Yammer, a Twitter-like spinout out of high profile Los Angeles genealogy firm Geni.com, has scored the top prize at the TechCrunch50 awards in San Francisco. Yammer offers instant messaging focused on internal corporate communications, and is the result of work by engineers at Geni. Geni is the online, Web 2.0-style genealogy and social networking web site headed up by former PayPal founder David Sacks; the firm is venture READ MOR

Top officers of some of the leading social media websites and tools (including Facebook, MySpace and Yammer) will be on the Panel, and there will be panelists from the worlds of media sharing platforms (Pringo), online advertising (Stun Media) and law (Greenberg Glusker), the latter to highlight risks relating to such issues as corporate blogging and privacy. Speakers: * Jason Oberfest, Senior Vice President, Business Development of MySpace * Paul Ollinger, West Coast Vice President of Sales of Facebook * Sam Cimino, Sales Manager SW, YouTube * Majid Abai, CEO

West Hollywood-based Geni, and instant messaging spinout Yammer have both raised $5M in funding from the firms' existing backers, Charles River Ventures and the Founders Fund, according to regulatory filings and reports. Geni is a high profile, family social networking and genealogy site headed by former Paypal co-founder David Sacks, and Yammer is the Twitter-like instant messaging spinout of Geni, focused on businesses. The details of the Geni funding were first reported by PEHub; with details on Yammer's latest round reported on TechCrunch this morning.

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Our interview this morning is with David Sacks, CEO of Geni.com, an online family tree and social networking site, as well as Yammer, the instant messaging startup spun out of Geni.com at TechCrunch50. We sat down with David to catch up on what Geni and Yammer are doing, plus got his insights into entrepreneurship and the Paypal mystique. Thanks David Sacks: As David has a unique perspective on the Southern California technology environment, having been the COO of PayPal before its acquisition by EBay, and having had the full Silicon Valley experience. Thanks for sitting

Los Angeles-based Geni , the online family tree and genealogy web site started by David Sacks, was hit by unexpected downtime Tuesday and today, the firm told its users Wednesday afternoon. According to Geni, it had "network difficulties" starting the morning of Tuesday, October 20th, with the firm taking the site down at 3:45PM to investigate. No reason for the downtime was given, however, The company said it managed to get the service back online at 4:30am Wednesday. Instant messaging service Yammer--which recently moved to the Bay Area--reported its services came down due to

West Hollywood-based Yammer , the corporate microblogging site inspired by Twitter, is moving from the Los Angeles area to Silicon Valley, according to founder David Sacks. Sacks said that Geni, which spun out Yammer, remains in West Hollywood. Yammer provides a Twitter-like corporate microblogging platform, essentially a version of Twitter restricted to specific corporate domains. According to Sacks, the entire firm--including its engineering team and executive staff--is moving to the Bay Area, to be closer to the startup scene in Silicon Valley. Sacks revealed the

Twiistup , the Los Angeles networking and technology showcase event, just announced that Brad Feld — a widely followed venture capitalist from the Foundry Group — and David Sacks, founder of Geni/Yammer and formerly COO of PayPal, will be speaking at the even

and David Sacks of Geni/Yammer , who were saying “maybe/no”. The issue, highlighted by Sacks’ announcement that he was moving Yammer to Silicon Valley, was the perception that Southern California firms don’t get the attention and lavish praises, particularly from the press/Silicon Valley blogs/etc., Last week, one of those never-ending topics of discussion came up at Twiistup on a panel about whether or not Southern California was a good place to put your startup. On one side, you had Mark Suster of GRP Partners and Mike Jones of MySpace

After this was my panel (co-hosted by Christian Gammill who had to leave mid-way to race off to Hawaii to get engaged and by Tony Adam), with Mike Jones (COO of MySpace), David Sacks (founder of Geni and Yammer) and Jamie Montgomery (CEO of tech investment bank Montgomery & Co).  The tone of the panel was set by David’s announcement that he was relocating to Silicon Valley (and dragging Geni & Yammer with him).  ExpenseBay Wins Showoff Twiistup 6 has come to an end.