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"HiveLive, a social startup based in Colorado, has raised $1.15 million in Series A funding led by Aeneas Ventures, according to regulatory filings that are coming to light today (I haven't seen an announcement yet).  I tested HiveLive way back in July, and on the surface the site seems much the same now - the internal blog, however, mentions a bunch of tweaks and updates.\nHiveLive has around 4500 members and remains in private beta - it brands itself as a \"social information manager\".  In some ways, it's like a blog platform: you create a \"hive\" and decide whether to make it public, private, or available only to friends.  There are a number of \"hive types\" to choose from, too - a blog, reviews and recipes, an address book, music reviews and so on.  Once your hive is set up, you can start posting blog entires, bookmarks, photos and more.  Users also have profile pages, a network of friends and the ability to add hives to a list of favorites.  \nHowever, that's about the sum of it, and I wonder whether HiveLive is unique enough to stand apart from existing blog platforms, especially when sites like Vox offer advanced options for public and private sharing with some effortlessly simple tools.  I'm also concerned about this nebulous idea of \"content sharing\" - is there a market gap for a general content-sharing site when YouTube has focused on video, Photobucket and Flickr on photos, and Blogger on blogs?  In other words: these media types are so different that they need specialized platforms.\nThat said, another vague content-sharing site has just announced funding: Israel-based eSnips has taken $2 million from Greylock Partners and Gemini Israel Funds.  Despite my major concerns, they're reporting success so far and their public traffic stats look healthy.  In some of these cases, it turns out that the site has taken off with a certain demographic (like Orkut and Brazilians), but I've yet to confirm with the eSnips founders whether that's the case.  Another interesting metric: I just used some of the Mashable Labs tools to search for eSnips buttons on MySpace.  As it turns out, around 5400 MySpace pages link to the site, with a large number of users hosting their MP3s on eSnips.  Could this be one of the catalysts for growth?\nUpdate: Mashable readers can get a HiveLive invite here.\n[via]\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/10/31/hivelive-gets-115m-for-blog-like-social-network/>