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Source:CenterNetworks

Tonight I attended the "New York Web 2.0 Social Networking Tech Meetup." What a name - covers all bases! We met at a club which unfortunately had horrible acoustics. I was one of three presenters, and it was nearly impossible for me to hear myself over the club music, and the noise coming from the bar. I would suggest that they move it to somewhere that is a bit quieter. I counted about 75-80 attendees. I had a chance to meet the editor of the new AlleyInsider.com, which is a tech blog focused on NYC.

There were two presenters for the evening: Confabb and TrustFX. Below are my comments and thoughts from each presentation.

Confabb

Confabb is a site that lists conferences around the U.S. and provides detailed information on each. Along with the conference information, you can also signup to a social networking option which lets you create a profile which others can "friend" you on. This is a better version of MyContags.

Here are my live comments/thoughts from the presentation:

• Launched November 2006

Claim to have the largest database of conference information

• Do they have travel information for each conference?
• Have to create yet another social profile?
• You can create branded URLs for your conference, they showed a bunch of "issue" related conferences
• Is it real-time, so if something changes on the schedule, do they update?
• How do they get the word out, do they have promos at conferences? Will this replace Twitter at SXSW?
• Seems like a ton of manual labor to keep this site updated
• Seems like a good idea as long as they can get every conference into the system and get a large number of conference attendees active
• My suggestion would be to tie into a social network like facebook so users are not required to create yet another profile
• What about a tie with Meetup or Upcoming?
• Might also be nice to let me save to Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.

TrustFX

TrustFX is attempting to create a way for consumers to "trust" a business by the ratings and reviews posted about the same business. One of my friends called it "yellow pages with ratings". Their mission statement is: "To create credible online reputations". The service just launched.

Here are my live comments/thoughts from the presentation:

• CEO Andrew Ward noted that the system can't be gamed, but from what I could tell on the demo, it looked like it would be easy to game
• They only list businesses that have registered with the system. My suggestion is that they start to fill the database. I searched for dentist in my ZIP code and no results were returned. I think they would have more luck returning as much data as possible and highlight those with a trust score.
• Andrew said that businesses can tie incentives to ratings. I think this could be a big no-no as it could create a payperpost type issue
• The last slide discussed market opportunity: potential for 250k customers in year 4 with sales of $100 million and they are open to acquisition

Overall I enjoyed the event (outside of the location) and meeting many new people. I look forward to hearing from the contacts I made and hopefully covering their startups here on CN.

Source:CenterNetworks

Mashable is reporting that social networking site Respectance has taken a Series A round of financing to the tune of $1.5 million. What makes Respectance unique is that pages are built for those who have deceased.

Pete notes, "Certainly, a 'social network for the dead' has the kind of simple premise that the mainstream media can latch onto. Meanwhile, we tested the site a few weeks back and liked it: with a nice, usable design and support for multimedia like photos and videos, it’s very well executed."

Assuming the Internet isn't going away anytime in the next 60 years, this type of site could be very valuable. A young child can learn about their grandparents from family and friends across the world.

It might be also a good place for each of us to live an "Internet Will" online.  Last month, I spoke with SharedBook, who handles the technology for Legacy.com, a site that scrapes obituaries from across the nation and creates printable books from the comments.

I guess when the living is so overwhelmed with social networking, those who have passed on is a good place to market to.

Source:CenterNetworks

Updated: If you are reading this in a feed reader, please visit the page to read the response from ExpoTV CEO Daphne Kwon. The response has clarified the concern I raised to my (and I hope everyone's) satisfaction. Thanks Daphne!

Last week I reported on a video reviews site called ExpoTv. During the demo, I asked about their syndication policy regarding positive and negative reviews. Since I was the last question, I don't think they had a chance to full answer, but the gist of their reply was, "We allow the retailers to pick what they show." That just does not sit well with me.

Thi Luu, SVP, Web Operations provided a comment on my original post:

Thanks for feedback on ExpoTV and wanted to address your question about our syndication strategy. We feel that because video is a new medium for most retailers and comparison shopping engines, they haven't yet been able to build into their sites the sorting functionality about the content being positive or negative.

They link to and promote ExpoTV to allow users a more robust experience and to find more video product reviews. Until they build the capability to sort through the videos, having a lot of them without any ability to skim through them is tough on users. So for now, we let them display what they want.

As the retailers build more functionality around videos on their sites, we agree it's a much better user experience (and written reviews have proven it's more effective) to offer all opinions and we will be encouraging them to do so.

That's why we feel strongly about letting people submit positive and negative videos about products on ExpoTV.com and compensate our video creators for both types of videos. Hope this helps to address your question.

Best,
Thi Luu
SVP, Web Operations

Thanks for the reply Thi. What I would like to understand is the ExpoTv policy if a syndication site only requests positive reviews. Will this be noted on the syndication site? I am guessing not and that's where my ethical concern begins. I could understand if a customer wanted to purchase one "highlight" review for their site, but outside of that, should not be able to purchase just one type of review. In this case, it feels like Payperpost using video.

Imagine visiting buy.com to buy your new gadget. You see two video reviews and play both. They tell you how great the product is. You buy it. It dies. Turns out ExpoTv had 100 reviews, of which 98 were negative but you never saw those.

So CN readers, chime in? Do you think it's ok for ExpoTv to offer only positive or negative reviews to its syndication sites?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 7:27 am and is filed under video, tv, Insights, ethics, ExpoTV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.