Seattle-based Snapvine isn't much to look at, but somehow they've just scored $2 million in venture funding from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and First Round Capital. Other investors include Russell Siegelman, a former Microsoft executive. The site, which reportedly has 20,000 users, offers a range of mobile services including horoscopes, weather reports and wake up calls sent to your cellphone. But as of this week they're pursuing the same strategy as hundreds of other startups: providing widgets for blogs and social networking sites (aka: feeding the MySpace beast).
More specifically, they're distributing a "voice comments" widget for MySpace pages - you post the Flash embed on your page and your friends can dial a number to leave comments - there's an example on the company's MySpace profile (yet more Branding 2.0). You also have access to a management panel where you can delete unwanted messages. Of course, it's not limited to MySpace - it also works on hi5, Bebo, Multiply, Friendster, Windows Live Spaces and any other site that supports Flash.
While the site design isn't exactly to my taste, I doubt that matters - Photobucket and MySpace were never the prettiest of services, either. In the end, it all hinges on whether they can achieve viral adoption among MySpace users.
On a related topic, I notice that Snapvine has gotten around the latest MySpace update by including plain html links, as I suggested. It seems the MySpace economy will continue to flourish, even if it requires a few workarounds.
![[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]](http://sale-online.click/wp-content/uploads/2006/07/snapvinelarge.png){kind=link}