XavierV's Gooruze Blog http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/ XavierV's Gooruze Blog Copyright 2008 Gooruze en-uk Uloop: Cheaper Textbooks, Career Opportunities and a Song - Ryan MacCarthy, Uloop XavierV Uloop - http://uloop.com is the social marketplace for students: Buy, sell, trade, find a ride, a party, opinions on the psychology 101 teacher... Somehow very similar to Craigslist, Uloop is free and exclusively for students - .edu email address sine qua none - in a very ancient Facebook sort of way. Uloop thrives to become the kiosque of the university... ...

Uloop is the social marketplace for students: Buy, sell, trade, find a ride, a party, opinions on the psychology 101 teacher... Somehow very similar to Craigslist, Uloop is free and exclusively for students - .edu email address sine qua none - in a very ancient Facebook sort of way. Uloop thrives to become the kiosque of the university... Online.


Credits: Todd Stringer
Uloop started out in January 2007 at UC Santa Barbara. The company was founded by Corey Cleek, Mike Ho, Scott Lewis and Ryan MacCarthy. The Santa Barbara experience was such a success that the company expended to more than 50 university campuses, and still growing.

Once a student signs up to Uloop, he gets access to all the classifieds posted for his university: Textbooks, roommates, carpools, parties, you name it, it's there. The site is a 100% free for students, including posting classified ads. Just like Craigslist, the community manages the content on the site, and any inappropriate content can be flagged by the community.

"It's a classified site for students at school who want to buy or sell [...] things that are typical of a college environment," MacCarthy said.

Advertisers pay to place classified ads. Uloop opened a self-service advertising platform where interested businesses can easily edit their ads and distribute them on Uloop. This makes it easy for the pizza place closest to campus to advertise about its Friday night special pricing, or its free delivery.

Uloop creates job opportunities on campus. As Ryan MacCarthy mentions in the video, Uloop's campus reps are what differentiate the company from the other classifieds site for students. Uloop's reps are brand ambassadors: they are in charge of creating excitement around Uloop to push product adoption. Uloop lives through the dynamics of his reps' creativity to find original means to reach out to their peers: Songs, pillow fights, class announcements, chalk graffiti, ...

Since Uloop has deployed nationwide, they also offer guerilla marketing solutions for national brands. As mentioned in the video, Uloop worked with UPS, where campus reps would run around their campus handing out fliers and spreading the word that UPS was hiring. There aren't so many companies who can offer brands such a powerful niche infiltration.

Uloop is the perfect example of a Web company that understands the need of offline marketing to catalyze users online. Campus reps do not only help Uloop grow, they are also part of Uloop's advertising projects, and above all, they help their peers save hundreds of dollars on school-related expenses. On their resume, Uloop's reps can show a significant marketing experience in a fast-growing company, before they even graduate.

Learn more:
Uloop's media center - Uloop.com
Shellziebel - Youtube channel of a UC Davis Uloop campus rep
The Student's Craigslist - KillerStartups review
katemetz1987 - Home of the Uloop song

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121986/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121986/ Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:33:32 -0700 BuzzLogic Vino Diaries - Episode 10 - Jory Des Jardins XavierV Is blogging better than chocolate? For some women bloggers the answer is yes. In this episode Val and Jory discuss how blogging became the new back-fence for women to connect, express themselves and have fun. And with women making up 83% of every dollar spent, it makes sense that brands would want to reach them. Original post - http://www.buzzlogic.com/video/2008/07/buzzlogic_vino_diaries_episode_7.html#more

Is blogging better than chocolate? For some women bloggers the answer is yes. In this episode Val and Jory discuss how blogging became the new back-fence for women to connect, express themselves and have fun. And with women making up 83% of every dollar spent, it makes sense that brands would want to reach them.



Original post
]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121903/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121903/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 20:43:23 -0700 TubeMogul Demystifies Online Video Distribution - David Burch, TubeMogul XavierV The rise of user-generated content has switched the traditional top down media strategy to a grassroots crowd adoption strategy to make original content bubble up in front of the mass' eyeballs. The most chaotic segment of user-generated content is online video. Its blitz deployment and massive adoption left traditional marketers clueless: Who watches videos online? What video platform to chose? ...

The rise of user-generated content has switched the traditional top down media strategy to a grassroots crowd adoption strategy to make original content bubble up in front of the mass' eyeballs. The most chaotic segment of user-generated content is online video. Its blitz deployment and massive adoption left traditional marketers clueless: Who watches videos online? What video platform to chose? How engaged are Web-spectators? How to make a video go viral? What is the place of online video in a global brand strategy? Who watches my videos?



All those questions are really tricky. If you face those questions, then the best starting point to find answers is TubeMogul. TubeMogul - founded by Brett Wilson and John Hughes - is the leading video distribution and analytic site. TubeMogul is a one-stop shop to syndicate your videos out to a multiplicity of video platforms, and it gives you powerful cross-platform analytic tools to understand your viewership.

With a free account, you can upload and analyze your video views. The TubeMogul's uploader lets you fill in all the video metadata on one page. You can also upload up to 300 MB worth of files. A resumable uploader - in alpha development right now - will resume interrupted uploads where you left them off. Once uploaded, you can track your total video views, your views on a specific platform, compare the performance on two different platforms, compare the performance for two different videos...

TubeMogul also offers a lot of goodies, like embeddable charts of your views, a viralize feature to submit your video to bookmarking sites like Digg, an embeddable cross-platform video views counter, link intelligence, and the list goes on.

Premium paying accounts get the whole enchilada: Scheduled video deployment, live training and account setup, viewership demographics and geographics, buzz tracking and competitive intelligence, and so on. The price for premium accounts vary according to the needs of the client. The best is to contact the team and you'll get a kind response in no time.

Interestingly enough, TubeMogul doesn't just sit there and offer a great service. The company thrives to become a leading provider of video analytics the same way NetRatings did for site analytics. Their position on the market is perfect for such an ambition, as they stand on top of video syndication, a great vista point to overlook the chaos of online video distribution. On a regular basis, TubeMogul releases super interesting in-house video distribution analysis. The most popular one was the TubeMogul's top 40, which listed the most popular video creators. The list got quite a buzz as it shows independent video bloggers performing better that media companies like CBS.

The latest study was released today by David Burch, Marketing Manager at TubeMogul. The study, Which Video Sites Deliver the Most Views, tells us that almost half of videos online are viewed on Youtube. The report also brings some unexpected results, like MySpace only ranks fourth (in terms of views) in the music category, behind YouTube, Yahoo! and Veoh, respectively.

In other words, if you are an online video creator, you should definitely make TubeMogul your home for distribution and analytics. It will help you figure out which video platforms are best fit for your content, which videos are popular where, and if you pay for a premium account, it will give you all the data you need to pitch potential advertisers.

Learn more:
TubeMogul: A Single Point For Uploading Video on the Web - Podacst with Mark Rotblat, TubeMogul's Director of Marketing
TubeMogul is to video sharing sites as Ping.fm is to social networks - DarrenKitchen.net
TubeMogul’s March Towards Becoming the Online Video Index - what TubeMogul should do next
TubeMogul Raises $1.5 Million from Lindzon and Knight’s Bridge - Mashable

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121886/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121886/ Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:34:32 -0700 FFWD to the Next Generation of Online Video - Patrick Koppula, FFWD XavierV The user-generated video phenomenon has grown so huge in the past couple of years that a large number of video-sharing platforms have sprouted on the back of Youtube's success. The new online video landscape is a very confusing one for end users who have a hard time differentiating the unique offers of each video platforms. Video search technologies are still ...

The user-generated video phenomenon has grown so huge in the past couple of years that a large number of video-sharing platforms have sprouted on the back of Youtube's success. The new online video landscape is a very confusing one for end users who have a hard time differentiating the unique offers of each video platforms. Video search technologies are still at a primary stage, meaning that finding a good video still remains a quest on the Web. StumbleUpon brought us the first generation of video personalization engine by offering a service that understands what type of video an individual user digs. The StumbleUpon video experience isn't super fine-tuned though: After too many "skip this video", users get fed up and leave the site.



Bringing videos to users on the basis of their personal preferences is the only solution to put some order in the online video chaos. Patrick Koppula, Founder and CEO of FFWD, is addressing this need. Before FFWD, Patrick Koppula was the man behind the music recommendation engine iLike. He felt that what he brought to music discovery, he could bring it to video discovery. FFWD is a video personalization engine, still in private alpha so far, that will launch public in the Fall of this year.

The Channel Paradigm
Once a user signs up to the service, the first thing he should do is subscribe to channels. FFWD's first differentiation in the video space is that instead of mainly looking at the similarity between two videos, it looks at the similarity between two channels withholding those videos: A channel holds more information about a withholding video than the video itself. For Patrick Koppula, a channel is the environment in which a video grows: A channel says as much about a video as a video says about a channel.

The Social Graph
As much as a channel reveals a lot about a video, a social graph reveals a lot about an individual. On FFWD, users can connect to their Facebook profile (right now an alpha FB app is available - it scans your video tastes) or Friendfeed accounts. With this information in hand, FFWD looks at the videos you and your friends like, and includes it in its algorithmic personalization formula.

The "Skip This Video" Behavior
In the end, despite all the calculus operated in the background to provide the best fit video to an individual, nothing beats the "skip this video" button that is very prevalent in the user interface, as you can see in the video. FFWD also takes into account how much of a video is watched, and pairs this data with the ones above to constantly fine-tune your video personalization experience.

Beyond the www
FFWD's upcoming launch created a micro-buzz at the Under the Radar last June, because the service is also planned to run on the Wii and other types of electronic devices. The Wii is the entry portal to the television set. By accessing homes with Wii-furnished TV sets, FFWD is making a strong statement that it is not only a new generation of online video service, it is a new generation of TV surfing.

Since the service is not public yet, it's hard to draw conclusions or get too excited about the promises FFWD makes. So far, you can visit the site's homepage and sign up for the Fall 2008 launch, or install the FB app mentioned above. Jason Kincaid made a good point in the Techcrunch's review of the startup:

"ffwd’s success is going to lie entirely on its ability to generate accurate channels - users that have to click ‘next’ too many times are liable to leave the site for good."


Learn more:
The dish on the next StumbleUpon: Ffwd - Webware
ffwd offers a personalized video channel that adapts to your tastes - VentureBeat
FFWD launches passive but personalized video site - TheDeal.com
ffwd Looks Cool - Makes Me the Curator - My Media Musings

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121810/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121810/ Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:58:28 -0700 Discussing Comments on Disqus - Screencast Demo XavierV Since HyveUp's video quality went up a notch in the recent weeks, I am in the process of re-lifting the first videos I made. After RateItAll - http://hyveup.blogspot.com/2008/06/rate-share-on-rateitall-screencast-demo.html and Twitter - http://hyveup.blogspot.com/2008/06/twitter-has-brand-appeal-screencast.html, it is the turn of Disqus. I met Disqus' Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Ha - http://twitter.com/danielha back in November 2007, 2 weeks after the service launched - http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/disqus-joins-the-battle-for-your-blogs-comments/ ...

Since HyveUp's video quality went up a notch in the recent weeks, I am in the process of re-lifting the first videos I made. After RateItAll and Twitter, it is the turn of Disqus. I met Disqus' Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Ha back in November 2007, 2 weeks after the service launched (remember they launched the same day Intense Debate did).




Disqus, a Y Combinator startup, is a comment system that enables site publishers/bloggers and commenters to gain more control over their commenting activities. As you can see in the video, Disqus offers a lot of functionality around comments: Customize the look of the comment box, Seesmic's video comment, trackbacks, comment moderation, widgets, and so much more.

A lot of bloggers are really enthusiast about their Disqus comment system: Fred Wilson early-adopted the service and liked it so much he invested in Disqus. Seesmic Founder Loic LeMeur chose Disqus as the first remote comment system to integrate Seesmic's video comments. When Friendfeed came clashing the market with its promise of syndicating the whole Web discussion on its boat, Disqus created a bridge with the ex-Googler startup to expand the reach of Disqus' comments. Disqus has developed in such a way that it became the best fit comment system to adapt to the evolution of the social media.

As usual, the buzz comes with a bug. Some voices arose on the Web pointing out to the fact that Disqus "steals" traffic from blogs, because their email alerts send recipients to the Disqus threaded comments interface, instead of linking back to the original post. After acquiring Haloscan a few days back, JS-Kit added a portable profile feature to their own commenting system and CEO Khris Loux made a direct attack against Disqus' ways:

Despite the fact that this feature is clearly inspired by Disqus, Khris Loux does not hesitate to bash his much-buzzed-about competitor, which he alleges “steals traffic from bloggers” and “is not upfront about its plans to monetize at the expense of its users.

It doesn't sound very thoughtful to aggress Silicon Valley's favorite commenting system heads on. Plus you could argue that re-directing email alerts' traffic to the Disqus platform is actually more convenient, as you can participate to the discussion of several blogs from there. Also, I don't see how Disqus is monetizing "at the expense of its users". I don't see how they could be more intrusive than Facebook, or more invasive than Myspace, which both seem to be doing very good btw.

Disqus is a very reliable commenting system. I've been a user since mid-November 2007: It never crashed, never lost a comment of mine, never did weird stuff or got hacked by spamming bots. It's a very reliable system. For those worried about what Disqus could end up doing to monetize comments, from what I know of Disqus' CEO, he is very ethical and trustworthy. So if you are having second thoughts about the ship, trust the captain. Arrrhh!

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121729/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121729/ Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:43:08 -0700 Will Zivity Become the HBO of the Internet? Cyan Banister, Zivity (+ invites here) XavierV The ad-based revenue-sharing distribution model of most social networking sites comes with a few restrictions for online content producers: even tens of thousands of views or visits do not generate a decent revenue, and since advertisers rule the casa, they refuse to see their ads appear next to explicit content. The free distribution model has its limits - low pay ...

The ad-based revenue-sharing distribution model of most social networking sites comes with a few restrictions for online content producers: even tens of thousands of views or visits do not generate a decent revenue, and since advertisers rule the casa, they refuse to see their ads appear next to explicit content. The free distribution model has its limits - low pay and censorship - which consequently pushes producers of explicit content to look for alternatives.



Zivity, a royalties-distributed social platform, is stepping in the online content distribution arena to tackle this frustrating situation. The company was founded by successful tech entrepreneur Scott Banister, Cyan Banister and Jeffrey Wescott. Officially launched during the 2007 Techrunch 40, Zivity got a buzz at a very early stage because of the pre-launch funding it received, and mostly because the site showcases artistic nude female pictures.

Right now, Zivity is a platform for models and photographers to create and monetize photosets through the royalties-distributed platform. Zivity is entirely ad-free, and content producers earn money every time a user likes a set and votes for it. The site's philosophy is that users will pay for quality content they cannot find anywhere else on the Web. On Zivity, users buy votes (1$ a vote), and wander around the site voting for the stuff they dig. Voting on Zivity resembles following on Twitter: Once a user votes for a model+photographer, he automatically subscribes to the artists' activity updates that will appear in his Zivity newsfeed. This way, voting becomes a way to create a tie between the artists and their fan base.

Cyan Banister is the Editor-in-Chief at Zivity and in charge of the company's global strategy. As she explains in the video, Zivity's beta evolves around glamour female photography, for the simple reason that there is a high demand online for this type of media. In the long-run, Zivity thrives to become a premier destination site for multimedia producers frustrated by the traditional free distribution sites. However, things are not all that loose on Zivity. As the Editor-in-Chief, Cyan controls the content submitted to the site and makes sure that the photos are in sync with Zivity's vision: Glamour, Pinup, focused on the woman. Photos must show skin, not sexual intercourse.

So far, Zivity is still in private beta: Efforts are directed towards developing a vibrant community of photography lovers. Investments are positive, the executive team is seriously building up, so there is no pressure to launch the public site prematurely. However, for those who want to see what Zivity is all about, I have a few invites to distribute: just send an email to interview@hyveup.com with your email address and I will get you in.

As a user of the private beta, there are two things I really liked about with Zivity. The first thing is the distribution model and how the social voting feature is also the artists' revenue stream. That's a really creative way to make paying for content more psychologically acceptable (CTO Jordan Ritter, also Co-Founder of Napster, got us used to free stuff, so making the shift is hard). The second thing is the look&feel of Zivity: intimate and playful, very similar to the experience of a French cabaret.

So far, my favorite photographer on Zivity is Addictedimage for the photoset Geisha, and my favorite model is Jetta for the photoset Playful.

Learn more about Zivity:
Zivity - A Social Network Promoting Beauty 2.0! - Describes the rev share model of Zivity
Shel Israel Has A Naked Conversation With Zivity CEO - Video interview with Cyan Banister
Zivity publishes my first set - Blog of enthusiast model on Zivity
Site Review Zivity - TechWag's review focused on the benefits for models and photographers

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121630/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121630/ Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:12:37 -0700 Apture Launches Publicly: Get Your Blog Linked In XavierV Apture recently opened up - http://blog.apture.com/2008/06/apture-announces-availability-of-1-click-multimedia-linking-platform/ their rich multimedia linking platform to the public. Apture - http://apture.com allows site publishers/bloggers to easily find content related to their articles and link to it. The major appeal of this tool is that the linked pages appear in a HTML overlay window (ie pop-up). Don't get lured by generally accepted ideas like the readers ...

Apture recently opened up their rich multimedia linking platform to the public. Apture allows site publishers/bloggers to easily find content related to their articles and link to it. The major appeal of this tool is that the linked pages appear in a HTML overlay window (ie pop-up).



Don't get lured by generally accepted ideas like the readers of Techcrunch: Apture's popups open up a world of infinite knowledge that superbly completes any written article. Apture is a convenient compromise for publishers: it provides great links which readers can browse from the original site. While the discussion is leaving the blogosphere, richer content is settling in.

“With our linking platform, websites can now be enriched with background articles, images, maps, videos, PDFs, PowerPoint presentations, podcasts, music and even interactive widgets in a way that’s never been possible before. Our solution will shift the way we currently publish and communicate on the web and will generate empathy and knowledge transfer, which will create fresh opportunities for distributed commerce."
Tristan Harris, Founder/CEO

The public launch of Apture comes with the release of a few cool additional features to the service. In pole position is the first non-pop-up feature of Apture: the easy embed feature. Just select a spot in an article where you would like to place a media, and Apture intuitively creates an area to embed content, by brushing aside the existing content. Once the free space has been created, simply use the Apture tool to easily select what content you want to place in this embed area.

This way, Apture makes the embedding process shrink from over ten clicks down to less than 5 (and it finds that content for you, in case you don't know what to look for).

Apture also offers a new tool to have more control on videos. If there is a specific moment of the video a blogger wants to link to, there is a "start viewing at time" feature that allows to do this. That makes linking to videos much more compelling.

Even in private beta, Apture received a lot of excellent feedbacks. Now that it is public, I recommend any site publisher to give it a twirl. As a media producer, I strongly recommend it to other media producers/bloggers: It is a great way to suggest a lot of your videos to your readership in an unobtrusive manner.




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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121533/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121533/ Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:53:25 -0700 Swivel: Cornerstone for the Information Age - Gerad Suyderhoud, Product Manager XavierV Graphs and data are pretty geeky items - http://datamineshaft.com/blog/i-swivel-data to share online. The information conveyed by graphs is useful knowledge, but the methodology to organize and share the right bits of info requires some strong data analysis knowledge. Swivel - http://swivel.com is here to help you deal with complex spreadsheets, transform them into intelligible graphs, and share it with everyone, ...

Graphs and data are pretty geeky items to share online. The information conveyed by graphs is useful knowledge, but the methodology to organize and share the right bits of info requires some strong data analysis knowledge. Swivel is here to help you deal with complex spreadsheets, transform them into intelligible graphs, and share it with everyone, or just with designated collaborators. Swivel has a public side where anybody can upload graphs and make them available for the rest of us, and a private corner for businesses wishing to benefit from the Swivel's technology without sharing their confidential data with the rest of us.



Swivel was created in December 2005 by two physics majors named Dmitry Dimov and Brian Mulloy. They came up with the idea of Swivel while working at GrandCentral at a position that seemingly required a lot of data analysis. The two Founders came to the conclusion that it would be great to create a site for SMBs to manage their data spreadsheets, share it internally or externally, and find great public data on the spot. A Youtube for graphs!

So how does Swivel works? Once signed up, you can freely surf public graphs, through keyword searches, groups of interest, latest uploads, or by checking out a user's profile that interests you. Just like regular blogging, if you feel you could add value to a graph, you can make comments, Digg it, rate it, send it as an email, post to a blog... The whole enchilada! Swivel is a great place for public institutions like the OECD to share their endless and extremely valuable data with a numbers-minded community.

As mentioned above, Swivel is also a place for businesses to post their graphs and create a private community of users that can remotely collaborate around a company's private numbers. Called Swivel Business, this private area - right now in free alpha - has a few interesting features: comments, email updates, customization of data streams, find always up-to-date numbers, groups creation, interactive graphs and dashboard customization.

Swivel is led by the philosophy that a business is successful if it has the capacity to integrate its internal data with the external data of the larger world. As Gerad Suyderhoud, Product Manager at Swivel, explains in the video, if your business evolves around newborns, then your business could use public data about infant mortality. Combining public and private data is Swivel's Graal. While there is no doubt that Swivel crunches numbers like madness to figure out what their users want, the startup's approach is mostly to rely on the wisdom of the crowds to organize this potentially infinite source of data. In a way, Swivel enables businesses to balance out the internal and external forces in action by knowing the facts and adjusting to it: Swivel makes your business zen.

Beyond what might look like a pretty geeky website, Swivel is on the road to offer an infinitely valuable marketing tool for SMBs that do not have the resources to analyze the external occurences that affect them. An API is available, but it only allows to upload and download data to the Swivel platform so far. In the longer term, Gerad Suyderhoud says that the API will be way more flexible to turn Swivel into a leading provider of data analytics. Since we are not there yet, the development team already offers a few cool features to make inter-operations with the Swivel platform easy to handle. Check it out!

More info about Swivel:
Data mining: the theory of everything? - super interesting discussion on the Swivel blog
I Swivel Data - The Data Mine Shaft
Take the data language survey - Garry's Blog
Streams in the Dessert: Lesson # 17 (Swivel and data analysis) - Streams in the Dessert

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121523/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121523/ Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:21:32 -0700 Hang In There - Michael Wilson, There.com XavierV Virtual worlds - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_world have undeniably taken over the entertainment arena in the past decade. MMORPGs put aside, Second Life was the most advertised 3D innovation of the past few years. Unfortunately, the place is not really fit for teens - a population of virtual worlds crunchers - and it is still not clear how popular - http://delifaks.blogspot.com/2007/07/lewispr-killed-second-life.html/ the platform ...

Virtual worlds have undeniably taken over the entertainment arena in the past decade. MMORPGs put aside, Second Life was the most advertised 3D innovation of the past few years. Unfortunately, the place is not really fit for teens - a population of virtual worlds crunchers - and it is still not clear how popular the platform is exactly. Alternatives exist: There, Metaversum or Kaneva. There is probably the most threatening competition to SL, even though they don't cater to the same audience.



There is a 3D hangout for friends to connect around virtual activities. It was founded in 1998 by Will Harvey, a Stanford computer science Ph.D. and game developer, and Jeffrey Ventrella, an expert on artificial life from MIT’s Media Lab. In 2005 the company was spun off under Makena Technologies. Michael Wilson, present CEO of Makena Tech, joined the startup in 2001 after successfully launching eBay.

Three components of There make the platform attractive for users and commercial partners. First, There was designed PG-13, and intends to stay this way to keep attracting teenagers in their playful environment. Second, There has a strict brand protection policy: all the new products entering the There platform are scanned, and fake branded products are denied access. Third and not least, the software is a lightweight 40MB download, and even users with a 56K modem can connect to the platform and experience the fun.

Since the environment is unoffensive, controlled and accessible,There attracts a lot of brands targeting teens like Cosmo Girl, Coca-Cola, and MTV. Those brands seem to be satisfied by the rich development potential of the virtual platform, and the young engaged users that populate it.

There is a lot of shopping going on in There. Third-party developers are welcome to build cool virtual products, and sell them on the platform. Users (I don't believe the inhabitants of There have a name, please comment) need to fill up their wallets with Therebucks to purchase goods. I traded $5 for 9,000 Therebucks. To give you an idea, the leopard string (watch the video) for my avatar was 1,500 Therebucks.

The Therebuck is a fixed currency. There is no Wall Street in There. As Michael Wilson clearly explains in the video, there isn't any power in the physical world to govern virtual financial transactions. This means virtual transactions are not protected. It is really hard to prosecute someone who "virtually" stole from you. This doesn't mean that an economy cannot be built in a social world: As this is the case in There, brands initiate consuming behaviors in the virtual world, and then push those habits in the real world to generate sales. A virtual world is just a great mean for brands to interact with their consumers.

Personally, I am not a big fan of virtual worlds, but I really had a blast in There, as it is easy to use and entertainment-oriented. Try it out.

Info to get started with There:
ThereCare - official info site
There Fun Times - Offical blog
The Voice of There - There latest news
Tips for making Therebucks

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121463/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121463/ Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:01:08 -0700 Share Your Web Expertise: Create Bundles - Get Invites Here - interview with Ethan Mevi, Co-Founder of YouBundle XavierV Guest Writer: YouBundle - http://youbundle.com is taking the most basic idea - links - and creating a centralized and organized database fueled and rated by users. Unlike social bookmarkers whose main goal is to simply get the links no matter their quality. The goal of YouBundle is for the USER to pick a subject - any subject - and put together ...

Guest Writer:

YouBundle is taking the most basic idea - links - and creating a centralized and organized database fueled and rated by users. Unlike social bookmarkers whose main goal is to simply get the links no matter their quality. The goal of YouBundle is for the USER to pick a subject - any subject - and put together a bundle of relevant links to pages, videos and photos. The Bundle actually becoming a new piece of content in the process.



Other users will then have the power to rate the quality of this bundle, with this rating determining how much exposure it will or will not gather. The value of YouBundle is a three-fold process.

1. Creation - The user has an expertise on a subject, along with a knowledge of places on the web to find information on this subject - They come to YouBundle and arrange all of these links into a bundle.
2. Share and Explore - Other users come to YouBundle to explore and learn all about new subjects. As they browse through various bundles - they get a concise summary of links regarding a certain subject so they can determine in a flash which subjects they would like to further explore in depth.
3. Search - The internet information gatherer currently has numerous tools at their disposal including typing the query into Google and sifting through all of the machine generated and SEO'ed results to find the sites of true value. YouBundle offers a shortcut to this process. As on any given subject, there will already have been a self-declared and community rated expert who has already created a bundle of results on the subject. Furthermore if the searcher is not satisfied with the Bundles offered, then the wheel turns back to the beginning where they can then become the Creator in order to offer their improved results. In this way it is a self-perpetuating system.

To further understand YouBundle and how it differentiates from time-substitutes and competitors, we have to know that there is no editorial process involved aside from basic TOS violation removal. If people make a bundle that is not full of quality links, then they are free to do so and to publish just the same. The crowd-sourced rating process will allow those bundles of highest quality to raise above the rest.

Furthermore - by the lack of an overboard editorial process such as Wiki which sterilizes results via need for consensus - YouBundle is offering the user to express their originality in the bundle. The same subject could have 5 different bundles from 5 different perspectives from 5 different people. Neither would be more right or wrong than the other (as opposed to the editorial model), rather it will be up to the community to decide which is to gather the most exposure.

YouBundle is such a simple and amazing concept that if it can reach the critical mass of users, then we should be prepared for a complete redefinition of the concept of how we search for information on the internet.

Neyma Jahansooz
Co-Founder YouBundle.com
updates @ twitter.com/youbundle

--

As an alpha user of the service, the thing I enjoy the most at Youbundle is the flexibility: Users create groups of links and are totally free to organize those the way they want. I put HyveUp in a top-ranked tech blog bundle, and I am expecting the community to readjust this by making new lists compared to which my vision of HyveUp will probably lose some ranks. Just give your subjective vision of things, and let the natural order object it back if needed.

Plus YouBundle feels like a social network where users interact with links (basic social features so far). If I like your bundles, I become your friend and follow your bundle creations. The sharing experience is very similar to Digg, except that the user provides several links at once in a category withholding them.

As usual, by opening up the system to the user, there is always surprising things popping up like this bundle about the secret sex lives of Pandas. Very informative. By the way, this blue text (or green here) leads to the private beta version of the site, meaning you need an invite, and I've got a few to offer. If you want in, all I need is your name and email, which you can drop in the Disqus thread below, or email to interview@hyveup.com.

As mentioned in Techcrunch, so far, like Mahalo, YouBundle is more of a Web guide than an actual search engine. YouBundle is still young, but the service is really easy to use. So join in and let's see how far this ship can go. If you sign up, look for xavierv and add me as a friend. See you there.

Invites: drop name and email in the comment section below, or email to interview@hyveup.com.

Additional info on Youbundle:
Nothing there yet. If you write a piece about Youbundle, let me know so that I can put your link here.

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YouBundle
Information provided by CrunchBase

]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121218/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121218/ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:50:30 -0700 Twitter Has Brand Appeal - Screencast Demo XavierV About eleven months ago (precisely on the 26th of July 2007), I set up an interview with jack Dorsey, Founder and CEO of Twitter - http://twitter.com. Back then, the messenger service had known a buzz for about three months, and a lot of popular social media enthusiasts were still trying to figure out the benefits of twittering. I actually got ...

About eleven months ago (precisely on the 26th of July 2007), I set up an interview with jack Dorsey, Founder and CEO of Twitter. Back then, the messenger service had known a buzz for about three months, and a lot of popular social media enthusiasts were still trying to figure out the benefits of twittering.



I actually got lucky to get this interview with Jack Dorsey, as I didn't really have a site to show where the video would be displayed. Also, part of the luck lies - I think - in that the Founder of Twitter did not verify my "journalist work" before replying with a positive answer to my invitation. The funniest in this story is that I had no idea that the same day I met Jack Dorsey, Twitter was announcing its first venture round (he probably thought I was a smart guy who breached into the secret of their upcoming funds. I wish!).

A year has passed, and yet I feel like the HyveUp interview with Jack Dorsey didn't wrinkle at all. Of course, the poor audiovisual quality always made the tape look old (lack of experience). Still though, the speech of the CEO about his company is still 100% accurate today.

The idea of Twitter came to the Founder as he was working as a courier in 911 dispatch. They had all those entities report describing what the officers were doing right at the moment. Jack wanted the same thing for his friends, and that's where the idea came from.

A few weeks ago, Twitter announced a second round of funds. The amazing part is that Twitter is exactly what it was a year ago. No additional features, enriched designs, video integration, leaderboards, groups...

That's because Twitter is not building an application. Twitter is building a social messaging engine. The company is focused on storing and retrieving short-messages. Apparently, things are not that easy. Those past few months, the attention was stuck on Twitter's periodic service outages.

Twitter is also building a brand. 56% of Twitter users tweet through the Twitter website (the blue area on the pie, source). 44% use Twitter through third-party applications. Only a powerful brand can federate and control such a market deployment. Without Twitter's popularity, third-party development opportunities would not exist. By working its brand appeal, Twitter talks the open-source community into developing the very own Twitter user base.

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Twitter
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121122/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121122/ Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:46:01 -0700 TubeMogul's Latest Study: Online Video Views Standards And HyveUp's Exceptions XavierV TubeMogul - http://tubemogul.com recently released the results of a very interesting study for all online video creators out there. For those who haven't heard of TubeMogul - http://tubemogul.com yet, it stands as a hub to launch and track online videos on a multitude of video platforms like Youtube, Dailymotion, Revver, Blip.tv and so on. They are experts in video analytics ... TubeMogul recently released the results of a very interesting study for all online video creators out there. For those who haven't heard of TubeMogul yet, it stands as a hub to launch and track online videos on a multitude of video platforms like Youtube, Dailymotion, Revver, Blip.tv and so on. They are experts in video analytics and, while using their video platform is free, they also provide distribution and marketing consulting services for professional video creators.

The study released, namely Online Video's Short Shelf Life, scrutinized the life-span of a typical video online.
Methodology:
Our sample includes data for views by day for 10,916 videos over a 90 day time period. In order to exclude casual creators of online video (i.e. "Mikey's Birthday"), each video in the sample achieved a minimum of 1,000 cumulative views over the 90 day time period. A statistician fit a curve to the data and projected out views by day for a full year. All data is from videos deployed by TubeMogul.
The results show - as any video creator has already witnessed - that 50% of all views occur in the first two weeks, peaking at day three, which constitutes 11% of all views.

This is no major outcome. As mentioned above, this is what any given video creator experiences with his content. Most video creators with a monetization intent tend to focus on providing volume instead of quality. Daily shows are increasingly common, and independent creators do not hesitate to launch 3 to 5 videos a day. Most of the time, creators are organized in teams to provide a maximum of videos on the same channel. Those creators are after video views, so any buzz that's on, they piggy-back on it.

In the end, blog monetization and video monetization obey the same rule: Not every video or article can be a traffic fountain. By submitting new content several times a day, bloggers and videobloggers get to be on top of the RSS readers' lists, on top of the recently released lists, and well-treated by search engines in general. All content creators know that. The Online Video's Short Shelf Life just made it scientifically proven for videos.

However, the most interesting parts of the study must have been on the exceptions that confirm the rule. Of course, those findings are not public, and one would have to contact TubeMogul's team to get the really juicy facts that can be squeezed out of this study.

I have a good unusual video trend I can share. It concerns the HyveUp video interview with Auctomatic Co-Founder Harjeet Taggar launched in January 2008. As you can see on the left of the chart, the first peak occurs in the first few days after the video is launched, just like what is described in the TubeMogul's study. However, the video really becomes popular two months later, precisely on the 26th of March, the day Auctomatic was acquired by Communicate.com.

This peak is mostly luck and opportunism. Auctomatic is a really small and discreet startup catering to a niche: eBay power sellers. When the news broke that it was acquired by an industry's leader (and for $5 million), a lot of people expressed the need to get more information about this surprising little startup. The video (in addition to being conveniently placed on the Auctomatic's Crunchbase profile) was one of the rare bit of info you could find about the company on the Web, and mostly about the people behind the company.


I have a similar example with Powerset. Powerset is a startup known for its buzz strategy: It positions itself as Google's direct competition, and hit a million drums every time they have an announcement to make. As you can see on the chart, the first peak happens right after the launch of the video. The second is when Techcrunch announced that Powerset was getting ready to launch. The last one is on Powerset's actual launch a month and a half later.

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tubemogul
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121093/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121093/ Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:55:04 -0700 Rate & Share on RateItAll - Screencast Demo XavierV It has been almost a year I have started HyveUp. The first interview, Lawrence Coburn, Founder of RateItAll, accepted to do it. in a way, he was my first victim. Today, I believe the videos HyveUp offers are of a much better quality, even though it still needs improvements (sound, light, music, screencasts). Doing videos for Web 2.0 startups is ...

It has been almost a year I have started HyveUp. The first interview, Lawrence Coburn, Founder of RateItAll, accepted to do it. in a way, he was my first victim. Today, I believe the videos HyveUp offers are of a much better quality, even though it still needs improvements (sound, light, music, screencasts). Doing videos for Web 2.0 startups is a constant learning process, as there isn't any books written on how to do promotional videos for Web 2.0 startups.

Now that I am at least able to deliver punchier videos, I thought it was time to dust out some old videos and give them a fresh face lift to keep them attractive to the eye. I am starting with RateItAll. RateItAll is a consumer rating engine that lets users rate everything. The idea is that RateItAll lets users create rating channels, like my favorite beers, the most boring movies, the sexiest first ladies, or the best Web 2.0 sites.

Once a user has created a list of items (a "Weblist"), RateItall offers different tools to help list creators reach out to an audience as large as possible.
First, RateItAll is a social network all to itself. Users can connect, share lists and rate each others' items. Popular reviewers get premium visibility on the latest reviews page and on the top most helpful reviewers' list.
Second, RateItAll offers widgets to enable users to export the RateItAll Weblists outside of RateItAll's walls. As you can see in the screencast demo, the slick flash widget fits in any blog post or Website's sidebar. Since recently, you can place a rating widget on Myspace and add the Review application on Facebook.

For the Web money-makers, RateItAll also shares its ad-based revenues with its users. So if you create compelling lists, and know how to make them popular enough to gain visibility in the RateItAll community, then you are on to get a slice of the pie.

Update 06/19/08: The same day I released this article, RateItAll raised $800K of funds to pursue the development of their rating engine.

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RateItAll
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121054/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/121054/ Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:21:40 -0700 Crunchbase Widget Adds Value To Startup Reviews TradeVibes Not Far Behind XavierV The initial idea with HyveUp was to build a directory of Web 2.0 startups where the search behavior would be video-centered. Very quickly, I understood all the challenges of creating such a database. The most obvious conclusion I drew was that only a central actor in the Web 2.0 industry could successfully manage such a project. Building such a directory ...
Recently, I started using the Crunchbase widget for my posts. This widget is coherent with my content as I review startups in a somehow similar way that traditional tech blogs do. Therefore, I need to provide readers with in-depth info of the companies I cover.

Techcrunch is the unbeatable provider of Web 2.0 news. They do not cover the entire 2.0 scene on the blog the way Kristen Nicole does on Mashable, but I have no doubt that anything that needs to be known about Bubble 2.0 goes through their editors' inbox. In a few words, Techcrunch is the epicenter of all things Web 2.0. From that perspective, I judge Techcrunch to be the fittest to handle a quality directory of Web 2.0 startups.

The Crunchbase has a clean-cut design, with internal company information in the left sidebar, including a link to the company's LinkedIn profile, and external info in the right sidebar (Techmeme's related posts, Techcrunch's related posts and recent incoming links, i.e. posts where the widget was pasted). The Crunchbase is built on a wiki platform: Visitors can easily edit the information presented and add new startups. Gate keepers (or site moderators, most of them interns) need to approve the changes suggested to make them effective. This helps fight spam and keep the content in sync with reality. On the downside, it seems like it may take a while before moderators review your contribution.

The juicy thing about the Crunchbase is the widget that site editors can grab and paste in their posts. This widget is almost like a seal of authenticity: Its presence doesn't mean that what is written above or below it is true, but it helps publishers provide information that is right. For example, if I fail to make an accurate description of a company I am reviewing, the reader can always be thankful that I have posted a direct link to a trustworthy source of information about the topic he was searching. In other words, the widget adds value to my posts.

Fortunately, the Crunchbase is not alone in this arena of compiling all the Web 2.0 startups in one place. I will start by Buzzshout, a Website that is no longer maintained by its owner, but that I really liked when it was still active. Buzzshout is a user-generated directory of Web 2.0 startups where visitors also rank the tools they like. Despite the clean-looking interface, and the catchy name, the owner of the site dropped the project to go work for Scribd (who wouldn't?).

More serious competitors include Dealipedia: Dealipedia covers deals from all industries (not specific to the Web industry). Compared to the Crunchbase, Dealipedia offers weekly wrap-ups, an extensive collection of transactions, reporting views of M&A, Investment, IPO, weekly deal count and it tells you who actually makes money on the deals (something I'm sure the Founder of Techcrunch would love to mention too). Because of its lack of focus on tech deals, Dealipedia doesn't directly compete with the Crunchbase.

Crunchbase's most direct and aggressive competitor to the Crunchbase is TradeVibes. Duncan Riley gives an in-depth comparison between the two directories in this post. Duncan Riley brings out good points, but to my opinion, TradeVibes is attractive because it creates a playful environment around the life of Web 2.0 startups. In Tradevibes, you can play startup battle: Choose between two similar startups which one will eat the other up. Users get access to discussions threads, they can give their opinion on a startup (bullish or bearish, they can vote, they can win gifts if they invite friends to join, and they offer site publishers to grab and paste widgets of the companies they cover.

TradeVibes was founded by 4 Pay-Palers. According to Compete, they generate about 25K uniques a month. Their business strategy is definitely more user-generated oriented. So far, to determine who will succeed in this game, it is mostly a question of belief: user-generated or editor-moderated? What is the winning solution? There isn't any proven model for this kind of activity. The Crunchbase attracts more visitors though, over 300K/months. However, it isn't clear if widget views are included in the maths. If this is the case, than the two directories are probably even.

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CrunchBase
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120997/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120997/ Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:29:11 -0700 Your Web-Browsing Social Companion - Interview with Guillaume Thonier, US VP of Engineering, Yoono XavierV So far, to connect with your friends online, there are a few tools available: destination sites like Spokeo - http://spokeo.com lets you know what people do across several social platforms; Friendfeed - http://friendfeed.com does the same, but enhances this experience by adding extra social features to their platform; Flock also allows you to keep track of your friends' activities online, ...
So far, to connect with your friends online, there are a few tools available: destination sites like Spokeo lets you know what people do across several social platforms; Friendfeed does the same, but enhances this experience by adding extra social features to their platform; Flock also allows you to keep track of your friends' activities online, except that Flock is a browser all to itself (here's a good list of social aggregators).

Quite frankly, all the players in this arena have developed great technologies to track online friends activities, but most of them fail so far to make this information easy to access and interact with.

Yoono is yet another friend aggregator. What singles Yoono out from the competition is the Yoono browser-based widget that lets users connect directly to their Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed and Flickr accounts (Myspace coming). Not only do users receive live updates from those social platforms, but they can send updates and replies directly from the widget, without having to leave the page they are browsing.

Of course, Yoono is also a social network all to itself, as it enables users to connect with each other and share bookmarked material like webpages, photos and videos. Sharing multimedia files can be done through IM, where the content is viewable by the recipient directly in the chatting environment.

As you can see in the video, the Yoono widget stands on the left of the browser. Hiding the sidebar is at a tip of a click. Is the widget slowing the browser down? I have not experienced any of that so far. Yoono is a light app, and recommended by Mozilla Firefox.

On the downside - other bloggers noticed it too - the widget tends to be too small to show the activity of several hundreds of friends across several social platforms. Guillaume Thonier, US VP of Engineering, says in the video that the development team is well-aware of this weakness, and that a solution to tackle it shall see the day around the end of June.

Quite honestly, it doesn't beat Twhirl in terms of Twitter updates but its diversity of social services makes it a perfect browsing companion.

If you want to connect on Yoono, look for xavierv.

Yoono

More info about Yoono:
Yoono browser plugin makes Firefox more like Flock - Download Squad
Head-to-Head Comparison with Digsby, Flock - Mashable
Do Yoono - Social Media Club
Yoono takes aggregation in a new direction - The Guidewire

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120762/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120762/ Tue, 10 Jun 2008 01:38:59 -0700 Re-Discover Your Web-Hosted Media Files - Interview with Mike Duggan, Oosah XavierV Aggregating services are extremely popular these days. Friendfeed - http://friendfeed.com aggregates your friends' online activities; Tubemogul - http://tubemogul.com aggregates your videos under one roof; and now Oosah - http://oosah.com steps in as the web-based application to manage all (at least a lot of them so far) your online media files. The first thing that strikes when using Oosah is its file ...

Aggregating services are extremely popular these days. Friendfeed aggregates your friends' online activities; Tubemogul aggregates your videos under one roof; and now Oosah steps in as the web-based application to manage all (at least a lot of them so far) your online media files.

The first thing that strikes when using Oosah is its file explorer interface: very much the look and feel of a desktop explorer. Every file is organized in folders placed in the left sidebar, making it really easy for any user to play with it. Just like a desktop explorer, users can create new folders, drag and drop files from one folder to the other, rename the folders...

These folders can contain files that users uploaded to Oosah, or files hosted on other media sites: So far, you can connect your Oosah account to Facebook, Picasa, Youtube and Flickr. These accounts show as folders in the Oosah explorer, making it super easy to access and manage.

Oosah is laser-focused on media management activities. From the Oosah interface, users can generate an embed code to share their media content, send it via email, make their files password protected, create RSS feeds, distribute their media as podcasts, print their documents on a local printer, create slideshows, and so much more.

So far, the slideshow is the first and only creation tool that users will find on Oosah. With a simple process of drag and drop, Oosah users can choose specific images or videos, add a music, a skinned player and transition effects, and Oosah generates a slideshow instantly. As any other media file on Oosah, users can share the slideshow through all the features mentioned above. Slideshows are even downloadable as zip files.

Oosah is working at connecting more social platforms to their services. More internal features are on their way too. Regarding the business model, Oosah is considering charging for users who shall use more than the 2 Gigabytes that comes with any free account. But things are not written in stone yet, and the team is mostly focused on development issues so far.

I see in Oosah a great opportunity for content creators like myself who need flexible distribution tools. With Oosah, I could put three videos in a slideshow (let's call it a widget at this point), distribute the widgets on other sites where i might not be able to access it again, and freely change the content of the widget from the Oosah interface. A lot of Oosah features are unique, but this one is the graal for video distribution, as no other service allows such a flexible tool to create, distribute and modify media files. Oosah has even developed an analytics feature for creators to track their content.

My personal request would be to get access to Revver from Oosah. That would seriously add a professional flavor to their services.

Really a fun toy to play with. Check it out:
Oosah

More info about Oosah:
Extremely rich “Web 2.0″ digital media content management site - Amazing Startups
Oosah: A Hub for Your Personal Online Media - Techcrunch
Oosah Connects Social Sites for Easy File Transfers - LifeHacker
Will Oosah be the web’s photo hub? - VentureBeat

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Oosah
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120569/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120569/ Tue, 03 Jun 2008 09:53:54 -0700 Social Mobile Messenger - interview with Ben Keighran, BluePulse XavierV "Bluepulse is a free mobile social messenger. Take the best of a social network, the best of an instant messenger, revolutionize both and combine them to run on anyone’s mobile phone. That’s a mobile social messenger, that’s bluepulse." (Standard Society - http://www.standardsociety.com/index.php/blog/article/bluepulse/) What is the difference between a social network and a social messenger? Sites like LinkedIn or Facebook enable users to ...

"Bluepulse is a free mobile social messenger.
Take the best of a social network, the best of an instant messenger, revolutionize both and combine them to run on anyone’s mobile phone. That’s a mobile social messenger, that’s bluepulse." (Standard Society)

What is the difference between a social network and a social messenger? Sites like LinkedIn or Facebook enable users to grow their networks of friends/acquaintances. A social messenger leverages the power of social platforms to facilitate interpersonal communications between existing friends.

BluePulse is the best social messenger solution out there. Once you sign up to the service - exclusively from your mobile phone - you get to connect with your existing friends through SMS, email or direct messages on the BluePulse platform. BluePulse is an universal mobile inbox for all your social interactions.

It is hard to do a better job than Ben Keighran (BluePulse's Founder and CEO - video above) to describe the service. I really like the fact that on bluePulse, you can send and receive messages from and to people that are not subscribed to the service. This flexibility makes the mobile platform extremely competitive (no wonder the service has been adopted in more than 190 countries).

Recently, BluePulse launched 3 new features to reinforce their unique offer. The most important to my opinion is the easy friends importing from your email account. It makes it a lot easier to connect with your existing friends who don't and won't join BluePulse because they are just not tech-savvy enough (even though the service is dead-simple to use).

At the end of the video, Ben Keighran identifies BluePulse's market and main competitors. BluePulse's goal is to become the social portal on your mobile, the starting point for all your interactions, regardless of the social platform you should use to connect with others. So far, their value-proposition makes a whole lot of sense, their technology works perfectly fine, and they recently hired a new CTO, Christopher Nguyen. Christopher Nguyen came to BluePulse in early 2008 from Google, where he was the Director of Engineering responsible for the operations of Google Apps (GMail, Calendar, etc).

Really an impressive universal social mobile app. Check it out:
BluePulse

More info about BluePulse:
Bluepulse Tops 150 Million Messages Per Month; - bNet
Robert Scoble visits Bluepulse HQ - BluePulse blog
Video-interview with Ben Keighran - Avin TV (better camera focus on phone)


Mobile Social Networks on RateItAll


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bluepulse
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120450/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120450/ Thu, 29 May 2008 11:14:41 -0700 Building Social Commerce - interview with Balaji Sundararajan, Bravisa XavierV Social commerce... While the term was coined by VC David Beisel - http://www.genuinevc.com/archives/2005/12/the_beginnings.htm, it is Steve Rubel who brought a comprehensive definition - http://www.micropersuasion.com/2005/12/2006_trends_to_.html to the new trend: “Social commerce can take several forms, but in sum it means creating places where people can collaborate online, get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them. It shrinks ...

Social commerce... While the term was coined by VC David Beisel, it is Steve Rubel who brought a comprehensive definition to the new trend:
“Social commerce can take several forms, but in sum it means creating places where people can collaborate online, get advice from trusted individuals, find goods and services and then purchase them. It shrinks the research and purchasing cycle by creating a single destination powered by the power of many.”
The VC and the Blogger sketched the main lines of social commerce back in those days. It's important to notice that while we witness an evolution of social commerce today, we don't particularly see that "single destination powered by the power of many". Or don't we?

Balaji Sundararajan is the Founder and CEO of Bravisa, a social commerce site. Bravisa's role in the social commerce landfill is to provide products for individual retailers at wholesale price. The process is dead simple: sign-up - product selection (from over 80 suppliers) - price tagging - store creation - product promotion through widgets, partner sites, written reviews - a 10-minute process max.

Retailers don't need to spend a dime to sell products through Bravisa. Online sellers choose the profit margin they wish to make on the product they sell. Bravisa handles payment processes, shipping, and customer service.

Bravisa's main competition is Zlio. The main difference between the two is that Zlio's products are from the Amazon store feed. since Zlio is the middlemen between a retailer and a re-seller, profit margins are smaller (check comments for details). Bravisa gets its stuff directly from wholesalers, which is a huge difference for small individual retailers.

So far, the product selection for individual sellers on Bravisa is not extraordinary. I would even say I was disappointed to see the wholesale store filled with pillows, candles and digital picture frames. Not very exciting products.

But Bravisa is young and has a great vision in mind: Becoming the back-end engine of all social commerce transactions. Balaji Sundararajan's strategy is to grow through partnerships to acquire new retailers (example), and therefore negotiate more deals with more whole sellers. And quite frankly, after talking with Balaji, I have total confidence in Bravisa's achievement of their goal.

Bravisa

More info about Bravisa:
Bravisa E-store: The Good, The Bad, And The Very Good - Online Business Review
Boosting Bravisa - Selling Products Without Owning - Startup Booster
Bravisa - Another Online Shop - Problogger
Bravisa - Make money with your own online store - howtomarketyourstuff.com

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Bravisa
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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120395/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120395/ Tue, 27 May 2008 09:40:31 -0700 Dare to social date - interview with Suneet Wadhwa, Derek Gordon, Engage XavierV A "bar-like environment". Those are the words that Suneet Wadhwa, Founder and CEO of Engage - http://engage.com, uses to describe traditional dating sites. The 1998 romantic movie "You got mail" has seriously changed Americans' attitude regarding online dating. Sites like Match.com - http://match.com soon became the next best thing for singles to make romantic encounters in a whole new fashion. Back ...

A "bar-like environment". Those are the words that Suneet Wadhwa, Founder and CEO of Engage, uses to describe traditional dating sites. The 1998 romantic movie "You got mail" has seriously changed Americans' attitude regarding online dating. Sites like Match.com soon became the next best thing for singles to make romantic encounters in a whole new fashion.

Back to 2008. The rise of online dating has brought yet another dilemma in the mix: Most online daters lie on their profiles to decrease their chances of being rejected. This is why Suneet Wadhwa describes traditional dating sites as "bar-like environment", i.e. places where the end justifies the means when it comes to attracting others.

Engage has been created in response to this dilemma. Engage is an online social dating site. The idea is to invite your friends to help you find the perfect match through recommendations. Most people love to play wingman for their friends. For that purpose, the Engage team has developed a set of social features, like the Matchmaker - you crawl a list of people to recommend some to your friend(s) - or the Cast Your Vote - out of three given profiles, you pick the one you think fits the most to a fourth given person.

Thanks to the presence of your friends:
a. You can approach other people with more ease by asking your friends to help you out, just like we often do in the real life;
b. You tend to be more honest since you are held socially accountable. Basically, your real life follows you online.

The service is really fun. As Derek Gordon, VP of marketing, adds at the end of the video, the service is not just designed for singles looking for a hot date. Married people can join the fun (if you're married, you can't put yourself in the date-me marketplace on Engage) and recommend their buddies to other singles to help them meet the right person.

There is much more to be said about Engage, so read those great articles below:
Engage Introduces Next-Generation Social Dating Community Platform - bnet
San Mateo-Based Engage Publicly Launches Social Dating Community - Silicon Valley Wire
Engage.com's CEO & VP of Love - CupidCast podcast
Engage: Where Dating gets Social! - Victor Caballero blog

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]]> http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120261/ http://www.gooruze.com/members/xavierv/blog/120261/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:44:22 -0700 Apture is 3.0 - interview with Tristan Harris, Apture XavierV Apture - http://apture.com is a new tool for bloggers that allows “content creators the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items directly into their pages” by adding links and small navigator windows to pages and posts automatically (CC Weblog - http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8283). This description of Apture couldn't be more exact. I am a video producer, and until today, I had not ...

Apture is a new tool for bloggers that allows “content creators the power to find and incorporate relevant multimedia items directly into their pages” by adding links and small navigator windows to pages and posts automatically (CC Weblog).

This description of Apture couldn't be more exact. I am a video producer, and until today, I had not found a way to let readers access and watch all of my videos without leaving that same page you are on right now (converting readers into viewers is tricky). If you look in the center sidebar (HyveUp video directory), just hover a link and the video pops right up in an HTML window (it's not another browser window popping up).

With Apture, setting up one of those links is a breeze. Simply select directly on your homepage the word(s) you want to link to, and Apture automatically fetches for you related Youtube, Flickr, Wikipedia and WashPost content. Out of this automated pre-selection, you the publisher select what it is that you really want to link to.

Apture opens up the door to a new form of navigation system, where content is universal thanks to CC-license and Wikipedia's GFDL license. As of today, small site publisher can try Apture for free, and the startup offers a revenue-sharing model for larger media sites.

As far as I am concerned, Apture is one of the most innovative publishing solutions I have heard of and adopted so far. A lot of startups think that 3D is the way to tackle the flat Web symptom. Apture actually is a form of 3D, as it adds layers of content to your site. However, 3D is a little sci-fi and heavy on your bandwidth. Apture is down-to-earth and nice with your connection speed. Is this the Web 3.0 everyone is fussing about?

There is much more to be said about Apture, so read those great articles below:
With Apture, Hyperlinks Get Rich Media - Giga Om
Apture: Enrich Your Site’s Content - Brown Thoughts
Apture drags online news experience into the 21st century - Venture Beat
Fantastically cool code to watch - Lawrence Lessig's blog

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