Deal Radar 2008: Bill Me Later – Blessed by Amazon

Bill Me Later is a safe and convenient payment system that allows people to purchase on the phone or over the web. The service is in direct competition with eBay’s PayPal. It was recently judged as the sixth-fastest-growing U.S. firm by Inc. magazine. It has around 200 employees and is based in Baltimore. Bill Me

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Deal Radar 2008: hi5 Going Strong

Last week we took a look at Xanga and today we will take a look at hi5, another popular social networking site. hi5 has an Alexa traffic rank of 8. hi5 is more popular globally than it is in the US. It is the number one site in Peru, Dominic Republic, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Portugal,

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Deal Radar 2008: Xanga Losing Steam?

Xanga is a free Web-based service that hosts weblogs, photoblogs, videoblogs, audioblogs, and social networking profiles and is popular around the globe. It is packed with features and is one of the easiest ways to get a blog up and running. It also has a real community feel to it. Xanga Setup Wizard has made

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Deal Radar 2008: Piczo Picture Perfect

Piczo allows teenagers worldwide to creatively express themselves, build personal communities, and share ideas and experiences with their friends in a safe online environment. Piczo recently introduced Piczo Zone. It allows users to decorate their profile pages in much the same way as teenagers decorate their rooms – with posters, music, etc. Piczo Zone has

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Deal Radar 2008: Retrevo

For the moment, this will be my last Vertical Search Engine on the deal radar, while we turn the spotlight onto other segments. We have discussed TheFind and Wize. Today we will take a look at Retrevo, another shopping search engine. We had profiled Vipin Jain, CEO Retrevo last year. Retrevo is a product review

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Deal Radar 2008: Wize Ranks Products

We profiled Tom Patterson, CEO of Wize.com last year. The site compiles both expert and user reviews and inserts them into a scoring algorithm to rank products. The site’s proprietary WizeRank gives each product a 1 – 100 score, utilizing collective wisdom ferreted from all over the web.

Deal Radar 2008: TheFind

We profiled Siva Kumar, CEO of TheFind.com, a discovery shopping search engine last year. This is yet another vertical search engine optimized for visual merchandising oriented lifestyle products. In July 2007, TheFind raised $15 million in a third round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures, Ignition, Lightspeed and Redpoint. It had previously raised $11 million

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Deal Radar 2008: Zillow

Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, founders of Expedia, launched Zillow, a real estimate site in Feb 2005. Zillow is known for providing free home valuations called Zestimates, which are somewhat accurate. Zillow also provides house specs, graphing, mapping, and analysis tools. Zillow launched Smart Search along with enhanced Neighborhood Pages that makes it easier for

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