Israel Innovation 2.0

Flash animators who wish to display their short animation videos and make a profit need look no further than Israel-based aniBOOM for a Flash-sharing community. The company that’s been turning heads in the media this past year, is at it again with news that video-delivery site, Joost will be giving aniBOOM its own channel. aniBOOM, which already has channels on Yahoo! Video and Google’s YouTube, will display the best animation videos on the Joost channel with the animator, aniBOOM and Joost splitting advertising revenues from it equally.

Aside from fulfilling part of its phase to cross over into other media with this new channel, this expansion provides a glimpse of the market opportunities still available for aniBOOM and its animators to tap. Below is a sample of a video from the site and check out CNN Money’s article for more on aniBOOM’s potential.

Last week, Globes reported that eBay, Inc. will be increasing its collaboration efforts with Israeli start-up, Shopping.com and opening a development center. The center will be charged with the task of developing “eBay’s sorting and cataloging technologies.”

With increasing threats to eBay’s technology integration methods, perhaps the company can benefit not only from the innovations Shopping.com will come up with, but from its story of survival as well. Originally called Dealtime and founded in Israel, Shopping.com was the first price comparison website. After surviving the dot-com bust and once the Internet began to recover, the company thrived and changed its name to Shopping.com and went public. It was then bought by eBay in 2005.

Although eBay also survived the dot-com crash, and has maintained its monopoly and is a survivor in its own right, its success in beating down any competitors in the past is different from its current competition today — primarily, Google and small VoIP companies. While in the past, threats were directed at eBay’s auction services itself, as the company tries to innovate its auction site and other holdings with multiple services to provide a better user experience, Google and small start-ups are finding vulnerabilities in the additional services and are directly attacking them, either by providing similar services of their own (i.e., Google) or trying to interfere with features that have been integrated onto the auction site (i.e., Jajah).

Despite the constant competition, perhaps eBay’s new activity with Shopping.com, and the collaboration of minds that have overcome different threats in the past, can ensure that eBay will be able to continue to have a leg up in the e-commerce world over Froogle and Google’s own constant cataloging efforts for the near future. Although time will tell, which company do you think will win the battle over cataloging and e-commerce? eBay’s Shopping.com or Google’s Froogle or do you think they can co-exist?

The Globes has reported that Tel Aviv-based, RayV has received $8 million dollars in second round funding from Accel Partners to create a 24-hour virtual network that can be viewed on TV or on a PC. According to TechCrunch, RayV’s technology will provide a “P2P live broadcasting offering in which users will be able to create and broadcast video playlists at ‘high video quality.’” With similar sites such as Joost and Veoh, and even several other Israeli companies, the big question is what is the differentiator between RayV and other sites? Another question is, should RayV succeed, will this be the long-awaited-for YouTube killer? For more analysis on RayV’s technology, check out the Venture Capital Cafe.