Through the caverns of the Internet, I've managed to get put on rather quickly to some of today's hottest Internet startups such as ifttt, Instagram, and turntable.fm. Startups and betas are as popular as they've ever been, and I can promise you that every single day a brand new startup is launched that will garner attention and is probably worth joining.

Until recently, it's been pretty tough finding these little guys in the wide space of the Internet. Luckily, we've got a few sites that aggregate the best of them and show them to you, so you can be the first of all of your friends to get invited. Maybe you'll even get a vanity username.

Where in one of my last posts I only dangled the meat in front of you, you're getting it all this time. I've put together four really great sites that not only act as directories for startups and betas, but very often also have exclusive invites just for you. No more rabid comments.

Beta Li.st

Beta List was really the one to start it all off and really popularize beta indexing. Maybe it wasn't the first, but in my opinion it is definitely the best. It's a simple paginated directory that does nothing more than update daily with (usually) anywhere in between two and ten brand new startups and betas per day.

find internet startup

Arguably the biggest perk about Beta List is that they often have very exclusive, sometimes very limited, invites that are special to their users only. As new betas develop, a lot of them go right to Beta List to get their first batch of test users, and you can take advantage of that if you're quick. These guys are the alpha of betas. See how I did that?

The Museum of Modern Betas (MoMB)

MoMB is a very simple, very quick way to get your daily fix of betas. MoMB is more of a blog style vs. Beta List, and the entries are separated by type: invite-only, beta, etc.

new internet startups

MoMB tends to carry the more obscure betas (though they also cover the mainstream ones as well). You'll see MoMB and Beta Li.st overlap in listings quite often, but I've noticed that both seem to pick up the slack of the other and push out interesting new ones that you won't see if you're browsing just one of the two. Good listing, easy to read, fast, etc.

StartupLi.st

StartupLi.st seems to be fail-proof, meaning if that your startup is destined to flop within the next couple of months then you won't be listed on this directory. That can't be said about the others. StartupLi.st takes a more white collar approach to betas.

new internet startups

Web 2.0 is becoming an extinct phrase as Web 1.0 is put far behind us, but Go2web20 does a good job at reminding us what fits the Web 2.0 mold. Like StartupLi.st, Go2web20 only posts tried and true services that have a good shot at escaping beta and reaching a respectable state of development.

find internet startup

On the front page right now, I'm seeing names like ifttt and Pinterest (which we gave out 100 invites for way back in January of last year) so you can see that it's a pretty tough list to squeeze on to. Great list if you don't want to waste your time and you're looking for mainstream startups that are eventually going to break into the vocabulary of thousands.

Startups are just about as popular as personal websites were back in the day, so jump on this! Like I said, I've found some very cool services, very early in their development and you can also.

If you've got a startup of your own, maybe you should check out Upstartly or BetaBait. Both services can help you get up off of the ground and on to one of these great lists!  Where else do you get your beta fix from?