Webware

At the Under the Radar conference earlier this week, the pitch from Joe Drumgoole, CEO of PutPlace, was tragically misunderstood. Drumgoole pitched his product as the one true glue to bind all a family's media together. Webware's Josh Lowensohn saw through it, but the judges and the audience did not, and neither did I. So I followed up with Drumgoole the day after the conference to give him another chance to make his case. See also the video interview at the end of this post.

PutPlace is backup. That's really it. It competes with services like Mozy and Carbonite. Architecturally it's quite different, though, and it has a different pricing structure.

The key selling point of PutPlace is that it backs up all your data and media to one place, no matter which computer it's on, and that it knows where all the versions of your files are stored, including storage on sharing services like Flickr.

Technically it does this by creating a hash on each file on each computer so it can keep track of duplicates. When PutPlace goes to back up a file on one computer that another has already stored, it instead simply creates a pointer to it, and it doesn't copy the actual file itself. This makes it much more efficient at backing up family computers, which are likely to hold a lot of data that duplicates other family machines. It also makes backups much faster, since the hash comparisons are done by the PutPlace software before the file is sent out for storage.

PutPlace doesn't yet handle data on non-computer gadgets (phones and cameras), the thinking being that valuable data on those devices eventually migrates to PCs where the backups run. Software for some gadgets (phones) may be built in the future. Release of a Mac client will also lag the public availability of Windows software.

The software can also auto-publish media to sharing services. It monitors the folders you specify and sends new files put in those folders up to the sites.

All the data PutPlace stores can be accessed from a Web site for viewing, sharing, or restoring. The company is pushing the capability that users will then have to see all their media in one place, no matter which of their PCs a file came from. Frankly, I'd like to see that capability in the computer's file system itself. See Microsoft Live Mesh for a peek at how this might be done in the future.

Unlike all-you-can-store backup services, PutPlace charges more if you store more. However, you can have as many PCs on a family account as you want, and since PutPlace doesn't duplicate files on its servers the incremental cost for adding computers to your account may be low or even zero. Drumgoole told me that the fees for the service are still being decided, but it's looking like $3 a month will get you 10GB of storage, and $15 will be good for 100GB. There will be intermediate plans and overage charges as well. During beta (which opens shortly), storage will be free.

PutPlace stores all your files on Amazon's S3 servers. If you'd rather your data is stored elsewhere (ADrive, for example), you can pay the minimum monthly charge and PutPlace will be able to write to those. Your directory data, however, is always stored by PutPlace itself.

The service is a closed beta right now. I have not tried it so I can't evaluate its speed or ease of use. But here's my take: Architecturally, it's a solid idea. Efficiency of storage and data transfer matters when you're doing backup, especially since most consumers have limited upstream network connections. However, from a consumer pricing perspective, even though PutPlace might actually cost most users less than an unlimited storage plan, the potential for overage may scare people. The predictability of the unlimited plans is more appropriate for services that are used as insurance.

Finally, services like this need a more in-your-face utility angle. Nobody wants to buy insurance, and when it comes to backup, most people just don't. Services like SugarSync and Joggle, that make your data easy to access and share from Web browsers, social networks, and mobile phones have an advantage, because while they do the more important job of backup, they have day-to-day utility that people might feel better about paying for.

VenCorps' Sean Wise.

(Credit: Rafe Needleman / CNET)

If you think you have what it takes to be a venture capitalist, you will definitely want to check out VenCorps when it launches in about three months. It lets you try your hand at picking start-ups to invest in.

VenCorps is not an actual fund in which you can participate. If you want to invest real money in a portfolio of pre-public companies, you can't, at least not without inside connections. That's what public company registration, and the public stock markets are for.

Instead, VenCorps lets you pick out the start-ups from its list of company submissions that you think would be good investments. VenCorp invests money in the companies its community members think are best. For users, there's no upfront buy-in to the game. And likewise there's no massive VC-level payback if VenCorps strikes it rich on one of your picks. VenCorps, from the user's perspective, is a prediction market: you pick winners and pay for your picks with your online reputation, and get paid back primarily in kind.

So why bother? Because you can win points, which can be redeemed for prizes, and maybe token cash amounts. And because if you really do want to be a VC, VenCorps, should it ever go into hiring mode, will tap its users who have proven that they can pick winners.

The VenCorps playing field is not level. When you first sign up for the game, the site takes your history and weighs your influence in its rankings based on your work experience, education, and other factors. From that point, your performance influences the weight your votes get: Pick well and your influence increases. Do badly and you sink into irrelevance. But you'll have more influence at the start if you have experience in investing or entrepreneurship.

VenCorps is a idea marketplace, but there's real money behind it.

It is worth mentioning--strongly--that picking companies to invest in is only a part of the venture capital process. Money that's just thrown at a start-up without a parallel investment in time and expertise by the people behind it is called "dumb money" for a good reason. VenCorps' model of crowd-sourcing the investment strategy is, thus, only half the battle; actually doing well for the companies that the fund invests in is just as important. And in this regard, there's a bit of a disconnect: If, for example, the VenCorps community picks a great company in a field that the VenCorps employees (the partners) don't have expertise in, the smart VenCorps money could become dumb, and a potentially good investment could go bad.

So, while VenCorps users may be, "smarter than three white guys in a board room," as instigator Sean Wise says, I'm not sure it's smart enough to give the funded companies the leg up they'll need.

That said, Wise has thought through a lot of the complex prediction market and real-world contest elements in this model. VenCorps is, incidentally, feeding into the Ph.D. thesis he's working on in prediction market economics. There are other elements here that tie the model together: There's a "showdown," or contest, that pits user favorites against each other for a $50,000 prize; and there's an economy behind the reward points that companies can exploit by participating in the model. Also, VenCorps will aim to rope in experienced start-up investors and get them to commit their expertise to making the contests' winners successes in the real world.

So even though VenCorps is to my mind a form of stunt marketing, an "American Idol" of venture investing, the operation might help a few young companies get their ideas off the ground. Certainly, there's no reason that the traditional three-white-guys model of picking VC investments deserves a monopoly on the process.

VenCorps' parent company is Spencer Trask, a serious, non-stunt venture firm. Its $2 billion fund is underwriting the VenCorps project.

See also: Vator.TV; Spigit; ThotMarket; CrowdSpirit.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Reality check: half of the social media start-ups at Tuesday's Under the Radar Conference won't exist next year.

That was the dour prediction of an advertising executive after a day of start-up presentations from a tongue-twisting list of tech companies--including Verismo, Mytopia, Loud3R, Jacked, Sometrics and PutPlace.

Not that the start-up pitches were boring or hard to swallow. It's just that similar to the dot-com heyday (and eventual bust), the success of many social media companies is tied to online advertising spending. And guess what, after nearly 10 years of hand-wringing over Internet advertising models, traditional brands are still not spending the many millions of dollars online that they regularly do on TV commercials.

Even more relevant to social media is that traditional advertisers are especially cautious when it comes to the idea that their brand logo might appear next to an image of a marijuana leaf posted by a 16-year-old. Never mind that Facebook's audience rivals that of some television networks.

"Take a look at history, and the way Web 1.0 worked...publishers didn't make it until the ad dollars started to scale. The same mistakes are being made in the social media space today," said Jeff Stiers, senior vice president of business growth for JWT, a major traditional advertising agency that was founded in 1864.

His skepticism--and hope for Internet advertising--was matched by other ad executives on the panel, which included Tom Bedecarre, CEO of digital advertising agency AKQA, and Chris Colborn, executive vice president of its rival R/GA. Internet companies must take the hand of traditional advertisers to get them to spend online, the executives said. But they agreed that there's continued uncertainty in interactive advertising and reluctance on the part of big advertisers.

Like with Web 1.0 companies, one of the biggest problems social media companies have in the market is that they're technology driven, the executives said. Tech companies often fail to hire media-savvy executives at the top who can sell brand advertising.

Another Web 1.0-like problem: many social media start-ups are marketing the idea that they have tons of data on people's demographics and preferences. The start-ups believe that that data will lure brand managers seeking to reach new customers. Not true, executives said.

"I can't imagine a large agency giving a rat about a small firm's data. Advertisers are looking for aggregation of data...and someone at a very high level to give an overview (of what it means)," said Bedecarre.

One member of the audience, an executive from news site Topix, asked the panelists when a major advertiser would announce plans to spend $20 million sponsoring AOL or Facebook. Bedecarre answered that that kind of deal doesn't translate on Facebook because brands are too used to ads that broadcast to, instead of engage, audiences. They're still not willing to spend many millions of dollars on major Web sites, he said.

"It hasn't happened yet because big advertisers and agencies haven't let go of advertisements. They like to buy lots of ads," he said, referring to commercials.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The Web has come a long way. The aesthetic of a site can oftentimes determine whether or not a wary user will dig deeper and explore your site. The four companies below offer some of the most beautiful products shown off Tuesday at the Under the Radar social media and entertainment conference, but are they really useful? For the most part, yes. Read more about them below.

Animoto, one of my colleague Elinor Mills' favorite slideshow tools and as CEO Brad Jefferson calls it "The end of the slideshow" (in the boring, stodgy sense, of course). Jefferson says he's seen a large amount of users taking advantage of its premium services, which offer the capability to create full-length videos as opposed to the 30-second clips that free members get. In the future, the company is moving toward offering artists and companies a branded player and tools for users to create videos that involve products, songs, TV shows, and feature-length films.

Previous coverage:
Animoto adds personal music videos to Facebook
Video-creation service Animoto has lit my fire
Can Animoto make you the next Spielberg?

Michael Galpert, the co-founder of Aviary, a Web-based photo editor we've covered several times here on Webware (see link dump below) showed off the service's latest layer tracking technology (video here).

Galpert only had six minutes to talk about the suite of Web-based graphics tools, but managed to throw in a mention about an upcoming vector-based editing tool akin to Adobe Illustrator. He also announced a 3D modeling tool that will take advantage of its sister-service that lets users create complex textures. Galpert didn't reveal the names of the two forthcoming apps, but said that a less confusing name convention was on the way.

Previous coverage:
Aviary's creative suite is more than a pretty Flash app
Flash apps are taking over--Phoenix is the latest proof
Web-based multimedia suite Aviary invites beta testers

BigStage is a 3D avatar service that puts together a rendered head based on three photographs it takes with your Webcam. It'll figure out your bone structure, how much your nose sticks out, and how large your ears are.

Co-founder Jonathan Strietzel's demo of the face maker reminded me a lot of Gizmoz, which does the same thing, except with Big Stage you can make live changes to your avatar in moving video clips and pictures and see the changes reflected right away.

The site is opening up with pictures in two months, and a version that integrates live videos about six months later. Strietzel thinks the future of the technology will be tie-ins with social networks to pull in faces from your buddy lists to make adjoining advertisements more targeted with rendered 3D heads of your friends. Creepy.

Previous coverage: CIA technology will map your face

Overlay.TV is a company that's doing something very similar to VideoClix.TV (see coverage). It'll link up the items, people, or subject matter that are found in videos to online stores so people can buy or get more information on what they're watching. Some of the demos I've seen of competing products are incredibly engaging, albeit a far cry from the virgin, ad-free purity of what's seen on most video sites.

What makes Overlay.TV interesting is that it's going for both media creators and consumers. It's got a Facebook app that lets you tag up your videos. It also works with over a dozen popular hosts like YouTube, MySpace.com, and Yahoo Video.

That's the end of the conference sessions for the day. Stay tuned for the fireside chat about how start-ups can get noticed among all the noise from competitors.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--The second to the last group rounding up Tuesday's presentations at the Under the Radar conference comes from all walks of Web services. There's a tool to post your baby photos, one to have artists and creative types scramble to create something for you, an upcoming video channel surfing app, and one that organizes all your files online and off.

CrowdSpring, a start-up we listed as one to watch, is a marketplace for creative ideas. The site lets you put out a project and get it crowd-sourced. The winner gets cash and potentially a job depending on what idea hunters are looking for. The service keeps track of completed projects and ideas in progress, which you can see in this logo contest, which had nearly 200 submissions from independent designers who were called upon to help rebrand a site.

Ffwd (pronounced "fast forward") is the creation of former iLike and Garageband.com CEO Patrick Koppula. I got a demonstration of it earlier Tuesday and it's a really fun idea, blending a little bit of the fun of channel surfing Web videos in a similar fashion to what's been seen on StumbleUpon. Instead of random Web videos though, Ffwd is all about channels and exploring other sets of videos as they've been sorted into those channels.

The site got its name for the ridiculously oversized fast-forward button that skips to the next clip in whatever channel you're on. Users also have the option to jump to three other channels where the same video they're currently watching is housed.

The site is launching this summer with plans for an application programming interface that developers and content creators can plug into in 2009. There's also an upcoming Wii-optimized version of the site that will let you channel surf from your couch--that is, in case there's nothing good on TV.

Lil'Grams is a real-time publishing tool for parents for text and media of their children. Like Tumblr, it separates what type of post you're about to do by what type of media it is, and adds on an extra layer of protection by letting you pick the privacy options before it even goes live. Likewise your friends and family members can choose what type and how much of any updates they want to receive, keeping them from getting spammed by your 500th picture of your child smearing food on his or her face.

Lil'Grams works via e-mail, SMS, and Twitter. You just send an item to a special address and it will organize it and archive it for you. Webware's Rafe Needleman attempted doing something similar with Gmail starting last month, but if you don't feel like filling up your in-box, this is a more organized solution.

The service is launching in beta next week with plans to open up to everyone in late summer. Rafe will no doubt be doing the hands on and sending me and everyone he knows a million alerts of said food smearing.

Putplace is an online storage provider. The service links together all your files with digital signatures and then puts it on a huge file map. These signatures track where you've shared those files online so you can view the past history of any given file.

The service will also estimate how much online storage you should use based on what you've got laying around on hard drives and what services you're using. When it comes time to get some online storage, you can buy it from PutPlace based on how much you need.

PutPlace is launching at the end of the month. Until then, it's in private beta.

Coming up next is the last session of the day with a handful of start-ups that specialize in useful eye candy. Stay tuned, and catch up on all our coverage here.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--News aggregation, licensing rights, and user-generated content. Every publisher has grappled with one or all of these issues as they've built online operations in the age of social media.

They're also potentially ripe markets for innovation. Or at least that's the hope of four Web publishing start-ups that presented business models here Tuesday at the Under the Radar Conference, a one-day confab on social media.

Four companies--AudioMicro, GumGum, Keibi, and Loud3r--delivered a six-minute elevator pitch to an audience of executives and three judges. Judges included Charlene Li, vice president at Forrester Research; Rob Hayes, partner at First Round Capital; and Jason Oberfest, vice president of business development at MySpace.

Here are the online publishing hopefuls:

AudioMicro
What it does: licenses music or soundtracks for $1. Launched last week, the company hosts a marketplace for independent artists to upload and license their music for $1. People who've produced a YouTube video, for example, could license an audio track from AudioMicro's collection of artists to sync the music with their video. Or movie studios could use the site to find music and offset production costs, according to founder Ryan Born. "We crowd-source content from unknown artists around the world and sell it for a dollar," Born said during his elevator pitch.

But First Round Capital's Rob Hayes pointed out that the company has a chicken-and-egg problem. It needs artists to attract major licensors, and it needs major licensors to attract artists.

AudioMicro, based in Los Angeles, is looking to raise a series A round of funding to grow fast and market itself.

(Credit: GumGum)

GumGum
What it does: Flexible licensing of photos, text, and video over the Internet. GumGum, which was founded in February, has created a marketplace for content--audio, pictures, articles, and video--that publishers can license per use, or for a share of advertising revenue. (Independent content creators post their material on GumGum, which is based in Santa Monica, Calif.) "We aggregate, post, and distribute content via widgets," according to the founders.

Gawker, for example, can pick up a cut of code for a photo on GumGum and paste it to its site, then pay a set price each time that photo is viewed from its site. Or it could allow GumGum to wrap an ad around the photo and collect 20 percent of the revenue. Gawker is an early public customer.

The challenge? Adoption.

Keibi
What it does: Technology for moderating user-generated content on sites like MySpace and Facebook. The two-year-old company is trying to solve one of the biggest problems that social networks face--how to make major brands comfortable with advertising near potentially questionable content posted by members of these networks. Keibi's answer is to sell an enterprise software platform that helps social networks moderate photos, text, images, or video before they're posted to a site.

Jason Oberfest (of MySpace) and one of the judges asked how well it integrates with social networks' existing software infrastructure. Paul Remer, CEO of Keibi, said that it has a plug-in and is working with companies like Salesforce.com on integrating its technology.

Keibi charges customers between $2,000 and $20,000 a month to use its software-as-a-service platform. So far, the company has raised $6 million; and it's in the process of raising a series B round of financing, Remer said.

(Credit: Loud3R)

Loud3r
What it does: news sites for sneaker heads, dog lovers, and martial arts geeks. And that's just a drop in the bucket. Loud3r develops technology to scour the Web for specialized news and social content, and then aggregates that material into a branded Web site. It owns 25 different sites--New3R (for gadgets and technology), Glaci3r (environment), and Putt3r (for golf)--but it plans to have at least 250 by the end of 2009. The company plans to make money by selling brand advertising around its targeted topics, and license its technology to third parties for five figures monthly.

"The Internet is a noisy place. Loud3r is the solution for the noise," said Lowell Goss, founder and CEO.

Still, the judges were skeptical about whether the Web needs another news aggregator. One judge asked specifically if Loud3r is late to the party. Lowell's answer: "Google wasn't the first search engine."

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA-- At 1 p.m. PDT, I'm kicking off my sessions at the Under the Radar conference on social-media companies.

First up, we have a few established companies, showing us what they're doing and what they've learned getting there: Shift Control Media, SocialMedia, and Wetpaint.

At 1:30 p.m., I've got my first group of start-ups, the media tools CrowdSpring, Ffwd, Lil'Grams, and PutPlace. The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher will be one of the judges in this session. Watch the video here.

There will be a break from 2:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m., and then we'll see four social-content creation tools: Animoto, Aviary, Big Stage, and Overlay.tv. Robert Scoble will be one of the judges in that session.

Update: The video stream from my laptop isn't working, so I'm removing it from this post. Sorry about that.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--You can't have the Web without content. The companies presenting at this morning's content group at Under the Radar here are trying to scrape together things for people to look at and enjoy--from stand-up comedy to a search engine that tells you how to beat the Serpentshrine Cavern raid in World of Warcraft.

Comedy.com better be funny. Luckily its CEO and founder Dean Valentine is. Valentine's a longtime content creator, and just happens to be the same guy who helped create the mid-'90s TV dud Homeboys in Outer Space, so go figure. The site launched in February, and it aggregates comedy content from all over the Web, including clips on YouTube, Metacafe, and others. Everything is picked out by human editors. Like Collegehumor and Break.com, the site also has its own series of original videos with reoccurring characters and hosts.

In addition to short comedy clips, the site hosts stand-up comedy routines and lets comedians create their own branded pages. It also hosts a database of 30,000 jokes.

Curse.com is an unfortunately named but useful series of portals for MMORPG gamers. It pulls in game statistics from a variety of platforms, and also grabs video game-related videos from hosting sites. Users can pick which game they're playing and they'll get a customized version of the site, complete with tips, related news, and blog stories, and downloads. CEO Hubert Thiebolt also demoed the service's search tool WOWDB, which lets you search through Wiki FAQs for the popular World of Warcraft series.

Next month Curse.com is releasing a premium subscription service for $4 a month that gives players access to special premium content on its site and partnered pages. Thiebolt is banking on MMO users already being comfortable with using services that incur a monthly charge.

MyHollywood is an upcoming "casual game in a virtual world that's married to virtual reality," says creator Joey Carson. The site is aimed at women who enjoy celebrity gossip sites and is actually tied to real-world news. Users get scored on quizzes and gameplay in a 3D virtual world. That information is then tied in with their online persona.

The site is heavily widgetized, with bits and pieces you can stick on existing social networks like MySpace and Facebook to show off your MyHollywood.com character. There's also a premium service with specialty goods people can buy with real-world fashion to adorn their virtual self. I will definitely blog about this later, if only to see how much celebrity knowledge I've unintentionally absorbed.

The site hasn't launched yet, but we got a small peek at its ties to existing celebrity gossip sites that get reposted as feeds.

PluggedIn.com launched in mid-April (see past coverage) is built around HD and broadcast-quality content. The site's claim to fame is pulling in content that's been linked up to artists and actors, so you can have entire pages of good clips and full-length videos for concerts or TV shows. The service also has a drag-and-drop playlist creator that gives people permalinked URLs that can be shared with friends or posted to an artist page.

Stay tuned for more UTR coverage throughout the day. Coming up are demos from game makers and video exploration services like Ffwd, which I'll be writing up soon.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--At 10:45 a.m. PDT, the Under the Radar conference (all stories) here recommences with two demo tracks. In the Content track we'll hear from Comedy.com, Curse, Hollywood Interactive, and PluggedIn. In Publishing, we get AudioMicro, GumGum, Keibi, and Loud3r. You can watch the live video streams below.

And be sure to tune in at 1 p.m. PDT, when I will be moderating the presentation and judging of several companies (Shift Control, SocialMedia, Wetpaint, CrowdSpring, ffwd, Lil'Grams, PutPlace, Animoto, Aviary, Big Stage, and Overlay.tv). I'll have The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher as one of my judges during my first start-up session, at 1:30 p.m., and Robert Scoble in the second, at 3:15 p.m. Don't miss. I will put up a post with links to the video, and I'll be taking reader questions for my presenters via Twitter (Follow me and then post a message starting with @Rafe, so I see it).

Room 1: Content, moderated by Jeremy Toeman
Broadcast by Ustream.TV

Room 2: Publishing, moderated by Ellen McGirt
TV Show hosted by Ustream