Vator has always been a place for entrepreneurs to share their story, starting with a video pitch. But since we've launched in June 2007, we've continually enhanced the ability for entrepreneurs to communicate their narrative in multiple ways, be it video, documents, company blog feeds, and now short messaging. 

Vator on Tuesday is opening up to Beta users a new product, called "Company updates," a micro-blogging news feed for startups to communicate their progress, activities and announcements, in a live, continuous feed. Anyone on Vator can quickly reply to those updates. 

Given the feedback and activity from our Alpha companies, we decided to make an announcement out of it, and get Beta users in right away.  

Here's a look at how it works on my Vator company profile:

When we post an update, or add/edit the profile with new text, video, images or documents, the activity appears as a feed on a users' "my vator" dashboard as a constant update of the latest posts by the companies they're following. 

Here's a look at my dashboard.

As of today, Vator will be making this short messaging product available to Beta users. For now, only a handful of Alpha companies have been in the program, including: Occipital, Nimbuzz, Blippr, Indaba Music, Crispy Gamer, Wize, Ignighter, Famplosion, Vayyoo and Buzzd.

Here's how the Company Updates look like if you're looking at a company profile. In this example, I'll show Occipital, since the company announced its iPhone app on its profile.

I'm really excited to make Company Updates available to Beta testers as we want the community to define how we should build it. We're trying to address their needs by slowly pushing this product out to ensure we're refining in a way that's useful to everyone. 

Companies interested in joining the private Beta program, should go here: [http://www.vator.tv/company-updates-private-beta]. If you're interested in following the companies in the Alpha program please register at: http://www.vator.tv/registration

Here's a press release for those interested in more information:

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – December 16, 2008 - Vator.tv, a business social media site for entrepreneurs and innovators, on Tuesday announced that it's making available Company Updates, a micro-blogging news feed for startups to communicate their progress, activities and announcements, in a live, continuous feed. The feeds appear on a users' dashboard as a constant update of the latest posts by the companies they're following.

"Vator.tv has always been a place for entrepreneurs to share their story in their own voice, typically in video and text," said Bambi Francisco, Co-founder and CEO, Vator, Inc. "People have been updating their profiles with new videos, and new information. Now, we're extending the sharing and communicating process to quick updates."

The initial release is being run as a private Alpha program, with a handful of companies.   There have been a substantial number of requests to open the Alpha to a larger group of companies, who currently use Vator.tv, for their PR and marketing needs.

"We wanted to keep the Alpha program limited to a small group of companies because we felt the most important first step was to make sure the product was functioning properly and prepared to scale," said Francisco.

Although the Alpha program has been running since December 3rd, it has already garnered the acclaim of companies in the alpha program. "I really like the new feature. It's allowed me to have some great conversations with other people from interesting companies and the ability to quickly view their profile page and learn more about the company gives it a sense of "real interaction" that I feel is lacking in other social conversation services (such as Twitter, FriendFeed, etc.)," said Himanshu Shah, Directr of Business Development / Strategic Partnerships at Wize.com.

The companies currently in the Alpha program are: Occipital, Nimbuzz, Blippr, Indaba Music, Crispy Gamer, Wize, Ignighter, Famplosion, Vayyoo and Buzzd.

Companies interested in joining the private Beta program, should go here: [http://www.vator.tv/company-updates-private-beta]. If you're interested in following the companies in the Alpha program please register at: http://www.vator.tv/registration

Vator is a next-generation business social media company, leveraging community-generated content to create data services and news. Vator allows startups to be discovered, and to communicate their story with others who are interested in their businesses. Anyone can join Vator and follow startups, or interact with others interested in the entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Vator.tv company directory allows anyone to easily find and follow startup companies, through profiles created and authored by the entrepreneur, and not third-party services. In addition to the social network, Vator's newsroom, called VatorNews, is a community-generated news site, comprised of 70 contributing bloggers and video bloggers.

Launched in June 2007, Vator brought in a second round of angel funding in 2008 from VentureFarm, an angel network found on the Vator platform. Other angel investors include Peter Thiel (founder, Clarium Capital, co-founder PayPal), Richard Rosenblatt (former MySpace Chairman, co-founder Demand Media), Georges Harik (co-developer Google's AdSense) Paul Buchheit (co-founder FriendFeed, developer Google's Gmail), Jeff Peterson (founder QuePasa), and Thom Calandra (founding editor MarketWatch).