TechCrunch Friday writes that SoftTechVC's Jeff Clavier and the Foundry Group's Brad Feld have invested $1 million in Gnip, a secretive startup founded by MyBlogLog co-founder Eric Marcoullier. Clavier was an early investor in MyBlogLog, a blogging community tool developer acquired by Yahoo! Inc. [YHOO] in January 2007; Feld was known to be a fan.

Marcoullier isn't saying much about Gnip, revealing only that it's a Web 2.0 infrastructure company aiming for a May 2008 launch, but TechCrunch commenters point out that the company's name is "ping" spelled backward, and that Marcoullier's profile at LinkedIn calls Gnip a "new service enabling social services to more efficiently aggregate user data from other sites." Feld himself says it's inspired by a 1970s tabletop game I remember fondly.

Clavier confirmed the news on Twitter, adding that Gnip doesn't need more money than it has now. - Paul Bonanos

See March 14 post from TechCrunch