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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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2007 at 7:02 am and is filed under venture capital, mashable, Quick News, Respectance. 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.