Israeli web authoring tool developer SemantiNet has raised $3.4 million in its second financing round. Giza Venture Capital led the round and was joined by Yossi Vardi, Jeff Pulver, Apax Partners chairman Sir Ronald Cohen, and Mordechai Ben-Shach. The company raised $1.7 million from the same investors in January.
SemantiNet claims its product is a smart plug-in that offers surfers a new dynamic approach to information retrieval and provides with them with customized content based on their page searches. The goal of the plug-in is to allow the user to organize and access information in the Internet in a simple and intuitive fashion. Surfers can use the plug-in to contact their friends, and look up places and products of interest to them. It will also enable them to access information from social sites such as Facebook, Twister or Digg, and let them know what their friends are doing on sites across the web.
SemantiNet was founded in 2006 by CEO Tal Keinan, former head of Scenario Analysis at Morgan Stanley's Risk Management Department, and CTO Tal Muskal, formerly of Go Networks, and it currently employs 12 people. The market it operates it is not entirely new, and among the products already available are social web browser Flock.com, as well as plug-ins for existing browsers such as Firefox.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 7, 2008
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2008