Yahoo Lands Bebo Advertising Deal

Good news for Yahoo, which until now didn’t have an advertising deal with any of the big social networks. They just announced that they will handle advertising for the UK and Ireland sites of Bebo, one of the large social networks (articles here and here).

The deal will see Yahoo selling the majority of display and video advertising to an audience of 11.6 million members. Yahoo was previously rumored to be in talks to acquire Bebo for $1 billion in May.

This at least gets them in the game. Last year Google snatched up Myspace advertising with a nearly $1 billion deal. Facebook went with Microsoft, and then Friendster announced a multi year deal with Google earlier this year.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Google guaranteed revenues to Fox, MySpace’s parent company, pursuant to their deal. And Microsoft was largely rumored to have done the same to win Facebook’s business.

More coverage at TechCrunch UK

Polar Rose Debuts At Gnomedex

Polar Rose, a European startup that has a unique approach to recognizing faces in photos (remember Riya?), is having a bit of a pre-launch coming out party at the Gnomedex conference in Seattle today.

We first wrote about the company last December, way before they were ready to take beta testers. But even then it was clear that they were on to something. They use a browser plugin to allow users to tag people in photos anywhere on the web. They use those photos to construct a 3D image of the person, and then make educated guesses as to who is in untagged photos. See the post linked at the top of this paragraph for more details.

The company has been testing the service with a very limited number of beta users. The beta will expand significantly today, however. Every attendee of the Gnomedex conference will be able to register, and will be encouraged to tag photos of the event. A special page at Polar Rose was set up to show the tagged photos (none yet, the conference hasn’t started).

250 Polar Rose Beta Accounts Available

Polar Rose has also given us 250 beta accounts to give out immediately. Just send an email to techcrunch@polarrose.com. If you aren’t one of the first 250, you’ll be placed on the waiting list for the beta - more invites are coming every week.