Friendster founder Jonathan Abrams is getting ready to launch his new startup, Socializr. It looks like it’ll be a social network/event organizing site…You can go through a “gamma” application process on the home page, or just read Steve Poland’s post – Steve played around with the URLs and found lots of ways into the protected site. Here’s Jonathan’s page, for example. And here’s an example event page.
From what I’m seeing it isn’t nearly as interesting as Skobee or Renkoo in terms of setting up events. This could just end up being one more social network to sign up for…
At least they have some sense of humour:
Socializr is the leading Web 3.1 Social TagML company.
Socializr is the leading Web 3.1 P2B VideoPod company.
Socializr is the leading Web 3.1 WikiCasting company
ha!
zzzzzzzzz……………
Skobee launched and died a long, long time ago. I don’t even think it’s around anymore. The win for Sclzr (and it won’t be remotely easy) is if they do to Evite what Youtube did to MySpace: Extract the coolest part. YouTube pulled the most addictive media, from a media-crazy site (Video) — and passed MySpace without even breathing hard. Maybe Socialzr could extract the “hot events” layer from Evite?
Skobee is certainly not dead.
What is with that icuemix ad up top?
It’s not clickable and the form feild does not work.
The Xdrive one in your post was nice. Is that a adsence ad or for sale?
I think Susan meant “dead” as in nobody is using it, not actually shutdown.
Sorry — Didn’t mean to be disrespectful. I really like Skobee — I actually use it and try go get my friends to engage (they haven’t yet!). It’s a rock-solid product.
Renkoo is the one that’s been around for more than a year with no success. I misspoke.
I think Renkoo is the one that’s well past it’s chance — been out too long with too little success. But, I really hope for success for Skobee — I think their product is solid.
Socializr – I actually found their sense of humor a relief. Does that mean they will be successful? Who knows, but it’s nice to see a Web 2.0 firm (3.1?) that has a bit of lightness.
I haven’t seen any activity out of Skobee for months.
Do you know something we don’t, Michael? =)
>>”free web service for sharing event and party information with your friends. Use Socializr to plan the ultimate social life!”
me atleast not interested
Susan, I believe you mispoke about Renkoo as well. I don’t think they have even had a public launch yet.
Harsh!
If they implement FOAF profile upload, then why not give it a spin? I’ll take my Tribe profile and boom – I’m rockin.
As for Socialzzzzzzrrrrrr, maybe they’re great, maybe they suck, but I, for one, believe that very small implementation/philosophy details can be the difference between make or break. And I certainly don’t believe that social networks and/or organizers have proven themselves yet, to be more trouble than they’re worth, anyways. If someone’s got the guts to say, “I’ve got a better way”, then more power to them. Most of those sites suck. I *hope* someone’s got a better way.
After a social network/website/anything fails, everyone is quick to point out the ‘obvious reasons’ why it failed – it’s Monday morning quarterbacking. What was ‘conspiracy theory’ 20 years ago is ‘obvious’ today. I say let Socccciiiiiilz get out the door before we cap them.
Too much of our analysis, here, seems to hark on ‘coolness’ or # of Web 2.0 features implemented, but in reality, that’s only part of the story – as evidenced by MySpace. Sure, now they’re caught up a bit, but it wasn’t always that way. They had one hook – a music widget – and a culture of chaos that nobody else could or would match. I wish I knew the secret formula to a successful website/service, but I know it’s not all about ‘tech specs’ and ‘capabilities’ – sometimes it’s the warm fuzzy you get – like when visiting Cute Overload, only not so over the top.
Just the other day I started running AdBrite ads on my site. I went through their home page (http://www.adbrite.com/) and thought, “primitive”, but I also thought, “cool”. What was cool about it? I dunno. It was a bit hokey. A bit amateur. It was *nothing* like many of the Web 2.0 sites that I love to look at (DropSend, Wufoo, etc.). So I ripped most of my advertising from Google AdSense and dropped in on AdBrite. Then I discovered they got this wicked interstitial ad thing that I’ve never seen before. What is it about AdBrite that says, “Google says they’re not evil, and you don’t really believe them, but you’d like to, but we’re not gonna talk down to you like that – we’re here to make a buck, drink some brews, deliver a good product, and get the most out of this life.”? Was it Web 2.0 features? No. Do all of their features and more exist in other products/services and have for years? Probably (except for that interstitial – not so sure about that one). There was something else there.
Odd about AdBrite (fd: i was in some type of employment almost-discussion with them the other day, but fell through), the 2nd page you link to above has this fool on it (http://www.soci.../user/191079828).
Another site I caught the other day that blew me away with its quirkiness – http://www.paperbackswap.com/ . We talk about the BookMooches of the world cause they’re new and whatever – but paperbackswap is trading thousands of books. How did they do it? No idea, but it’s not crazy ‘advanced features’.
Back to the original point, if anything helps take down MySpace, it’ll be the openness/interconnectedness of other communities. Wonder where the Justice Department-friendly People Aggregator is at these days? I would have thought we’d have seen more folks in that space.
Mike,
Susan a probably referred to an earlier story from Om Malik:
http://software...-in-six-months/
According to him, the owners of Skobee pretty much gave up on it:
“Skobee — one of the much-hyped young companies in this space, one that had been named “best in show” at a web 2.0 conference five months ago — has essentially gone into remission.
After hearing tips about the three founders actively seeking jobs, we began to notice other telling signs: the company blog had been taken down; the Alexa charts had taken a nosedive. It turns out that after multiple failed acquisition talks, the founders have had to reduce Skobee to a side project and have taken jobs elsewhere. The company had raised a small angel round but hadn’t managed to secure VC funding.”
Just to be clear, Skobee is far from dead. We are indeed taking a different direction, but we aren’t ready to make our plans public just yet.
Actually, I do like skobee and dont think it is gone or much hyped…
How many social circles do i need ?
i have freinds from work, school, the neighbors, my wifes freinds, my single freinds , my dope smoking freinds, my booze drinking freinds, i have freinds that will swing, i have freinds that will talk religion, i have freinds i ride mountian bikes, i have freinds that i snowboard with ……..now i have my delicious freinds, myspace, youtube …..
…i think the next big wave in social software are freindship aggregators .bring all your freinds on to one page, Manage and share your freinds hahahaha.
cheers
scott
i manage my freinds the old fashion way …i talk to them
If i was Scoble i would sue for attempted passing off…
Scobleizer – Socializr – i mean come on guys…
http://www.upcoming.org
Much better UI, already launched, already bought by yahoo
Mike and company, now that you have multiple authors for TechCrunch it would be excellent to have the author’s name included in the RSS feed.
Thanks!
There is another new “Social Networking” site I recently saw http://www.involver.com . I looked at it at first, and realized I had seen their logo before. With disbelief, I went to the Web 2.0 logo generator http://msig.info/web2.php . They created their logo from the Web 2.0 logo generator. Wow. All they did was change the colors. Check out the gradients, they are exactly the same. People aren’t even trying in this space anymore.
Is there really a need in the marketplace for a better Evite? I don’t know of anyone who has issues with the product. Evite, for what it is, does the job and the switching cost is not worth it. None of these products are exactly mindblowing – yeah, they’ve added fancy AJAX interfaces, but does the consumer really care?
To Chad: Upcoming.org is a very nice service, but due to loads of spam, searching for “real” events can be really annoying. Also, they have a focus on the US only so for a majority of the world the usability of the site is limited.
Looks like it needs a little bit of work (after looking at the screenshots). However, if it can somehow figure out a way to improve on the current “events” as far as registration and such is concerned — then I’d be interested.
The leader in the “events” space will be the one with the most content (”events”). If Socializr can get the events schedules from tons of organizations (that likely operate primarly offline), the community will follow. Google Calendar fits into all of this as well — they are trying to get organizations to post via their tool.
Does anyone work for IAC? I’d love to do some acquisition / integration consulting for them. They have such a vast network of websites just asking for a social network. They could create the next MySpace/Friendster potentially — imagine getting users to all mingle amongst Ticketmaster, Match.com, Ask.com, Citysearch, Evite, and the rest of their network. They could shut Socializr down before it even launches, if Evite added some social networking features. And/or if Evite integrated the Facebook API; and users with Friendster/MySpace/blogs could add a flash widget that displays all their public Evite events they are attending.
Overall, Evite does need to step up their game if they are going to compete with the next gen of event websites.
If I were MySpace, I might look at an acquisition of Renkoo or Skobee.
BTW, when will Friendster be suing MySpace over their patent? Friendster raised $10mm more a couple months ago — my thought was that was for the legal costs of a case; anyone heard anything?
Check out – http://www.ilcu.com
It just launched today with over 50,000 events
Hrm. do we really need that service. Upcoming.org for example is very well. and there are a couple of more out there. yours http://www.gamelexi.de/
We’re about to launch Planypus, which is not about ‘events’, no because nobody honestly cares about events. If you want proof of that look on upcoming.org and notice how even the most popular events can’t even get 30 people attending. I think it’s clear there is not a whole lot of social reward to rsvping to an event with a bunch of strangers…
What we’re about is _making plans_ with your friends. Events are just a background for you to have a good time with your friends, and before you can do that you need a way to plan your outing. Planypus makes it dead easy because we realize planning is about conversations, and that means everyone gets a say. When one person has to decide everything, planning is a pain in the ass. When you can say ‘lets go to dinner’ and have the rest of your friends fill in the details, and then get a message on your phone saying where to be…now that’s easy. And that’s Planypus..check us out! http://planyp.us