WebSite Watch 3
The following pages are remarkable because they either offer a service that I predict will be successful or demonstrate a unique model.
Interesting note: Dow Jones VentureOne reports that during the first half of 2007, venture capitalists put $464 million into 101 Web 2.0 deals. This is up from 89 deals involving $432 million during the first half of 2006. For the first time, New England beat the Bay Area in terms of funds given, $102 million versus $90 million. Europe’s investments doubled during the first half of this year to $51.5 million. Including cash from other VC hotspots such as China and Israel, total investment from outside the US grew by 60 percent to $107 million.
Powerset (www.powerset.com) San Francisco startup, Powerset, is charging into the search engine arena telling the crowd that Google has plateaued. The technology that they’re licensing from the Palo Alto Research center (PARC) has been tried before, and failed. Ask Jeeves was the first popular plain English language search engine that brought users results based on a simple sentence, not keywords. Powerset is testing it’s technology on a selected 16,000 users but so far their searches are restricted to Wikipedia. Users then vote on weather a Google query returned better results or if they were outdone by Powerset. Theoretically, users will be able to get better results by typing more precise search requests. Should this technology prove accurate, Google will need to shift gears to keep up.
SpirlFrog (www.spiralfrog.com) This iTunes competitor is completely free. Registration requires an e-mail address, name, dob, and zip code. The site aims to let users download tunes to their personal computers with the click of a mouse. With profits from advertising, SpiralFrog estimates it will need 10 million users each month to pay for its record licensing. I believe this site will meet with some failure. Set for launch next Monday, the site so far has only 770,000 songs compared to iTunes’ 6 million. Furthermore, Mac users can’t get the service and Mozilla users must either change browsers or download Windows Media Player plug-ins. The niche between Pandora and iTunes’ services is not a large one, nor one that, without a competitive number of archived songs, will be very popular. It is a niche nonetheless so only time will tell.
Bazaar Voice, Inc. (www.bazaarvoice.com) This startup is based on promoting e-commerce. They have a number of services aimed at shoppers. One feature gives consumers the tools to ask other consumers questions about products they might buy. While many vendor sites have places for customers to review a product, Bazaar Voice is the first to offer the “ask and answer” service, which would enable one to pose a question and hope for an answer moments before a purchase. They recently netted $8.8 million in VC funding.
Fon (www.fon.com) Founded by Martin Varsavsky in 2005, Spanish ingenuity shines through this internet startup. Fon is as simple as it is useful. First, Fon sells users a wireless router (about US $60). They hook it up, register their node, and agree to share their connection with other “Foneros”. Any users who want to charge outsiders for access can do so, and Fon gets a cut. Using a neat feature involving Google Earth, users can pick out locations via satellite! It’s as practical for tourists using their laptops as it is for business travelers trying to find a signal with their PDA. With $21.7 million from Google and Skype among other investors, Fon plans on having over a million hot-spots by 2010. With half a million users and over 70,000 hot-spots already, this shouldn’t be a problem. In the near future, expect a few telecom provider partnerships. One foreseeable snag is the fact that cities, such as San Francisco, are beginning to explore the possibility city-wide WiFi.
Loopt (www.loopt.com) Palo Alto-based Loopt is a play on the social networking fad. CEO and founder, Sam Altman, turned one’s mobile phone into a 24/7 friend-tracker (through their application software) and allows you to view friends’ locations on a Google-looking map. Reciprocally, friends can see your profile picture above your geographic location. You can also get alerts when friends are nearby and send “proximity” messages back and forth. Their hook is a profile that members create and can manipulate through their cell phones. Event locations can also be tagged and sent out to all, some, or just one friend. Users at home can view the same information on their desktops. One catch is that only certain phones will support this activity. However, the target demographic is likely to already have the upgraded phones anyway. In their Series A round of funding, Loopt secured $8 million. In Series B, Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates dished out $12 million. The service is free for the time being but in January, users will be charged a $2.99 monthly fee. Competition as of yet remains the text message-based, Google-owned, Dodgeball – a far less smooth experience.
Soonr (www.soonr.com) This September 2006 product connects users with their PCs at home. Pictures, data files, sound bytes; all can be accessed and optimized for use on your mobile phone. Soonr even provides users with a desktop search capability. Of course the real-time practicality of a service like this would be to access office files left at home, at work. For teens or students, the pictures alone would make this service desirable. Series A negotiations landed Soonr $6 million from Clearstone Venture Partners, Intel Capital, and private investors. Soonr has approximately 250,000 users and partnerships with WebEx and Swisscom.
