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Just as any online content producer or web site owner is hungry for metrics about their web site, iPhone application developers are bound to want the same types of facts and figures surrounding the usage of their programs. New York City-based startup Pinch Media, which has received an undisclosed amount of funding from Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital and a handful of angel investors, offers iPhone SDK developers free code that gives them analytics based on unique users, active users and length of time the application is in use.

Not only has Apple has sold roughly 5.4 million iPhones to date, but it’s working hard to get the device into as many people’s hands as possible, launching it in country after country around the globe. At this point, it’s hard to gauge how large this market could become.

And with the iPhone SDK coming out in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, we’re about to see an explosion of apps being offered by mobile developers. Indeed, as the iPhone ecosystem continues to evolve, startups that offer tools such as Pinch Analytics are going to be really valuable.

Mike Volpi, CEO of Joost, spent his first weekend in California in many months dealing with the blowback from a story in The Sunday Times (of UK) that has the company scaling back its global ambitions in favor of a US-only focus. We talked earlier this evening, and Volpi said none of those things are actually true. (PaidContent had talked to Joost spokesperson earlier today.)

“We are focusing on US, Western Europe, China and a few other Asian markets,” he told me. “Taking a more measured approach to our expansion, and keeping it in sync with markets where online advertising is mature enough.” Volpi pointed out that Joost launched in China two weeks ago, and has recently signed content partnerships in Scandinavia. When you add to the mix UK, France and a couple of other Western European countries, Volpi said it is pretty obvious that the company is not scaling back from its global ambitions.

“What we are not doing is chasing every market, because as a start-up we need to be focused,” Volpi added. Due to its heritage - it was started by Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis - Joost had received a lot of press coverage. God knows, I wrote about them a few times. The fact that it is run by Volpi, a highly regarded former Cisco executive and funded by the likes of uber VC funds Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, it is hardly a surprise that Joost is being closely scrutinized. The company raised about $45 million in May 2007.

Joost was supposed to be the delivery vehicle for Hollywood content in the US. Instead, Hulu, a web-based video company backed by major networks chose its thunder and market, leaving Joost scrambling to play catch up. It has Viacom and CBS as its primary US partners, and it clearly needs to sign-up more A-list type content providers. Furthermore, the BBC’s iPlayer (where the former Joost CTO currently works), Kangaroo and other players are beginning to challenge Joost on its turf in Europe as well.

That said, the company doesn’t have much room for error. It needs to quickly improve its client and platform. Joost client has been subject of much criticism. Volpi knows that. He said that Joost is going to announce a new web-based platform in a few months. (We offered them 5 ways they can get out of trouble. Anil Gupte had listed 7 reasons they could be in trouble.)

When I asked Volpi about layoffs, he said that company realigned its work force. A few people were let go recently, as I first reported for NewTeeVee. Many contractors were cut as well.

As a result Joost of today is a trimmer version of its former self, thanks to pruning by Volpi, who became Joost CEO in May 2007. Some of these details were outlined in a Portfolio article. I tried to pin down Volpi on the total number of employees the company currently has, but he would not comment.

Rafat in his report says that Joost has about 100 employees. By that yardstick and my own not-quite-confirmed-data, that’s a head count reduction of around 35 to 40. Volpi said that the company is adding more “engineering” folks in their New York office and contrary to published reports has no plans to shut down the Netherlands operation.

Photo by Joey Wan.

Almost a year after Facebook opened up its social network to developers, MySpace is launching its own developer platform in public beta with an application Gallery Page available to users. It’s based on Google’s OpenSocial platform, which MySpace helped develop. MySpace announced the platform in late January and said it would be ready in early March. It may be a tiny bit late, but that may be because each application is being approved by hand.

Joe Heitzeberg, founder and CEO of voice widget service SnapVine, has a Photo Shout app already on the site. He said developing on the platform was sometimes a challenge since the code kept changing, but pointed out that the MySpace team was responsive to questions via email and instant messaging. For more on how the developer platform works, check out our chat with MySpace CTO Aber Whitcomb.

Jay Gould, a former owner of pioneering social network and video-sharing site Bolt.com, has launched Gamers Media, an ad network for casual game sites. It is one of several other startups, such as NeoEdge and Mochi Media, which launched last year, seeking to monetize the hugely popular casual games market.

After the bankruptcy of Bolt.com last year, Gould said he was looking for his next opportunity. He’d noted an advertiser rush to gaming sites while at Bolt, and decided that should be his next endeavor. New York-based Gamers Media reaches 20 million uniques and has about 40 properties on which it can place ads, and it has signed a partnership with Adify to build out its publisher network. So far, Gamers Media is profitable, but Gould said he doesn’t disclose revenue.

He did say the CPMs on his site range from $10 to $20 for brand advertising, with tactics such as page takeovers and custom-built “advergames” netting a higher CPM. The site shares an average of 50 percent of its revenue with publishers that range from Big Fish Games to Lycos’ Gamesville property. I love that the company is making money, and is profitable, but the value of Gamers Media is only as good as its publishers. It needs to corner the market fast — or score some exclusive arrangements with big publishers — in order to compete.

The first day of Le Web 3 was a bit of a blur. The jet lag compounded by complete lack of sleep and numerous cups of petit coffees have jumbled up all the conversations I had over the course of the day. One fact that stood out at the end of the work day: video is as hot in Europe as it is in the U.S.

I got a chance to hang out with vPod.tv co-founder Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz, who said that their foray into platform services has started to pay off and the company is close to announcing at least one major deal that will give them nice momentum going into 2008. vPod.tv faces competition from Brightcove, which recently shifted strategy and moved away from the consumer and is instead focusing on large media companies and their online video efforts.

While vPod.tv falls into the more established startups category, there were several other video startups pitching their stories. Quite a few of them were focusing on lifecasting video via mobile phones, à la Kyte. Floobs, a Helsinki-based startup, for instance is going to announce its beta in about two weeks. These videos can then be embedded in social networking profiles and other web pages. The plan is to offer a premium service along with the usual ad-supported service.

Lifecasting is getting to be a crowded business — Liz wrote about Qix earlier this week — and I have heard of another couple of companies that are trying to go after the market established by Kyte.tv. I had talked about this trend in my Business 2.0 column, Reach out and Twitter Someone.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the web is transforming itself from a medium of passive consumption to active interactions, and we are going to see many companies trying to make a business out of this.

Another company I met at the conference that is worth noting is Israel-based PLYMedia, which overlays web video with additional meta data. For instance, folks at Hulu could add data about various actors in “30 Rock” that’s visible when you mouse over or click on a part of the video. Of course, the most obvious use of this would be providing referral links. Talk about video commerce.

Looking beyond that, if you believe (and I do) that all video is going to eventually be delivered over IP networks, PLY Media can extend its technology to IPTV-based systems. PLY Media has a couple of competitors, including Jacked, which I am going to write about when I get back to San Francisco.

Signing off for today, but stay tuned: Tomorrow I have an interview with France’s greatest entrepreneur, Free.fr founder Xavier Niel. For nearly 2.5 hours we talked broadband, what the next-generation Internet service provider looks like, and when we were done, he gave me the tour of his entire operation. And I must say, I was blown away!

Newsvine, a Seattle-based social news start-up has been acquired by MSNBC, a joint venture of Microsoft (MSFT) and GE (GE), for an undisclosed amount of cash. The deal closed on Friday and was supposed to be announced on Monday.

We officially became part of the msnbc.com family on Friday, October 5th but we’ve been talking since May.

Newsvine is going to be run as an independent company. Mike Davidson, one of the co-founders of the company says that the company could have gone out and raised a new round of financing and grown the operation, but instead decided that working with MSNBC was a better course of action.

Newsvine came out of stealth in November 2005. (Read, Introducing Newsvine.) I think we will expect more large media players will start buying these Web 2.0-Media start-ups as a way to bolster their web operations. News Corp. (NWS) was the first company to expand into social news when it acquired Newroo.

Related Posts:

• Is Social News the new trend?
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Time and again, file-sharing services with a dubious past try to overcome their history by going legit, and they fail. Limewire is the latest one to try its hand, betting that it can build a business by going legit and selling music. Fat chance!

Making money selling tunes on the Net is a hard business. Even Apple (AAPL), which owns the biggest music download store, makes most of its money selling iPods. Of the $653 million generated by music sales, nearly 70% goes to the record labels. What makes Limewire so sure it can be a winner?

Others have attempted that and failed. Napster, Grokster (bought by Mashboxx, but no service yet) Morpheus, iMesh… all are operations that built up a sizable user base, thanks to free music, and in the process built a brand. The problem is that these brands are associated with free music. Even companies like BitTorrent and Azureus, both of whom have gobs of venture funding, are navigating choppy waters.

All this attention on Facebook must be getting under MySpace’s skin.

Despite posting good growth, the company is being treated as a carton of milk left in the open overnight. While Facebook is a rocket whose upward trajectory cannot be denied, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of MySpace’s death are highly exaggerated. To counter the perceptions, MySpace is going to launch a PR offensive tomorrow, touting its recent growth. (Read our previous post for the comparisons between two behemoths.)

The MySpace press release quotes a study by Forrester that shows that “nearly 80% of 12-17 year olds use MySpace at least weekly which is three times more than any other social network.” There are a lot of stats in the release, and while MySpace doesn’t use Facebook anywhere in the release, it is clear that they are the “closet competitor in the social networking category.” One interesting bit in the release: seriously strong international growth. MySpace UK, for example has over 10 million active users.

So why all the PR action? Two reasons: MySpace like any other social network cannot be perceived as being uncool. Like night clubs, an unhip social networks might as well shut down. Second reason, I believe is mostly to remind the developers that MySpace is still a good platform to write widgets for. As I said at the end of my previous post, this is a great derby to watch, and occasionally pontificate about.

PS: I promise, for rest of the week we are going to skip writing about Facebook and MySpace. Unless, someone decides to pay a gazillion dollars for Facebook.

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