Panelists:

Stowe Boyd, A Working Capital
Kevin Efrusy, Accel Partners
David Tennenhouse, A9.com

Companies:

BubbleShare (http://www.bubbleshare.com)

Bubbleshare had joined the ring in the heavily contested photo sharing space with a simple tool and lots of cool ajax features. Albert Lai was a bit secretive about business model but did say they are exploring the “Big Three” revenue models- Advertising, premium services, and partnering and licensing deals. There was lots of concern from the panel and audience about Bubbleshare’s chances of building their own community. While ajax features are cool, Web 2.0 is still about network effects. Neat features alone won’t get you past existing services where network effects are already established. To induce switching or acquire the next marginal user, they will need to be an order of magnitude better. As a reluctant somewhat entrapped user of ofoto, bubbleshare offers some nice to have, but you won’t see me switching just yet.

Dogster (http://www.dogster.com)

Dogster is a 200,000 person online pet community. Dogster’s presentation started with a Dogster member running through the audience dressed as a dog. According to Ted Rangle, Dogster’s founder, that costume represented their entire marketing budget for 2006. Who would have thought that a site for uploading your pet’s photos to share with your friends was big business? I’m all for dogs, I might even say that I’m one of those crazy dog owners, but not sure if I’d be befriending “Lady”, giving her virtual bones, sending her messages and expecting Lady to write me a message back. Well, apparently, I’m wrong. The site looks like the Facebook, for your dog (or worse, for your cat). The founder described Dogster as digital Doritos; it is fun to play around in and you just can’t stop. The company has seen healthy growth since its inception and with advertising revenue from pet related stores, the company has been able to boot strap and quickly became profitable. Growth has been completely dependent on word of mouth; on average, each member tells 4 people. Who’s the demographic? 80% women, average age: 32, with salaries above $70,000. What better place to advertise pet products than to people with money who are that crazy about their dogs or cats to spend time creating a web page for them online? Dogster’s integrated brand campaign employs multilayered messaging to make the advertiser a trusted member of the community. Dogster will likely make money. One sexist question from the audience was: Do these women have children, and when they, can we expect them to continue pouring that much love into their dogs and into Dogster?

Popist (http://www.popist.com)

Popist is a social network that lets you see what your friends, your network, your neighborhood and your school really love and to share it with them. They’ve created an open API that lets you create a dynamic sharing protocol for your user base. I like the local search component; I like the social element; I like the fact that it solves the multifaceted digital identity problem by letting you export your Popist hotlist to all of your places on the internet. It’s also a great idea to let people to be brand evangelists and make money off of it. But, the problem with this model is that there is so much going on right now. To be truly successful, new community spaces have to differentiate themselves dramatically from MySpace and the Facebook and micro-sharing alone isn’t going to cut it. Interestingly, the Popist founder got slammed by the panelists and the audience, but the next presenter, Greg Tseng from Tagged began his presentation by coming to Popist’s defense.

Panelists:

Stowe Boyd, A Working Capital
Kevin Efrusy, Accel Partners
David Tennenhouse, A9.com

Companies:

BubbleShare (http://www.bubbleshare.com)

Bubbleshare had joined the ring in the heavily contested photo sharing space with a simple tool and lots of cool ajax features. Albert Lai was a bit secretive about business model but did say they are exploring the “Big Three” revenue models- Advertising, premium services, and partnering and licensing deals. There was lots of concern from the panel and audience about Bubbleshare’s chances of building their own community. While ajax features are cool, Web 2.0 is still about network effects. Neat features alone won’t get you past existing services where network effects are already established. To induce switching or acquire the next marginal user, they will need to be an order of magnitude better. As a reluctant somewhat entrapped user of ofoto, bubbleshare offers some nice to have, but you won’t see me switching just yet.

Dogster (http://www.dogster.com)

Dogster is a 200,000 person online pet community. Dogster’s presentation started with a Dogster member running through the audience dressed as a dog. According to Ted Rangle, Dogster’s founder, that costume represented their entire marketing budget for 2006. Who would have thought that a site for uploading your pet’s photos to share with your friends was big business? I’m all for dogs, I might even say that I’m one of those crazy dog owners, but not sure if I’d be befriending “Lady”, giving her virtual bones, sending her messages and expecting Lady to write me a message back. Well, apparently, I’m wrong. The site looks like the Facebook, for your dog (or worse, for your cat). The founder described Dogster as digital Doritos; it is fun to play around in and you just can’t stop. The company has seen healthy growth since its inception and with advertising revenue from pet related stores, the company has been able to boot strap and quickly became profitable. Growth has been completely dependent on word of mouth; on average, each member tells 4 people. Who’s the demographic? 80% women, average age: 32, with salaries above $70,000. What better place to advertise pet products than to people with money who are that crazy about their dogs or cats to spend time creating a web page for them online? Dogster’s integrated brand campaign employs multilayered messaging to make the advertiser a trusted member of the community. Dogster will likely make money. One sexist question from the audience was: Do these women have children, and when they, can we expect them to continue pouring that much love into their dogs and into Dogster?

Popist (http://www.popist.com)

Popist is a social network that lets you see what your friends, your network, your neighborhood and your school really love and to share it with them. They’ve created an open API that lets you create a dynamic sharing protocol for your user base. I like the local search component; I like the social element; I like the fact that it solves the multifaceted digital identity problem by letting you export your Popist hotlist to all of your places on the internet. It’s also a great idea to let people to be brand evangelists and make money off of it. But, the problem with this model is that there is so much going on right now. To be truly successful, new community spaces have to differentiate themselves dramatically from MySpace and the Facebook and micro-sharing alone isn’t going to cut it. Interestingly, the Popist founder got slammed by the panelists and the audience, but the next presenter, Greg Tseng from Tagged began his presentation by coming to Popist’s defense.