TechCrunch writes today about Zilok.com, a French start up now in the United States that facilitates people renting stuff from strangers… kind of like eBay, but you get the things back. The comments mention several competitors doing the same thing.
Front Porch Forum sees a lot of exchanges like this among nearby neighbors, but without the rental fee. We like to call it “borrowing something from the neighbor.” Some readers with long memories may remember such a practice from days of yore. And, while borrowing, you actually get to know the people who live around you a little better. Gadzooks!
From TechCrunch today…
Sometimes products are easy to sum up in single sentences, sometimes they are most definitely not. Whrrl, a new site by Pelago, is one of those that eludes definition. Hence, Pelago’s need to describe it unhelpfully as “a seamlessly integrated Web and mobile experience that is social, useful, and fun”.
Let’s start with the fundamentals and go from there. Whrrl is at heart a social network, as are many websites we see these days. But it’s a social network with a purpose (or, several related purposes, as we shall see). Members primarily use Whrrl to share their opinions and knowledge about local outfits, such as restaurants, bars, retail stores, and hotels. In the spirit of Yelp, users can find basic information about establishments and then, more importantly, share reviews of them (with brief descriptions and a star rating system). You can also write simple notes that correspond with particular locations, notes you can choose to share with all Whrrl members or just your friends…
Pelago raised $7.4 million last November from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Trilogy Equity Partners. They are currently running a promotion campaign with American Eagle to get the word out to Whrrl’s target demographic, 18 to late 20 year olds. Robert Scoble recently recorded an interview with Pelago CEO Jeff Holden.
I have no idea if this will be successful… perhaps it will turn into a real champ. What catches my attention is how much venture capital is flowing into dot.com start-ups with silly one-word names that are aimed at gear-heads living in major urban areas who have too much time on their hands. That’s not a knock against Whrrl, just an observation about the online universe.
Perhaps the division I’m groping around is between those who use the internet primarily for entertainment and those who use it as a tool to get things done more efficiently, cheaper, better, etc. Seems like internet-as-entertainment has won the day. Maybe we should start calling PCs mobile devices “the new idiot box.”
TechCrunch reports today…
We’ve been informed that Meetro – provider of a location-based instant messaging service – is working on a stealth project that aims to make forum setup, customization, and moderation as easy as blogging with Blogger.
The project, codenamed “Makaha”, has been in development since the beginning of this year. While many forums require users to find their own hosting and install software, Makaha will enable users to create and personalize forums through a point-and-click interface. Forums will have their own subdomains at the Makaha website just as blogs have their own subdomains at Blogger… Forum moderators will have full control over CSS styling (in addition to premade templates) and will benefit from an extensive community moderation system.
Even with the attractiveness of that traffic, few companies have been innovating in this space. We recently reviewed Tangler, which provides forums that function much like chat rooms by immediately displaying posts via Ajax when they are added to a discussion thread.
Interesting traffic numbers for social networking sites on TechCrunch today. Lots of interesting comments. My first take-away… loads of options for online social networking and more flooding onto the web every day.
It’s not about features, it’s about who’s already there and tone. The internet is overflowing with social networks for (1) snarky techno-types, (2) pop-culture-obsessed kids (i.e., college age on down), and (3) career-focused climbers in a few industries. For the rest?
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more