Webjam – Funding a Worthy Startup

European Internet start-up Webjam raises $2 million in first-round funding.

Webjam, a London startup founded by Yahoo! veterans, has just received their first round funding of about $2 million for further product development. We received the press release from Webjam Ltd. announcing this latest news about the versatile online community.

Webjam has been in Beta testing since its inception back in November of last year and has been covered by us then. This latest news prompted me to join the site to describe in more details what Webjam is capable of.

Features

• Drag and drop modules – Allow users to spatially and aesthetically organize their spaces
• Blogs - This flexible feature allows all users to easily design, publish and syndicate blogs
• Homepages - Allows for ultimate flexibility for user creation and style
• Photos – Users have several options for utilizing and posting images all over their spaces
• Message Boards ­- Users can leave messages or post comments for their communities
• Replication – This is a function that allows key elements to be used across user pages

Other Modules

• Rich Text – Add text, pictures and links and allows HTML editing
• MP3 Player – Adds music to the user site
• All My Contacts – Lists your contacts and shows your popularity
• Flickr - Add photos to Webjam from Flickr
• Google Map – Adds a collaborative map
• YouTube Videos – Adds your favorite videos
• Weather – Shows your local weather
• Horoscope – See what is in your stars
• Amazon Search – Product searches
• Bookmarks – Share and add bookmarks
• Site Navigation – Navigate between your sites
• Gmail - Add Gmail to your site
• Text Ads – Adds Google Ads to your site

Next On Webjam

Webjam will soon add even more modules like eBay, Yahoo! Mail, Pop Mail and site statistics. Webjam users can fully tailor their community the way they really want it. I especially like the blog editing interface and I created a pretty decent looking blog there in about 10 minutes. The templates are plentiful, but could use a little more variety. The real point of this site comes through very clearly in that this is a quality site designed to please users.

One clearly noticeable and positive thing about Webjam is the absolute lack of any obnoxious  logos or ads surrounding the individual space. There is a small Webjam logo beside the name of your homepage and that is it! Webjam has emulated some of the very best aspects of other Web 2.0 communities and has integrated them into something that a user could make really special.

Bad Stuff

There is hardly anything bad about Webjam, well except the usual learning curve for UI interaction. The site is pretty simple to navigate but I did get hung up a couple of times. The template selection for pages could be a little more flexible if you are picky like me. I did have some gripe about the way the modules themselves have to be organized because it was difficult for me to edit some spatial aspects for my blog page. Like I said, this could just be because I couldn't figure it out but then that is an issue isn't it?

Webjam has done a great job and it looks like they earned the $2 million for continued work on the site. I am sure their investors have to be happy with Webjam so far. This is a much more mature and tailored atmosphere than MySpace and it has the capability to grow into one of the best community sites we have seen.

A 10 minute blog (below) made at Webjam by your's truly (aka Misterblog).