Santa Monica-based Userplan has extended the firm's chat applications, saying Tuesday that the firm will connect users of its chat application across different web sites, regardless of where they are on the web. According to Userplane, users of its Userplane Chat App can chat with other users logged in anywhere on the chat application, which previously only offered chatting within a specific web site. Userplane said that those sites include MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Ning, Flux, and Bebo, as well as other social websites using its chat application. The developer

Santa Monica-based Tsavo Media, the new startup venture of former Userplane founder Michael Jones, said Tuesday that it has named Steve Schepke as General Manager of Tsavo Agency, a new unit focused on providing monetization services to content providers. According to Tsavo, Schepke joins Tsavo from Commission Junction. Schepke has also served at Proceed Interactive, a search and interactive marketing agency, and Terra Firma Marketing, where he was founder.

Tap their lists - To broaden his guest list, he co-hosted his dinners with two other connections: Mike Jones, CEO of userplane and Keith Richman, CEO of Break.com If you want to know the value of having a good network, take a look at what it’s done for Peter Pham’s new company, BillShrink : Networking helped him find a co-founder who is a former venture capitalist.

Santa Monica-based Tsavo Media, the online media startup headed by former Userplane founder Michael Jones, said today that it has hired on Sean Percival as Director of Content at the firm. Percival was most recently at Docstoc, where he was Content Manager, and has also previously headed up social media and search engine marketing at Mahalo. Percival has previously served at Trading Places International and Nova Development.

Santa Monica-based Tsavo Media, the new startup founded by Userplane founder Michael Jones, has launched a new division, focused on search engine marketing. The firm announced the division Tuesday afternoon, saying that its new Tsavo Agency will provide search engine marketing and content monetization services for companies. The new unit comes shortly after Tsavo Media's acquisition of Better Inc, which runs the DONE!

Goodreads is backed by angel investors, including True Ventures, Userplane founder Michael Jones, James Currier and Stan Chudnovsky of Ooga Labs, Michael Birch of Bebo.com, and Chris Michel of Military.com. Santa Monica-based Goodreads, a social networking site focused on book readers, said today that it has rolled out a new feature which allows users to provide status updates. Goodreads said that the feature, which is similar to features from Twitter and Facebook, allows members of the site to micro-blog thoughts about books as they are reading them.

Santa Monica-based Tsavo Media, the startup headed by former Userplane CEO Michael Jones, said today that it has acquired Better Inc, the SEO and pay-per-click marketing software firm headed by Ben Padnos. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Better Inc.'s s

Mike's latest claim to fame was selling Userplane to AOL. One of the recent trends in the technology industry here in Los Angeles is the use of "coworking" spaces--flexible workspaces where companies can rent open office space. BLANKSPACES (www.blankspaces.com) -- which is on Wilshire Blvd.--is is the brainchild of architect Jerome Chang.

worked at Userplane, building social applications for sites like MySpace. As companies figure out a way to monetize social media, one of the areas which has been lacking is a way to measure the impact and effectiveness of social media advertising. To gain some insight into the area, we spoke with Ian Swanson, one of the founders of Sometrics (www.sometrics.com), which develops software to gather information on social media and optimize advertising.

worked at Userplane, building social applications for sites like MySpace. As companies figure out a way to monetize social media, one of the areas which has been lacking is a way to measure the impact and effectiveness of social media advertising. To gain some insight into the area, we spoke with Ian Swanson, one of the founders of Sometrics (www.sometrics.com), which develops software to gather information on social media and optimize advertising.