by Victor Karamalis

Although Mint won the $50,000, there were plenty of startups that merit the spotlight. With twenty members based for the most part in Tel Aviv, Israel and New York City, Kaltura was selected to be the demo wild card by the conference attendees. In keeping with the mash up ideal, Kaltura lets groups of people collaborate to create videos for music and other collages. According to their demo page, “Kaltura is a pioneer in Collaborative Media, allowing groups of users to do with video, audio, and animation what wiki platforms enable them to do with text.” This is definitely an evolved step in collaboration and a new door to user generated collaborative creativity.

Other featured TechCrunch 40 selectees that brought sexy sizzle to the conference are WooMe and Zivity. WooMe brings the speed dating platform online. As Ceo, Steven Stokol showed with one of his other partners, one can have up to eight men and eight women together and all have up to a minute to see and talk to each other. If they want to keep up with the interactions, one can contact them within the service and it is relatively safe and secure. It looks like it worked quite well when seeing a beautiful young lady contacting Sokol’s colleague after the initial one minute session.

Zivity brought one of the most criticical issues with user generated content; getting paid for it. They have figured out a workable business model which involves a subscription model with people voting for their favorite photos. Half of the ten dollar subscription goes to Zivity and the person owning the photos gets paid along with a photographer (an 80/20 deal). They had four lovely women showcased on stage and even more risky pics on the demo site (even Michael Arrington voiced that the photos on the site were a little racy). However, the majority of the attendees were all for the photos and the ladies on the stage.

The little darling in the Demo pit came from Thembid. They marry customers with contractors for bids. Think of it as Craigslist but one actually gets to see what everyone else bids. This may sound boring but in today’s age of sky rocketing medical billing and other tradesman robbery, this gives power to customers (regardless if it’s government or me). The features include a whole bunch of mash ups all on one site such as keyword monitoring, comparing different bids, and comments on contractors from other businesses). Currently angel backed, they are on to something in my honest opinion.

Special thanks to the folks at TechCrunch who outdid themselves. Overall, the two day conference was an excellent run and I’m looking forward to next season’s TechCrunch60.

tc40 tc20 techcrunch20 techcrunch40 bub.blicio.us bubblicious piczo web2.0 fleck fleck.com docstoc docstoc.com aol frank+gruber heather+harde ouriel+ohayon web+2.0 web 2.0 startup tech mint mint.com kaltura zivity thembid

Tagged as: prototyping