SocialTech.com has a fairly long interview with Anthony Batt, the co-founder of the moblog hosting company Buzznet (see below).
It’s certainly worth reading if you’re interested in not just Buzznet’s vision but also the business model. Indeed, in the previous entry I wrote about YouTube and wondered how it was going to make money, and then found the socialTech article — where Batt is asked about YouTube.
Benjamin Kuo, the founder, editor and publisher of socialtech.com, interviews Batt, who says “We've sort of got one foot in the social networking space, and another foot in the media space. We don't really put ourselves in the social network category; we put ourselves in the social media category.”
Buzznet versus YouTube
Batt characterizes YouTube as a “media categorization and sharing system” rather than a community built around content. Buzznet is “change media.” He explains:
“For example, if you're a fan of a band, say My Chemical Romance, and you have photos of them, you want to contribute your photos to a place that has all the photos and the community My Chemical Romance.“The members create their own photos, and we customize that template for them, and we create the social media space for a band. That's far different from a social network.
“We’re less about the hooking up and more about bringing your media into a social space and letting the community enjoy it….We have a certain voice, a certain angle, which says bring your content here, go ahead and put it elsewhere, but put it here because there's a community of people here interested in your media.
“And around that media, create a social network.”
Business model
Batt says the company was self-funded for a while and has recently received about $1 million from venture capitalists and private investors. In a few months Buzznet will go after round B financing.
Most the the company’s revenues now are from advertising but there also are revenues from working with companies to help build a community by using Buzznet’s platform. That’s one of Buzznet’s differentiating factors, Batt says.
“Name a social network — they don't do any deals with brands like that. We've been able to successfully work with many brands, and many things for publishing firms like Knight Ridder Digital — we do a lot of work for them — and we have a revenue stream from there as well.”
Future business
Buzznet has been targeting record labels in an effort to get them to pay for the moblog platform. Batt says, “The members who are joining Buzznet usually trainspotters and trendspotters.
“The content that bubbles up is really pop culture-y content, and is really about what is going on. We attract the very unique user. It's a much higher quality community.
“I don't want to sound like I'm putting down other social networks, which provide a useful service, but if you compare what we do to magazines, our magazine is upscale a bit.”
More money for more deals
Batt says that “When we raise more money we'll be doing more marketing and reaching out to do some more larger scale media deals and partnering to provide community services to them, and piggy backing on their success as well.”
While I’m on the subject of moblogs, I haven’t read much about textamerica. I did some consulting for them a few years ago but I have seen them in the news very much.
I just looked at their site and can’t find any “About” or “Company” or similar link that tells me who the principals are, what the business model is, what corporate services they offer, etc.
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