South Africa-based Synthasite, a service that makes it easy to build a website, has raised a $5 million first round from Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital. The company has developed a simple, drag-and-drop system for use by people with little or no web knowledge—a bit of a Geocities 2.0 perhaps? It says says it has 10,000 users and that it will use its funding to accelerate growth. Competitor Weebly raised $650,000 this earlier this year, while Google (NSDQ: GOOG) has its Page Creator service. Platforms like Movable Type and Wordpress also make it easy for relatively unskilled users to develop their own sites. Release (.pdf) (via VentureBeat)

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