But GroupMe was able to raise more than $11 million in funding in its sole year of operation and now VoIP specialist Skype has agreed to acquire the company. (Skype itself is in the process of being acquired by Microsoft). Details such as purchase price were not shared. Apparently GroupMe will continue to operate as a standalone service, although elements of its technology will be incorporated into Skype’s offerings.

Group messaging presents an interesting marketing opportunity — the ability to sponsor group chat rooms (“Hangouts” as they’re called on Google+). Niche social networks like Gaia Online have been perfecting this kind of marketing for a while — a movie studio will sponsor a room on Gaia, an avatar-based social network for teens, and users will gather to the room to watch clips from an upcoming film and converse.

With a mobile group messaging service, imagine the check-in element added in. A brand sponsoring a rock show could invite concert attendees to virtually meet and greet in a mobile branded environment while they wait for the band to get drunk enough to play.

Looking at the bigger picture, Skype and Facebook are buddy-buddy these days (same with Skype’s potential parent Microsoft), so Facebook could effectively offer brand sponsorships or other marketing initiatives along the same lines.

TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, the go-to guy for leaking product details to build buzz before a launch, reports that the “awesome” announcement Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been talking about since the introduction of Google’s latest stab at a social network (one that actually might be successful!) revolves around the introduction of video chat, filling out the missing component of Messages’ social hub.

While some tech media soothsayers foretold the unveiling of an iPad or a photo-sharing app (which could still come to pass tomorrow), Facebook pretty much gave the game away through the event invitation, which features a chat icon with a person’s silhouette.

Incorporating video chat is more important than ever — arguably the two advantages Google+ has over Facebook are its Circles friend-arranging feature (much more intuitive and easier to use than Facebook’s group function) and the Hangout group video chat functionality.

It’s amazing the way symbiosis appears in the face of a common enemy: Facebook is Microsoft’s last hope in making a dent in Google’s search dominance through integration of its social data into the Bing search engine and now Microsoft wields the weapon Facebook needs to fend off Google’s rival social network.

(In another interesting correlation, Bing inked a search venture with Chinese search giant Baidu to get in on the mainland search action that Google is having trouble grasping. Facebook is also teaming up with Baidu to build its mainland social offering. As Digital Due Diligence recently noted, the Chinese search market is a rough part of town.)

Facebook and Skype have been integrating technology for a while now, and it seems Messages’ video chat feature will have a desktop component, allowing users to chat with Facebook friends without being the site. Of course, I can chat with my Facebook friends and send messages via my social browser Rockmelt without having to go to the site. I wonder if any of the $30 million in funding the company just scored will go toward integrating video into the chat function.

It’s a sweet deal for Facebook as long as Microsoft doesn’t break Skype first — reports of the network going down seem to be more frequent since the acquisition. More important, Facebook is quickly closing the gap between its offering and Google+ — as soon as Facebook introduces a better friend-arranging tool (something that the social network has stumbled over before), the rival social services will be judged on their merits.

And marketers can’t ignore, there’s no real ad product for Google+. A level playing field might be a bitch for Google.

On a Google+ side note, some media people have been having Buzz flashbacks as Social SVP Vic Gundrota admitted that the social network isn’t quite ready for prime time, but it was pretty smart to soft launch Google+ in the summer right before a holiday. Across most of the United States, it’s too hot and sunny to think about work and minds were already turned off prior to a three-day Independence weekend — what better way to kill some time than trying out this new Google toy?

Of course, Google has “run out of invites” because they were swamped with an “unanticipated amount” of requests — limit the supply and demand driven by curiosity will amass. However, I’ve seen some Tweets suggesting Google+ has been a bit hectic to operate… Perhaps Google jumped the gun again.

Besides that, Skype’s new display ads — which will only appear in consumer Windows versions — are simply banners on the home tab, nothing more intrusive than you’d find on… Well, just about every website. Oh yeah, the ads can support audio and video, as well as be dismissed by clicking the close button. Sounds… noninvasive.

At first, Skype will only serve an ad from one brand a day based on market — U.S., the U.K. and Germany are the launch markets. Meebo has been chosen to sell ad space in the U.S., while Ad2One and Ströer Interactive will handle the U.K. and Germany respectively.

In the press release the company repeats a few times that consumer experience is priority numero uno — users aren’t going to be interrupted mid-phone call with an offer to refinance their mortgage.

However, all of the non-PPI demographic data Skype has available in its system must be fantastic for targeting — we’re talking 145 million average users active monthly and 560 million registered in total. Not wanting to irk its users, Skype has been upfront about the ease of opting out of data-sharing.

Initially plugged advertisers are Groupon, Universal Pictures and Visa, while TechCrunch has learned that Nokia, Volkswagen and Disney have also made deals with Skype.

Skype has put down the legwork for an IPO, and an advertising revenue stream will likely look more impressive than the subscription service, which boasts only 8.1 million users.

Traffic Marketplace has launched MarketInsight, a comprehensive suite of campaign reporting products that are powered by from comScore and sister site Firstlook.com.

Three Omnicom Group agencies — TBWA London, Rapp and Wolff Olins — will split Skype’s $80 million global advertising business. The company has already spent $42 billion in advertising this year.

Warner Music Group has hired Outrigger Media to sell Internet ads for its music videos displayed across all digital platforms.

After John Donahue, its chief executive, described Skype as a “great stand-alone business”. This has led to suggestions that eBay would find it relatively easy to part with Skype, if a substantial bid was made.

Larry Witt, an analyst with MorningStar told the Times: “If someone’s willing to pay the right price, I don’t think [eBay] would have a problem selling it. They will have their own internal projections on how much it’s worth, but I think they made it clear it’s not a core part of their strategy going forward.”

A Google buy would work because of its ambitions in the mobile industry through its new open mobile phone development platform Android, and for eBay – which was recently forced to admit that it had paid too much for Skype.

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While video chatting is nothing new for major online players (Yahoo and Microsoft offer it through their IM services), Google is the first of the big three to offer it for free.

The feature is both Mac and PC-friendly.

iBloks, 3D ad aficionados, named Will Hunsinger, the former GM of Gap Online, as its CEO. iBloks also recently appointed Mike Hard, vice president of Microsoft’s ad unit to its board; it also introduced 3D InstantAD, an interactive 3D ad platform that MGM, Honda and Fox will deploy.

NBCU is promoting Sci-Fi channel marketing guru Adam Stosky to president of NBC entertainment marketing.

Whitman will be heeding her own advice that no CEO should stay in the same job for more than a decade, reports Reuters. It is speculated that John Donahoe, the current president of the auction site’s business unit is at the top of the list of successors for Whitman.

A report in the Wall Street Journal said that the official announcement of Whitman’s departure could happen in the next few weeks.

Shares of the company fell about 4% to $27.14 in morning trade on the Nasdaq, however the recession could still churn out business for the company due to users searching for lower prices on desirable items.

It has been under Whitman that the company has become more than a household name, but an Internet icon.

Recently though, the firm has been slowing down with a decreased pace in core auction business and the blunder in buying Skype have plummeted its stock prices by about half.

Whoever succeeds Whitman will need to figure out how to keep both the “powersellers” and the shareholders satisfied. This, according to industry insiders, will take drastic actions.

It is anticipated by analysts that once eBay announces its fourth-quarter earnings, it will cut the list prices of items on the site and charge sellers more for a completed sale.

Joost professes to be nothing short of an effort to change the face of television media and bring the 25 year promise of multi media fusion together with free TV. In recent news Joost has launched Coca-Cola as a premiere widget where consumers can provide comments on video content and email them to their friends. What is different here is that they can do it with the help of a coke bottle called Coke Bubbles

“In creating Coke Bubbles, we wanted to give people a widget that would recreate the experience of chatting together with friends while watching TV– free from the constraints of time and space,” said Stafford Green, head of interactive marketing for the Coca-Cola European Union Group. “We are always striving to become enthusiastic investors in interactive community innovations, and creating the first commercial widget has been a fun, collaborative project for both The Coca-Cola Company and our friends at Joost.”

This may be one of the first and most innovative approaches to integrating products and advertising into video content online.  Coca-Cola signed on to sponsor Joost since it’s launch and will continue to work with the European team to launch next generation widgets.

Wunderloop has already begun working with AOL, T-Online, Tiscali, Lycos, and Deutsche, and lays claim that its technology can improve revenue gain for advertisers by 10 to 15 times over its current rate. The company claims that advertising efficiency would also reach almost 80 percent with this new technology, which Wunderloop claims continuously analyzes users’ current behavior – what they click on or their queries in search engines, for example — and compares available market research data in real-time from AGOF, Nielsen NetRatings and comScore among others. Additional information is culled with the user’s consent from in-house data such as CRM profiles.

Other investors like the Samwer brothers are joining in on backing Wunderloop, which will receive an estimate of €8m (£5m). While Hommels and Hartenbaum are using their own funds to invest, Zennstrom is investing through his Atomico Investments.

In a statement to the New York Times, Hartenbaum said, “When I am surfing the web, I get a lot of ads that are a waste of my time and a waste of the advertisers’ time – weight-loss products for women, for example. Wunderloop means that I get a better experience, and it works for the advertise.