European Myspace competitor Netlog, which has over 33 million users, has released its native iPhone app. Users can get a feed of friends updates, see pictures, upload content and add pictures. Unusually, it is also GPS-enabled, something Facebook has so far steered clear of. It’s TechCrunch’s general view that if Facebook added true, location-based mobile social networking to its iPhone app, it would probably kill off a lot of the startups in that arena fairly swiftly. But it has yet to do so, leaving the way open for sites like Netlog. (App store link)

Perhaps taking a cue from the Downing Street YouTube Channel, where punters are leaving questions for the UK Prime Minister, Russia’s President has opened a video dialogue with citzens on his blog, reports Russian startup Quintura. The video is even translated into English.

It’s clearly a growing trend. The Kazakh Prime Minister, in power since 1989, has actually ordered his ministers to set up blogs. They are in for a surprise. The Kazakh government has never been democratically elected nor re-elected. Watch those comments coming in…

In the UK, Gordon has precisely ZERO comments on most of his posts, e.g here’s one on interest rates. Perhaps Peter Mandelson will fair better with his brand new avatar in Second Life?

Dmitry Medvedev, meanwhile, appears to have plenty coming in. Just don’t ask about gas supplies or the Ukraine.

More is emerging about why ad-supported mobile virtual network operator Blyk abruptly let go of its UK chief at the end of last week. Co-founder and current executive director Antti Öhrling (right) replaced Shaun Gregory, who had only been in the role for 14 months, but said he was leaving for “personal reasons.” He’s already been removed from the corporate site. Blyk has now installed Öhrling, who parachutes in from the company’s spiritual home in Finland where many of its former Nokia executives hail from.

The move can’t have been about money. Blyk just raised €40 million Euros in funding last November, aimed at expansion.

So why did Gregory leave? Privately sources close to the company say that although he was “great to work with”, he “just didn’t ‘get it’ “.

It’s hard to interpret that precisely. But the former senior executive at Emap Radio, joined the Telegraph in October 2006 with a brief to expand its online, TV and mobile operations, as director of new media. However then left only a year later for Blyk.

In other words, there appears to be a reversal of the trends during last dotcom boom and bust. Last time around the old hands from big businesses used to producing ‘real’ revenues were often brought in to failing startups. They called them ‘grey hairs’. What’s happening now is that people who don’t “get” interactive media really are being replaced by people who do, whatever their age or notional experience in traditonal media. You now have to have actually been engaged in social media to be able to lead a company involved in it, not just an executive from a traditional media company with a few scout badges.

As for November’s job loses at Blyk, word on the street is that this was not linked to Gregory’s term but more to the state of the company’s need to cut costs. Blyk’s subscriber numbers are now around the 200,000 mark, peanuts in mobile terms, but it retains advertisers including Coca Cola, L’Oreal and Penguin.

There appears to be no contact details on Twicksize, but whoever produced it has a sense of humour. Plug in your Twitter name and you get ranked for the “size” of your Twitter account (probably a ratio of followers/following) in a notional “inches”. Alongside is a fairly graphic portayal of your “size” which leaves nothing to the imagination. Alas, I was only 11 inches, compared to @Techcrunch‘s fullsome 14…

Local online reviews startup Qype has switched CEOs. Founder/CEO Stephan Uhrenbacher (pictured), who remains Qype’s largest private shareholder, is moving to the board after deciding to bring in Stephen Taylor, a former Yahoo! Europe head honcho. What appears to be clear however, is that this is a not you usual ‘startup-founder-ousted-for-experienced-CEO’ scenario.

Uhrenbacher told me he’s been looking for a new guy for a while after Qype has ramped up its operations and become an increasingly more complex business stretched across multiple markets and facing competition from a number of players. Not least of which is Yelp which launched in London last week. “Were in 9 markets now and have 50 people, and are very close to beak even in Germany so it was time to get the next level of managament,” he told me today. “We didn’t have a formal search for a new CEO.” However, it’s clear that Taylor was introduced to Uhrenbacher by Qype investors, Advent Ventures.

Taylor (pictured right) brings an experienced pedigree to Qype: he has experience in UGC sites, monetisation strategy and pan-european experience as a former CEO of Overture in Europe.

I asked Taylor if acquisition of other startups in the local review field was n the cards, and he said “we can’t rule out acquiring anyone but we’re concentrating on organic growth – acquiring not a lead strategy.”

Uhrenbacher will stay on the board and continue his business angel activity in Europe, though he said he won’t be getting directly involved in any new startups for the foreseeable future.

London-based Balderton Capital has announced it has secured a new £285 million ($430 million) fund to invest in technology and media startups in the downturn. Amazingly, despite the banking crisis, Balderton got the new fund together in only two months, which indicates that Balderton’s limited partners like its track record. Balderton made $140 million from the sale of Bebo to AOL and had 15 percent of MySQL which went for $1 billion to Sun Microsystems last year. Plus, their backers must agree with its view that the wider media business will go through profound change in the next few years. BC will clearly invest in companies that can disrupt faster than the entertainment/media business can adapt, such as in digital delivery, gaming etc.

However, when I asked Balderton for more detail about the announcement, and whether they would invest in early stage startups, they came back with this: “The new fund will invest mainly in early stage (ie investments fro $5-10 million) but will also look at later stage companies.” Reading into that, this clearly means the Sub-$1m/£1m investment market – which arose during the most recent Web 2.0 era – will effectively be dead to Balderton. So ‘true’ early stage, i.e. bootstrapped startups will have to be already on the road to revenue to catch their attention.

In short, don’t expect much love. A contact of mine close to the company told me just before Christamas “2009 is going to be terrible for startups.”

In 2008 Balderton went mostly for $5 million Series A round investments and above (from Crunchbase). In 2008 it invested in:

Big Fish Games: Unattributed
GreenRoad Technologies: Series C, $14.5M
Metaversum: Angel
Profitable.net: Series A, €6.5M
Adjug: Series B, $6.5M
betNOW: Series A $5M
7digital: Series A, $8.5M

Publicly, Balderton is upbeat. Barry Maloney told the Financial Times:”We are about to enter a very interesting time for new investments, if not for exits. Part of the reason for raising this fund now is to take advantage of the opportunities that this stage of the cycle throws up.” Balderton’s thinking is evidenced by the fact that it invested in Lovefilm which will benefit from film fans avoiding high prices at cinemas. Balterton’s Barrry Maloney also told the FT there would be “some casualities” in its portfolio and made the totally safe prediction that there would be VC-backed IPOs in the next 18 to 24 months.

Balderton’s other investments include 7digital, Figleaves, Newbay (social software for mobile operators), Habbo Hotel and Adjug. It has also invested in Big Fish Games (a game development studio) and Metaversum which operates the 3D online world Twinity, which mashes up the real with the virtual world. It’s also backed the Betfair gambling website and Setanta pay-TV broadcaster.

This is London-based Balderton’s fourth fund, having raised US$550m in December 2006, US$375m in July 2004 and US$500m in May 2000.

In Europe the “Big Five” pan-European VCs that remain are Balderton, Accel, Atlas, Wellington and Index Ventures. Among the other venture ‘players’ in London are Advent Ventures and DFJ Espirit. 3i pulled out of early stage last year and and Apax Partners long ago.

However, the thinking is that venture capital will come back into back into favour as private money is switched from bad banks, low interest rates and the difficulty of financing big buy-outs of firms which rely more heavily on debt.

Plus, last month Accel Partners raised $1bn for two new technology and media-focused funds in the US and Europe.

Yes folks, it’s that kerrrazeee Techfluff.TV bunch again with their latest episode (No. 5), another look at the lighter side of the tech scene. This features the new electric Tesla, a 13 year-old entrepreneur you may have heard of, a pitch from BookingBug and an interview with serial entrepreneur and former Dragon, Doug Richard. [TechCrunch Europe is a proud media sponsor of Techfluff.TV].

Enjoy:

This week’s TechCrunch Europe Job of the Week is for a SaaS Programmer (php, mysql) with Thisispearl.com, a web based ERP software package available for SMEs. Pearl is based in Bristol, and is “expanding rapidly.”

Check out the job on our Jobs/Ads board here.

Remember, it costs only £20 to post *any* kind of advert on the CrunchBoard related to your startup/business, whether it be jobs, searches for office space or requests for new projects.

From March this year all ISPs will by law have to keep information about every e-mail sent or received in the UK for a year. Currently many do this on a voluntary basis but this will now become mandatory. With little evidence to support their position, the government says this move is vital for monitoring crime and combating terrorist activity. The new rules are due to come into force on 15 March, as part of a European Commission directive which could affect every ISP in the country. It will cost between £25m and £70m. The rules already apply to telephone companies, which routinely hold much of the data for billing. The Home Office think the data is vital for investigation and intelligence gathering.

The Home Office insists the data will not contain the email content but data about when and where it was sent. But of course we all known that it is quite possible to work out quite a lot from email headers. This data will be accessible by over 600 public bodies, such as the police and councils, if they make a “valid” request.

Dr Richard Clayton, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge’s computer lab, points out that this will include all the spam out there and would rather see more focused online policing than catch-all initiatives like this. Of course, once the government has this power, they will not draw back from it, and most likely extend it once again, as governments are want to do.

This is not all.

The government has plans for a bigger data retention scheme called the Interception Modernisation Programme involving one central database, gathering details on every text sent, e-mail sent, phone call made and website visited. Consultation on the plans is due to begin later this year.

At the same time, this week, culture secretary Andy Burnham suggested “unsuitable” websites be given cinema-style ratings, a move which played well with some parenting organisations – but as most people who know anything about how the Internet works know, this idea is unworkable.

Yes, pornography is easy to access online, but the solution does not lie in rating web sites (the content of which, unlike films, can change from page to page) but getting parents and schools to educate children about how best to use the Web. There are also technical solutions local to desktop PCs like using OpenDNS or net-nanny software.

As the Guardian recently, and succinctly, pointed out:

“People would be outraged if BT monitored telephone calls for explicit conversations or the Post Office for unseemly letters, yet government is considering such options for ISPs. The monitoring of any such system would be very expensive. It would also incriminate innocent people and make much bigger incursions into the privacy of everyone than could be justified by the few successes it might get. The big porn operators, usually pioneers of new technology, would switch overnight to another corner of the web.”

Plus, how do you rate sites? Who does the rating? I agree with the Guardian: “The government should save the money that might be lavished on an ineffectual Big Brother solution and spend it instead on a concerted campaign to make parents aware of what they can do for themselves.”

What is most incredible about these government proposals, is that one side of the government is not talking to the other. Tom Watson, a cabinet office minister who I am generally a fan of, has made great claim to creating a more listening culture inside government about the innovation economy that technology startups represent. He has held lavish receptions in London and talked a great deal about the amazing technology companies coming out of the UK. He even set up a web site called Showusabetterway.com – about “helping government become more open, transparent and effective through better use of published information.”

But with one hand the government seeks to lock down the British Internet with an iron fist, while at the same time telling us it is boosting innovation and business online.

It is quite clearly blind to the fact that one affects the other.

Are we also expected to think that the consumers using online services are not going to be put off from engaging in the boom of “sharing” that Web 2.0 created? How would you feel if every Twitter you sent, every video uploaded, was to be stored and held against you in perpetuity? That may not happen, but the mere suggestion that your email is no longer private would serve to kill the UK population’s relish for new media stone dead, and with it large swathes of the developing online economy.

These proposals will affect both the blooming of online culture in this country, the development of the innovation economy and its civil liberties – all in one fell swoop.

What is to be done about this?

Well, one approach might be a coalition of civil liberties campaigners, digital rights groups and business. The Open Rights Group is a key thought leader in this. There is also an interesting looking event on soon: The Convention on Modern Liberty. But I also hope that more mainstream figures who are in some way associated with tech, perhaps Stephen Fry, can be persuaded to join.

Why should business get involved?

Mark my words, business would be affected by this: startup technology companies, already restricted by plenty of red tape associated with setting up a business would now have to build in plans for content ratings, tracing users, capturing data for the Home Office – you name it.

And when terrorists can merely default to VOIP or messaging services held on servers outside the UK – hell, they are even using online games to pass messages not old-fashioned, traceable email – it seems utterly ludicrous to subject the ENTIRE population to this burden. All this legislation will do is drive organised crime and terrorists deeper into parts of the Net where they will be virtually impossible to trace, leaving the rest of us monitored like battery chickens.

On Monday I will be calling Westminster Council about how we can go about setting up a public rally against these initiatives, and I’d like to hear from anyone else who wants to get involved.

Stay tuned.

Amid one of the biggest economic downturns in world history a startup has spent £35,000 on a web app which was built with no monetisation strategy and no revenues. Guess what? It’s now for sale.

Developing the site by himself, founder Stas Murzynowski created Letsallshare.com to allow anyone to rent or “share” anything or anywhere. RentMineOnline in the US and Zilok on Europe have had some success putting such “rent anything” sites together, but they at least wrapped their sites in business models.

Letsallshare members build new communities (sharing groups) post stuff, request items and invite others. Unfortunately, has Murzynowski “no idea” how much traffic the site gets, how many people use it or many successful “shares” it has facilitated, since the site’s admin tool is too basic. However since its launch in April 2008, it has had some press from environmental sites and magazines.

Murzynowski told me: “You need to remember that having had the idea I simply went about getting it built. I am not in any way versed in IT or reporting skills. What I had was an idea and the capital to self fund the build (circa £35k). I had hoped that I would have time to learn the various reporting elements but quite simply I ran out of time and my priorities moved elsewhere.”

So what now? Well, Murzynowski is now looking for someone to either take over the running of the site in return for equity or indeed to sell the site lock-stock-and-barrel. He says he no longer has time to run the site, or the cash to pump into it.

My personal view is that there might be something of value here. Freecycle has garnered thousands users globally interested in a) getting things free and b) preventing old items end up in landfill, for environmental reasons. But whether that model is monetisable is anyone’s guess.

There are some truly useless Twitter apps out there but usually we are spared from seeing the worst, either because they get such bad reviews and fall to the bottom of the listings, or because Apple never accepts them into the App Store. And the same may well be applied to an unnofficial App doing the rounds of the London Tech scene right now. “Pocket Walsh” is an iPhone app developed by Firebox co-founder Tom Boardman with one use only: to randomly select the Twitters of another entrepreneur, Paul Walsh, who heads up Segala and is working on a mobile startup Wubud.

Walsh is now legend for his entirely un-ironic Tweeting, a good example of which is displayed from the app itself, pictured. Clicking the “Impart Wisdom” button displays selects some other choice quotes such as “I live by the ‘work hard, play hard’ motto. But playing so hard is starting to feel like work” and “I am a disrupting, leading innovative solutions provider – no job too big or too small.” In fact, like Vogon poetry, Walsh’s tweets are so bad he even had his own satirical stalker last year in the form of the Walshwatch blog and twitter account which eventually couldn’t keep up and went dead.

No word yet on whether this app will make it into the official store – let’s hope Boardman never submits it.

[Disclaimer: Actually Paul is really not that bad - and much more personable in real life than his Tweets sometimes suggest!].

Thursday night proved that Twitter, once again, is not only a source of breaking news but also an amazing support network to people when things go wrong.

Steven Livingstone, a Scotland-based entrepreneur, was caught in an apartment fire with his family around 7pm Thursday night. According to his tweets, everyone got out OK, and he even went back for his elderly neighbour, caught in her upstairs apartment.

Livingstone is working on a project related to OpenID, but a fire which apparently emanated from below caught hold in his building as he worked at home. Thankfully it sounds like everyone in the building got out OK. However, it looks like their building is not habitable.

After winning £1,500 on Brainteaser in 2004 and being called Ron Weasly by Carol Vorderman on Countdown in 2007, GroupSpaces co-founder David Langer has come back for more punishment. He has ended up on another TV game show. Oh yes.

Tonight you can see him on The Krypton Factor from 7.30pm-8pm on ITV which will be available online for the 30 days after the show at http://www.itv.com/catchup. It’s not quite US dotcom billionaire Mark Cuban on Dancing with the Stars, but it’ll do for now.

Here’s a taster of what you’re in store for, but look hard, David is the contestant on the right just before the show ends…

The arrival of local reviews giant Yelp on the UK scene will have a lasting impact on the local players who have painstakingly built local reviews sites. Some mirror Yelp’s model completely, some compete on only some – but still significant – aspects of the site’s business model. I asked some of the major players in the market to comment on what they think will happen next, and how they will deal with Yelp’s arrival.

Marc Lyne Brownbook.net
For us Yelp’s arrival to London is good news. Helping small businesses succeed online is what we are all about at Brownbook and Yelps arrival will further highlight to businesses in London that they need to further engage ‘online’. Regarding the pure competition question; Brownbook is very different in many ways:

- It’s a global platform and has over 27 million businesses listed worldwide – with major coverage in USA, UK, Canada, Australia and users contributing to listings in 220 other countries
- People can add reviews but it’s not what Brownbook is all about, it’s the free local business directory that anyone can edit; it’s created by the people for the people (very much based on ‘wiki’ principals)
- It has no sales force, it’s all self service. Brownbook rewards users for their contributions, with a lifetime share of revenue
- It helps people and businesses to flourish in tough times by, offering business owners no-cost and low-cost tools to promote their businesses online (at a price point that is an order of magnitude lower than any of the competition), and offering people a way to boost their income by contributing to Brownbook (users can earn as much as $24 in a single transaction – not just nickels and dimes!).
- Launched in May 2008, Brownbook is growing at 40% per month and the mobile site is growing at 60% month on month

Joel Brazil, Tipped
Look, we recognize that Yelp and Qype are big and well-funded , essentially the Starbucks of the review community sites. But just like with coffee, we’re convinced that there still is a need and an audience for the small and independent business. We have always been and remain a small, passionate team, committed to authentic reviews of interesting and independent businesses in the UK. We don’t think it takes a massive amount of capital to build a great product and a great community. It takes innovation, a dedicated team, and commitment to our core beliefs. The game is far from over, and we’ll continue to work tirelessly to build the best community and the best product possible. To quote: “The Way of the Samurai is in desperateness. Ten men or more cannot kill such a man. Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.” – Hagakure – Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1709AD)

Mark Livingstone, CEO of Touchlocal.com
We welcome Yelp’s arrival into the UK as its further validation of this emerging way of advertising and also allowing consumers to make informed, local choice. Touchlocal continues to grow at over 100% per year and with over 4m uniques per month has a very significant position in the market. Getting traction is one thing but monetising it is another and reliance on display advertising is clearly not the way right now. With over 100 people in the sales team at the company it had taken a very large effort to build our position and its only now that we are seeing revenue streams in the 10’s of millions. Stating the obvious although it is becoming clearer by the day it’s the well backed, access to capital companies that will survive and win. To adapt an old retail phrase “traction is vanity, monetisation is sanity” Interestingly it’s the Yells and Thompson’s that should take this as yet another hammer blow.

Stephan Uhrenbacher, CEO, Qype
Yelp is a great site in the US, but the local space is literally vast. While Yelp seems to be focusing entirely on London, on Qype you can already find reviews not only in London but also from any region in the UK – with excellent coverage in cities like Liverpool or Edinburgh – and at the same time with Qype operating in 8 countries now you can plan your trip to Paris, Barcelona or Berlin, Vienna, Zurich, or Warsaw. Nevertheless: London today is the city with the most reviews on Qype. We have built a strong local team at Leicester Square, where we are constantly adapting the site to the needs of the UK users, like making sure that people looking for a cafe in Richmond do not end up in Yorkshire. We added the “nearest tube” and TFL directions functions last week after requests from our London users. Or take the great location aware iPhone app that launched 4 weeks ago, which shows you what is good around you, not only in London, but anywhere in the UK and in Europe. We also just launched our API which connects the great Qype content to many other websites and is already being used by UK sites like Nestoria. In summary, I think that in order to be really successful in the local space, you have to become local.

So we’re taking 35 of the UK’s digital/tech companies over to the US to get into the vibe over there and hopefully do some business. Specifically this is the “Digital Mission” – a kind of trade mission, but with more sex appeal – to Austin, Texas for the South by South West Interactive (SXSWi) conference from 12-18 March this year. Established in 1994, SXSWi is now a byword for emerging media and an amazing networking opportunity for these companies. The Digital Mission is organised by digital networking community, Chinwag, on behalf of UKTI (UK Trade & Investment) and the participating companies will get some instruction on extending their business to the US, and showcasing the “BritPack” scene at with a “Great British Breakfast” for 300 delegates during the conference. The event follows the Digital Mission to New York in September 2008 – also organised by Chinwag for the UKTI, and supported by TechCrunch UK.

The 35 successful companies were selected from over 100 entries by an advisory board consisting of Mike Butcher, TechCrunch UK Editor (me); Herb Kim, Codeworks CEO; and Sarbjit Bakhshi, Head of Information & Technology Group, UKTI. Official sponsors Sun Startup Essentials and legal experts, Winston & Strawn; and technical development experts, Core Objects.

More information about each company can be seen on the Digital Mission website but here they are for your delectation. Congrats to all for being selected:

• AMEE
• Best Before
• BookingBug
• Ceros
• cxpartners
• dpivision
• ensembli
• Facultas
• Harvest Digital
• Hubdub
• Infurious
• Mixcloud
• Mobile Pie
• Mydex
• Myrl
• NixonMcInnes
• Plebble
• ProofHQ
• Rummble
• School of
  Everything
• Six to Start
• skive
• Short Fuze (Moviestorm)
• Snagsta
• Splendid
• Tactile CRM
• The Filter
• The iPlatform
• Traffic Digital
• Vizimo
• We7
• we are social
• Workhound
• Worldeka
• Yiibu

Well, the war of “local” sites which started last year is really on now. US local reviews giant Yelp, the model for many such sites globally, is to launch in the UK today, under Yelp.co.uk, and local competitors will be taking a keen interest in its launch.

There is already a swathe of players fighting it out in the UK, most in the London hothouse. Qype is well-funded and leading the pack. They are followed by Trusted Places, mobile-focused Rummble, Tipped, Brownbook and recent upstart (which probably now has little chance) YourLocalLondon.

Yelp’s US community is both famous and infamous of its reviews of restaurants, shops, events, you name it. And the startup plans to bring its community events as well – something the UK sites haven’t gone in for very often, outside of occasional parties thrown by Qype and Trusted Places.

Yelp says it has 100,000 UK-based Yelpers, which is incentive enough for it to start a UK site, and Yelp’s co-founder and chief executive Jeremy Stoppelman tells The Guardian “The best time to grow is when others are struggling”. But in truth the expansion is almost certainly down to wanting to garner more revenue via expansion into new markets.

As usual, the question is, will the plucky local players be able to hold their own? Here’s my prediction: Trusted Places will try to sell to Yelp, as hinted before Christmas. Qype will fight it out. The rest will either re-focus and get out of the way or die. The market simply will not sustain all the current players.

Somewhere along the line someone didn’t get the memo about how hard it was to succeed on the mobile Web. Netherlands-based MADS, has announced it has won over 150 of Europe’s online publishers with its mobile ad-platform, a reach which represents 60 million mobile consumers across across 15 countries. So far publishers including Gazzetta dello Sport (Italy), Telegraaf Media Group (Netherlands), TV4 (Sweden) and Aftenposten (Norway) are now using the MADS platform, which is not a million miles away from being a kind of DoubleClick for Mobile. Competitors to MADS would be San Francisco-based Amobee, Cambridge, MA-basedJumpTap, Third Screen Media and AdInfuse in Belgium.

The three year old privately held Netherlands-based company founded by CEO Ashu Mathura now has brands like Adidas, Mercedes-Benz, Peugeot, Mini, H&M, Coca-Cola and British Airways using the ad platform. It also offers its platform to operators and agencies and combines mobile web, SMS push/insert, MMS push/insert, mobile video, mobile games and applications, idle screens and ring back tones.

But of course the ones to beat in the mobile advertising platform stakes currently is AdMob which today said it was now allowing advertisers to track App Store downloads, conversion rates and cost-per-download. AdMob says its ad network reached 8.4 million unique iPhone and iPod Touch devices worldwide as of December 2008.

On Monday we reported on how Facebook appeared to have been hacked. For a short time the Facebook Advertising page had its title description changed from “Advertising” to “Lying”. An observant informant emailed the screen grab before the page was changed and other blogs also carried the news of the incident.

However, Facebook has since come back to me to clarify. It wasn’t a hack, or a disgruntled employee they say, it was an anomaly in their translation software. When I asked why the English word “advertising” was auto-translated into the word “lying”, the explanation was that because Facebook’s regionalisation software is driven by users – in other words, users are roped into translating Facebook’s interface for each country it operates in – one of the words those cheeky users had suggested had briefly popped into that slot by mistake. Call it a bug in the software.

So there you have it – iit’s not Facebook’s employees who think Facebook is lying about its advertising, or a hacker, it’s a user who actually suggested it. I’m glad we’ve sorted that out.

Cambridge-based technology VC deals tracker Library House, which went into administration last month, has had its database of deals sold to Dow Jones. The Library House database and customers will now go into Dow Jones’s VentureSource, a larger, similar service.

The news confirms a couple of interesting trends.

First, it’s clear that with the downturn Library House’ main client base of Venture Capitalists could no longer afford Library House’s fees – thousands of pounds for just one subscriber account – and this was the first thing that has been cut from their budget. They are also increasingly less interested in early stage companies, the usual fodder for LH’s research. All that remains is the rump of an – albeit promising – events business.

Second, information about business sectors is now pretty easy to get to. The kind of information Library House dealt in – small startups, who’s About pages usually had more information – is increasingly an area filled by crowd-sourced databases like Crunchbase. Clearly TechCrunch has an interest in saying this, but over the next few years I predict we’ll see many more “CrunchBase copies” appear, all targeting differing sectors. Why? Because it’s easier and cheaper to get the companies to do it for you, so long as the resulting content can have someone cast an eye over it and verify the information. The “heavy-lifting”, the data entry, can easily be done by the companies themselves via RSS, wiki-style approaches, you name it. After all, that’s more or less what Library House was selling: grad students hammering phones to check the startup’s postal address, for instance.

Meanwhile the demise of LH means a double blow to founder Doug Richard, former BBC Dragons Den judge. His Trutap venture is pretty much life-support, having cut to a skeleton staff just before Christmas. However, Richard had long since become a hands-off Chairman at LH and I daresay he’ll be back – he is usually working on several ventures at once.

And in an unrelated development, watch out for an interview with him on TechFluff.TV later this week (TechCrunch UK is a media sponsor).

Israeli startup SundaySky has raised $8m from Carmel Ventures and Globspan capital. SundaySky makes automated video content solutions which generates dynamic video clips on the fly out of existing web content. The video produced is dynamic, continuously updated, high quality video clips. The obvious benefits are that it enables websites to significantly increase the appeal of their content, stickiness of their site and their conversion rates while creating a significant inventory of video ads. Here’s the official release.

UK/Irish video startups include Quick.tv and WorldTV, to name just two. I think we’ll hear much more from this sector this year.