Memolane stays competitive by beefing up features

Now that Facebook has co-opted their idea, Memolane ups their game with new features

Social networking aggregate site, and the immediate forebear to the Facebook timeline, Memolane gained a new investor and launched a significant update to their service on Wednesday. Japan's Digital Garage joined an existing $2 million investment from August Capital and Atomico, announced in Sep. 2010.

Memolane started in private Beta in 2010 as a site that compiles all your social networking data into one place, what it calls a "lane." Memolane compiles Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Vimeo, Last.fm, TripIt, Foursquare, Wordpress.com, SoundCloud, Instagram, Myspace, and RSS feeds.

The concept of arranging social networking into a sequential timeline, or "scrapbook," thereby preserving the memory of a given user's online activity, was once quite novel. Now that Facebook has effectively co-opted this feature, the onus was left on Memolane to expand its platform, which it has in these new updates.

New updates to Memolane include: larger memos and simpler navigation that work better on touch devices and tablets; the ability to build multiple lanes; the option to stream entire services and to select contributors; a new "favorite" option that highlights certain entries or feeds; and an updated Dashboard to keep track of feeds, friends, and lanes.

"As our community grew we learned about brands, schools, musicians, and festivals that were using Memolane in exciting new ways, so we have made some changes to the structure of Memolane to make it more adaptable and customizable for our entire community," the company said in a blog post.

"We are quite excited to share with you what we have been working on for the past several months – a faster, sleeker, more powerful social media platform – Memolane 2.0."

Memolane was created in April 2010 at a Startup Week event in Copenhagen. Memolane won a cash prize at the event, which was what originally prompted founder Eric Lagier to pursue the project fulltime. The company is now based in San Francisco, CA.