Since you see it every time you open your web browser, a good start page is key. Google has a pretty good option with iGoogle, which is highly customizable. But as social networking continues to rise in popularity, an increasing number of people just have something like Facebook as their main page. ZooLoo is kind of like iGoogle meets Facebook.
When you set up your ZooLoo account, you are given a dashboard which contains customizable widgets just like iGoogle. But you’ll see along both the top and bottom of the site elements that lead you to the more social aspects. Along the bottom, is your Facebook-style chat bar and options area. At the top of the main page you’ll find the tools to control your site and manage your media (pictures and videos).
And the key two words in there are “your site.” ZooLoo clearly wants to give you everything you want, so you never have to leave your ZooLoo. You want to watch YouTube videos? You can browse and watch them from in ZooLoo. Hulu videos? Same thing. Maybe you want to go read some news on popular tech blogs like this one? Again there’s a series of widgets you can install so you can do all of that without leaving.
Obviously, it’s a good idea in theory as users spending more time on the site means more ads that can be shown to them. And ZooLoo has plenty of those — big ones at the bottom and sides of the site. It’s the same line of thinking that Facebook has, in that it wants to be your central hub for everything on the web.
The problem with that for ZooLoo is that Facebook has about a 200 million user head start on their social graph. For a service like this, that is all that really matters. That’s not to say that ZooLoo can’t woo some of those users with some nice features, but it’s hard to teach 200 million users new tricks. And while it’s not a “there can be only one”-type situation, if ZooLoo is trying to do the same thing that Facebook is, which one do you think will win?
And obviously it’s not just Facebook in this game as well, they’re just the big guys right now. But Google is still trying to get more social too, and continues to take iGoogle in that direction. Again, the choice between Google or ZooLoo as your main hub, doesn’t seem like too tough of one right now.
But ZooLoo is smart to play off of the vanity URL thing. Its slogan, “Your name. Your domain. Your life.” doesn’t seem to be an accident. As we saw from the users flocking to Facebook on a Friday night to secure their own vanity names, users clearly want domains that are easy to remember. And ZooLoo offers that up with the slightly different XXXXX.zooloo.com naming structure.
But its real hidden weapon may be letting users pick any domain to use with the service, not just a zooloo.com one. That’s an option if you sign up for the paid version of the service, ZooLoo Plus. For $29.99, you get to select a .com, .net or .info domain (.me names are available too for slightly more money).
The freemium model hasn’t exactly taken off in the traditional social networking market. But ZooLoo gives you some things that are a bit more like an online office service, such as calendaring.
There’s no shortage of options on ZooLoo, but you have to wonder if it can possibly meet such lofty goals with going up against Facebook and Google. Of course, they used to say that about Facebook going up against MySpace. And MySpace against Friendster, before that.
ZooLoo should be live at some point later today.
Wow! Thanks for the info. Its time to try up on ZooLoo!
Since you mention that Facebook has a head start on Zooloo, you’ll probably see Zooloo either creating a Facebook app or use Facebook connect to draw more users. Plus, it’s not game over for Zooloo since we all remember Yahoo came before Google.
yeah facebook connect would be a good call, i think.
MG, would love to introduce you to Gigya Socialize.
Gigya Socialize aggregates FB Connect, MySpaceID, SigninwithTwitter and OpenID for Gmail, AOL Mail and Yahoo Mail into a single, easy to use API. Full API available, or sites can use Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla plugins, a few applications etc.
Turner Sports is using it for NBA and NASCAR web coverage, and many more soon to be announced.
http://www.gigy...nt/GS/Home.aspx
http://adage.co...ticle_id=137157
LMKWYT
I see two issues with this:
- Account setup fatigue, unless they support Facebook Connect or OpenID so you can use an existing login and port everything straight over painlessly
- How will it keep up with the many niche social networks that people are now making use of that don’t necessarily have an open standards API they can utilise to bring feeds and contacts over
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I don’t think most people have “setup fatigue.” Only us geeks that sign up for every site that comes across TechCrunch
Ian makes an excellent point about the prevalence of password fatigue when it comes to registering for new web applications. This makes technologies like OpenID all the more valuable.
JanRain’s RPX solution (http://rpxnow.com) allows websites to accept logins from major providers like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Windows Live ID, Twitter, MySpace and AOL. RPX can be deployed in a few hours or less and allows websites to extend their reach through social publishing features.
As Forrester noted in its five-year forecast for social media, walled gardens across the web are beginning to crumble in favor of greater social interaction and interoperability between sites. OpenID and easy deployment solutions like RPX help accelerate this shift.
We would love to chat with Zooloo about the benefits of adopting OpenID.
ZooLoo should have faceboo connect, how can I apply for an account – seems fairly interesting.
site isn’t live yet, but should be tomorrow.
ty very much!
Boring… The inherent problem with portal sites is that I always feel like I could be missing something on the main site that everyone else is seeing.. So I end up just visiting that site anyway. Myspace learned the hard way that people like new places to go from time to time, Portals just feel like prison…
Exactly. And I DO end up missing something on my favorite sites if I use an aggregation tool
I’ve never really been a fan of these types of services but Zooloo has definitely got an appealing Logo and the entire setup all looks very user friendly. But all the bright/harsh colours are an off putter to me!
i’ve invested too much time in iGoogle to switch. Unless I see a big reason to switch I’m not going to. Plus I don’t get why I’d care about getting a custom domain name if it’s just my start page.
I’m all about playing here!
Zooloo is going to be a big hit because it has “oo” twice in its name while facebook, Google and Yahoo has only one “oo”
Yes, that’s why oooooooooo.com is registered.
That seems interesting, I will definitely try it when it comes out to public.
It will be interesting to see if Zooloo becomes a major player.
You can sign up for ZooLoo now — just go to zooloo.com and use ready4zooloo and g33ks as your password.
Wrong — it’s zoolooalpha / g33ks.
Hi, based on user comments here, you guys may want to check out Gigya Socialize, it’s free and is designed to make it easy for sites/services like yours to easily add and maintain social and authentication features.
http://www.gigy...nt/GS/Home.aspx
I will try it out, tried signing in with ie8 newest and get “Unfortunately, it looks like you’re using an old version of Internet Explorer® that we do not support.
Please download the latest version, or better yet, download one of the other recommended browsers using the links below (ZooLoo operates much better in those browsers!), for free.”
So it appears their browser sniffing script needs some work, as it is not correctly detecting IE versions.
TechCrunch is one the case, as usual! But, it’s still a bit early. We are hard at work putting the final touches on ZooLoo so check back soon….
seems an awful lot like something we’ve already built (that often doesn’t get noticed)…
schmedley – http://schmedley.com
Schmedley is far and away the best user interface I have ever seen. Seriously…awesome…
Think original; Schmedley is just taking too much from Apple. Icon and UI theft abound.
No shame.
I agree with Shane, Schmedley is pretty sweet. Must admit I’ve never heard of it until reading this post and looking at the comments, but I’m loving the whole Mootools interfacing.
As far as Zooloo goes, I need to say though, why would I ever want to use my own domain for this? It’s bad enough people don’t even register their own domains out of neglect, or lack of time or whatever, but if you do own your own domain, wouldn’t you want people to see something that’s representative of who you are?
If I had my own domain and it’s a whole iGoogle-ish interface, would everyone else then see all my Zooloo widgets I’ve installed as well? What this would do is present people with even more information overload and random data and posts than they already see by Googling your name and coming up with your facebook, twitter, linkedin etc. Personally, my personal domain has all of my pertinent information that I choose to show the public.
Zooloo looks like a really interesting site. It might work well in the K-12 educational system, serving as a central hub for classrooms.
I’ve been an Alpha tester on ZooLoo for a few months and it’s be great so far. ZooLoo does utilize Facebook Connect and the Twitter API. Also don’t worry about that yellow background, the writer chose that, you can customize your background colors to your taste. They also have a pretty cool site builder that is a major benefit to having your own domain. You can create a personal site and blog in addition to the other features the article mentions. There are a lot of things on the site that are not covered in the article and I think most people will be surprised at how many features there are. It is nothing like the other sites that have been posted in the comments.
Sounds awesome. I don’t think it’s meant to compete with Facebook, and I love the fact that you can opt to use your own domain.
People would stop using facebook if they had to pay. People would stop using twitter if they had to pay. People would stop using myspace if they had to pay.
People will not pay for zooloo.
Agree with Terry – People are not going to spend $29 a year for this service.
ZooLoo is like Navigaya, Netvibes, Schmedley, iGoogle, PageFlakes, Protopage, etc. with blogging features like Xanga and somewhat similar to a FanBox…
You don’t have to pay the 29 bucks to use the site. The 29 dollars is if want your own domain name.
You are basically paying for domain registration and a year of hosting of your personal site or blog. That’s a pretty damn good deal on it’s own, but you also get all the other features.
Everyone wants to compare it to something else, but there is really nothing like it. It does have have areas that are similar to the sites mentioned but no one has all the elements of the sites combined in 1 place. That is the key different here, convenience and domain/site ownership.
ZooLoo new tagline = Your Name. Your Domain. Our Ads.
The profile page is a rip off of myspace.
I went to school with Jill, one of the founders, and was excited to hear she had started this. Hoping it goes well for them – trying it out now.
looks nice. keep it up
thanks