Over the weekend TagWorld, a young, self-funded startup in Santa Monica that’s all of a month old, launched a music product that is turning heads.
TagWorld is targeting the MySpace crowd – generally people under 25, who all want a blogging/home page presence on the web. Sites like MySpace, FaceBook and Xanga are generating a truly massive number of page views – MySpace and FaceBook each rival Google in page views (although they don’t approach the reach). The reason? These users spend most of their day on these sites, updating their sites and clicking on friends.
TagWorld already had an impressive feature set that includes a GB of storage and great ajax tools for creating a site. And, as the name implies, tagging of everything.
The new music functionality is a full generation ahead of MySpace and others. Bands can upload a GB of music and have a number of DRM options to control distrubution. Users can mix this music into their own media player and can upload their own music (and other files, like photos and movies) as well. They can create customized music playlists, store the music on TagWorld and have access to it anywhere they can get online. Users can also set up playlists that others can listen to when they visit the user’s website. All of this requires nothing but the ability to click on the music and drag the music player modue onto their site. No HTML or other technical skills are needed.
Can TagWorld take on MySpace and become the King of Social Networks 3.0?
Yeah, I think they will. For a number of reasons.
First, the founders, Fred Krueger and Evan Rifkin, have done a great job getting top bands to start using the platform. Check out the TagWorld pages for Death Cab For Cutie, The Shins and The Postal Service.
Second, TagWorld has 160,000+ users after just a month of being live. The “in” crowd is starting to notice.
Third, I think the teenager/student social network doesn’t have the same lock-in that, say, ebay has. TagWorld’s target users are fickle and don’t want to be considered mainstream. They’ll try new things and if the functionality is there, they’ll stay. And this target market is constantly renewing itself as children become teenagers (new customers) and young adults move on to more professional tools (customers leave).
So, in a nutshell, I’m bullish on TagWorld. And some of these features quite frankly appeal to a much larger audience than teenagers and young adults. The market for an online music locker with a portable player is wide open. TagWorld can take this market.
I’m still very skeptical about TagWorld. The fact that it has unverified signups makes me wonder how good that user number is. The popular tags on the homepage is a static GIF. Besides that, the activity through tagging and such does not match with what is being said in terms of metrics.
And it doesn’t work on Safari.
Sorry Mike. I keep trying to see what you see (and I have more than a nascent interest, working for a record company), but I can’t see i t.
Hey Ethan,
I’m getting the Safari comment a lot. Why is it so hard to develop for that browser?
You could certainly be right regarding the accuracy of the metrics. But what isn’t disputable, in my opinion, is that they’ve created a really user friendly and feature rich product. I think Tagworld has legs.
OK, I can agree that the features are pretty nice, but it seems a but…fluffy. Signing some bands doesn’t mean much either. I know that we’re willing to try anything here, and often do, but that doesn’t mean we think everything is a sustainable product or business model.
Also the site is quite slow.
I think social networking services are ultimately going to be quite faddish anyhow. MySpace is way beyond a social networking site at this point from a marketing perspective. As is FaceBook.
What I think will be interesting is how these services adapt over the next year as the US population moves more mobile, catching up with international.
Tough time for the Tagworld site to go in for some maintenance. Or is that the error message for Safari users like me?
Safari has a bit of a weird JavaScript implementation. The main problem is that it has a problem with doing dynamic includes of other JavaScript files on the fly, but there’s a lot more to it. Its quirks aren’t really any more significantly than those in IE, but since Safari is pushing a merely 2-4% of browser share, it doesn’t get the focus.
While it seems like they’ve put together some nice tools and I love that they’re thinking big, I think it deserves mention that Tagworld is actively spamming.
I’ve received 6 bogus “invites” from the profile of some pretty girl (that sadly, I don’t know).
If the founders are reading this, I’d love to hear their thought process behind using a spam campaign in support of a site that is trying to be legit.
Everyone is being so friggin skeptical. Can’t you just accept Tagworld really has 160 000 odd users becuase its a really great service they offer.
Ethan,
I agree on the site speed. It’s always been slow…time to ramp up the servers.
Andrew – I love these guys, but I don’t trust anyone’s stats.
The artist pages you mentioned freeze up both Firefox and Safari on my Mac…
Excellent write-up. I tried tagworld a few weeks ago, but came away distinctly unimpressed. It seemed clunky and a bit cliched. But then I’m not the target audience and I’m possibly a bit jaded at this end of the year
Also, I don’t trust those stats either.
I think skeptacism is healthy, as we saw in the 2000 days, a lot can be made through pushing statistics.
Tagworld seems like a great product. I think it gives a much more user friendly interface as opposed to Myspace’s bland looks and browser crashing pages (If one more person’s page I visit puts 20 videos, changing cursors, and un-needed scripting I’m deleting my account on MySpace). Servers always end up being slow at first on SNS sites. Michael, statistics I’d love to know, but I doubt will be released right now:
-retention rate on users
-most used feature
I think if we see users using tagworld for the same features on myspace, we really have an interesting early insight to the loyalty of Myspace users. We can also see what users really think of new features such as the music section. With Rupert behind Myspace, I would expect this to be a very difficult fight for tagworld. I’m looking forward to more posts on tagworld. Btw, when is the next party?
-Jason L. Baptiste
It seems like a powerful suite of services, but of course the main thing is drawing people away from myspace. That’s basically the whole game right now.
I think going at it from the music angle makes sense, because the presence of bands was one of the major reasons myspace went crazy.
However, right now it all feels a bit top-down and a bit forced. Organic growth is the real killer in this space, once they have the ‘feel’ of organic growth, they’ll be well positioned.
The product looks good. It sometimes works, right now, but who knows how it will scale. The overall concept is great however.
On the user side, 85% are acquired through aggressive marketing. The “in” crowd definitely hasn’t noticed yet, they might, but that 160K users does not reflect word of mouth sign ups.
As some of the comments have metioned, there is some shady marekting going on, which shouldn’t surprise anyone as the founders come straight from the adware business.
Overall great idea, fake numbers, looking for a sale in the next year or so.
these guys spam and they stole their concept from a teen site, tagged.com. my sister is always on tagged and thought tagworld was by the same people.
these guys are bogus – for one use last.fm for music – it the real deal
My music player on there wont work
I Like This Website Did I See Right On This Site We Can Upload 250 Songs? If So Then I Will Tell All My Friends On My Space. On That Site You Can Only Have 4 Songs I Have Lots Of Songs To Put On This Website I Have Posted A Bulletin On My Space Telling People I Know To Have A Look At This Site. Yes I Like This One Better Thank You Your Newest Member Tony Quinn. Oh I Have 215 Friends On My Space And If We Can Upload 250 Songs Then I Will Tell Them.
The music angle seems crowded. In addition to the current Goliath MySpace, there’s LastFM (as previously mentioned), plus Pandora and Webjay for finding new music and sharing playlists, respectively. I think people are being too literal in assessing why MySpace is so popular. It was first to combine several social tools in an easy-to-use form AND build around the presence of a topic (music) that people are passionate about, love debating/sharing, and are FED up with mainstream gatekeepers (lame commercial radio and MTV). There surely are other areas that still have unmet needs.
Both myspace and tagworld, are slow, tagworld has more features, and is totally user friendly. as much of a computer geek that I am, I don’t have the time to HTML everything on myspace, like your required to do, with tagworld I can get it done faster. I agree, we need to somehow tell people that it is okay to cut the cord with myspace to join another site, a site that I believe is 90% better in someways, I tried talking about tagworld on myspace, but the post would never show up…hrmmm I guess Tom @myspace doesn’t want word to get out?
Another one to keep an eye on is PostElement.com. They just launched a beta version of their site, but it looks to have a strong foundation. The features they are rolling out should place them in a strong position.
I want to try it, but I get nothing, I have a burly cpu and net line, the intro was very user friendly I really liked it, then when it came time to search or use any of the search functions, it won’t budge, I’ll try again, and hope they kick myspaces ass, since.. Why would I want to fund Fox? I’d rather give it to these guys once I know they offer an intelligent service
Rumor has it that myspace is coming out with a better version of there site on another domain name starting march 1st it will be another social networking community site with alot more features even then tagworld. I guess to stay ahead of other sites coming out like TagWorld.com also i heard it will be called http://www.FriendWise.com i guess well just have to see if FriendWise happens.
So how did Tagworld get all them users in 1 month?
Well Ive moved to Tagworld and think it’s pretty good. Certainly better than Myspace, bith on features and usuability. Bit slow running though.
Not bad.
It’s nice to see a site that’s not held together by duct tape like Myspace, but the lack of Safari and Firefox support worries me.
很不错哦,,支持呀,,,
I don’t thing the social networking site tagworld would ever come close as in music goes as myspace does but it’s good to see tagowrld moving in that direction.
Tagword just trying to offer more services, not sure if that should be called ‘war’..