I was also very surprised to see how many SoCal startups there were.  I tried not to look at the locations of the startups until after the event, so I could judge them without a bias, and I’m glad I did.  Some of my favorite companies from the week were from right down here in Southland.

The most obvious, to me anyway, was Yammer, the grand prize winner of TechCrunch50.  Not many people know this, but according to Crunchbase, Geni, the company that spawned Yammer, is based in West Hollywood.  CEO David Sacks is also entrenched in Hollywood as a producer of the film, Thank You For Smoking, and several upcoming films (IMDB).

Several other SoCal-based startups are:

DotSpots - DotSpots a semantic annotation system that is attempting to apply the wisdom of crowds to every piece of information on the web, starting with news.  DotSpots is not technically based in SoCal, the team is actually spread all over the US and Canada (Beverly Hills, CA; Orange County, CA; Calgary, AB; Mesa, AZ; Austin, TX; and San Francisco, CA) but with CEO, Farhad Mohit based in Beverly Hills we figured they deserved a mention.

Quant The News - Quant The News is an LA-based company that is developing advanced textual sentiment analysis applications through an AI-based language processing technology. Their first product is StockMood, a site that analyzes a stock’s “mood” by assessing news stories about stocks, identifying their sentiment, and measuring their potential impact on a stock’s price direction.

Blah Girls - Blah Girls is an interactive, original content web property from Katalyst Media (Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg). The site features a bi-weekly animated “vlog” called Blah Blah Blah that features the “Blah Girls,” 3 vivacious young girls who are obsessed with celebrity gossip and pop culture.

Closet Couture - My personal favorite, Closet Couture, is a Pacific Palisades-based fashion social network from Christine Elia. Through Closet Couture, women can manage their wardrobe in a “virtual closet” and get personalized shopping recommendations from professional stylists and retailers.

TrueCar - TrueCar is a new car buying service from Scott Painter, founder of CarsDirect. Through TrueCar, consumers can see how much people have actually paid for a particular car in their geographic area.

Causecast - Causecast is a Santa Monica-based online social portal that connects celebrities, leaders, philanthropists, nonprofits, and brands to people who wish to make a difference through social networking, original media content and real-time daily coverage of cause-related news.

Over the next few days, I will attempt to followup with each company to see how the TechCrunch50 bump has treated them, and what they have coming in the future.  Let me know in the comments which one you think is the most interesting and if you have any questions you’d like answered in the upcoming posts.

Sweet Jesus, it’s about time!  Text CALLEY to 50500 to see what I mean.

Contxts is a new service from the geniuses at ID345, a Denver-based idea company from Danny Newman and Austin Gayer. It’s quite simple: you program what you want your business card to say on the website, and then tell people to text your user ID to 50500, or you can send it to them. Could it be any easier than that?

Several companies have attempted to solve the problem of paper business cards for some time. TechCrunch recently wrote about this problem, and introduced some of the players. There is FriendBook, an iPhone application from Tapulous where two iPhone users with the application could exchange information by “shaking” their phones close to each other, like a handshake. The obvious downfall to this application is that only iPhone users can exchange information this way.

There is also Rmbr.me, another SMS business card service. They were close, but they fall short in making it a primarily web-based service. To set up an account, users must create a profile on the website. To exchange contact information, the user sends a text message containing the recipient’s phone number or email address to a short code. The recipient then receives a link to the user’s profile and can create a profile to send their information back to the sender.

Contxts is much simpler. You can even use the service without ever visiting the website. Just text “JOIN firstname lastname email” to 50500 and then when anyone texts your number to 50500, they will get your name and email address. You can log in on the site later and change your user ID and business card information.

While debating, I visited Uber. According to a message posted to its users on the homepage, they’ve received a massive influx of support from its users and from several companies. One of them, ShareNow, a personal media sharing site, has “graciously bought [them] more time to figure out if there is a fit.” They also ask their users to post everyday and share their Uber page with their friends on Myspace and Facebook.

Uber was founded by the former CEO of Friendster, Scott Sassa and visual artist Glenn Kaino. They received $5.5 million of a $7.6 million investment in May from Sterling Stamos Capital Managment, Universal Music Group, and Discovery Communications.

While I was uber excited to see an effort like this from a startup, may I ask the question that should be on everyone’s minds? How the hell did they spend $5.5 million in five months?

The most shocking of the layoffs was of Stephen Semprevivo, the President of Experian Interactive Media, LowerMyBills, and ClassesUSA. Semprevivo was previously Executive Vice President and General Manager of LowerMyBills, a position he held from April 2004 until his promotion to President in June 2007. Before LowerMyBills, Semprevivo was Chief Operating Officer of GetSmart, a company that was acquired by Providian Financial for $38 million, and eventually acquired by Washington Mutual Card Services. In 2000, he was selected by Credit Card Magazine as “Leader of the Year,” for his work with GetSmart.

Another surprising layoff was that of Rob Gabel, the highly-regarded Senior VP of Marketing for LowerMyBills/Experian Interactive, after almost 9 years of employment with the company. Travis Thomas, the Senior VP of Sales was also let go today.

Could the release of their three highest paid executives be a sign of things to come? Or just a company struggling in the tough economy? After a rough day in the market, neither would surprise me.

Either way, I wish them all the best.

Title: Lunch 2.0 @ Suggestion Box
Location: SuggestionBox.com’s Office, 120A South Sierra Avenue, Solana Beach, CA 92075
Link out: Click here
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2008-09-26
End Time: 14:30

On WooMe, users can join speed-dating sessions that fit their interests or location, and do one minute live video introductions with the other users in the room. After one minute, each user is asked if they were “wooed,” and if they were, their information will become available to each other so they can continue in the wooing process.

Now, users can opt in to WooMe.TV to publish those one-minute video chat sessions. WooMe claims that this is a revolution in the term “reality television,” seeing as how the content is not neither taped or produced. It’s just two people, meeting for the first time and talking for a minute.

WooMe, an LA-based startup, received a $12 million Series B led by Index Ventures in June. At the time of the funding, we reported that they were working on a deal that would turn WooMe video chats into content for MTV. That may or may not be still in the works, but for now you’ll have to settle for satisfying your inner voyeur on WooMe.TV.

It’s an interesting concept, but it’s hard to predict it’s success. Will people opt in? Will people care what user rdot says to woo sweetcherrypie03 (shown below)? We will just have to wait and see.

Au contraire.  Universal Music Group, Warner Bros. Music, EMI, and Sony BMG have agreed to release their top artists’ music through slotMusic, and Best Buy and Wal-Mart have agreed to retail them.  This is just another demonstration of old Hollywood methods affecting technology companies.  It should be the other way around!

Just a few WTF? thoughts regarding slotMusic:

- MicroSD cards usually retail for about $8.50, and they come with a USB sleeve for computer interoperability, so when you add the music, distribution, licenses, and whatever else, it seems that these would cost at least $20.

- They are the size of a fingernail! (Approximate actual size pictured below.)

- I don’t know about all phones, but I know that when I have a memory card in my Blackberry, it stores contact information, messages, images, events, memos, and applications on it.  You don’t just take it out to listen to Carrie Underwood.

- I have trouble finding CDs (I have a lot from my music business days) and they are 5 in x 5 in.  MicroSDs are 15mm x 11mm, roughly 1/30th the size of a CD.

- What about my car?

- And last but not least, everyone downloads!

So, I think we’ve established how bad of an idea it is, and I haven’t even touched on their marketing materials.  While at TC50 last week, I received a promotional postcard from SanDisk that said - wait for it - “Get Your Slot Ready.”

There are no more words.  Take it away commenters.

SmartConnect is a new method of electrical metering that connects thermostats and appliances in order to control over-usage at peak times to save both energy and money. Another advantage of the system is to provide real-time monitoring of electrical usage, into the home and to the electrical company.

The traditional metering system is inherently flawed. Electrical companies have no way of accounting for the energy being used at any given time. Do you know how they find out about outages? When people call in and complain. They have no other way of knowing.

Neither does the homeowner. The homeowner has no way of knowing how much energy they are using at the moment, how much it’s costing them (electricity costs are higher at peak times, but no one knows when those peak times are), or where the highest energy usage is coming from.

SmartConnect is aiming to fix all of that. One of the coolest principles driving this methodology is something called the Prius Effect. Hybrid cars (like the Toyota Prius) have a monitor that tells the driver if they are running on battery or gasoline power, and how many MPG they are getting. This makes the driver conscious of their driving habits and how they are affecting their mileage. SmartConnect aims to make homeowners conscious of their energy usage, so that they can change their usage habits to save them money, and help the environment.

SCE estimates that SmartConnect will reduce overall peak energy consumption by about 1,000 megawatts - the average output of an entire power plant. They also predict that it will lower greenhouse gas emissions and smog-forming pollutants by at least 365,000 metric tons per year – the equivalent of 79,000 cars being removed from the road.

I am *so* excited about this technology, and I can’t wait to get one in my house. SCE will start implementing SmartConnect systems in homes in 2009, and they aim to install 5.3 million by 2012.

This year’s winner, Yammer, had a great presentation, and I genuinely liked the product. I’m a fan of Geni as well, and I think David Sacks is a brilliant entrepreneur. Yammer does have a huge market, and an established business model, but in my opinion, it lacks innovation, originality, and staying power. For a system like Yammer to work, everyone in the company would need to use it, and I don’t see that happening in a lot of industries. Most companies fear security issues, and rightly so.

The business Twitter clone is not an new idea. Two companies, Ididwork and Present.ly, have recently launched similar applications. My personal favorite is Ididwork, it offers analytics and performance reports - a very cool feature.

So in lieu of Yammer (”What are you working on?”) winning TechCrunch50, I thought I might have some fun guessing some other Twitter-like sites that I think have serious potential.

10. Ritter - “What would John Ritter be doing?”

9. GetHer - “Who are you stalking?”

8. Quitter - “What have you failed at recently?”

7. Bitter - “What are you angry about?”

6. Bicker - “Who have you fought with today?”

5. Hitter - “What have you punched recently?”

4. Jitter - “How much coffee have you had today?”

3. Boozer - “What are you drinking?”

2. Litter - “What have you done to ruin the environment recently?”

1. Twatter - “Who are you doing right now?”

Any other suggestions? Leave them in the comments.

I will be trying out a service called CoverItLive for liveblogging.  In the player below you can chat with me, ask me questions, and I can post links and insert images.  I haven’t used it yet, so it should be interesting.