08.30.07
What’s in a Web 2.0 Name?
So what’s in a web 2.0 name? A lot seem to go for vowel less names, but how about Dr Seuss style names?
07.29.07
Pownce – A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope
JUST now, the hottest startup in Silicon Valley — minutely examined by bloggers, panted after by investors — is Pownce, but only a chosen few can try out its Web site.
Kevin Rose, the co-founder and chief architect of Digg, a hugely popular news site, announced in late June the introduction of Pownce, a social-networking service that combines messaging with file-sharing. Mr. Rose immediately endowed his latest venture with some mystique by declaring that, for the time being, only those with invitations would be permitted to test his new site.
Within days, invitations were selling on eBay for as much as $10. Mr. Rose has declined all requests to be interviewed about the service, including my own. But as a consolation, he sent me a coveted invitation. I enjoyed the rare thrill of cyberhipness — and got to experiment with the site.
A Social-Networking Service With a Velvet Rope – New York Times
I’ve managed to get an invite into Pownce and although it looks and works quite nicely, I can’t find much use for it yet.
Unless you have friends on their, all of the sharing capabilities are pretty much useless, apart from perhaps public messages – which I was able to do before in Twitter or Jaiku anyway.
So to make it useful for me, I need to get friends to use it. Easier said than done. I could invite the first 6, then count on them inviting more people etc. However, the majority of my friends are not people into the Web 2.0 trend. The likeliness of them joining pownce is very low, especially as most of them already have facebook, myspace & bebo and they’re happy on them. In fact I already hear complaints that they’re using too many of these services, which makes me question – how much room is there in the mainstream market for another social network?
technorati tags:pownce, social networking, kevin rose
07.25.07
Joost Hits 1 Million Beta Testers
1 million is a lot of beta users. But that’s the number of users that IPTV startup Joost co-founder Niklas Zennström said are using the service at a press event in Estonia yesterday (get your invitation to Joost here). And he also said the service would launch publicly by year end.The company, which raised $45 million in venture capital in May, is one of the trendy startups right now. And they’ve benefited from some of YouTube’s legal woes by becoming the partner of choice for the anti-Google crowd.
Some complain that online TV should come through the browser, not a new application like Joost (which, however, is built partially on the Mozilla application framework). But Joost is a solid application that is attracting some well known content owners. Having the Skype founders behind it certainly hasn’t hurt, of course. This could be the web application launch of the year.
Joost Says They Have 1 million Beta Users; Launch By Year End
I’ve been a beta tester for Joost for a while now & have to say it seems to be constantly improving. Their programming selections are slowly increasing – even to those of us who are outside the States, plus their adverts seem to be slipping into programs a lot nicer now.
They could still do with a few improvements before launch. I still spot the occasional bug whilst using it and it would eb nice to have a little more control of the size of the cache that’s being created. Linked with this, being able to control the upstream avaiable to Joost and it’s p2p element may be useful to some users as well.
06.18.07
MiniME Wadgets
MiniME Wadgets are mini interactive, multi-page Websites which you can embed into other websites, including social networking sites such as Myspace.
A wadget can contain a lot of interactive multimedia within a relatively small space.
Heres the example wadget which they make available:
 |
MiniME
Hi, I’m MiniME! I may be mini but I’m very BIG in what I can do because I’m powered by WiziMedia. Make a MiniME Wadget about YOU and your fr … |
| My MiniME | powered by WiziMedia |
For social networks, something like this is ideal as you can get a lot more information into one section without breaking what the remainder of the page looks like (i.e. no more annoyingly long myspace pages).
The other thing is that its highly personal –everything is down to the user with what’s contained, the colours etc. As well as how they want users to interact.
It also looks like it will allow you to bring types of content in to sites via this service which may not normally be allowed. As such it will be interesting to see what their reactions are.
Others are also able to embed wadgets that you create into their own sites, allowing the content you create to multiply around the internet and reach a lot larger audience.
Please Note:
This post is sponsored by WizMedia
Technorati Tags: wadgets, wizmedia, multimedia, websites
06.17.07
The New eBuddy Delivers Improved User Experience
Web IM service eBuddy launched a new version this week that delivers an improved user experience.
The company, which competes head on with Meebo, has completely overhauled its web based IM platform with the three separate AOL, Yahoo and MSN clients being now integrated in to a multi network Ajax based platform.
A new mobile J2ME client that supports the top 300 phones worldwide provides a quick and easy to use mobile experience.
The New eBuddy Delivers Improved User Experience
I’ve had a look at their old web interface before and though it was alright – preferred using the actual software though and from the computers I normally chat from, this is always an option.
The part that interests me the most though is the web client. From reading about it, it sound slike they keep the data transfer quite low so it shouldn’t be too expensive to run on the occasions I may need to use it.
As I get to use it a bit, I’ll be able to give more feedback about it. Just not sure how eays it is going to be to keep typing chat responses using a phone keypad. I’m just about able to reply to emails, msn conversations is the next step!
technorati tags:msn, isntant messenger, msn, j2me, ebuddy
06.14.07
Yahoo Photos Begins Closing Down
Yahoo’s planned shutdown of Yahoo Photos has begun. The Yahoo blog Yodel Anecdotal reports that they have started to close accounts and transition users over to Flickr. And as promised, users who don’t want to use Flickr are being given the option of moving to Shutterfly, Kodak Gallery, Snapfish or Photobucket instead. “No hard feelings,” says Yahoo, which is also offering users the option of downloading images or having them mailed on a CD. Users have until September 20 to make their final decision.
Yahoo Photos Begins Closing Down
Yahoo Photos is a very different service to flickr, so it will be interesting tos ee how many of the yahoo photos users will feel at home there. It is nice to see, however, that they’re making it easy to transfer photos over to another (what could be seen as rival) service so that users have a full choice.
We’ll just have to wait and see how many unhappy people there will be on September 20th, especially if they don’t move their photos on time.
Also, if yahoo are promoting flickr as an alternative it would be nice to see them increase or remove some of the limits that are imposed as a free user – particularly the maximum number of photos that can be uploaded to your account.
technorati tags:photos, flickr, photobucket, yahoo photos
06.13.07
Apple To Integrate iTunes Into Bebo
Apple has announced a deal that will see the its popular iTunes service embedded into Bebo.
According to FT.com, Bebo’s 8.8m users in the UK and Ireland will be able to buy music directly from the profile of any musician who has a Bebo profile and whose music is available on iTunes.
The deal is a first for Apple. Bebo is a market leader in social networking in the United Kingdom despite not taking off to the same extent elsewhere.
Apple To Integrate iTunes Into Bebo
I’m a big fan of Bebo and it’s one of the more popular social networks amongst my friends too.
It also seems to have a good market for Apple to aim at – teenagers interested in music. It will be interesting to see how nicely it fits in to the bebo site and if people will go ahead and buy the songs, or whether they’re just happy listening to it through the musicians profile page.
06.12.07
Flickr Goes Multilingual – Now Available In Seven New Languages
Flickr is launching in seven new languages this morning. In addition to English, the site now supports French, German, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese. This comes in response to user demand, says the company – over half of Flickr users are live outside of the United States.
read more | digg story
$7m Investment Raised for PayPerPost
It was announced today that PayPerPost have raised a further $7m in investment.
The press release is as follows:
The PayPerPost Revolution Accelerates, Sponsored
Blogging Marketplace Secures $7 Million Series BDraper Fisher Jurvetson leads round and joins Board of Directors
ORLANDO, FL – (June 12, 2007) – PayPerPost, the leading marketplace for advertisers to reach bloggers and other consumer content creators, today announced it has completed a $7 million second round investment led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, an investor in the company’s Series A and one of the world’s leading high-technology venture capital firms. The financing brings the total amount of capital raised by PayPerPost to over $10 million, giving the company considerable resources for further development as the industry’s leading Consumer Generated Advertising marketplace. Additional participants in the round include existing investors Inflexion Partners and Village Ventures as well as new investor DFJ Gotham. With this investment, DFJ Managing Director Josh Stein also joins PayPerPost’s Board of Directors.
“PayPerPost created this exciting new advertising space and has established itself as the industry leader,” said Ted Murphy, chief executive officer of PayPerPost. “Although we’ve only used a portion of our first round capital, this added support from investors unlocks significant growth potential. Our content creator and advertiser ROI metrics clearly demonstrate the upside for PayPerPost’s model. We intend to use this capital to build the infrastructure, visibility and professional expertise necessary to reach and retain a greater network of advertisers and content creators than ever before.”
Since its founding in June of 2006, PayPerPost has signed more than 6,500 advertisers to its groundbreaking service, which has enabled Consumer Content Creators to be compensated for their efforts discussing specific companies, products or services via blogs, videos or other media. The content creators are required to disclose relationships with advertisers on their blog, providing transparency for the end reader. Over 125,000 Internet postings, most in the form of blogs, have already earned money for their creators through PayPerPost’s innovative marketplace. PayPerPost recently released PayPerPost Direct, a disruptive new service that allows advertisers to contract and negotiate directly with individual bloggers they identify through a safe, managed system.
“PayPerPost has laid a strong foundation for the future,” noted Tim Draper, founder and managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. “It continues to attract a critical mass of participants from both the advertising and blogging communities. Analogous to Overture’s sponsored search model, we believe PayPerPost’s business model holds disruptive potential and will enable the company to thrive in the evolving paid-content arena.”
To mark the $7 million dollar funding, PayPerPost has launched a new website detailing the company’s service offering at http://www.payperpost.com. Bloggers and advertisers can easily sign up at the site and begin leveraging the self service marketplace.
As a postie this can only be fantastic news.
As part of this they have already released a brand new website with more information then ever. Apart from a fresh new design they have introduced more information for the bloggers as well as those who wish to advertise on blogs.
To help celebrate, they are also running a nice competition for the bloggers called Lucky 7’s where they’re giving $7,000 in PPP opportunities priced at either $10.77, $70 or $700.
All of this seems to be a method of thanking the posties and enhancing the community which is where it would be nice to see the venture capital go.
They have already made a few acquisitions of useful blogging companies and continuing to do this would both assist the posties they already have, as well as attract new posties to the site.
It would also be nice to see them develop some more community features, in an almost social networking manner. This could help the posties advertise their individual sites as well as share tips and learn from each other. Although this already takes place on the discussion boards they have it would be nice to see this taken further.
Most importantly it will be good to see them continue to try and attract more advertisers to the site. The more advertisers there are, the more opportunities for all the posties which is what is important for PayPerPost to thrive.
Technorati Tags: PayPerPost, Venture Capital, lucky 7s, investment, advertising
06.11.07
Announcing The New PayPerPost.com
I am happy to report that the new site is now live! On it you will find a wealth of new information for both Advertisers and Posties. I want to give a huge shout out to everyone from Marketing, Dev and CL. This was a major undertaking.
I personally think the new site looks very nice, an improvement on one which was already very good.
There seems to be a lot more information available to posties and advertisers which is always good!
read more | digg story
Technorati Tags: payperpost, advertising, blogging