DEMO: Sococo will let you detect sarcasm over the Internet

Sococo is one of 70 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Fall 2010 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After our selection, the companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Most of a conversation is made up in body language and tone. Unfortunately for the denizens of the Internet, that means one of the most ubiquitous forms of communication, instant messaging, loses a fair bit of meaning in transmission.

[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":212877,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,","session":"A"}']

Today at the DEMO conference, Mountain View, Calif-based Sococo is unveiling its first commercial service, Team Space, a communication tool that provides some visual and sensory cues to make communication more efficient.

Sococo was founded in 2007 and currently employs 25 people, including CEO David Van Wie, the former co-founder of InterTrust Technologies — an early developer of digital rights management, or DRM, software. The company said it is privately funded, and would not disclose its funding details.

Its direct competitors span pretty much all avenues of Internet communication. Team Space occupies the same space as just about any messaging tool, whether it is VOIP like Skype or just text like Google Talk. But Sococo offers users a persistent communications channel that requires no scheduling or coordination — drop in and drop out. Connections are managed with peer-to-peer and cloud-based software.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/980795693