The social shopping community Wishpot recently announced the closing of a $1 million investment round (Series A). The round was led by Monster Venture Partners, along with Italian internet firm H-Farm and angel backer Adrian Hanauer, who had previously invested. Wishpot is a social shopping service that lets you collect and and share information about items you find online and in stores. By creating a common space in which users can browse, recommend products, get advice, and find new items they are interested in, Wishpot seeks to simplify shopping. Wishpot will launch outside the U.S. later in 2008. Wishpot was founded in 2006 in Seattle by veterans of Microsoft. Co-founder and CEO Max Ciccotosto was previously an Italy-based entrepreneur.

Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released a report about what it takes to start a new business, by surveying nearly 5,000 startup companies that were founded in 2004.

Morgan Stanley offers a interesting slide (download here) sowhing the growth of web 2.0 sites. The slides are based on Alexa statistics. In favor of the right (green) sites, the left (red) sites dropped out of the TOP 10 list.

Social Networks and Social Media Services can now claim six of the top-10 slots.

According to Morgan Stanley, worldwide Internet usage has passed the 1 billion mark last year, and is estimated to hit more than 1.3 billion this year. The provided chart also shows the reach of Internet users by region.

During his speech at the Web 2.0 Summit, MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe and Rupert Murdoch (NewsCorp CEO) announced that MySpace will open up the platform for third-party applications. This strategic move will position MySpace to a direct head-to-head competition with number one rival Facebook and its successful F8 application platform.

According to DeWolfe, Myspace will be opened up within the next few months, and that MySpace will set up a sandbox on the site as a staging system for new applications. Also, within the next days, MySpace will come up with a catalog for all current widgets on MySpace, making it easier to find and install them.

Constant Contact, a service-provider for managing and creating email newsletters, had his NASDAQ debut yesterday. Shares are trading up an impressive 65% at more than $26 per share. With this IPO, Constant Contact has raised more than $100 million.

Clear that it is not a Web 2.0 company, the company is a clear leader in the niche market of providing email marketing infrastructure & services for small and mid-size clients. 2006 revenues hit $27.6 million.