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Munich Online Network – or my opinion about WhatsYourPlace |
Yesterday, I had a nice evening at the Munich Online Network, which took place at the Pschorr. Drank some beer (or more) and met other founders. Most companies I’ve met are building special interest communities (people aggregators) or creating portals (content aggregators). Their primary income source is advertising.
Whats your [favorite] place?
I also met Tobias from WhatsYourPlace.de. You may know him from his comments on the posting “Virtual Goods Market Size”. Their income comes from selling real land, especially famous places like a soccer arena, virtually to people, i.e. soccer fans, for real money! So you can buy the arena of your favorite sports team and present yourself as the (virtual) owner of the place:
Of course, each place can have only one owner, which he calls “economic rivalry”. WhatsYourPlace has taken the principle of virtual goods to an extreme: at the lower end of the spectrum there is pure digital content. You may create an infinite number of copies. In the middle there are virtual goods. In most cases the ownership of a virtual item is limited. You can not create a copy. Most virtual goods are limited, too. There is just a finite number of each item. At WhatsYourPlace there is just one item per place! So they sit on the upper end of the spectrum.
People or content?
So is WhatsYourPlace a community or a portal? Is it aggregating people or content? In my opinion: neither. It is providing the missing link between community (Web 2.0) and content (Web 1.0): service. The service of WhatsYourPlace is to identify important places and to manage who can use these places for self-representation or marketing. The content comes from Google Maps, the community may come from special interest websites like the new Pepsico social network (a branded community focusing on soccer).
Websites like Facebook or MySpace integrate not only content from other websites but also services via widgets or web services. The widget and web service providers are services aggregators, because they combine multiple services to an application, e.g. the service to search for popular places, to buy it and to claim it.
Why need Squirrel?
So what are we doing with Squirrel? Are we aggregating people, content or services? There are lot of start-ups and companies focusing on content and/or community, but most websites have a lack of services, so we are providing services for these companies.
Why should those companies not build their own WhatsYourPlace or their own Squirrel? Because what their users want is diversion: a WhatsYourPlace, a Squirrel and hundreds or thousands of other cool applications within their community that they can use and combine with their content!
So the insight (from talking to a lot of people at the Munich Online Network) is: we have to work together to bring together what needs to be together: content, people and services.
It was nice to meet you all! Hope to see you again next month! Until then, have a good time!
Hi Martin,
this calls for another comment from my side ;-)
Tt was a pleasure talking to you on the Online Network and to learn more about your ideas on virtual goods! I am enthrilled about your analysis on the content / community division.
So far, I had not spent the deepest kind of thoughts on whether WhatsYourPlace truly is a community. I would say yes, because to a large part WhatsYourPlace is about people representing themselves (by way of choosing their favourite places, rather than simply describing personal charateristics) and also interacting with each other (for which relating somehow to the same place provides the basis). But then of course, “community” may be defined differently and I learned that many are not happy with my definition of virtual self-representation and interaction. User generated content is also created in abundance at WhatsYourPlace. People not only buy their favourite places and walk away, but express their particular relation to those places in words, personal pictures, dates, and placemarks. That is, after all, what makes it interesting to browse the places: to learn WHY people bought those.
But the main purpose of WhatsYourPlace of course is not to provide yet another platform to administer social contacts. Neither is it targeted at special interests (what some consider the main constituting factor of communities: that all members have something in common and feel a sense of togetherness). So I am quite happy with your analysis.
So now it’s time for Squirrel to materialize. I will definately watch out – let’s enhance diversity!
btw: terrible screenshot from wyp ;-)
comment by Tobias — March 19, 2008 @ 3:52 pm
Hi Tobias,
Thanks for your comment!
The content / community division comes from a presentation by Kupferwerk (internet company in Regensburg) at a Web Monday. However, I think the model is not complete: the service is missing.
Of course, every website needs to be or – better – to have a social network! It’s just an essential feature.
Sorry for the screenshot. It was late at night ;)
Greetings, Martin
comment by Martin — March 19, 2008 @ 11:03 pm