Meetup, the popular events management service will be undergoing several large changes in the next few weeks. According to an entry posted to the company's official blog last night, users new and old were watched while using the site to help restructure the design and layout.
Screenshots have been posted showing a new look, which is possibly a little less important than the announcement of a developer API that's launching alongside it. Developers will be able to tap into a limited amount of the data found on the site for use in third-party sites and tools. Personal information from members is not making the cut.
Also new is an updated payment system that will be provided to social organizers who need better ways to manage events with a price tag. Meetup currently has PayPal, but the new tool will integrate Amazon Payments--a PayPal and Google Checkout competitor that launched late last year. What's smart is that the new system lets event planners set it up so that people who want to RSVP "yes" are required to pay up front. As a host, they can also refund everyone at once if an event is canceled or the funds are no longer required.
To help people plan where they should have events, the service is also adding a new location finder called "Places" that lists locations where Meetup events have been held in the past, alongside a user-maintained rating system. With enough use, this system could help weed out potentially bad places where newbie event holders might try to book without knowing any better. It's something that's made Yelp quite popular with restaurants and hotels, and this is a nice vertical for a community that thrives on where events are being held.
Meetup sits in a space that's been shaken up a little in the last few years. Newcomers like MyPunchBowl and Facebook's own events service have given people easy ways to create some of the more simple get-togethers using lists of contacts from other services or their core groups of friends. Competitor Yelp has also thrown its hat in the ring with an events service that's a smart pickup on user bases and their penchant for leaving the house and spending money. One remedy for this is getting places where competitors aren't. In the case of Meetup, it's attempting to spread internationally, starting with the markets where it's being used the most--like Italy. Others will follow, but will it be enough to crush some of the big boys?
Thinking about setting up an event here? Check the scores from other users on how good it is for meetups first.
(Credit: Meetup Inc.)
A correction was made to this post: Fotolog's projected revenue is $2.3 million, not $2.3 billion. Dr. Evil would be proud.
Fotolog, a photo-sharing social network founded by Meetup co-founder and CEO Scott Heiferman, has been acquired. After several days of rumors that the company was up for sale, the French company Hi-Media Group announced on Monday that it had acquired Fotolog for $90 million in cash and stock.
As the Silicon Alley Insider notes, most of the New York-based Fotolog's 10 million-plus members are in Europe and Latin America. The company's 2007 projected revenue is estimated at $2.3 million, expected to come from sponsored ad links (thanks to a deal with Google), banner ads and premium membership packages. A release from the publicly traded Hi-Media stated that Fotolog's membership has doubled this year and that the site is raking in 3.3 billion page views per month.
CEO John Borthwick will apparently stay with the company, at least for the time being.
PowerReviews collects user opinions from e-tailers.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Found at the Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup last night: PowerReviews, yet another site that collects user reviews (see also ViewScore, Wize, Retrevo, DigitalAdvisor, and TheFind). But in a diabolically clever way: The company's first product, which has been out for a while, is a technology platform that online retailers use to collect user reviews for the items they sell. Businesses using the technology include J&R Electronics, Adorama, Ritz Camera, and Walgreens. PowerReviews provides user reviews technology free to these and other businesses. In return, it gets rights to repurpose the reviews on its own aggregation site.
This setup gives PowerReviews control over two big factors. First, since the company provides the reviews templates to its customers, it can ensure consistency in how products are written up. For example, all PowerReviews-enabled sites ask users to score products on a 1-to5-star scale and enter in pros, cons, and "best uses" for each product. Second, since the reviews are attached to commerce sites, PowerReviews can ensure than only people who actually purchased a particular product can review it.
You can compare brand satisfaction.
(Credit: CNET Networks)PowerReviews doesn't have to scrounge the Web for user reviews, and it doesn't have to beg users to write reviews for its own site. It just siphons off the data it's collecting on behalf of its customers. And they apparently don't mind, since user reviews are all ultimately connected to the site they came from and can thus generate additional traffic back to the online store.
How is it? The content is quite good, and it's diverse as well. There are plenty of reviews of digital cameras, but you'll also find BBQ grills and bras. There's also a cool feature that lets you compare users' overall satisfaction with a product type across different brands.
My only problem with this service right now (it's in beta) is that the same product, if sold by various retailers, is listed on the site as different products. For example, the Canon SD600 is listed three times, with a different set of reviews for each.
The site should launch in February. If you sign up for the "private beta" now, you should get an access code within a few hours.
Last night, while CES and Macworld were both raging on into the after-dark hours, I was at the Great Hall of NYC's Cooper Union for the first NY Tech Meetup of 2007. The monthly event was hosted, as usual, by Meetup founder Scott Heiferman, who proudly announced that the NY Tech Meetup had spawned parallel events in 20 cities, and that in the month of January there would be around one thousand meetups held across New York City that ranged from yoga enthusiasts groups to political activist organizations. While some meetups number only a handful of people, this one draws a crowd of 500+.
For the most part, the NY Tech Meetup followed its standard format of a handful of six-minute presentations from local entrepreneurs' start-ups--several of which I'll be writing up over the next day. This month, one of the presentations was given by a visitor from across the country in Portland, Oregon: Diane Eisnor of Platial, a Google Maps mashup creator that CNET covered shortly after its launch about a year ago (in the pre-Webware days). And a second presentation was not a start-up at all, but rather a technique: a demonstration of how to make quick and easy cartoon animations using a wipe-off board, a piece of free software called Monkeyjam, and a USB webcam. Yeah, we're creative here in the New York tech scene!
After the presentation, Heiferman opened up the floor for comments about the thing that was on pretty much everyones' minds: Apple's iPhone. A few attendees were skeptical, citing the fact that the iPhone is only available on Cingular's carrier, and it's got a $499-$599 price tag, but most in the room were purely effervescent about the new handheld. They were particularly impressed by the sensors that automatically orient the screen and can tell when the iPhone is being held close to an ear; the apparently seamless switch between Wi-Fi and cellular modes; the multi-touch functions for zooming in and out; and the fact that Apple has managed to weave such disparate technologies into an interface that's so simple.
As one NY Tech Meetup member put it, citing Apple's recent name change from Apple Computer to just Apple, Inc.: "I think Apple revealed its entire company strategy today."
Last August, I covered MyCroft, which was making a unique service that broke down tasks, such as translation, that could only be done well by humans. It spread out these tasks as challenges on advertising banners. Cool idea, but it was so way out there that it was unlikely to succeed. And indeed, is hasn't. The company has renamed itself inChorus and launched a new service with that name that takes the original MyCroft concept in a new direction. I got the skinny at last night's Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup.
Ask the crowd your (short) questions.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Now, instead of challenging random users to perform rote tasks such as translation and tagging, it encourages its questioners to launch "projects" that seek advice from the crowd. For example, you can ask for feedback on a product you're thinking of launching, or put a multiple-choice poll on the service, or (just like with the old version) ask users to tag photos or items.
What do these tasks have in common? Not much that I can see, and that's not good. I was initially intrigued by the open-ended project template on inChorus, but to me, a "project" consists of more than a single question and an answer that can be crammed into a standard advertising banner. Here's my project, for example. There's no room for depth there. It pains me to say it, but inChorus seems to be even more an example of a technology in search of a business than MyCroft was.
The concept of spreading work out to multiple users and sites does make sense, though. For example, the voting engine Vizu is interesting. Like inChorus, it distributes questions to multiple sites and communities, but the Vizu business model seems better thought out.
I liked what MyCroft was doing previously. I still believe that yoking the crowd of Net users together into a single engine of intelligence is a powerful idea, but this project seems a bit scattered.
At the Silicon Valley New Tech Meetup tonight I got a demo of Pinger, a cool little voice messaging service that works on your cell phone. You dial the Pinger number, speak your message to the service, say the name of person you want to get it, and it sends an SMS to your recipient. The recipient gets a text message with a phone number attached to it. The recipient selects and dials that number to hear the message immediately and can respond immediately by voice, too.
It sounds an awful lot like voice mail, doesn't it? It is, sort of, but in the demo, it looked like a more simple solution for sending a voice message when you're sure what you want to do is send a message, not engage in a dialogue. Pinger is also good if you don't like sending text messages.
It's a cool tool, but it seems a bit lonely as a service by itself. It really should be integrated into a larger communications product. On the plus side, if you want to use it, you don't have to deal with your cellular carrier. Just sign up and go for it.
Last night was the year-end edition of the NY Tech Meetup, the monthly event organized by Meetup founder Scott Heiferman. It's a popular local event for the (re)emerging Silicon Alley set, usually drawing a crowd of over 500.
One of this month's features was a set of 10-second predictions by audience members regarding what they think the biggest tech trends of 2007 will be. There were some far-flung ones about grassroots political movement, radios, and whatnot, but there was one noticeable trend: the "connected home," with fluidity between broadband audio and video, television, speakers, and other components of the home media center. We've already seen plenty of it in '06, but I'd have to say I'm in agreement that it'll see a much more mainstream reception in '07. Although I'm not sure how well those grainy YouTube videos will translate to our HDTVs.
The second most frequent prediction last night? That New York City will produce its first-ever billion-dollar Internet company. It's a possibility, but I wouldn't say the crowd of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and enthusiasts was exactly "objective."
UPDATE: I forgot one. Another attendee predicted that in 2007, the term "2.0" will be used by techies "like building developers treat the 13th floor." He was answered with resounding applause.
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