising makes sense,” said Ben Pashman, Gigya vice president of sales and business development.

Gigya began testing its distribution model about 60 days ago and now counts Kimberly-Clark, Disney, and Zomba Label Group, a division of Sony BMG, among its advertisers. The publisher network includes application developers Blingee and ImageChef.

The Palo Alto, California, startup hopes its new ad network will help it rival competitors Google Gadget Ads and McLean, Virginia-based Clearspring Technologies’ ad widget offerings.

Advertisers see an opportunity on widgets. Why not given their enormous popularity that has supported the proliferation of some 13,000 across Facebook alone. Bebo, Friendster, and LinkedIn have also seen rising widget numbers since opening their platforms to third-party developers. Social-networking giant MySpace keeps a tighter leash on its widgets, but promises to open up with Google’s OpenSocial.

Analysts see 2008 as the year widgets make money. Last year was about “experimenting with widgets,” Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang said. “Now it’s about trying to figure out how to monetize them.”

Gigya wants get people’s attention while they are updating their social network profile. Its network offers advertisers the chance to serve up branded widgets while people wait for applications to install. It also offers advertisers tracking of widgets, such as the number of installations, impressions, and user engagement.

“When dollars are involved, you have to have a measurement,” Mr. Owyang said.

Advertisers are charged on a cost per install basis and Gigya shares the resulting revenue with its widget publishers. “We’re providing a traditional ad network model for widget publishers,” said Mr. Pashman.

Widget ads are a logical next step in the evolution of online advertising, according to analysts. “The market will weigh traditional banner ads and Google ads against this new form of advertising,” Mr. Owyang said. Because of the viral spread of widgets and their increasing ability to move between social networks, “some might have larger audiences than traditional web sites.”

Gigya hopes to differentiate itself from Clearspring’s widget ad network by serving up branded widgets rather than ads within widgets.

Designed by Columbia, South Carolina-based Collexis Holdings, BioMedExperts plans to launch Friday. The site hopes to leverage the power of online professional networks to promote collaborative medical research and development among scientists around the world.

When researchers log into the site, they immediately see a list of their publications, areas of expertise, and a preliminary social network culled from their co-authors.

“Just about anybody who has written anything in a peer-reviewed journal in the past ten years worldwide is in the system,” said Collexis Holdings CEO Bill Kirkland.

Although the site is launching with 20,000 active users, it is pre-populated with 1.4 million profiles and 12 million network connections from more than 150 countries. “It’s the Kevin Bacon rule. If you’ve published, you’re connected to everyone,” said Mr. Kirkland.

The site allows health care and life science professionals to quickly see who else is working in their area of expertise, their institutional affiliation, where they are located, and what research papers they have published. In addition to viewing potential contacts, researchers can conduct grant and publication searches on the site as well.

According to industry analysts, social networks have become an alternative to search engines. However, given the abundance of social media information that currently exists, developers are now returning to search in order “to make sense of the information more quickly,” said analyst John Blossom, president of Shore Communications.

As powerful as Facebook and LinkedIn are, both sites’ keyword and tag searches are “too crude” to quickly find specific affinities, said Mr. Blossom. Collexis’ technology allows people to drill down quickly to “see who is doing what and with whom.”

At the University of South Carolina, Collexis’ expert profile system (a precursor to BioMedExperts) helped an Alzheimer researcher discover that a cancer researcher on campus was looking at the same gene pathway. "I don’t think they’d ever have thought to talk to each other," said Rose Booze, associate professor for research at the University of South Carolina. "Surprising connections can be made."

The network is an outgrowth of the company’s core business—enterprise-level “discovery” software. Collexis’ software aims to make search results more relevant by taking documents from various databases and pulling out key ideas and applying weight to them. COO Stephen Leicht equates the process to a high-tech version of highlighting important information in a college text book. Collexis used this semantic search technology to extract bibliographic information from Medline’s vast database to create the BioMedExperts network.

“There’s Google, and then there’s a 150 companies trying to be like Google,” said Mr. Kirkland. “We decided the best route was to build applications on top of our search technology.”     

In addition to ad revenue, Collexis, which counts the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins, and Harvard among its clients, plans to market its technology to institutions with large directories.

The company is looking at ways to apply the application to other academic disciplines as well. “This approach is by no means limited to the biosciences,” said Mr. Kirkland.

Dell has partnered with Collexis in launching the site. The two companies also plan to develop configurations that will allow researchers within large pharmaceutical companies to use the networking and search technology behind their firewall. Additionally, they will begin working together on hardware standards for the biological arena that will be offered though BioMedExperts.

Dell believes the site’s networking ability could aid in drug discovery. "The problem with some pharmaceutical companies is that don’t know what’s going on behind their own walls," said James Coffin, vice president and general manager, Dell Health Care and Life Sciences.

With the company still in beta mode, the funds will go toward continued development of the search engine, with an eye on launching in the first half of this year.

hakia aims to offer “a quality search experience that no one has seen before,” said CEO Riza C. Berkan.

The central challenge for hakia is that the firm's current site provides a search engine experience for users that's not very different from what's widely available in the marketplace. “Sometimes it's better, but very often it’s not,” said analyst Greg Sterling of Sterling Market Intelligence.

Founded in 2004, the New York City-based company is among a crowded market of search engine startups hoping to change the way the search experience work. Along with hakia, San Francisco, California-based Powerset and the Australian company Lexxe are hoping to be the semantic search engine of choice. Meanwhile, San Mateo, California-based Wikia Search, Santa Monica, California-based Mahalo, and mobile search startup ChaCha, based in Carmel, Indiana, aim to stand out from the pack by recruiting people to manually edit search results.

“What it [semantic search] amounts to is trying to understand a query more holistically rather than parsing it into individual words. A lot of people have decided that this is something that is very hard to do…it’s not something that’s imminent,” said Mr. Sterling.

While query results on conventional search engine giants like Google and Yahoo are statistical, or popularity based, hakia’s results are based off of conceptual relationships, said Mr. Berkan.

The problem with Google’s system is that “some information may not be popular, but correct, and some information may be popular, but false,” said Mr. Berkan.

Executives at search giant Google seems unfazed by such assertions. "Search is a highly competitive industry and we welcome competition that stimulates innovation and provides users with more choice,"  a Google representative wrote in an e-mail.

The startup does not see itself as a direct competitor to Google, but rather as the go-to search engine when other engines fail. “The people who will appreciate the site the most are the power users, professional users, or users who have serious problems that they’re trying to solve, such as medical or legal,” Mr. Berkan said.

However, mainstream consumers do not understand semantic search, said Mr. Sterling. It’s not obvious to consumers “why you should use this search engine versus others. They say that Google is capturing key words that may or may not capture the intended meaning behind the phrase…but by and large Google gets you to the right pages,” he said.

The conventional indexing approach used by other search engines can’t keep up with dynamic sites that are changing all the time, said Mr. Berkan. “Statistics-based systems will be behind more and more,” he said.

“Dr. Riza Berkan, and the team at hakia.com, are driving web search to a new level. The task is arduous, but, we have seen that this team is pushing the search industry to its next level,” said Ryszard Krauze, CEO of Prokom Investments S.A., in a release.

“Investors are hopeful,” said Mr. Sterling. Advertisers are pouring billions of dollars into search engines, so even a little piece can be profitable. Or, one of the major players may decide to acquire the company and integrate its technology into its current offering.

According to Nielsen Online, Google claims over half of the search market. With other major search sites like Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask.com, left “struggling to maintain a share of the search market…it’s very unlikely that an upstart will break out,” said Mr. Sterling.

The search startup is currently working with Ask.com’s advertising system, but the new round of funding will also be used to build hakia’s own semantic advertising platform and a European data center. Hakia hopes to attract advertising dollars by leveraging its technology to serve up more relevant ads.

Further expanding its search potential, the site also offers people the option to see who else has entered the same or similar query. The site’s social networking service is voluntary and anonymous by default, but users can choose to add their contact information.

The search engine’s social side is “more transactional,” said Mr. Berkan, who likens the feature to Craigslist rather than Facebook. “It’s not a place to present yourself to the world,” he said. “It’s a place to connect…with people who are asking the same question.”

The social side is interesting, said Mr. Sterling. Part of the rise of social networks may be attributed to individuals looking to ask for recommendations directly from real people, rather than getting lost down the search engine rabbit hole.

Even with the potential to differentiate itself with its social features, “right now it’s going to be very, very hard for anybody to shake up the search market,” said Mr. Sterling. “There is some next generation search experience that everyone is trying to work on, but no one has figured it out yet.”

The social-networking site contacted the developers and disabled the application, or widget, from use on the site.

“Facebook is committed to user safety and security and, to that end, its Terms of Service for developers explicitly state that applications should not use adware and spyware,” Facebook representatives said in an email.

The move comes a day after Sunnyvale, California-based security firm Fortinet took the social network to task for allowing the malicious application to propagate across the site.

The sneaky widget first piqued people’s interest by suggesting that one of their friends had a crush on them. Lured by the promise of discovering who had been silently pining for their hearts, users were coaxed through a series of steps that ultimately lead to a prompt to download a free horoscope service.

Once downloaded, users’ computers were then infected with the “infamous Zango adware/spyware” that monitors web browsing and then initiates targeted pop-up windows, said Guillaume Lovet, Fortinet’s Threat Response Team manager and the one responsible for discovering the adware widget.

Despite the risk of giving up personal information to a third-party developer, some 4 percent of Facebook members installed the application, which amounts to over 1 million downloads.

Zango, formerly known as 180solutions and Hotbar, is one of the world’s largest distributors of adware. Last November,  Bellevue, Washington-based Zango settled charges with the Federal Trade Commission for $3 million. The FTC said, “ they used unfair and deceptive methods to download adware and obstruct consumers from removing it, in violation of federal law.”

Zango denied the connections to the Secret Crush widget and said that they were unable to regenerate the ad that Fortinet discovered.

“In the case of the Zango ad seen by Fortinet, if clicked it would have taken a consumer to Zango’s standard plain-language notice and consent page where consumers could choose to install Zango software and access (without subscription) a Zango Astrology application – or choose not to install the software,” Zango representative Steve Stratz said a statement.

Mr. Lovet contends that people are so committed by the time they reach the Zango page that they are likely to agree to the notice. No one ever reads “end user license agreements,” he said.

The discovery of malicious widgets on Facebook “should come as no surprise to anyone,” said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “As sites like Facebook and MySpace become the destination for large numbers of users, they will also attract adware and spyware.”

The lesson to be learned is don't be lured into a false sense of security on the Internet just because it's Facebook, Mr. von Lohmann said. 

Although developers have to agree to follow Facebook’s terms of service, the site doesn’t have a vetting process.

Facebook appeared to react quickly to Fortinet’s report.  Friday morning Secret Crush had disappeared, only to be replaced by My Admirer. That too has since been disabled, suggesting a cat-and-mouse game between the developers and Facebook.

There will “always be rogues out there trying to slip through,”  Mr. von Lohmann said.

“When you go to general social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, it’s really all about you,” CEO and co-founder Michael Atkinson said. “FohBoh is for you and by you …Our focus is on the industry rather than the consumer.”

The site features forums, blogs, and videos on topics ranging from fast food to artisan cheese making. And even though the site is focused on industry insiders, it also includes a restaurant review section. “We can’t help it,” said Mr. Atkinson.

According to the National Restaurant Association, the restaurant industry employs an estimated 13.1 million people, making it the nation’s largest employer outside of government. FohBoh hopes to tap into this $500 billion-plus U.S. market.

“It’s a big industry and it’s interesting that it’s been overlooked,” Mr. Atkinson said.

Since its very quiet beta launch back in November, the site has attracted 344 members worldwide. The startup is focused on an intermediate goal of 50,000 members, Mr. Atkinson said. “Any niche or vertical network will never be as large as a generic site.”     

So far, Mr. Atkinson and his partner, Ted Cohn, have funded the company out of their own pockets. And while they have no immediate plans to seek venture capital, they are seeking $1 million in seed funding from friends and family.

The startup is among a growing number of social networks seeking to stand out from giants such as  Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and LinkedIn by appealing to a narrow demographic.

“This is representative of a larger future trend—vertical sites, loaded with social network features,” Sterling Market Intelligence analyst Greg Sterling said.

Given the dominance of established sites, it would be very hard for a startup to come in and launch a broad social network. “Everyone would roll their eyes,” Mr. Sterling said.

Although going after a narrower market may translate into a smaller financial opportunity, it may be easier to gain adoption. “The niche aspect will draw word of mouth. There’s less noise in this segment,” he said.

Most of the online action in the restaurant industry focuses on the consumer, said Mr. Sterling. Type in “restaurant” and any city name into a search field and Yelp, Citysearch, Yahoo, and Zagat all pop up.

While sites such as CNET’s Chow attract both a casual consumer and professional audience, Mr. Sterling said that he was not aware of another social-networking site aimed specifically at folks within the food industry.

The business-to-business aspect “offers a range of opportunities that consumer sites don’t have,” Mr. Sterling said.

FohBoh, which targets ad revenue, plans to develop a marketplace for buying and selling equipment, a job board, virtual gifts, and premium membership options for restaurants, vendors, and service providers.

“Restaurant people are naturally social,” Mr. Atkinson said. “Our ultimate mission is to provide an opportunity for everyone in the industry to have an interactive voice.”

San Francisco-based PlayFirst on Wednesday said it scored $16.5 million in a third funding round led by DCM.

Creator of the popular Diner Dash franchise, as well as Wedding Dash, Chocolatier, and Dream Chronicles, the startup bases its games on comforting themes to appeal to a broad market.

PlayFirst CEO John Welch said that while he could spend time on more hard-core gamer sites, “the mass market is not waiting to put on tights and cast fireballs at trolls.”

While PlayFirst’s themes probably aren’t going to attract large numbers of teenage males, they do attract young to middle-aged females. This is the “sweet spot in online casual gaming,” said Pete Moran, general partner at DCM, which is also an investor in Red Herring.

Previous investors, including Mayfield Fund, Trinity Ventures, and Rustic Canyon Partners, also joined in the round. PlayFirst raised a combined $10 million in its previous two rounds, putting its total funding at $26.5 million.

There's a lot at stake. According to analyst firm DFC Intelligence, the casual games/online games market is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2012.

That has the likes of Seattle-based Big Fish Games, Redmond, Washington-based WildTanget, New York City-based Oberon Media, and Dallas-based MumboJumbo among a growing number of companies competing for casual gaming hits.

Players of in Diner Dash, PlayFirst’s most popular game, step into the role of Flo, a diner owner and operator. In addition to scoring points through pleasing customers, players can also engage in the game by purchasing items like clothes for their avatar or new restaurants.

Traditionally, casual games publishers have hooked users with a play-for-free trial and then charged a single payment of around $20 to download the game. PlayFirst’s microtransactions, which range in cost from $0.79 to $4.99, provide the company with an additional revenue stream. PlayFirst plans to eventually sell advertising as well.

Microtransactions first became popular in Asia as a way to make money off of games in a region plagued by piracy. Since the items purchased within the world of the game reside on a server, they can’t be stolen, explained Mr. Welch. “We looked at what was successful in Asia and decided to bring it to North America.”

“Innovative companies willing to diversify platforms, create quality content, move beyond the $20 business model and introduce innovations like microtransactions to casual games will continue to drive this industry forward,” DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole said in a statement.

The popularity of PlayFirst’s games along with its multiple avenues for grabbing money make the startup a compelling investment, Mr. Moran said.

The three-and-half-year-old company plans to use the funding to accelerate product development efforts, including a push to move its games onto social networks.

As part of this effort, the company also announced Wednesday that it will be distributing Wedding Dash on Facebook through widget developer RockYou’s publisher network.

PlayFirst plans to take advantage of the viral nature of social networks to spread its current games as well as design games specifically for social-networking platforms.

While it may be common place for World of Warcraft fans to play with hundreds of fellow gamers online, Mr. Welch said that PlayFirst’s social-networking applications will be designed for solitary players and for those looking to engage with small group of friends.