Hearty congratulations to the winners of the annual awards for the British Interactive Media Association, otherwise known as the BIMAs. In summary, Channel 4 New Media won the “Grand Prix” for 4oD* (the On demand TV catchup service) while ad agency Publicis Dialog won two, and agency GT three. Channel 4 won for the “ingenuity and simplicity of this new interface.” That’s handy because the BIMAs “aim to recognise and reward creative excellence in interactive design”. There were twenty-three awards in total. Army Jobs (by Publicis) and the Interactive Dive Cage at the Bournemouth Aquarium (by Flaming Pear) was commended for “challenging conventional thinking on how we interact with media.” The rest of the winners you’ll find here on Friday.

The BIMAs are 23rd years old and are described as “the only significant digital creative awards in the UK which celebrate digital creative excellence and best practice”. And it’s fair to say the enthusiasm and energy of chairman Paul Walsh have put them back onto the map. But they are one of the many awards for online media/marketing/creative in the UK. The NMA Effectiveness Awards “recognise those companies that have a deep understanding of the potential of interactive media.” The Interactive Media and Marketing Awards “recognise and celebrate the most effective examples of marketing and advertising using the internet, mobile and interactive TV.” Not dissimilar again are the Revolution Awards which “reward the best in digital marketing.” Then there’s the Association of Online Publishers Awards for “excellence in all aspects of digital publishing”. And until recently there was even the Bafta Interactives, but they were closed last year in favour of a video games award. (Film people still having trouble with the Web, it seems).

In other words, there are a lot of cool, sexy awards ceremonies for media and marketing online in the UK, and let’s be clear, they are all wonderful in their own special way, and recognise the prodigious talent we have on those areas. I’ve even been known to chair the odd awards event myself…

But, equally, there are not many UK cool, sexy awards which recognise cool tech companies, like LastFM, a great British story which did not win a BIMA (admittedly they may not have fit into this particular awards), but did build an amazing business and sell to CBS for £140m in the last year. That’s an amazing achievement, and I bet you there will be plenty others like it which may not fit into a traditional ‘media’ or ‘marketing’ category but which do deserve to be recognised.

In the tech industry the best we seem to be able to come up with in terms of a “glammed-up” awards party is the British Computer Society IT Industry Awards. Or a beamed-in, rambling version of the Webbys.

I think it’s time for a Crunchies over here, don’t you?

*Note: Channel 4’s 4oD internet service uses exactly the same technology (Kontiki Delivery Manager and Microsoft DRM) as the BBC iPlayer, as does the Sky Anytime service. Kontiki is a US company owned by VeriSign. Perhaps the Grand Prix should be shared?

Miomi, a digital lifestyle aggregator (DLA) I talked about back in October, is officially unveiling itself to the world now. Incorporating content from Encarta and Wikipedia, you can plot your own historical progress through time by uploading your personal take on events be it through words, pictures or video. You can choose to share this the world or just with your friends on the site. So far they’ve had over 120,000 sign-ups.

The brainchild of three German post-graduate students, Thomas Whitfield (25) of Oxford University, Charly Toni (26) and Richard Schreiber (26) from the Technical University of Munich, the startup secured funding from Brightstation Ventures and is part of the Microsoft Startup Accelerator Programme, presumably because they are a showcase for MS tech. It’s been a fast track. They pitched the idea to the Oxford University “Idea Idol” competition in February this year, got the backing, moved to London, recruited Jonny Crowe as CEO and launched the beta in October.

DLA’s like Miomi essentially work on a business model of hooking in users, and by the time they’ve realised they’ve uploaded a lifetime’s worth of content it’s way too late to pull out. Smart.

However, Miomi’s policy on data retention will need to take into account whatever happens to Facebook, following the Information Commissioner’s investigation into the social network for retaining user data after they have requested it be deleted.

Microsoft is calling it “the UK’s answer to Skype and YouTube” which seems somewhat far-fetched.

Search startup True Knowledge, reviewed here, is seeking beta testers for its API service. The UK startup, which recently won Angel funding, has developed an application which (deep breath) represents facts as entities within a broad knowledge-base that computers can understand and process. It answers question through deduction and cross-referencing to produce what looks, to all intents and purposes, like a human response. Ask it if Ben Affleck is married and it will come back with “Yes” rather than lots of web pages which may or may not have the answer.

TK is going to leverage its API in a variety of ways. For instance, over 2.1 million geographical places are registered as entities in True Knowledge’s database, plus time zones. So in theory web and tele-conferencing services could use this to help you place calls at the right time for both parties across the planet. Currently this can be tricky as there is basically no logic to local time changes but, says founder William Tunstall-Pedoe, having TK’s API integrated into the website of a conference service provider could solve this. Check out www.trueknowledge.com/api/

Here’s a video of what True Knowledge is all about. The Jennifer Lopez example is pretty convincing…

When I first saw iDesktop.tv one of my first thoughts was that it must be a US startup. Now I will admit that is incredibly Silicon-Valley-centric of me, for which apologise. In fact iDesktop.tv is coming out of Davendra Patel’s 3rd Eye Solutions agency in good ol’ Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK which makes it doubly cool.
iDesktop.tv – a relaunch of YouTubeDesktop – is basically an Ajax interface onto YouTube videos with a few more features added, chiefly the ability to download videos to your desktop. I know there are apps for this kind of thing, but few achieve this is in the consumer-friendly fashion of iDesktop.tv. When you download a video, you can choose from a variety of formats to convert it to – AVI, MP4, 3GP, 3GP2, MOV, WMV, FLV, EXE or ZIP. That means you can then transfer the video easily to a PC or a mobile phone, iPhone or iPod without using any other converter program. Windows can be dragged around and resized and you can create playlists or share video links with friends. It’s also possible to dim the background while watching videos.

You can also import your saved playlists or favourite videos from YouTube by logging-in. Each user profile displays a video comments list and information and you can see their other other videos or see their favourites. Searching for videos is a fun experience where you can make thumbnails zoom in and out, and search results can be sorted by relevance, date, rating or view count. The player can be opened in a new browser window and be maximised to four different aspect ratios.
There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of monetisation of the site, but I’d put that aside for now, because this is a really interesting interface onto YouTube which even YouTube ought to take a look at.

However, there are of course also some tricky implications. Interfaces like this rob YouTube of advertising impressions while sucking up bandwidth, although in theory pre-oll and post-roll adverts wouldn’t be affected. And don’t even ask about the licensing issues for the videos concerned, but it just goes to show that if you want to put content out there you need to make sure the video itself contains any necessary branding or copyright information.

UK digital networking event Mashup will be running another of its mashup Demo events for startups and growing companies in the digital sector on Wednesday December 5th. It’s an opportunity to demo your services to an audience of investors, corporates, bloggers, journalists and industry influencers. It will be held at the offices of Sun Microsystems in central London. There are still a few slots for demo companies to participate, so contact julia[at]mashupevent.com if you are interested. Companies who participated at the last mashup Demo included Serena Software, Mobestar, 15 Second TV, BabelTV, WeLoveLocal, Rummble, Magpie, Inspire, Bondaii, Meecard, Rollsense, Fav.or.it, Kwiqq, Tipped and testcard.tv. A slight health warning: to attend the event as a Demo company will cost £350, but get in touch with the organisers and you might be able to twist their arm on that price.

Widgety Goodness, the first European conference on web widgets and applications, kicks off on Thursday December 6th at the Corn Exchange, Brighton. TechCrunch UK is media partner and we have ten tickets to give away to the most enthusiastic commenters on this post.

Speakers include Tariq Krim (founder Netvibes), Russell Davies (OpenIntelligenceAgency) and Ivan Pope (founder Snipperoo) and a host of others.

Channel 4 will be launching an RSS/widget competition at the event and there are various other announcements lined up for the day.

Bloggers can apply for a blogger pass to the event, and as well as early bird discounts, and you can ask for a special TechCrunch discount.

TechCrunch UK will also be hosting a FREE after-event drinks party You need to grab a free ticket here.  **Any tech person in Brighton is invited to attend, but tickets are limited to 100**.

The drinks party is kindly sponsored by Nixon Mcinnes, Spanner Works, Big Mouth Media and doof.com.

Any other firms interested in sponsorship – including the TechCrunch drinks – should contact organiser Ivan Pope.

As part of a continuing series, I’m asking you, the reader, to contribute your thoughts on various subjects (and I’m open to suggestions for topics). So here’s the latest:

Question: Where are the best sources of funding for tech startups?

Please note that I am not asking, ‘what’ are the best sources of funding for startups. I am not trying to prompt debate about whether a startup should do a ‘friends and family’ round, or seed funding or VC funding. That debate is too philosophical. I’m asking where you think the best sources are. Let’s name some.

Now, yes, it does depend on the circumstances of the company yadda, yadda, yadda… so please think in terms of early-stage startups, because these are the ones who most likely need the benefit of your manifest experience and advice. Some examples might include some Angel networks you’re heard of, Y Combinator-style incubators, or even government grant schemes. And yes, there are some VCs who invest at the early stage too. If you want, talk about your experiences raising money for your startup… [takes one step back].

The usual rules apply. Please be respectful and non-libelous in your answers. Any firms attempting to PR-the-hell out of their own company in the comments below need to be aware that it could well backfire. Badly.

The plot thickens. Last week I took the decision to go with a very strong lead that News Corporation was in talks with LinkedIn about possibly buying the professional networking site. At the time my sources said the idea was based around the concept that advertising to high-level executives is becoming much harder via print, and LinkedIn could make up revenues for News Corp in that area. It’s now emerging however that LinkedIn could well be wrapped up with the News Corp-owned Wall Street Journal and Factiva, the business news aggregator, something backed up by Breakingviews.com. It now has 17 million members and revenues from $75 million to $100 million next year. Yesterday VentureBeat, another credible venture news blog, picked up the gauntlet and confirmed via their sources that the talks were serious (though LinkedIn still declines to comment as I note here). The driving force behind the deal is said to be Jeremy Philips, a 33-year-old hotshot exec at News Corp close to chairman Rupert Murdoch, who focuses on acquisitions, oversees internet investments and – stealth like – operates an internal department dubbed News Interactive Media (NIM) which runs separately from Fox Interactive Media. Meanwhile Fortune magazine has decided to weigh-in by blogging a chat with LinkedIn’s CEO Dan Nye who is PR-ing some new community features on Dec. 10, and quotes him as saying he is only interested in “building this company” and “It would take a helluva lot to get us off that path.” He does however indicate the sale price at “a lot more” than $1 billion. I have since been back to my main source on this story and they just have one thing to say: “No smoke without fire.”

Update:
Kara Swisher from The Wall Street Journal says a LinkedIn deal with News Corp “makes a lot of sense” while Goldman Sachs Internet and media analyst Anthony Noto told the Reuters Media Summit on Wednesday: “I think LinkedIn is an important strategic asset” and “strategically, it would be a great fit [for News Corp].”

As part of this week’s effort to allow you, the readers, to steer this blog for a while, here’s the first of a few questions this week.

Question: Which firm, or which individual PR person, is the best for tech/mobile startups (either in the UK or Ireland)?

Now, this is a question I get asked a lot by startups I meet. So I thought I’d ask the community of commenters and bloggers around TCUK to contribute their thoughts (either via comments or trackback), thereby allowing everyone else to benefit from your knowledge.

I might add that I don’t have a huge amount of interest in the answer since I seem to be indiscriminately contacted by just about every tech PR under the sun. My reaction almost always depends entirely on the “story” they are trying to sell me, not on the firm or person doing the selling. I also get some of my best stories from the companies themselves. But then, they clearly employ PRs because they’d rather run their company than talk to 27 different media outlets!

Now, obviously it goes without saying that it would be nice if you were respectful and non-libelous in your answers. Plus, any PRs attempting to PR their own company in the comments below needs to be aware that they could end up subjecting themselves to a bit of pasting. People can comment anonymously but I can see where you are coming from so really terrible shilling will get “called out”. You have been warned.

I now expect a lot of PR people to furiously ring/email around their clients asking them to say nice things in the comments, so let’s take it all with a pinch of salt shall we?

BREAKING NEWS: In an unprecedented joint venture, UK TV giants BBC Worldwide, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a jointly-owned on-demand Web service creating a single destination for over ten thousand hours of TV entertainment content. Code-named “Kangaroo” the plans are yet to be formally approved by the BBC Trust and each broadcaster’s board, but the project has the full assent of the head of each organisation.

Kangaroo will have wide implications for the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD service, with the latter being replaced by the new joint service. The smallest UK TV player, Channel 5 (owned by RTL of Germany), is conspicuous by its absence from the venture.

In a joint statement, the three channels said the service will launch first as a web service and will later be available for distribution on other platforms. Content will be available to both stream and download and viewers will be able to watch for free, rent or buy. A name and brand for the new service will be unveiled before launch.

The joint venture will be owned equally and will work independently as an aggregator of both joint venture partners and third party content. There is no indication at this stage whether that will include content from user-generated outlets like YouTube for instance.

The new service is described as a “complement” to the BBC iPlayer, the free catch-up TV service which has had a mixed reception since its launch. For its part ITV.com will continue to feature a 30 day catch up facility alongside simulcasts of its four digital channels. Channel 4’s web site will host a catch-up service, but the new venture means the end of the 4oD service as this will be replaced by Kangaroo.

The joint venture will be owned equally and will work independently as an aggregator of both joint venture partners and “third party content”.

Broadcasters clearly hope that by aggregating the bulk of their content into one easy to use service they will fend off competition from the early on-demand services provided by Internet upstarts like Joost and download services like Apple iTunes.

It’s not clear at this stage whether the shows will be viewable outside the UK, although, knowing how draconian TV copyright and licensing deals are, it seems highly unlikely that they would.
Clearly the broadcasters stand to gain a lot from this deal. They can now share the considerable costs of such a service.

It is also not clear how ‘open’ this platform will be and how other video content owner will be able to interface with it. Will it have DRM up the eyeballs (very likely)? Will it allow for user-generated semi-professional content? We’ll have to wait and see…

UPDATE: Media Guardian has the additional news that the new venture has appointed BSkyB veteran Lesley MacKenzie as chief executive. (So don’t expect any partnerships with internet companies any time soon).

• On 3 December Second Chance Tuesday, the London networking event is holding its next shindig on gaming (such as massively multi-player online games, in-game advertising, virtual worlds etc). Gaming guru Alice Taylor will be leading the discussions with a panel of industry experts including Toby Rowland (CEO of King.com), Klass Kersting (CEO of gameforge.de) and Michel Cassius (COO Imagini). Here are more details. Disclosure: TechCrunch UK is a media partner.

• Last.fm has appointed Musicmobs creator Toby Padilla as VP Desktop & Client Software focusing on refining the Last.fm desktop client software.

• E-commerce site Webtogs.co.uk has launched its site selling outdoor brands with “high resolution multi-angle product shots” for squinty-eyed outdoorsy types. The CEO is James Balmain and Crowdstorm founder Philip Wilkinson is an investor.

• Geoffrey McCaleb, CEO of UK-based ‘social search‘ startup nsyght.com heads to Silicon Valley next week where he’ll be doing the rounds of ‘door knocking’. And before you ask, yes, he’s been talking to investors in the UK as well.

• And as it happens, an ad-hoc group of Irish business and technology people will also be over in the States next week to create closer bonds with companies and people there. The tour, nicknamed “PaddysValley”, will head off on December 2nd and anyone is welcome to come along on the trip including “curious business people and members of the press”. You have to arrange your own meetings though. If you want to sign up for the tour then contact them on PaddysValley < at > Gmail .com or see the site. The main organisers are the uber Irish bloggers Conor O’Neill, James Corbett and Damien Mulley.

• Ariadne Capital, the London-based investment and advisory firm, has appointed Clive Rich as head of its Digital Music Practice. He joins after previously heading up the Futures Division at SonyBMG.

• The PizzaOnRails Christmas Party, for London’s Ruby on Rails developers, is on Thursday 29-Nov-2007 at 18:30. See here for details.

• Terapad, an online blogging platform out of the UK (not many of those) is relaunching aiming at web designers who want to re-sell their platform. They are holding a reseller event in London on 10th December. Why? There are over 4.5m small businesses in the UK all requiring a cutting edge web presence, but their expectations are high and their budgets are low (figures), so re-selling apps like Terapad might be a useful string to the bow. Contact Joshua Davidson: joshua AT terapad.com or call 02073943858 for more info or see here.

Right now TechCrunch UK & Ireland (unlike the US site) does not have a community forum where you can air your thoughts in a more free-form manner. Like all blogs, I get to start the conversation and you get to talk back. At some point there’ll be more to do here, but until then I want to make sure I am getting you the news, reviews and – now and again – the gossip.
In the meantime I thought I would reverse the blog process for a handful of posts this week, where I will kick off the topic but you get to take the discussion wherever you want to. In other words, “you have control”.

Some topics we could discuss include – who are the best tech PRs right now; where are the best sources of funding; where are the best locations to work? I’m not saying it’ll be a regular thing – just something to help you in your thinking.

The first of these kinds of posts – all suggestions are welcome by the way, email mike at mbites dot com – is coming up tomorrow, so stay tuned…

Now here’s an interesting opportunity. One day in a December entrepreneur and former BBC Dragons Den judge Doug Richard (pictured) will be interviewing very young startups who have web companies that think they could go big. Very big. But don’t go whipping out your NDA. You’re going to be filmed, potentially for a new TV show.

Doug emailed me to say: “I will be arranging an informal pitching morning and from that I will choose one company who will have the opportunity to spend the rest of the day with me reviewing their business plan in detail.” He will give them “all the assistance” he can to make the plan bullet proof and then introduce them to potential partners and funders. It might be added that Mr Richard has backed a few tech firms in the past, is the founder and chairman of Library House, and founder and vice-chairman of the Cambridge Angels network. He’s currently backing mobile startup Trutap, among others. So not exactly inexperienced.

The entire day will be filmed by the BBC but it will not air on television. At least yet. Why? Because it’s the pilot for a show, code-named “The Next Big Thing”. There is no date for this opportunity as yet but anyone interested should email thenextbigthing2008@gmail.com and mention that you heard this from TechCrunch UK. And I guess I may as well add that startups can also get in touch with TechCrunch, but alas we don’t have a TV station. Yet.

Dothomes, the renamed property search engines formerly known as Extate, has launched a property price tracker to measure prices. Plug in a postcode, the year and month you purchased your house and it will map that data against a number of other data points including including average national property prices, average London property prices, FTSE100 indices and the Bank of England base rates.

This is nice, but other sites are also doing similar kinds of things including Nestoria, which recently launched an API for data about average house prices in a postcode, in its key markets of the UK and Spain. Plus we can get some similar raw data from the Land Registry anyway.

Nestoria has also launched a house price widget which allows anyone to paste average house prices for their area onto their blog or website, etc. And they have obviously been busy, coming up with UK Property Vision, which is best described as Twittervision meets property porn.

So where are the APIs and widgets from Dothomes? It looks like they are no longer bothered by that game. Dothomes have dumped their old Extate model of keeping users on the site (at one point we were being encouraged to upload whole videos of houses) and gone for a full-blown “Google” strategy. Their new aim is to provide the absolute best search engine they can, give good results, link searchers directly to the estate agents’ original listings and then rely on the fact that they will come back again. In addition – instead of trying to compete with estate agents as a portal – as a search engine they will be in a position to now sell premium advertising against results and also sell search terms.

Dothomes is owned by BytePlay the company which has investment from The Accelerator Group (TAG), Arts Alliance, and Samos Investments. It was founded in May 2006 by Artemi Krymski and Douglas de Jager, two young alumni of London’s Imperial College, something of a hotbed of UK-based startups.

Meanwhile, the last I heard from Zoomf, that other UK-based Web 2.0 property site (which closed a round of funding from HOWZAT media at the start of the year) they’d launched a ‘Visual Search’ facility where you can draw on a map the area you would like to search for property in.

My mobile is also free from any voicemail from OnOneMap, and Igglo, the property search engine from Finland which trumpeted a $12.5m investment from Benchmark Europe a whole year ago about its impending entry into the UK, only for the line to go quiet. A simple check reveals that typing in Igglo.co.uk re-directs you to Igglo.fi. Perhaps they had second thoughts? Either that or they had mates who worked at Northern Rock….

All in all it feels as if the property search startups are starting to mature and shake-out from their flurry of activity at the start of the year and are heading back to focus on their core ideas. This seems appropriate in a housing market which is waking up and smelling some very strong black coffee right now.

Here is more on Extate/Dothomes

Here is more on Zoomf

Here is more on OnOneMap

Here is more on Nestoria

Moshi Monsters, a virtual world which is best described as Tamagotchi-meets- educational-games- meets-Facebook for 7-12 year olds, has been sending out secret invites since its closed beta launch this week.

But TechCrunch UK has secured some invites for you, our dear readers, so all you have to do is to email iwantone@mindcandy.com with ‘techcrunch’ as the subject and they’ll send out an invite code to the first 50 that write in. Feel free to go and try the world out, but you may be better off giving the invite to your kids (hint, hint).

The idea is to adopt and care for your own monster, play puzzle games and buy weird and wonderful things to style your monster’s home. The new world is a venture from MindCandy, the UK-based startup which came up with the Perplex City ARG last year, and is backed from Index Capital and Spark Ventures.

Maybe I was wrong to be sceptical about the whole StartupWeekend thing and its US founder Andrew Hyde? The back-story – which I wrote on at length – is that he has been flying to several US cities working with volunteers to co-create internet companies in one weekend, where everyone has an equal share in the resulting web site. The movement has spread to copy-cat events, such as in Germany, but London will have an ‘official’ event where Hyde himself is due to appear. Needless to say, some events have been more successful than others, but it’s hard to fault the enthusiasm of the participants, whatever happens. Just don’t expect the next Google to be created inside 48 hours, I guess.

The London StartupWeekend (Nov 30-Dec 2) site now has over 40 people signed-up to create an internet company in just one “jam-packed” weekend and they’ve even made a video to explain how it will all work.

LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman has responded to my story of yesterday. He confirms that there are rumours that LinkedIn is in buyout talks with News Corporation – but does not confirm them. He reserves the right not to comment now, on the basis that there “may be some truth to them” at some point in the future. He also says he is “entertained” by them.

Hoffman emailed TechCrunch on what is the US Thanksgiving Day holiday to say:

“I am being entertained by the same rumors. Our policy on rumors is “no comment” since in almost everycase [sic.] they are/have been wrong — but we want to reserve the option of saying no comment if and when there may be some truth to them. So, no comment on rumors as always. Have a great turkey day.”

I guess all I can say is that – to borrow a phrase from Mandy Rice Davies – he would say that, wouldn’t he.

But I’ll leave you with this thought: companies entertaining a sale, or already in talks with another party, typically send their chairmen on massive press tours to talk up the proposition.

This week Hoffman was interviewed in the Daily Telegraph, and yesterday he visited BBC News and the BBC’s Newsnight team, as well as The Financial Times.

[Get the RSS feed or see right for the newsletter. Digg this story. Got a story? Get in touch]

[Update:  Hoffman has responded]

An unconfirmed rumour has reached me via a reliable source that LinkedIn is in talks with media giant News Corporation over a possible buyout in January 2008. The reason I am running with this, is that the source is very well-placed. Furthermore, the rumour has the fundamental ring of truth about it. Consider the following.

LinkedIn is firmly in the mainstream. Most of its users are mature professionals and it has a healthy number of early adopters. These people are gradually abandoning recruitment advertising in newspapers. Instead they use LinkedIn and sites like it – even, increasingly, Facebook – to build their professional network and advance their careers. In particular, LinkedIn appeals to the top of the professional market because older business people have a tougher time seeing the value of Facebook’s wackiness. News Corporation, headed by the shrewd Rupert Murdoch, owns some of the premier advertising properties aimed at top-tier professionals including The Wall Street Journal and (in the UK) The Times and The Sunday Times. (Murdoch was smart enough to buy MySpace when it was ‘just’ $580m in 2005, long before the billions associated with Facebook).

In the new environment of professional online networking Newspaper classified advertising is becoming an anachronism (as I have argued in the distant past), and this trend is reflected in the decline of the advertising market in the newspaper sector.
Newspaper advertising is plummeting in the US, down 7.4 per cent year on year. In the UK classified advertising was down 8 per cent in 2006 and will decrease further this year, according to a forecast by media-buying network Zenith Optimedia. Meanwhile online spending grew by more than 41 per cent in 2006 to just over £2 billion, according to figures released by the Internet Advertising Bureau.

However, while online revenue is growing it isn’t offsetting the declines in print revenue. So newspapers need another way to monetise their online operations, and social networking – which is eating into classified revenues – is the natural route to take.

LinkedIn is also on an upward growth path which makes it a good acquisition target. It has more than 16 million registered users globally, spanning 150 industries in more than 400 economic regions and in the last year it experienced 189% growth. It is now the largest professional networking site in the UK, with over 1m users. It has a high calibre of members too – senior executives for 96 of the FTSE 100 companies have their own LinkedIn profile pages. In the US, all of the Fortune 500 companies have an executive level presence.

In January LinkedIn, which has been profitable since March 2006, announced a $12.8 million round of financing led by Bessemer and the European Founders Fund, bringing the total raised since launch to$26 million. The company had something over $10 million in revenue in 2006, and said they’ll do substantially more than that in 2007.

In the UK LinkedIn competes to some extent with with Ecademy, and in Xing in Europe/Asia, though its biggest competitor globally is Facebook. But the latter is too expensive a prize for News Corporation, even allowing for the tactical errors it’s made in recent weeks, which will have downgraded it from its $15 billion valuation, and the launch of Google’s competing OpenSocial platform for social applications.

There’s a further reason that LinkedIn could be in talks with News Corporation. Chairman and founder Reid Hoffman was this week in London to speak at MediaTech and an Oxford University event, affording him ample opportunity to visit News Corp executives here.

Although Hoffman hired a new CEO and became chairman in February he is still deeply involved in the business. Interestingly, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph this week, he was quoted as saying: “I would make LinkedIn a public company – but not until we’ve finished innovating. I find companies are more innovative when they’re private.”

This may indicate that LinkedIn will spend the remainder of this year working on the OpenSocial integration, prior to a sale. With Facebook snapping at its heels, it’s hard to see another route for it to take.

As I write this, daytime TV chat shows normally given over to house decorating and the latest reality TV gossip are literally up in arms about how two computer disks containing the identity details of 25 million people in the UK – many of them children – could go missing in the postal system. Suddenly the issue of identity and personal information is at the forefront of people’s minds in a way that obscure debates about ID cards could never have achieved. At the same time, earlier this week, Channel 4 ran a story detailing how Facebook is facing an investigation from the UK’s Information Commissioner (which oversees the implementation of the Data Protection Act) after a complaint from a Channel 4 News viewer. He found he could not remove his account or any of the data – photos, wall posts etc – associated with it. And this morning new research by YouGov details how 70 percent of adults say that fears of identity theft are changing their online behaviour and 84 percent say their trust in an organisation’s ability to protect their personal details now dictates who they interact with the most.

Why should we care? Put simply, all of this adds up to a perfect storm for technology companies playing in the social networking arena, where identity and personal information are at the core of the data around which these companies are built and create ‘intelligence from the crowd’. If consumers start to realise just how much information they are putting online about themselves, will they start to hold back? Will every social networking startup, online or mobile, now find themselves on the back foot? And what does this mean for “Web 2.0″?

What do you think?

Only a few days after Huddle, a UK enterprise 2.0 startup, announced it had raised $4m in a Series A funding round from VCs Eden Ventures, another UK startup is gunning for the ‘team collaboration’ space. Phuser has turned its formerly consumer focused site 180 degrees around to face towards the working world, promising to bring together presentations, conference calls, videos, files, whiteboards and more all into the one space.

Next week it launches the first of several integrations with other Web 2.0 properties. Essentially, Phuser is going to become a mashup of other Web 2.0 services and applications, bringing it all into the one space and making it all trackable. When a new application comes along, Phuser will grab the API and integrate it into the service, and because it will sit in the middle it could also generate a potential income for its partners. This means your team doesn’t have to sign up for every separate Web service – in theory Phuser will handle all the sign-ons. Other players in this space include Basecamp, Huddle, Wrike and Goplan.

Next week Phuser adds Slideshare and del.icio.us, after that it will add Web 2.0 apps for conference calling, shared whiteboards, online document editing, transcription, translation and others. They are styling the new site as ‘Basecamp meets Facebook Apps’ but a more original feature of Phuser than some will be its use of SMS to update teams about new materials.

Obviously basing your entire business model on other people’s applications is not always the stablest of business models. However, I daresay they will be adding applications which tend to be best of breed and aren’t going anywhere, like the Yahoo! owned del.icio.us.

Founders George Black (CEO) and Simon Kinsella (CTO) have previously worked for the Swedish start-up Sendit which was bought by Microsoft in 1999 for $130m. But they are boot-strapping Phuser, hence they currently work out of an old Fire Station on Dunsfold park, an old aerodrome in Surrey where the Top Gear TV show is filmed. Here’s a Slideshow explaining Phuser’s offering.