Chances are you use at least two major social networks – 49 million people, for example, visited both MySpace and Facebook in October 2008 (Comscore, worldwide). Nearly 7 million people in the UK use both Bebo and Facebook. A lot of people maintain very different friend lists on LinkedIn than MySpace or Facebook. Etc. And when you add in niche social sites like YouTube, Flickr, etc., there’s even more overlap among users.
There has never been an effective way of aggregating and merging all the data and activity on these sites into a single user interface. A new venture backed Brazilian-based started called Power.com launches today, though, that aims to do just that. They’re calling what they do “social inter-networking” because it allows users to view and interact with all of their social networks at once. Data is aggregated, and the sites themselves, if accessed via the Power.com site, are marked up with added features in a way that Greasemonkey users are familiar with.
The service is unknown in the U.S. today, although it’s been live since August and boasts 5 million users already. Until today it supported just a few social networks, notably Orkut. Now, though, the service supports users from Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5 and a number of niche networks like YouTube.
Here’s how it works.
Log into one or more social networks on the Power.com site. Friends, messages, updates, photos and other information are either scraped from the site or obtained via the API (it varies by site), and aggregated on the Power dashboard. Users can respond/comment on this content directly from Power. And if they like, they can send messages and updates to all of their social networks at once. Or send a message to just one friend, but have it sent to all of their different social networks (and if they are a Power user, to their email, SMS, instant message, etc., per their settings).
If you visit one of the social networks through the Power site, the pages are marked up with additional functionality. Click a button to start chatting with the user over MSN chat, if they are a Power.com user.
Lastly, users can create a Power.com profile based on whatever social network they choose. Here’s mine, based on Facebook (which, by the way, effectively makes my private Facebook profile public).
It’s all a bit confusing, but it’s fairly simple to try out. Just log in and go.
There are real benefits to the service. Users can keep track of friends on social networks they belong to but don’t visit very often. Status messages can be added to all networks simultaneously. Photos and videos can be uploaded on multiple sites at once. And messaging people across multiple services is dead simple.
There are limitations to the service. You have to access the sites via Power.com. And the company is scraping content off the sites, something that may violate the terms and conditions of some or all of these services (Meebo did the same with instant messaging platforms, and was eventually embraced – but they could have just been shut down).
As I said above, the company has gathered 5 million users since August, mostly on Orkut. Power.com users who leave content on sites can choose to add a link to Power.com, making the service spread virally very quickly. Now that they’ve launched publicly and on the big sites, expect the service to grow even more quickly.
The company has raised $5 million in venture financing from Silicon Valley-based Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
It’s also worth noting that we’ve covered a bunch of services that attempt to do some of the things Power.com is doing. See our posts on MyLifeBrand, Spokeo, Loopster and ProfileLinker. None of those sites were able to tap into the viral growth features that Power.com has, though. Power’s decision to add a link when content is posted through their service was brilliant.
Their UI looks like shiit
Ugly can be fixed later, opportunity cannot.
Jon
http://buzvia.com – Where’s Your Traffic Going?
it’s all in the domain. power.com I suspect they paid a pretty penny for that domain. some lowlife domainer just made a killing and you can bet he’s living it up right now.
they’ll do well solely because of the domain, it’s basically friendfeed with a bad ui and the ability to post and manage stuff.
lifestreaming will be passe in 2009
But neat idea none the less. Wish them good luck.
I bet that domain name cost some ca$h money…
the age of domain names are over. nobody gives a shiit really as long as it is catchy and cool. if it is not available then invent one. who would expect a dumb ass name like google, yahoo, or a facebook, worst twitter. wtf are they really?
this is an exciting company. consolidation and integration of the net is the future.
power.com is a valuable property. premium domains are naturally older and statistically worth more money. catchy and cool is few and far between. the domain landrush is over. the domains that are the most valuable are the natural language properties. if it was so easy to to invent a domain everyone would do it. most the ones you metioned are well funded that is why they are main stream and then you have the premium niche natural language domains that consumers and businesses find naturally. whomever creates the greatest cluster of niche natural language domain properties might just be on to something.
SocialLocator.com – together forever
This is interesting. I’m quite a big facebook whore, but don’t utilize MySpace as much because of it’s crazy layout. Guess this might make it easier for me to have both. So, if I’m truly a power networker, are you all going to add me on Facebook?
http://www.face...e.php?id=400566
Do you know anyone with over 5000 friends? Other than Arrington/Pete?
isnt this what friendfeed does?
sigh… such a waste of a good domain…
yeah, so true.
yeah it is true………………………….
Anti matter, you’re right. I have a doman name kakoot.com. It just means, in a playful way ,”butt” in Cambodian. People think I’m strange for having it, but I always point to the domain names such as Google, Yahoo, Twitter, Oodle, Hulu, or Yelp. There’s a pattern of online companies having goofy names. For less than 10 bucks a year, why not…
Pretty ironic Power.com has in it’s TOS “• Any form of reverse engineering, modification or adaptation of Power.com” because that’s exactly what they’re doing with the services that they have to scrape.
Despite that, there’s still a need for this kind of service. Look at how well FriendFeed is doing.
Not bad, but that is why I only use 2 social networking sites, 1 for business and the other one for friends and family, I do not understand why some people just have to be on every single social site.
I’ve heard this idea kicked around and pitched so many times, glad someone is finally putting it into action. I’m going to give it a whirl…
tons of bugs
PeopleBrowsr.com launches Tuesday, social network aggregater. I think it has an awesome interface. He’s Sydney based. You should check it out. I’m not affiliated with the site, just have seen it demoed and liked it.
Which browser does it support?
I am unable to open it using Mozilla or IE.
I had somewhat similar idea, but still much different than this one. Would be launching it probably in the first quarter of 2009.
Hi Rashmi, I also have similar idea and somewhat different. I would love to share my idea. Please send me an email with your contact email. jamianandatyahoo.com
Too busy building a professional network to participate in the social ones
. Sounds like those guys are on the right track with something that many others are trying but not really coming through.
The link to your power.com profile is broken, you missed the “http://” I guess.
Seems neat. Interface need some help, but definitely tons of potential!
If you’re into social networking and communications, check out this Silicon Valley start-up called VingTalk:
http://www.vingtalk.com/cpp
I agree, It’s not the cleanest looking UI and riddled with bugs!
Why do you need this when you can simply automate all your logins with a browser addon like iMacros? It logs me in Facebook, linkedin etc whenever I want. It saves time, plus I like to keep those private and business contacts phyiscally separate.
I’m gonna build a site that aggregates social network aggregators.
many people thing that web services should starts with beautiful UI, no bugs, good usability…
the idea of service is awesome… like some guys commented, look to the potential…
Not bad, but most of the people use two or three social networks, so is not a very good idea .
Doesn’t Oosah do the same thing and also offer storage space?
Power.com was originally built to overcome some limitations of orkut, which is the biggest social network in Brazil. (and a pretty crappy one, compared to facebook or others).
That’s why they have such a good user base there. It has been more than 2 years since they are trying to launch this kind of integration with other networks, but let’s face it : it just suck.
This doesn’t sound new – isn’t this almost the exact same as Minggl.com?
Can anyone point me to a site that doesn’t aggregate anything so I know I’m reading original content?
Very nice domain name, half of the success just because of that.
I’m not convinced.
First off, is there such a thing as a “power networker”? There are people who register profiles on as many mainstream sites as they can, but they tend to spend their time on only a few key ones (the ones they get the most attention on) and is managing a Facebook profile AND YouTube profile really such hard work?
Secondly, niche networks are the future and Power.com will find it hard to keep up with all of them. It also needs to use somthing like OpenID and OpenAuth to ensure that the interaction between it and and those networks is as seemless as possible.
I’ve long though a network aggregator services would be a great social media launch page, but it needs to have cross-site authentication with it, as well as enabling users to move their social graph around networks as they move, so they don’t have to build a friends list from scratch.
I am not sure Power.com has all it needs to be successful, other than a great domain name — in fact, I’d suggest that’s the only reason it’s getting the exposure it is.
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I agree 100%! The domain is making all the difference in the world for this start-up, and the “eyes” it is getting. Anyone who claims that “the age of domain names is over” is out of touch with reality.
This article is missing a lot of important details – the top of that list is the fact that Power.com violates the TOS on most of those sites, meaning your Facebook account can be shut down for using Power.com.
And TC gave Combo.com a hard time – this site looks like shit and uses scrapes (?!) when API’s are readily available (though more challenging to integrate)
Sigh.
Is that safe merging all the data and activity into a single user interface?
Agreed. The idea isn’t new, even within Brazil although the main site that did this was only offered in Portuguese (I’m blanking on the name at the moment since I don’t personally use site aggregators).
UI could use some work too so lets hope they improve it quickly.
As I mentioned, site aggregators aren’t my favorite thing and equally so, OpenID is something I avoid too. The concept is nice but in the same way that I wouldn’t accept a National ID here in the States, I wouldn’t go for it online either. To go even further, I’m against the whole cloud idea too as in general, giving another company permission to hold all your data is dangerous.
Shall I even mention the general uselessness of social networks and how they keep us unconnected (to the real world) by keeping us connected (to the virtual one)? Ok, ok, I admit, I have one account on one network, but its for business purposes.
Good idea with many bugs!
Good idea, but underwhelming execution. I agree with other comments regarding the bugs. But my chief complaint is the lack of aggregation functionality. I hooked up my MySpace and Facebook accounts, and as far as I can tell, while I can switch between them, never do I see a combined list. My list of Friends only seems to have my Facebook friends. My list of messages only has my Facebook messages. etc. In addition, the updates list is only for a single network, so there’s no intersection or aggregation across networks so that I can track conversations which cross social networks.
Michael Arrington also states that I can use Power.com to update my status across the networks. How? There does not seem to be any functionality to accomplish this. There is an ability to send messages to users in multiple social networks at once, but that’s not the same thing as updating my status message.
Right now, Power.com functions ok as a launch pad, but due to the bugs and otherwise missing functionality, I think I’ll stick to using Flock with tabs for each social network and save the screen real estate.
Crossposted on zyggyrat.wordpress.com.
web 2.0 is an interesting thing… most people/companies try to come up with new thing to stand out from other ideas, and there are some that try to bring all those things together in one (like google is trying)… this a very good example of this…
anyway..interesting
I have always wanted a service like this, simplifies things for me tremendously. Nice work.
Wow, no doubt about it. Those are some amazing, must have tools!
jesss
http://www.privacy.de.tc
If you click my name you will see that I “predicted” a similar idea all the way back in January 2007.
Maybe I should make a video like that 10th YouTube founder, or what was it?, and ask for a slice of the pie.
Just saying…
Has anyone actually read their ‘Terms of Use’? Scary stuff indeed.
sweet!!, i was looking for something like this. :]
Where is YouTube support?
Going to “Link Accounts” shows options only for Orkut, MySpace, Hi5, Facebook, Flogao, and Voteme.
@Raskin….wow! Good to know!
i want to join this
How do they intend to make money?
There`s more information on this in this article: http://bits.blo...ives-stateside/
the ui looks good
http://makkale....i_30285761.html
It sounds like what Yahoo has been TALKING about doing for the last year with their “universal profile system”.
be carefull! everyone!
This power.com really sucks!!!
not even to mention that it sent disgusting garbeges emails to all my friends,
It even changed my status without my permission!
And now I’m VERY VERY ANGRY!!!!!
This one will create a lot of problem and complaint from other social network site.
Nat
http://www.halflet.com
i lk it…..i havent got any problems with it….
im board at school and its a drag
I wonder when support for http://www.affluence.org will be added?