LiveWorld is a publicly traded company that’s been around since 1996 and is best known for its white labeled social networks. These are online communities that LiveWorld helps clients build up around their existing brands, and they often take a good deal more time and effort to set up than communities created on top of self-service platforms like Ning or KickApps.
However, LiveWorld is making a significant foray into “out-of-the-box” communities with the release of LiveBar, a widget-like site addition that brings community features to any website using only one line of JavaScript.
The LiveBar consists of a thin strip that sticks to the bottom of the browser window and displays social content related to the page. It’s reminiscent of Facebook Chat or the upcoming community instant messaging offering from Meebo. But instead of facilitating instant messages, the LiveBar shows three types of user contributions: Conversations, Soapboxes, and Shouts.
Conversations are essentially lightweight forum threads where users can post messages and solicit responses. Soapboxes are akin to blog posts and Shouts are like tweets in that they’re restricted to 140 characters. In the LiveBar’s simplest implementation, these pieces of UGC are associated with individual URLs, so when you move from one page to the next, you see different content.
However, they can also be tied together into so-called bundles so that discussions form across pages that relate to each other. The LiveBar can also be rolled out across multiple sites on different domains, with bundles providing social glue around pages and sites that were formerly fragmented.
The biggest downside to the LiveBar (which could also be seen as its greatest virtue) is its discreetness. Visitors are prone to overlook it entirely because it sits so low and short on the page. To combat this tendency, LiveWorld has developed a suite of widgets that hook the LiveBar into the actual page layout. The widgets can be used, for example, to print the most recent conversations or solicit new ones. I expect that most publishers will deploy these extra widgets to get the most bang for their buck. After all, the LiveBar isn’t free; like other LiveWorld services, it’ll cost you thousands of dollars just to get it up and running.
LiveWorld plans to add more flexibility and functionality to the LiveBar over time, with chat in particular on the way. This will put LiveWorld in direct competition with Meebo, although Meebo’s specialty in online instant messaging should make for a superior product.
Both Tulane University and A&E Biography already plan to use LiveBar on their respective sites.
Mark:
Thanks for the writeup on LiveBar, and for your initial impressions. We’re excited about LiveBar’s launch today, and its potential to help companies build thriving communities around the rich content on their sites.
–Bryan Person
LiveWorld social media evangelist
The widget looks nice, their homepage makes me cry.
@AW: The timing of your comment suggests that you were referring to our homepage prior to last night’s post-embargo release of our redesigned home page. And while we didn’t exactly cry about it, we wanted it changed, too.
This looks like a fantastic alternative to weblog commenting - but can it be integrated with Wordpress, etc.? And is this even going to make its way to the weblog community-at-large, or is this restricted to larger sites?
Nope, no WordPress integration and I doubt it’ll make it into the weblog community given its price.
Just looked over their financials. They’ve got to be kidding me — around since 1996, and in a free-floating fall to the bottom ever since. (Revenues < 10m, taking a loss of ~25% last quarter alone.)
I also looked up some management team members — all have less than stellar track records at the mid-manager level at best. They also recently chose to no longer be a *reporting* public company, meaning they will be now listed on pinksheets / OTBB. This was due to no longer being able to afford the costs associated with being on the regular exchange. (Noted in their most recent quarterly report.)
If I was a large org, I’d be very weary of buying any software from a company like this — they have unstable financial footing, and it’s unknown how much longer they’ll be able to operate.
Instead, I’d use either a) use open source software and a boutique consulting shop for the service piece or b) a closed source solution from a company with firmer financial footing and a stronger track record of innovation.
Just my $0.02…
I don’t know.. I mean.. they have some pretty high-profile clients right?
http://www.liveworld.com/clients/index.html
Anyone can have “high profile client stickers” on their site. I’m sure I swept a bathroom at some point at Google… does that mean I have them as my client? This is no different from every JEE vendor claiming BofA as a “customer.” Sure, BofA buys from each of these guys, but which vendors provide critical software, and which ones provide the things one developer of an internal portal might use?
The whole premise of LiveWorld is that a large customer would bet on *them* to provide a very public portion of the site. I’ve just seen too many projects go the wrong way from fly-by-night operations like this, and figured I’d express my thoughts in case anyone wants to avoid costly endeavors.
Many of those “high profile client stickers” are clickable, leading to pages showing the work we’ve been doing for them for almost a decade or directly to the communities we host for them: have a look.
Of course, some of the sites, like the Mini Owners’ Lounge, require that you be a Mini Owner to join, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you buy a Mini and join the community…
I had to chuckle a bit at the comment that before liveworld I was “mid-manager level at best”. That would accurately describe me. Before LiveWorld I had not created major internet web sites, won webby awards, managed projects for many more Fortune 100 customers that the LiveWorld website lists. Although to be fair, that was in 1996 when almost no one had that kind of experience. For comparison, twelve years ago now Senator Obama had three year of experience as a lawyer and had not served public office. You can learn a lot in twelve years.
Chris Christensen
EVP Engineering and Operations
LiveWorld
@PRC: LiveBar can be installed on any site, but at this point it doesn’t integrate with blog comments (which is I think what you’re hoping for, right?). Doesn’t mean we’re not considering it for a future release though
Really interesting product; looks very nice and neat too.
I’ll certainly be playing around with this soon.
It should have a Wordpress plugin ala Seesmic & Disqus
This site is terrible. tinyCrunch posted their stock price. Hilarious.
Yeah but it’s not as low as tinyCrunch’s page rank of zero. tinyCrunch… lol
This looks like a great concept with a prohibitive price tag. I’d love to offer this to my clients but I’ll just have to wait until the price comes down or someone develops a knock off version that’s affordable.
Agreed
Aside from the $1000 setup fee, do you have any info on the pricing structure or the infrastructure that drives LiveBar? This seems like an interesting service, but it also sounds expensive and unruly. Taking into account chat, numerous highly trafficked sites will cause a serious load. Building a highly available, redundant, and scalable infrastructure costs megabucks and I wonder if LiveWorld has the proper backing to make this work.
Also, I don’t really understand the differentiation between ‘conversations’, ’soapboxes’, and ’shouts’. Especially considering the screens show people engaging in conversation within the ’shouts’ section. For practical purposes, they are all the same thing. I suggest they cut the marketing bs and build a well designed and usable product.
Lastly, excluding the social components, it would be fairly easy to make an open source clone of this suite and make it available to anyone running LAMP. You would need a centralized DB to create social context across multiple sites.
Any info on costs/pricing, beyond the $1,000 set up?
Is there any plugin available for wordpress blog for this?
Surprised their business model doesn’t provide non-commercial or less featured version for free use. Seems to me that could generate more use and acceptance of a product like this, and ultimately help improve their bottom line.
Anyone agree?
Man, the price is way too much!
LiveBar’s target market
So what are the costs? Can you give me some sense, or at least a range?
I love the product but for now the price is to high to recommend to my clients.
Thanks everyone for the interest and comments. LiveBar is an exciting new product and paradigm for social networking. We are interested in any and all feedback and ideas for it. Some people have asked about LiveWorld the company, its history, financials, and clients.
Our core team came from Apple where in the 1980s and 1990s we created and ran Apple’s industry social network, AppleLink, then eWorld. Our work there also included projects that later became AOL and Salon. We left in 1996 to start LiveWorld, building on our Apple experience to create social networks for other brands.
Like many companies, we were venture backed, then went public in 1999.
We managed to survive the Internet crash in 2000-2001 and grew our revenues 50%-100% through 2006. We turned cash positive at end of 2002 and remained so through 2006. For 2007 and 2008 we decided to invest in more product development, ahead of revenue. Following that effort, and as further described in our financial filings, we are now managing our business to be supported by the cash we have on hand and cash flow from operations.
We’re really excited about our dozens of Fortune 500 clients, some of whom have been with us for over seven years. For almost all of them we have multi-year engagements, involving creating, managing and/or operating their online communities. LiveBar adds an entirely new dimension to our business and the market. Initial response is very positive, but we intend to listen to all feedback and make it an even greater product.
- Peter Friedman, Chairman & CEO, LiveWorld
“The widget looks nice, their homepage makes me cry.”
Looking at the time of your posting I wonder (hope) if you were looking at our old site design. We pushed a new website and a new community live last night also. If that’s what you are referring to I certainly agree. It was well over due for a redesign as it was very web 1.0 brochure-ware. It was one of those “the cobbler’s kids lack for shoes” sort of thing.
—
Chris Christensen
LiveWorld
EVP Engineering and Operations
We are planning to offer a free knock-off version using a different implementation - through our free award-winning HHOTT View toolbar. This means everyone using our HHOTT View toolbar will get our version of “LiveBar” on every web page. There is no need for the website owner to modify their site and pay us anything. Of course, our business model is different since we will get paid by the advertisers shown on the LiveBar. This allows us to show context-sensitive ads on every web pageWe call our own version USA - Unbiquitous Social networking and Advertising.
Guys,
Why force people to log in? Takes away the spontaneity of an instant social community. I would like to use this for feedback on products on my retail site but think usage will be limited by the log in requirement.
Interesting idea though.
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