Startup social networking site imeem, which lets users listen to and share their favorite music online, said that it signed a deal to access the catalog of Universal Music Group. This makes imeem the first company to offer free unlimited songs and music videos from all four major record labels.

imeem is the leading social media network where users create, recommend and discover music, film/video, art, and pop culture media and connect directly with people with similar tastes. By offering innovative media expression tools and social discovery features, including custom music playlists, video channels, photo slideshows and blogs, the imeem community can share their tastes with friends and fans on imeem and across the Web.

imeem is the first social network to partner with all four major labels as well as thousands of indie labels and video providers to offer free, on-demand streaming of all music and video content on an ad-supported basis. Since the launch of its Web-based service www.imeem.com in March 2006, the community has attracted over 19 million unique users each month. imeem was the fastest growing social site in the U.S. in September and October 2007. [imeem]

Imeem allows users to stream, but not download, an unlimited number of songs and videos and makes money by selling advertising. It shares ad revenues with its label partners. This represents a big challenge for imeem, since the music industry is very hesitant about ad-supported business models due to labels not making as much profit per song from advertising as they make through downloads. However, the site includes links to both iTunes and Amazon in case users want to purchase the tracks.

Imeem will face several ad-supported competitors such as SpiralFrog, which lets users download free tracks, and Rhapsody, which lets users stream only 25 songs per month.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of the popular Internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia, has revealed more details about the development of his new for-profit search engine Wikia. During the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) held in Portland, Jimmy Wales announced the acquisition of from search engine LookSmart and the release of the software under open source.

Grub, a distributed search spidering technology, will enable Wikia to index the millions of websites on the internet.

“We’ve had a tremendous response from very interesting commercial players in the search space,” said Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman, Wikia, Inc. “The desire to collaborate and support a transparent and open platform for search is clearly deeply exciting to both open source and businesses. Look for other exciting announcements in the coming months as we collectively work to free the judgment of information from invisible rules inside an algorithmic black box.” [Wikia]

LookSmart will be providing text and display ads in Wikia’s free wiki communities and eventually on the Search Wikia site, Wales said. Wikia will sell ads a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand (CPM) models. Unsold inventory will be back-filled by ads from LookSmart’s distributed ad network.

Second largest social networking site, Facebook, has bought Parakey, a startup run by two engineers who helped create Mozilla’s Firefox open source browser. This represents the company’s first acquisition in three years of history.

Parakey is a platform for building applications that merge the best of the desktop and the Web. Like desktop applications, these applications work offline, offer more privacy than pure websites, run quickly, and integrate with your computer and its devices. But like Web applications, they are also more creative, visually alluring, accessible from anywhere and potentially accessible by anyone. In short, Parakey apps are designed to be both useful and social, a combination that is too rare today. [Parakey]

Facebook’s acquisition of Parakey is a clear indicator of Facebook’s CEO (23-year old Mark Zuckerberg) intention of keep building the company instead of selling to potential acquirers. One year ago, Yahoo offered $1 billion for the firm, and was rejected right away… today some sources from the Deal indicated that Peter Thiel, a Facebook director who is president of hedge fund Clarium Capital Management LLC and managing partner of VC firm Founders Fund Management LLC, estimates it would command a price tag between $7 billion and $10 billion.

Facebook ranks among the fastest growing websites of the moment, and its growth potential is undeniable. However, it is difficult to estimate the real value of a firm which has not yet clearly developed its business model.

The firm might either end up being acquired by a tech giant or going public some months from now… time will tell. We will keep an eye on Facebook’s promising future.

A new VoIP startup called “ooma” has been launched after receiving $27 million in funding. Ooma will allow users to make and receive phone calls through their normal telephones at a very low price. The company will compete directly with current web based telephone providers like Vonage or Ebay (Skype), and with traditional phone and cable companies such as Verizon, Comcast or AT&T.

Ooma, which is based on P2P technology, promises free unlimited service for life within the United States. Consumers will only need to buy the hardware (starting at $399) and have broadband Internet connection. That is a pretty good deal for a one time fee, mostly considering most VoIP services provide equipment for free but charge around $25 for monthly service fees.

The stylish Ooma box has answering machine capabilities and integrates a built in speaker. However, Ooma will not make profit on hardware sales only; the company plans to add additional for-pay features (such as customized ringtones) over time.

Moreover, Ooma counts with a remarkable management team, including technology notable such as TiVo co-founder Mike Ransay, former executives from Apple and Yahoo, and famous actor Ashton Kutcher (co-creator of MTV’s Punk’d reality show) as a Creative Director. Ooma’s CEO, Andrew Frame, became the youngest person ever to receive Cisco’s CCIE certification while working as a full-time employee.

The product will go on sale in September.