Whenever I have a conversation with good-natured Web 2.0 entrepreneurs in a relaxed atmosphere, the conversation inevitably turns to the question of why there are so few vowels in the industry? The best answer I can usually come up with is that, as we know from watching Wheel of Fortune all our lives, vowels cost money. When you're trying to bootstrap the next revolutionary, game-changing, market-disruptive, ad-supported application, you simply don't have money to waste on all those sorts of frivolities.
I'm beginning to see a picture forming, though. Of course everyone's seen the "Ads provided by Gooooogle" bit on the AdSense frames. Then of course there's Zooomr, Kristopher Tate's photo sharing service. And now, we recieve word today that Japanese video search engine Fooooo (that's five o's) has raised $1 million in second round financing from CyberAgent.
The site aggregates embeded video from sites like YouTube, Break, Metacafe and Veoh with eleven different localizd versions. Alarm:Clock says that Fooooo claims to be 'the fastest growing video site.'
This is the company's second $1 million funding round, bringing their total to $2 million. None of the press coverage around the web indicates what the money is going towards, but we have a guess.