Former Forbes CEO invests in WebMynd’s publisher tools

San Francisco startup WebMynd is releasing a new product to help publishers on the Web make money from content.

Monetizing on content is what WebMynd chief executive Amir Nathoo calls a “hair on fire” problem.

The company first launched in 2008, offering a browser add-on to deliver personalized search results. Those results appear alongside a user’s regular searches, linking to pages from their favorite websites. This add-on has been installed 1 million times and used on 10 million searches a month, Nathoo said.

Now, WebMynd is working to build sidebars or toolbars with specific publishers, and it has lined up some high-profile early partners. With MySpace, users will get to see friend, band, and star pages from the social network. With Forbes’ Capitalist Toolbar, readers will be notified of the website’s latest news and will also get a view of its most popular stories.

WebMynd runs search advertising along all of these results, and that’s where it has something to offer publishers. While Google won’t share the advertising revenue from its search pages, WebMynd will split the ad revenue 50-50 with publishers (although Nathoo acknowledged that the company’s early partners are getting a better deal).

More information about the program is available here. WebMynd was incubated by Y Combinator and raised a $400,000 seed round last year, followed by a more recent $200,000 from angel investors, including former Forbes CEO James Spanfeller. It’s now raising a venture round.