4 Social start-ups Silicon Valley Bigwigs are following closely

Some hours ago, at Facebook’s headquarters at Silicon Valley, venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have launched a $250 million sFund.

This fund, is being led by Bing Gordon, the former chief creative officer at Electronic Arts. Ten U.S. partners and four ones based in China will be helping source and vet deals for the fund. The impetus for the fund came one year ago by looking at the success of Zynga.

The fund will focus on social products and applications (that’s startups playing on social networking arena). Kleiner’s earlier $200 million iFund, focused on companies on the iPad and iPhone.

In addition to the fund contributors, other companies involved include Amazon and Zynga, as well as boutique investment bank Allen & Company and telecommunications giant Comcast. They will be providing services based on their field of expertise.

The big names associated with the fund launch and the event include Kleiner’s partner John Doerr, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus and Bing Gordon.

Below are the 5 start-ups in the social arena (in no particular order) that will be followed closely by some of the big names (by their own admission and their investment) during the next one year:

1) CafeBots, founded by a Stanford University computer science professor Yoav Shoham.

2) Mike McCue’s Flipboard, a social magazine for the iPad

3) Jive, an enterprise company

4) Lockerz, a company focused at pre-teens and young people that helps them shop and connect. --------

4 Social start-ups Silicon Valley Bigwigs are following closely

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