Berkeley based Hubpages, which we wrote about in February, launched today. CEO Paul Edmondson also tells me that he’s raised a cool $2 million from Hummer Winblad, with Mitchell Kertzman taking a board seat and Will Price taking a board observer seat.
Hubpages allows user to create topical web page (think Wikia or Squidoo) that also included blog-like modules like comments. Pages are tagged by the creator and by readers, allowing for quick browsing among related pages.
Users are encouraged to build sites that can generate revenue. A good example is a list of important books on a topic, or a review of a product (the best running shoe, for example). Hubpages will insert google ads relevant to the topic, as well as allow links to Amazon, eBay and other affiliate-paying retailers, and split revenue 50/50 with the page creator. Compared to Squidoo, which only pays 50% of profits to page creators, that’s a good deal.
I created a page on the site, called Crunch Network, to experience the site building tools. The page took about 10 minutes to create, and includes summary text, RSS feeds from three of our sites, and a comment area. The creation tools are far beyond what wikia or squidoo has currently (I’d appreciate any comments on this from Squidoo authors), using ajax for previews, moving modules around on the page, etc. They’ve done a really nice job.
Pages are ranked and presesented on the home page. Rank is determined by a algorithm that takes total traffic and “polarization” into account; polarization is simply how often people click that they like, or don’t like, a particular website. Whether they like it or not isn’t relevant, only that they have an opinion.
Can Hubpages succeed? If it will, it has to differentiate itself from Squidoo, which has yet to see significant usage growth. A key way to increase the likelihood of links to hub pages is to encourage the creation of regular fresh content via a blog-like module. Paul says this is in development, and also adds that it’s so easy to create new hubs that beta users have been creating new ones regularly. Readers can subscribe via RSS to an individual author’s hubs.
The Hubpages team is founded by three guys out of Microsoft that were part of the successful startup MongoMusic. The team includes Paul Edmondson, Jay Reitz, and Paul Deeds. Most recently, Paul Edmondson was the Group Product Manager for MSN Entertainment, Jay Reitz was the Development Manager, and Paul Deeds was a developer in Windows Media Internet Services.
I see a $2 million tax write off for Hummer Winbad in the near future.
Craigslist-esque looks aside, I think the site works well.
I doubt the target market is the TC crowd but I can definitely see this appealing to a lot of would-be authors who don’t want to deal with a blog.
The design of the sites is very different. HubPages feels like Craigslist while Squidoo feels like AOL. Not sure what resonates better with authors. I give the nod to readability to Squidoo.
HubPages tools are simpler. Capsules are added directly to a page on HubPages. Squidoo takes you through a process that is more difficult to add modules. I think HubPages will get more content just because pages can be assembled quicker.
Revenue wise. Squidoo hasn’t paid me much and HubPages just started, so we’ll see. One thing I like on HubPages is I don’t have to have any ads.
I received a message from Squidoo saying traffic was up 3X.
Mike, you need reliable traffic numbers. Delicious, now Squidoo, don’t quote something if you know it’s bad. It just spreads lies.
The revenue share is actually 60% to the user according to the HubPages FAQ, with additional cuts (around 10% each) potentially going to sites that refer traffic or new users. A little something for everyone I guess. I like it so far.
http://hubpages.com/help/#impressions
Example Poker Hub - http://hubpages.com/hub/Poker_Night
Let see if it makes any money.
I gave it a try: http://hubpages.com/hub/Wiki
Can’t compare with Squidoo because I have not used it. The idea might have legs because everyone is an expert at something - or at least want to be. The notion of scoring is smart -and makes this challenging/mesurable. But the user interface and usability are not there yet!
$2M on a (admittedly much better-done) clone of a failed site? I’m glad I’m not a Hum-Win LP…
[Then again, why people re-upped after Pets.com and WBVN, I'll never understand.]
Isn’t this just about.com with less infrastucture? Or Wikipedia for profit? The founders and a VC are top authors on the site. This is an investment in some guys who sold something before, on an idea that isn’t really untested. Why not take a bet with other people’s money, in such a situation.
Bummer is, these kinds of sites are pretty boring. At least people might be paid for making someone else rich along the way.
Apologies upfront for the shameless self-promotion. At Zimbio, we approach a similar problem in a fundamentally different manner by embracing collaboration and encouraging community…would love your thoughts…
I can’t say I care much for the look of it. Squidoo is much better as far as design goes. I’ve got a number of lenses there, and I’ve never found the editing or creating of lenses to be that tedious. On the other hand, actually making any money at all from Squidoo takes some pretty hard core promotion on the part of the lens maker, which is the real business model here. Allow people to make some of the money to get them to promote the site and do your marketing for you.
Good luck. Squidoo hasn’t really had the impact they expected when they started it (I was an early beta tester), we’ll see if HubPages does any different.
Mike,
Don’t you think it would be more accurate to use this graph of traffic, from the same source:
http://www.alexaholic.com/edge.....crunch.com
Why choose a two year scale for a company that’s been in business for just one year?
Our Google Analytics numbers, which are certainly more accurate, indicate that we just crossed 200,000 unique visitors per week, a 6x increase in six months.
Traffic truth aside, we’re busy building schools in Southeast Asia, funding research on diabetes research and making it easier for people to find the perfect link about their favorite professional wrestler. That, and I get to work with some absolutely amazing people.
I might be dumb or something.. I don’t see the point of these sites. And I don’t know why I would want to use it.
Boring… Yawn..
Re: “The creation tools are far beyond what wikia or squidoo has currently (I’d appreciate any comments on this from Squidoo authors)”
In my opinion, Hubpages’ tools don’t even come close in usefulness or number to those offered by Squidoo, and some have serious bugs. For example, Link modules truncate text without warning and and the descriptions don’t permit HTML formatting.
Compare the Squidoo lens at http://www.squidoo.com/TheBlackScholar, which uses most Squidoo modules, with the spartan Hubpage version at http://hubpages.com/hub/The_Black_Scholar. It seems to me that Hubpage is simply an (unsuccessful) attempt to clone Squidoo, which hasn’t been all that successful in delivering wealth to contributors (or gaining traffic).
–rj
What I’d love is a simple RSS aggregator which allows my to have a page on my site updated with various feeds. A DIY version of the feedburner networks discussed in todays ther news. This is probably easy for our techies if i could extract a few hours out of them for fun research
Any off the shelf solutions to this?
Wow, Seth, you are right. By gratuitously attacking a startup I am associated with but that has nothing to do with squidoo or hubpages, and by distracting me with all the charity work that you guys are supposedly up to, you’ve convinced me that Squidoo is a winner.
Are you actually the same person that wrote all the wonderful books, some of which I’ve pimped on my blog? http://www.techcrunch.com/2005.....eth-godin/
Michael,
I can’t believe you gave a positive writeup on this site. After all, I used it to immediately create a site that rips content from both you and Dave Winer, then allows HubPages and me (Feedpass) to both make money from posting your content previews on my new page.
http://hubpages.com/hub/Feedpass_Mashup
Compare that to the harmless Feedpass page we created for TechCrunch that displays even less of your “valuable” content with links right back to your site. And yet, you chose to ridicule Feedpass and say it did “absolutely nothing?”:
http://www.feedpass.com/techcrunch
Sounds alot like Feedpass, but with no subscription angle and the ability to mash together any number of feeds. Feedpass was at least developed as a landing page to a specific feed. HubPages is plain and simple allowing anyone to rip off anyone’s content and make money from it. I don’t even see a way for content owners, like you, to get credit for your content being used on my hubpages site or any other.
If anything, perhaps this writeup shows that you simply choose to attack certain players in this business without really thinking it through, while you decide it’s okay for others to go ahead and make a living doing essentially the same thing.
Looks like Randy Charles Morin was right about both you and Dave Winer.
http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/?guid=20060521114813
http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/?guid=20060521081354
Jim, What was the final price on ebay?
Funny Michael. Listen, I’ll give you credit for having some real power in the tech-savvy/web 2.0 community. You’ve got lots of reach and getting mentioned on TechCrunch is a big thing. We certainly saw the impact and it helped us to grow. As far as our lightly publicized eBay auction of Feedpass.com, it’s been pretty weak. I can admit that. The auction doesn’t end until tomorrow AM and yet current bids are WAY below the reserve. So, we’ll probably just continue to build the site and improve it.
There certainly is demand for landing pages, etc. that don’t require you to “burn” your feed. I believe that the millions of users of tools like Blogger.com, MySpace, etc. that don’t even realize they have a feed are prime targets for simple RSS feed management tools. With limited readership, they are probably much less inclined to even care about stats, one of the areas where Feedburner is a clear leader today.
The eBay auction was meant to generate some discussions…and yes, I would sell it if the price was right. In fact, I even lowered the reserve price yesterday to stimulate some interest among current bidders. That being said, we’ll need some pretty big activity in the morning to see it sell. At a minimum, I considered the listing on eBay to be a publicity stunt that might help me gauge perception of value.
I’ve also made it very clear that the new owner, if there is one, will be required to protect all current Feedpass users IF the owner were to make any significant changes to the site, the business model, etc.
Anyway, we’ll see what happens. But can’t you at least be consistent? Why SLAM on Feedpass for monetizing content (other people’s content) and yet give HubPages a fairly positive spin? From the page I created, it seems like HubPages is blatantly allowing anyone to profit from your content…with nothing more than a link to your site. What’s the difference?
Jim - I understand your line of argument. Ordinarily I’d engage with you on it but the combination of verbal attacks from you and Randy was just too much. Bridges burned, no going back. Good luck with your business, I am really sorry I ever posted on it at all.
How much of Squidoo’s “traffic” is “lensmasters” republishing their sites to keep their “lens freshness” up? (I thought that’s what RSS was *for*) Or vandalizing competing sites with 1-star rankings? (what genius decided that only one’s direct competition should be able to rate pages?)
Put another way, is Squidoo’s sales/impression anything like “normal” for similar content or is it mostly fake? There’s really no question that the numbers are distorted — the issue is just how much?
Also have a look at a few squidoo clone options here:
http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-clone
Very cool post. I have 25 or 30 Squidoo lens which have a very positive effect on my main site http://www.SpongoBongo.com.But in the last three days the links Plexo has developed a bug where I can load 10 sites but only one link saves. so why not try Hub Pages? I just did my first one and I like it. http://hubpages.com/hub/Caucasian_Rugs
best wishes,
Barry O’Connell