Following the recent beta launch of Ciaobelli, the private community for sharing life events through pictures, Pix-Yu has now beta launched with a public network for users to do similar. Pix-Yu is promoting itself as an online virtual space in which users can share life experiences, events, journeys, holidays and meetings etc, by uploading unlimited number of pictures.

I caught up with the Founder Daniele Florio, who mentioned that while in Beta, Pix-Yu allows users to upload a maximum of ten events but the team is about to complete the next upgrade which will let users choose from a selection of pro accounts (silver and gold). Pix-Yu members can already communicate through an internal messaging system which lets the community speak, exchange messages and receive email. Users can upload files up to 3MB in size. Pix-Yu officially supports JPEGs, non-animated GIFs, and PNGs. Images can be shared by blogging any public photos, as attachments to an email or as a link to a Pix-Yu page. When the pictures are inserted they are automatically posted under the license Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works of Creative Commons.

It’s a simple design which is intuitive to use and allows users to browse instantly. To register users just need to provide a username, password and email, after which a personal profile can be created. The profile can be integrated with Google Maps and a Flickr account.

There are numerous vertical social networks emerging from Italy at the moment - La Brigata (for professional chefs), Vinix (for the wine industry) and SegnaloItalia (tourism) to name just a few. What will be interesting to see is if those which have developed in English manage to capture a larger market and if at some point the networks manage to carve a niche for themselves around a space which is fast filling up with competitor sites, while trying to compete with giants like FaceBook.

For updates from the Pix-Yu team, keep an eye on the company blog.

On Monday, a selection of Italy’s prominent leaders in the internet sector will meet at Sicilia 2.0, taking place in the faculty of engineering in Palermo University from 3pm. Heading up the event is the President of Ars (Asemblea Regionale Siciliana), Gianfranco Micciché.

There is an interesting speaker line up for the event including Enzo Biagini (MD of Apple Italia), Andrea Cabrini (Director of Class CNBC), Sara Cartoni (Communications Manager of Vivendi Games), Luigi Crespi (Clandestinoweb), Stefano Hesse (Communications Manager of Google Italia) and Massimo Martini (MD of Yahoo! Italia).

This is a great opportunity for anyone in Sicily who perhaps doesn’t get to attend events in the north of the country. We’ll be posting a round up of topics covered after the event for those unable to make the afternoon.

This month, Funambol - the start up headed by the energetic Italian entrepreneur Fabrizio Capobianco - has made the prestigious finals of the Red Herring 100.

The award selects the best start ups from around the world, so this is a real coup for Funambol. There are 200 finalists in total - here’s what Red Herring had to say about the company:

“You have made the final group because of your outstanding achievements, and Red Herring Magazine is honored to announce Funambol Inc. as one of the most promising technology firms in the world”

Funambol provides open source push email, contacts and calendars and heads up the leading mobile open source project in the world. The Funambol teams believes that Mobile 2.0 is the next huge wave of innovation in mobile services and data. Whereas Web 2.0 meant user generated content (wikis, photo sharing), collaboration (social networking) and interactive technology such as AJAX, Mobile 2.0 is ushering in a similar era to wireless, and Funambol is at the forefront.

Funambol outlines Mobile 2.0 as having several trends:

• Better, faster, cheaper wireless devices, networks and data services and plans.
• Messaging “maturation”, where people are looking beyond SMS/texting for the next cool mobile experience.
• Emerging technology such as mobile search, presence, location-based services and navigation.

Their vision is to harness the innovation that open source can bring to mobile 2.0 messaging, believing this will spur exciting new forms of mobile communication, collaboration and entertainment.

Best of luck to the team - it was a pleasure meeting Fabrizio at the recent VentureCamp in Rome, where he outlined his vision for the promotion of Italy as a top outsourcing destination.

The latest stats on web usage in Italy were announced at this month’s IAB Forum in Milan (now in it’s fifth year), organised by IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Italia.

At the conference, Layla Pavone, President of IAB Italia said, “The internet allows consumers the freedom to choose and the power to influence brand behaviour. The latest data indicates there are around 24 million Italians regularly using the Internet and this needs to be taken seriously into consideration during strategic analysis of the media considered in communications strategies.”

Also present at the conference was the Minister of Communication, Paolo Gentiloni, via video conference in a conversation with Luca De Biase. He said, “The Internet needs to be a right for everyone and needs to be in every Italian household by 2o11″.

Gentiloni announced that the entire region of Emilia-Romagna will shortly be covered with the Lepida broadband network. Interestingly he also acknowledged the errors made in the recent proposals for editorial laws, which caused somewhat of a scandal among the Italian blog community.

Last night saw Chris “The Long Tail” Anderson, editor of Wired magazine, in Milan to promote his new book. Unfortunately I couldn’t make the event so I decided to follow developments via Twitter as many friends were present.

I am so glad I did. Often following an event via Twitter turns into a losing battle, but this time those present were updating with short, informative one liners that made keeping track of the evening pleasurable. Thanks to the great Tweets from Cristian Conti, Lele Dainesi, Andrea Beggi, David Orban, Paolo Valdemarin, Luca Mascaro, Luca Sartoni, Alessio Jacona and Giovy, to name a few. Watching the event develop, one of the amusing things I noticed which surfaced on the Twittersphere was that the only people in the audience asking questions were the bloggers. Well done all, I understand that your questions basically made the evening. Anderson was generally regarded as a brilliant and entertaining speaker - joining him on stage were also Gianpaolo Fabris, and Paolo Gentiloni (Italian Minister for Communications).

Here are a few sound bytes from the evening:

“Italy is an example of somewhere where the long tail effect is highly evident. It’s a country made up of small to medium enterprises and niche markets.”

Anderson cited the fashion industry and the wine industry as examples. He said “Italy has always been a country that has valued diversification, which has a value of discriminating tastes, a value of the niche and there are extraordinary economic advantages to satisfying the minority taste.”

“Your brand isn’t what you say it is…it’s what Google says it is.”

“Microsoft has one of the best examples of corporate bloggers.”

The comments about Italy epitomising the long tail effect certainly seemed to hit home with many present. Often cited as one of the major stumbling blocks to development in one aspect (lack of larger enterprises investing in technology from smaller companies / start ups inhibits organic growth in many ways), Italy’s huge SME sector is nothing if not diverse. Adapting to a very different business environment to the UK / US model, innovators should perhaps be looking for opportunities to embrace and use the diversity rather than looking to duplicate the successful US model…

Looking forward to seeing the photos from the Long Tail Dinner!

(Image: With thanks to David Orban)

Reed Business Information has just launched an innovative new service for Italy’s professional chefs - La Brigata. Aiming to create a network of professionals working in the catering industry, the site is a hybrid of user generated content with articles and industry news.

Alongside user generated content, a team of journalists monitor the market, interview influential chefs and attend food related events to write articles and news. The users can then comment on each article, meet other chefs and interact through questions and answers, voting, commenting and posting photos. Every piece of content is tagged and can be accessed and aggregated making use of RSS feeds. Other tools will be made available in the near future.

The platform is custom built and has been developed leveraging the experience accumulated on Reed’s editorial sites during the last few years. It took a few months to build it from scratch and it will now be open this week to the community to get feedback for improvements while it’s in beta.

Users signing up for the service can create a profile and take part in an active forum which provides a place for chefs to share information and ask questions to fellow members. The site is divided up into specific channels - ingredients, technology, baking, personalities and venues, trends, recipes, wine, science and education and events.

La Brigata uses a tag system to make searching for relevant information easier. The questions service is divided up into latest questions, most responded and most voted by users. It’s an interesting concept and one that reflects an overall trend in Italy - for vertical social networks. There has been a flurry of travel, tourism and catering style community and social networks which reflect Italy’s active and successful industries.

Reed Business Information’s latest contribution should prove successful if marketed well to the catering community - the site is well designed and there should be a genuine need for the services it offers.

Heading up the project is Reed’s Lead Web 2.0 researcher, Emanuele Quintarelli:

“La Brigata is the business-to-business social network that Reed Business Information is launching (officially online later this week in beta stage) for chefs, sommeliers, maitre d’s and other professionals in the food and cooking world. While there is a never ending list of services targeted to the consumer space, examples of professional networks are still quite rare. We believe there is a deep lack of tools and places to meet and interact with peers from a professional perspective and La Brigata is one of the first venture into this field.

La Brigata is the technical Italian name used by chefs to describe themselves inside the kitchen of a restaurant or hotel. By extension we’ve chosen it to indicate an active group of people passionate about cooking. From our experience with the magazine “La Grande Cucina Professionale & Wine“, these professionals are rarely able to identify peers, to share experiences, ideas, events and considerations with them and, in the end, to improve their expertise and grow their creativity with the help of the community. La Brigata wants to introduce this opportunity by making use of web 2.0 ingredients.”

In the near future there will be very targeted spaces for branding and product marketing but also other innovative opportunities of sponsoring, giving real value to partners and users without being intrusive.

So is this a new direction for Reed in Italy?

“Reed Business Information has been working hard and seriously investing on the web during the last few years. Now we are pushing harder on the accelerator. This year we have launched Web2oltre.it, the first and most successful business conference about Web 2.0 in Italy and in November a second edition will be held with a special focus on marketing and communication. La Brigata and the other social networks we are presenting are strong evidence of our work and commitment towards an evolution of the b2b publishing market.”

Currently in pre-public beta, TVBLOB is an Italian start up pioneering TV to TV communication. A TV-centric communications platform, TVBLOB is able to facilitate real-time, mono- and bidirectional video streaming in high TV quality over the public Internet.

The package consists of a set-top box with online services, which together can deliver Internet TV, IPTV and Video On Demand (VOD, Push, Pull), along with digital terrestrial television (DTT), cable and satellite television. Founded by the inspirational Italian entrepreneur Fabrizio Caffarelli, the team is promoting the service as TV 3.0 and is now looking for funding to take the product to the next level.

The overall concept is brining the power of the web straight onto the TV. To use the service you need a video camera with broadband connection, as well as a regular TV set. The TVBLOB box connects the various devices and automatically installs an easy-to-use interface on your TV.

With your remote control, you can call friends who are also “blobbers” and participate in what they are doing - record a TV show and send it to someone or create and publish your own TV program in real-time or as pre-recorded content. You can also record voices and re-encode your old movies into an .mpg format to create DVDs. It enables people to produce and receive high quality TV from anywhere in the world. The box has a standard analog input so you can connect many devices - camera, DVD player, computer, satellite receive. The possibilities provided by the service are vast, both in terms of one to one communication and also within a business environment.

Fabrizio Caffarelli, TVBLOB CEO, said: “Everyone talks about broadband (in Italy), but no one really uses it, or even understands its full capabilities.” His provocative statement is confirmed by ISTAT data released last December, that 35% of Italian families have an Internet connection, but only 14% have a broadband connection. Furthermore, only 46% of families in Italy own a PC.

Caffarelli twists this data around: “We can read this data the other way around and say that 64% of families don’t find the Internet attractive, that those who don’t have it aren’t willing to spend to acquire a broadband connection, and 34% of those who own a PC don’t even bother to connect it to the Internet. 95% of Italian families own a television set, so the entry portal for broadband in Italy will be the television – not the PC.”

“We have worked for four years to create an enabling technology in which anyone can participate, offering new opportunities for multimedia communication. This platform creates a good reason for the consumer to want a broadband connection: to be able to communicate, at TV quality, using his own TV.”

Certainly no lack of vision there for the market potential. Before launching TVBLOB, Fabrizio already had two successes in the technology world, the most widely-known being Easy CD - the first software that let people burn CDs from their personal computers. Five years ago, he started assembling the development team (including the leading Italian video and IT guru and TVBLOB co-founder, Pancrazio Auteri).

I caught up with the VP of Sales and Marketing, Lisa Morris, at VentureCamp where she highlighted that the company was also experimenting with the creation of TV based communities - an area they will be further exploring. The dilemma for the team now is around the venture funding question: To go, or not to go to the US? We wish them all the best on the hunt for funding.

The Getting Started workshop today, the first day of the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, touched on the topic of Italy during the session, which I thought I’d highlight. The session was run by Saul Klein from Index Ventures and Reshma Sohoni from SeedCamp, and looked at how to secure funding from the VC perspective. The session also highlighted some of the issues raised at the recent SeedCamp and featured a panel of experts including Founder’s Link, Oliver J and Lukasz G, Samwers, Klaus H.F, Christoph Marie, Max at Atlas and 3i.

During the final Q & A session Nicola Gasperini, MD of Rome-based start up Yubuk, asked the VCs directly about Italy and how it is viewed externally.

The VCs response was unsurprising, outlined below, however one very interesting point was raised: that there are quite a number of VCs with Italians in their ranks who have an affinity and special interest in the country. They pointed out that it’s worthwhile researching who is on the VC team and if there are Italians on board it’s a good place to start.

Otherwise, the general perspective on the Italian start up scene is that it suffers from limitation in size and scope, where the stereotype is that it’s difficult to build a business of a significant enough size for VC interest. Very few start ups are viable unless they are active in multiple geographies in other words - look outside of Italian shores for an increased market.

Language was also cited as an issue - localised services are essential but English is the widely accepted standard now and start ups should bear this in mind if they are looking for high traffic numbers and VC attention.

It was great to hear the topic brought up and also interesting to get the tip about searching out the Italians working at VCs as a starting point if you are trying to secure funding.

I caught up recently with Paolo Valdemarin, CEO of Evectors - a web consultancy for large enterprises - about one of their latest betas, Pages. As a quick backgrounder, Evectors developed K-Collector in 2003, a knowledge management platform for blogs which counted the BBC as a first client for the trial. The Evectors team is now developing tools and applications while consulting, using one activity to bolster the other. This has enabled them to concentrate on further product developments.

One of their current clients is Nova, and Evectors is working on the popular Nova100 project for the Italian publisher. Nova100 is an initiative to distribute blog content to influencers including politicians, business leaders and the entertainment industry. Luca De Biase heads up the project, selecting high profile and well known figures to blog on a wide range of topics of interest to a wider audience. Evectors developed the technology that runs behind the Nova100 platform.

After working with Nova100, the Evectors team realised there was an issue surrounding document creation for collaborative working, where simple wikis did not suffice. So they created Pages - a system of creating and managing documents (or “pages”), for collaborative working. It has now been expanded into a very nice tool which is currently in private beta testing.

I’ve been testing out Pages recently and it’s a great way to collaborate on a project. The functionality is intuitive and it’s very easy to create and edit pages. Once you create your page, you are able to add modules including images from a Flick account, video from YouTube, MySpace etc and also text based modules in the style of a blog post.

The text module:

The Flickr module:

There is also a handy feature that logs all the activity on a page in order of time, so users can see who has modified or added to the document and when.

I caught up with Paolo recently, and he highlighted some of the advantages of Pages; “All the editing and html generation is done on the browser rather than sending information to a server and the html is generated within the client, making the load on the server very low - all it does is assemble the posts. This is great for scalability as all the work is done client side when the author creates the post.” Paolo also hinted that they will be opening their API so that developers will be able to create plug ins and apps for Pages.

There are currently versions in English and Italian and the technology is first being offered to Nova as part of the blog project. Evectors is based in Gorizia and the Pages project is auto-financed.

There are a few private beta invites available so if you are interested in taking a look, please let me know.

One of the sessions held at VentureCamp this month was given by three members of the First Generation Network - an organisation looking to unite and inspire Italian entrepreneurs through positive case studies and role models.

The panel was made up of Vitaminic Founder Gianluca Dettori, Marco Palombi who founded Splinder and Marco Rossi, Founder of Movenda. First Generation Network now has 15 members who give up their time to participate at events and give mentoring and advice to entrepreneurs. It’s a fantastic, positive showcase that proves it is possible to buck the negative stereotypes surrounding starting up in Italy and the team wants to address the “no risk” culture that prevails with providing real life proof.

The messages they are promoting among entrepreneurs get straight to the point and were highlighted by Dettori at VentureCamp:

1) You can do it on your own - sometimes Italy suffers from the illusion that it’s impossible to start something on your own without backing from friends in high places or a powerful family. This is not the case and First Generation provides the evidence contrary to the idea.

2) Italy has home grown success stories - there are many highly successful web / technology companies that are based in Italy. It’s not always easy to find them because, unlike in the US, entrepreneurs in this sector don’t have the same celebrity status among the industry and wider public. First Generation aims to provide positive role models for Italians to get inspiration from.

3) Information and help is available - it’s easy to think that starting up in Italy is almost impossible. Unearthing information on anything: from how to set up, company admin, taxes etc to building a support network can seem daunting. But, information and help is out there and the First Generation team gives up their time to diffuse as much of their knowledge as possible.

They also highlighted a new project, Capturing Creativity, which is being run in conjunction with the American Embassy in Rome. This series of web chats with key players also provides a great showcase of Italian success stories and is well worth checking out.

One of the points made by Gianluca Dettori is something that has been coming up regularly at events in Italy - that Italian entrepreneurs who were successful during the first dot com boom are now looking to reinvest with early stage seed funding.

This is really encouraging news for the Italian internet sector so if you are considering a start up or just want more information to help you make decisions, First Generation is a good place to start.

I would also be interested in finding out about other schemes running like this one which could prove a good source of information for entrepreneurs. Please let us know if you are involved with anything similar.