Company Name: HooQs
Founded in: 2007
Location: Tel Aviv

HooQs, an Israeli startup launched in 2007, brings personalized mobile content to users with a unique mobile media recommendation system. Based in Tel Aviv, HooQs was co-founded by Aner Ravon and Itay Gissin. HooQs’ partners and distributors are spread globally and as a result the founders plan to open European and North American headquarters in 2009 in order to grow their business and become more easily accessible to partners. However for the creators, there was no better place to start than Israel.

HooQs’ concept came about when its creators noticed a lack of personalized mobile media and decided to make it easier for users to find music and videos that interest them by incorporating a prediction engine for recommendations into their site. When searching for video and music from a mobile device it can be difficult to find content that interests you quickly. There is so much content to choose from that you sometimes don’t even know what you’re looking for. HooQs created a way to make mobile content find you instead.

Once a user watches a video, HooQs gives him a personalized homepage with 5 to 30 recommended clips based on what other users with similar tastes are watching and listening to. Each time that the user watches, downloads or shares a video on HooQs, he is, in essence, creating recommendation statistics for users with similar interests. HooQs creates recommendations based purely on user behavior. Recommendations take into account how long a user views a clip, as well as whether he downloaded or shared the clip. Users are not required to answer any questions or give any information in order to receive recommendations. In fact, anyone can receive recommendations based on his behavior on the site without even registering.

According to Aner, the service picked up quickly, with over 300,000 mobile downloads a month in the beginning. The first version did not include the recommendation system and was intended purely for learning purposes to create a better model. The second version of HooQs, which was released a few weeks ago, has much more functionality, including the recommendation system which allows for collaborative media filtering, making it much easier for users to find desirable mobile content quickly and efficiently. This recommendation engine was developed by Nimrod Steinbock, CTO of the company.

The addition of this unique recommendation engine has aided in the growth of HooQs. The service currently has over 250,000 users that account for over 500,000 mobile downloads a month. HooQs distributes video content on virtually every subject—users are downloading niche content from pizza recipes to kite boarding lessons and everything in between.

HooQs channels cover a range of subject matter including music, animation, animals, TV, tech, sports, games, politics and “hotties.” The site even has a “whatever” category which features channels such as Best UFO Clips. “How to” videos are also popular, as well as videos about the iPhone and, of course, videos made by gorgeous women (surprise, surprise).

The improvement of mobile devices, with the introduction of mobile handsets such as the iPhone, has only served to raise the consumption of mobile media and HooQs’ mission is to serve this increased need. HooQs can be used on any mobile device that is media enabled and has an Internet connection. Additionally, the company is currently working on an iPhone application.

Itay tells me that unlike other mobile media distributors, HooQs has decided to remain an independent service, managing and developing everything on their own. Mobile operators may partner with them to incorporate the HooQs recommendation engine into their own portals. In fact, two operators already signed agreements with them for distribution and integration of their recommendation engine.

HooQs’ revenue model is based on the distribution of their mobile media and on partnerships with mobile operators that are incorporating their service. The company recently raised over $1 million from Zohar Gilon, Eilon Tirosh of GingerBit, Yigal Ahuvi of Partam, and Yaron Gissin on behalf of BEC. Hooqs is still on the lookout for further investments.

This post was originally posted June 30th on Mashable.com

Company Name: Footbo
Founded in: 2008
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel

Footbo is a social network for football fans, or as they are called in the U.S., soccer fans. The site, which launched this month to coincide with the EURO 2008 tournament, is the brainchild of Raphael Honigstein, a well known football journalist based in London, who writes for England’s The Guardian, amongst other publications. Raphael teamed up with his brother Mani, who has worked in the Israeli tech industry for many years, to get Footbo off the ground. As a result, the company’s headquarters are located in the UK while their operations are run from Israel.

According to Mani, having the startup’s operations in Israel has made it easy for Footbo to find multi-lingual employees who are also passionate football fans to serve the tri-lingual (English, German, Spanish) Footbo community. However, one of the biggest advantages of giving Footbo’s operations a home in Israel has been taking advantage of the tech industry and expertise here.

With an estimated one billion fans, football is the most popular sport in the world. Raphael noticed that there was no site that catered to the complete needs of these fans and decided that he would take matters into his own hands. Thus, he created Footbo—a “one-stop shop” for football fans to show pride for their teams and get excited together about the sport.

When a user joins the Footbo community they gain a customized football experience by identifying their favorite teams and players. A personalized homepage is then created for them. The user can then begin to take part in the community, blog, share photos and videos, create and join groups and fan clubs, plan events, grade player performances, and more. Footbo provides users with all of the latest updates about their favorite teams and gives them access to RSS news feeds. Footbo also allows users to make predictions about which teams will win in future games, a feature that has already become very popular. In essence, Footbo offers everything that other social networks do, but is catered specifically to football fans.

Footbo’s soft launch was strategically planned during the EURO 2008 tournament—a time of excitement for football fans all over the world. In the coming months Footbo plans to launch new features as well as start bringing in revenue streams. Footbo’s revenue model is based on targeted marketing which includes football-related sponsorships, merchandising and ticket sales. Given the size of this market and the passion of fans for the game, the company believes this should prove to be a very viable model.

This post was originally posted June 27th on Mashable.com

Launched in 2006 in the basement of a small house in Malal village, Yedda is a knowledge community whose mission is to connect people who are looking for knowledge with the people who have the knowledge. The company was acquired by AOL in 2007, but has stuck to its basement in Malal, renovating the space to accommodate the company’s growth.

On Yedda, all questions and users are organized by tags, so if you’re looking for a specific answer or someone who’s knowledgeable in a particular field, you can easily find either. The service is completely free of charge and is all about users helping fellow users. By specifying their tags of interest, users only receive questions that are based on their interests and are not bothered with questions about topics that don’t really relate to them. Answers themselves are ranked and each user receives an overall ranking based on the quality of his or her responses. In this manner, each user can demonstrate their level of knowledge to peers.

As part of their mission, Yedda also helps promote knowledge communities throughout the net and has partnered up with services such as ePals, the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, and ArticlesBase. Each of these sites has Yedda widgets integrated into them and thus enables the services to tap into the global Yedda community and benefit from the accumulated content in the Yedda network. The company also offers several very useful widgets for site owners, such as the Ask & Answer Widget.

Yedda is proactive in getting users’ questions answered, either through emails sent to users who mention they are interested in a question topic or by allowing anyone to subscribe to an RSS feed. In addition, Yedda has integrated its service with Twitter and created a Facebook application.

Yedda is expanding rapidly with a recently launched Partnership Program, announcing their first 100 partners worldwide. In the future you will also see Yedda integration within AOL properties.

See my interview with Yedda below.

This post was originally posted June 17th on Mashable.com

Tel-Aviv based fring announced that they are releasing their API, allowing third-party developers the opportunity to develop new applications called fring Add-ons for the fring community. fring offers peer to peer mobile VOIP and allows users to chat, call, and transfer files from mobile to PC or mobile to mobile, completely free of charge, using the mobile devices’ Wi-Fi connection. The company has a strong managerial team led by Avi Shechter, Co-founder and CEO of fring, who was also the CEO of ICQ in its early days.

In our conversation, Roy Timor-Rousso, fring’s Product Marketing VP pointed out that currently the company is not focusing on earning revenue, but rather on building the fring community and brand. According to fring, they have experienced phenomenal growth since their launch in January 2007 with users in more than 200 countries, growing at more than 100,000 new users each month. fring is available on more than 600 mobile phones and devices, such as Symbian Series 60, Sony Ericsson UIQ, Windows Mobile 5 & 6 and the iPhone. In the past, users complained of a few problems such as a bug causing the deletion of SMS’s, however, Timor-Rousso affirmed that all these bugs had been fixed in the latest version, which came out in late May.fring is currently integrated with Skype, AIM, Twitter, Google Talk, SIP and more, and is working on a Facebook application The-New-Faces-at-Facebook that will be coming out soon. Of course, this will all change with the release of the Open API. There is an iPhone application, unfortunately if you want to use it you’ll have to jailbreak your iPhone.See my interview with Fring below:

This post was originally posted June 18th on Mashable.com

Technorati tags: fring, open api, api, mobile, voip, israel media tour, mashable, blonde20, blonde 2.0, developers, applications, wifi, avi shechter, tel aviv, roy timor-rousso, iphone, sip

As many of you know, over the next few weeks I will be covering the Israel Media Tour Series for Mashable and will introduce you to some of Israel’s most interesting companies.

Israel has a history of strength in the technology sector. It is home to many top global companies’ research and development facilities, and host to companies that have produced innovative products like the first instant messenger ever, ICQ. Now, with the emergence of Web 2.0 we are seeing a lot of hip and unique new startups forming, as well as many older companies innovating themselves to adapt. Last week at MashBash Tel Aviv, Mashable networked with over 800 people involved in the Israeli tech scene, and over the next three weeks I will write about 11 of those companies on the The Israel Media Tour Series.

If you are a tech company or entrepreneur and want to be right smack in the middle of it all, Israel is the perfect place to be. It is a small country with a lot to offer, from innovation to venture capital, networking, and more. Most of us Israeli geeks see each other frequently at social networking events such as Garage Geeks, Twitter meetups, and other informal gatherings. We’re also a uniquely close-knit community as many of us are connected somehow by a relative, friend, or army mate, and therefore networking I suppose is easier to do here than elsewhere.

Here are a few facts about the Israeli Tech Scene:

Did you know that…

1) In proportion to its population, Israel has the largest number of startup companies in the world

2) The Cell phone was developed in the holy by Motorola

3) Most of the Windows NT and XP operating systems were developed by Microsoft-Israel

4) Voice mail was developed in Israel

5) Microsoft, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems built R & D facilities outside of the US, in Israel.

Get ready to read about some of Israel’s most exciting companies in the upcoming weeks…..

This post was originally posted June 16th on Mashable.com

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the Mashbash event last Wednesday plus those companies who were also a part of the Israel Media Tour Series. Here are a few pics from all the festivities:

                                                    Adam Hirsch from Mashable

Sharon Feder from Mashable

Gilad Shlang from Meemix

Liad Agmon from Delver

Adam from Mashable and John LoGioco from Outbrain

Adam from Mashable and Ari Gottesmann from Sightix

For more pics, please visit my Facebook profile….

Technorati tags: israel media tour, mashable, mashbash tel aviv, adam hirsch, sharon feder, tel aviv, israel, meemix, gilad shlang, delver, liad agmon, john logioco, outbrain, ari gottesmann, sightix, facebook

Didn’t get a ticket to our MashBash event tonight? No worries. Watch Mashbash Tel Aviv event live right here starting at 7pm Israel time (12pm EST).

Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple,  unveils iPhone 3G today, the App Store, MobileMe, and more in his Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address. the iPhone 3G will be released July 11th. It will be twice as fast as the current iPhone, have a longer battery life, GPS, and will cost only $199 in the US, with a $200 subsidy from AT&T.  According to Gizmodo:

“Apple has accepted that the new iPhone should be subsidised in the US and western Europe by the mobile operators who sell it to consumers, according to people familiar with the matter.”

To watch the keynote address, click here.

For all those of you who are Twitter users and still aren’t using Summize, you’re definitely missing out. Summize is a great tool helping you create some order within the Twitter universe chaos…

On the Summize site you can search for any term or phrase and see all the twitts that include it. You can filter by language, people, attitudes (positive or negative ) and also translate twitts in other languages to English. You can also subscribe to a particular term/phrase’s feed thus saving you the time of having to go to the Summize site. Summize also allows developers to use their API and integrate Summize’s search results with their own apps.

Summize is a great tool for those of us who try to keep track of twitts personally directed at us and allows us to respond promptly without needing to constantly check our Twitter page.

By searching for specific keywords that interest us such as Web 2.0, social media, etc., Summize can also help us find people with similar interests to ours and follow them. I highly recommend it. Especially for the heavy twitterers.