Redanyway is a young startup out of India that aims to provide an alternate way to manage your ‘centralized me’ where your personal website or blog is your profile page outside of any walled gardens. The founders dubbed the application a ‘distributed social network’, but I look at it more like MyBlogLog on steroids, since it’s basically a way to get to know and interact more with your readers.
Signing up is invitation-only for now, but we’ve got some invite codes for the first 1000 TechCrunch readers that register for beta testing the application. You don’t need to comment on this post to get an invite, simply use ‘techcrunch’ upon registering or click here for a shortcut.
The essential idea behind Redanyway is that it should be easier for content publishers to build a social network around blog posts, photos, videos etc. and also enable users to follow / befriend on this centralized location, enhancing traffic, interactivity and reader engagement. In a sense, it also acts like a feed reader, by aggregating content from various sources and bringing it together in a single feed in the Redanyway dashboard. In a blog post, co-founder Kuldeep Kapade says they want to cut out RSS as the middle-man for subscribing to online content. If they’d add tabs and futher categorization capabilities, it would be even more useful, I think.
The setup is a bit tedious, though, as publishers are required to install a plugin / widget on their personal blog or website, which is still quite a challenge for many mainstream bloggers (i.e. Redanyway’s target audience). The startup integrated Gigya to make the whole process a bit less complicated, but I still feel this might be a hindrance for the company’s growth. I’m also having trouble looking at it from a different perspective than recent initiatives like Facebook Connect and Google Friend Connect. Furthermore, I ran into a couple of bugs when adding contacts in the initial setup process, and someone should really take a look at the design and usability of the application as well.
That said, Redanyway is still in private beta and has only been going for a couple of months, so maybe we’ll see some improvements in the future. All in all, I’m not really impressed, but maybe I’m missing something here. The startup was short-listed for the Techstars Summer program out of hundreds of applications, even though they eventually didn’t participate due to external circumstances.
hi
Signed up. Can’t say it is overwhelmingly impressive at first glance, but god know’s MBL is pretty lackluster as well.
I have to say I’m not so sure a closed beta is actually a good idea for a site like this considering I can’t really make use of most of the functions if 99% of my blog readers aren’t members of it.
Oh well, we’ll see how it goes
Matt Coddington
http://www.netbusinessblog.com
Hi Matt,
Your readers don’t require invite code to get in. It’s only for user who want to install friends and followers widget.
hi Nice I Like It
Hi Thanks for the information and invite..I will surely try it out..
Couple of months ?
http://www.iamlittle.net
Their website mentions Yahoo in a few places – the header, footer, and login form. Is this something created within Yahoo or are they just using Yahoo’s developer services and putting the logo/name around for some brand recognition and maybe trust?
Actually, ignore my last comment, I was looking at mybloglog by mistake!
LOL!
This is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is the future of social networking. The number of social networks and bookmarks sites and blog sites are getting out of control. This is much needed!
Thanks Chris. We think so too.
Your password system is archaic. “Password cannot begin with special characters or numbers” I can’t stand having to create a new password for a website. I have 3 or 4 I use and your site requires me to learn another, which means I won’t use the site. Enough stuff in my brain as is.
I am kinda curious. Can TC find the IP of Chris and let me know which part of the world he is from?
Wow , another Indian Startup that makes sense , i did sign up hopefully this shall be as productive as it seems !
btw , Google Friend Connect is kinda weird :/
Is this not what the Wordpress profile also tries to be?
not really.
its nice, still lacks in some forms but has potential. Hopefully they will read the buzz that techcrunch will create and can use that input to make some changes to streamline it a little more. Thanks robin for a good find.
I like mybloglog
Yahoo’s My Blog Log is very popular ,how is redanyway going to be very interesting
my money is on google friendconnect mainly cause google has the muscle to push it through
I signed up and confirmed the email, but I can’t log in now.
Apparently my name is not a valid one… Could the developers please allow hyphens in the name? (I am guessing that Irish people with an apostrophe in their name are also excluded.)
Looking forward to playing with the service.
Issue is fixed now. Sorry for inconvenience.
Let us know of your further feedbacks, here http://getsatis...n.com/redanyway
Hey, I met these guys in Boulder. I’m glad to see they’re moving along on their site/business.
nice
Thanks Robin, I signed up.
Fantastic, just starting a new love blog on relationship dating and this will be a great resource to use. I love techcrunch!
If I remember correctly, these guys were affiliated with one of the TechStars companies this year and they started up RedAnyway after their initial idea fizzled out post-TechStars.
Nice to see 1) that these guys are displaying true entrepreneurial grit (if at first you don’t success) and 2) that TechStars continues to bet on the right type of people.
Best of luck to the RedAnyway team.
Thanks Eric for such kind words and your encouragement earlier this year.
i need to add profile, its asking for invite code
The invite code is ‘techcrunch’ as mentioned in the blog.
Frankly, I don’t understand what this is supposed to do. I signed up, got through, put in my blog’s RSS feed, but received no instruction on anything. The tips were all jumbled together, and as soon as I clicked somewhere on the page they all disappeared.
Not saying it’s a bad application, just saying it’s unclear how to use it. Some instructions, a little welcome note or something, would be very useful.
Go to ‘Profile’ on your Redanyway dashboard and make sure your blog details are correct.
Then, go to ‘Widgets’ and grab a piece of code to put on your blog to install the widget.
‘Help’ coming up very soon.
good post
tks and more info in future
ngo
Get the real story before reporting. They did not participate in Techstars as they were not selected as one of the 10 teams.
And EricMarcoullier you need all the facts too.
They were a part of a 2008 Techstars team, did not fulfill obligations to that team but lied about it the whole time.
Instead, they abused the privilege for themselves, mislead a legitimate company (that is still going strong, btw) and behaved in a very unprofessional, shadey manner.
Since when did journalism not require sources and research?
When is it coming out of beta?
It would be interesting to see how it competes with other simiar services.
Good service! Really liked it.
Any new updates from them ? many blogs already seem to be a part of their network.