TechCrunch50 - Social Media Streams Session
Threadsy - “pull yourself together”. It’s a unified inbox of all your social networks and communications. There’s a lot going on here but pretty powerful stuff. It not only centralizes all of your communications, but builds complete profile pages about all the people in your network, offering you easy access to all their homes on the web. Scoble wanted to try it right away. Dick liked the centralized inbox which is geared to solve a major problem. Chamillionaire thought it was brilliant - his way of cheating on mySpace.
Lissn - aggregates and simply presents “conversations” that are going on across the web, showing how many people are listening in on them and participating. The local component is neat - so you might only see conversations that are around San Francisco or DC. Dick liked the product but pointed out that Google ads aren’t going to work but liked the idea of sponsored conversations (eg, Comcast Cares - sponsored conversations).
Radiusly - is a microblogging community for professionals to network and market their products and services. It allows for customers to interact with them and learn more. A company can include an entire list of employees who are engaged in social media. This was a tough sell for Scoble who thought they missed the target. In general, they got beat up by the panel who didn’t see any compelling reason to use it.
Stribe - a plug and play social network for any site. The site can track social activity and give the owner metrics. Chat, messaging, IM, recommended sites, etc are all integrated into this very simple installation. I think we’ve seen this before… Let’s just say the panel feedback didn’t go so well.
Clixtr - location + smartphone cameras creates an opportunity for real-time event photo streams. Photos and events are public and can be followed live on the web or mobile devices and others can contribute as they happen. Schroepfer thought it was all great, had some good questions. Scoble installed the app during the preso but it locked up his phone. Oops. At least Scoble still liked it and complimented them on the sign up process. Other judges had good suggestions about incentives and rewards (gaming type features).
The Whuffie Bank - inspired by the concept of creative commons, they are attempting to build a new currency around reputation. It’s a nonprofit organization, but users who earn whuffie salary will be able to redeem that currency for real and virtual products and services. It’s currently integrated with Twitter, Facebook is coming soon. The website ranks people based on their value, which is created by looking at your influence and reputation, and the content of messages. General consensus was that it would be difficult to get it to take off. Chamillionaire felt it was a lot of work without a clear reward.
Overall, judges liked Clixtr and Threadsy very much.
DEMO PIT WINNERS (got to come on stage and present)
Chyngle - an ultra-local mobile network. It provides branded experiences for users to interact and exchange value with each other and their surroundings. The local areas could be stadiums, malls, resorts, airports, schools, hotels and more. Loved the example for finding a ride home. They already have customers in line. Judges were lukewarm on the opportunity.
Socialwok - team from Singapore, built a social network in Google Apps. Use existing Google App credentials, sign into a Twitter like interface and have community features available. Anyone in the org can publish to external social networks as well.
