San Francisco startup RocketOn, the company behind a virtual world platform that bares the same name, has more tricks up its sleeve and is today showing off the second product it created.
The web application it’s introducing today is dubbed Blerp, and its ambition is to turn the Web into a giant interactive message board by making it possible for visitors to add text comments and multimedia to existing web pages and share them with their friends.
Under the motto ‘layer the web!’, Blerp aims to enable people to enrich web pages with an additional layer of content with the ability to let others join in on the fun at any time. RocketOn is calling the concept Hyperlayers, and if the idea makes you think of social annotation services like Reframe It, Diigo or Fleck, that’s because it’s taking an extremely similar route with Blerp.
The app basically creates a virtual space on top of websites that you visit in the form of a sidebar and a header, which allows you to post text, photos, videos and interactive elements like polls and ratings on top of the page while still being able to see and interact with it. Blerp users get a personal homepage dubbed My Stuff that gives them an overview of what’s being discussed by their friends online, and are able to jump right into the conversation from the interface. In Digg, or rather StumbleUpon fashion, users can ‘hype’ certain discussions to help it get featured on the Blerp homepage, with the extra ability to favorite (aka bookmark) live discussions and share them with friends by e-mail or through a variety of social networking services.
There are two types of discussions: user-owned and community discussions. The former are created and controlled by specific users, while community discussions are created by the startup’s system and are not owned by anyone. There’s a community discussion on every site Blerp users visit, and you can view one I started for TechCrunch here.
I don’t see myself becoming a regular Blerp user any time soon, but the original idea seems to be well implemented. Note that the service is still in alpha mode, so expect to run into a few bugs here and there.
RocketOn is backed by $5.8 million in venture capital (judging from the members on its board by Bertram Capital next to DE Shaw’s Venture Group whose investment in the company we covered earlier) and says it initially developed Blerp as a feature for its parallel virtual world but quickly realized that it could function as a stand-alone tool just as well. Time will tell if it was a sensible decision to make.
Thanks for mentioning Fleck.com. Actually gaining members and moderate, but steady, growth in traffic. Still around!
Interesting logo.
Reminds me of http://burrp.com – a Indian Startup.
I like the idea. It’s Genius.
Rather than generating content or users generating content and a social network forming around that content, why not use existing content and create a social network around that instead!
It’s nothing new there is already a firefox plugin that in essence tries to do the same thing, but text only. It’s called bumpin (bumpin.com), it’s struggling because it’s from Pakistan people ain’t that web-sevy over there.
If any of these services could aggregate discussion up a level from individual sites so that sites of a similar topical nature share relevant conversation (pull from something like DMOZ to categorize sites), then they might have more chance of gaining traction. Otherwise conversations risk being way too small to get a critical mass and ultimately have a higher risk of degenerating into flame wars or ghost boards far too fast.
Of course, would Microsoft and Apple really want people sharing conversation on their respective Zune/iPod sites?
I’d see a Yammer style business model here – “claim your own discussion and remove the competition’s users for $x per user per month, we moderate your forum for you.”
Good luck.
Nothing to see here folks, just another web annotation service with no solid business plan anywhere in sight. That said, there are worse ones out there.
Actually, it’s not like any of the other web annotation systems out there. It’s much more of a social experience, and it ties directly into Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and other social networks.
The other big difference is that you can blerp with virtually any widget online (not just text), whether it’s a video widget from YouTube, a Rock You widget, a polling widget, a Google widget, and even widgets that you create yourself.
Steve
CEO of RocketOn
Let me get this straight — the argument boils down to being a “more social experience” and allowing you to burp (blerp) with “widgets”?
Since when do investors put people into position of CEO that have reasoning on this level?
By this token, I can vaguely describe any site foo as being “more social”, having a “tie in to Facebook”, and allowing for creative use of widgets.
Does that mean my site Foo is any different from the others out there?
How about finding a problem first, and then working hard to provide a solution? This blerp thing looks like it’s got it backwards to me.
test
Your pic made me zoom in from iPhone full screen and then log into facebook to see a higher res version. It was worth it.
Howdy
During the first Internet bubble, 1998-2000 there was a company that did EXACTLY that. It was called Gooeye or Goooyy or something like that.
I had ads -everywhere-, all CNET sites, MTV, it sponsored everything and their mother, and got nowhere.
Basically it allowed people that are visiting the same sites to communicate/share stuff with each other while being on the site. Pretty much same thing here.
Just 10 years later…. maybe now people will find it useful for some reason.
Ha, found it !
http://en.wikip....org/wiki/Gooey
“Gooey allows people who are simultaneously browsing the same Web sites to communicate with each other, creating big chat rooms in portals and thematic websites. Gooey was acquired by CNET and closed in 2000.”
there is another one called bumpin (http://www.bumpin.com), this is a of the handful thing you can do with it. But the issue here is how to get that initial bust of traffic, as most of these require content to engage people at the first place
The one i rembember from web 1.0 days, which did the same as Blerp, was Third Voice, lasted 2 years then it died in at the end of the bubble. Many webmasters hated it for allow unmoderated comments about there sites.
http://www.wire...s/2001/04/42803
Thought it would be a toolbar.
Surfing the web through another site is too much for me and I guess for most users.
It was already discussed here before, in relation to digg, you can’t bookmark, there’s wasted browser real-estate, browser address-bar useless, etc…
If I missed something (a bookmarklet for example) prove me wrong.
This is really interesting! It is fresh enough to gain people interest.
Interesting.
Content cannot get more “Web 2.0″ than this, although I think this will be exploited to the “maximum” by internet marketers.
This is one of those good, obvious ideas that has thwarted everyone who’s tried it.
So I hope these people either a) are familiar with the long line of failed startups based on this idea and have figured out where they all went wrong, or b) have determined that the timing is finally right for this type of app.
If memory serves, the first app of this kind was Third Voice back in 1998/9. I think it was venture backed and attracted a fair amount of users, but couldn’t get enough traction to make a go of it.
Interesting, just last week I came across a site very similar at http://bleetbox.com/
It’s also in early beta but seems to be more about live chat.
There have probably been 10 or 12 companies that have done this before. One of the first “social” plays on the web did so. All of them have either a) failed, or b) failed to take off.
Robin – I am envious of your age.
Which is exactly why you need young people in companies who don’t know about past projects and who;s first reaction isn’t always ‘Tried it but didn’t work’…
I’m inherently biased because I’m the co-founder of YouSaidIt, a company that actually lets visitors to a website interact on the site as part of the site content.
I’m not sure that the layered approach espoused by Blerp is ideal because integration with the site and the publishers is a huge advantage. Sites need to become more collaborative and they need to become conversational.
Once they become conversational they can flow out onto social networks that exist rather than creating these layered new ones.
cool!
Looks like a similar way of streamlining communication like UC is with call centers. Adaptive Engineering is another company which is thinking about simplifying the way in which we communicate on the web. Right now they’re up for a Red Herring award http://www.adap...engine.com/news
I can’t believe no one has mentioned Third Voice…
http://www.wire...s/2001/04/42803
bears, not bares
I find this kind of layering very very confusing. Idea is kind of good (and invited by many) but the best solution is still to come.
not to be a hater but I don’t see this gaining any traction. Weak name in general as well as ‘e’ and ‘u’ ambiguity and no mention of partnerships with content producers has this headed for the deadpool already.
Another similar startup is http://www.grazeit.com/
I believe every new startup is going only in one direction using word “Social” – post this update on your social network. In my opinion true power of social network is to bring your network to place where you are and allow them to interact with each other in various ways.
Use asymmetric social networks like Twitter to influence visitors on a given web site. I think its no-brainer that you will value opinions of your friends and people you follow over any random person.
I like the idea, I hope it works out.