As Reuters’s Bobbi Rebell reports, a recent comScore study found a 7% decline in the click through rate of Google’s sponsored search ads. CTR is a key indicator of its profit potential so this decline has sparked some questions about how Google can maintain its position as one of the hottest companies on the [...]

Alistar Carole writes…
“Does the World Need Another Way to Search?”
” Google’s dominance in online search hasn’t stopped hundreds of startups from trying to build a better mousetrap. Each is trying a new twist on search: geography, crowdsourcing, tags, user annotations, learned hierarchies and timelines. With $20 billion spent on online advertising every year, a killer [...]

I have been following the discussion about social lending since reading a November 2006 Center Networks post in which CN blogger Allen Stern called social lending the “next Web 2.0 phenomenon.” I’ve followed Prosper in the US, Zopa in the UK and Kiva’s international philanthropic P2P service.
When I saw that one of my favorite Tech [...]

On Wednesday, we were thrilled to see that Duncan Riley reviewed 123people.com on TechCrunch and made  invites for our private beta site available to readers.

“150 Invites to 123people.com for TechCrunch Readers”

Duncan Riley writes: “New comer to the people search game 123people.com is a Austrian based startup that is looking to provide a new take [...]

After months developing, coding, designing and testing our latest venture, our i5invest team is proud to announce…
the European launch of 123people.com

So early in our launch, we’ve already had great success. 123people.com:

Has had 300, 000 visits within the first days since launch and 1.9 million page views.
1.500 outgoing search request per minute
Is the most successful [...]

When news broke that Microsoft made an offer to acquire Yahoo, News Corp and Google quickly reacted. News Corp threw its own offer in the ring and Google criticized Microsoft asking, “Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?”
Our [...]

We’ve had a really busy month at i5invest but I got the chance to attend DLD a few weeks back and thought I’d share some photos and a bit about my experience.
[slideshow id=1801439850951270170&w=426&h=320]
Munich, widely recognized as Europe’s center for commerce and extravagant capital, was again this year’s host for DLD. Presented by the prestigious Hubert [...]

Here’s a really interesting session from the World Economic Forum in Davos. The rich dialog featured here, including Eric Schmidt’s comments about Google’s plans for mobile advertising makes this a must-watch video.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjjoJjyIngg&rel=1]
Amanda Mooney, i5invest Boston

1. TechCrunch reports on a possible deal between Nokia and Facebook. Duncan Riley says, “The investment side isn’t that surprising given how many companies have now bought into the Facebook phenomenon. The remarkable part is how many companies are willing to invest in Facebook at a $15 billion valuation.”
2. A guest-written post on GigaOM by [...]

BusinessWeek has an interesting report asserting that US tech companies with a strong international presence will weather the recession much better than US-centric companies.
As BW’s Olga Kharif, Spencer E. Ante and Roger O. Crockett report:
One key factor in how these companies perform will be geography. While tech spending in the U.S. is expected to slow [...]