Yahoo announced Tuesday that it planned to develop individual sites that will evolve around 100 different entertainment brands, called the Brand Universe. Yahoo is planning to launch all of these 100 different sites this year. This branding will help attract communities of interest to Yahoo’s branded sites which will include movies, television shows, bands, celebrities, games and other types of entertainment. Yahoo will continue to brand with out without the approval of these brands.

Vince Broady head of games, entertainment and youth at Yahoo said on Tuesday, “We don’t connect the dots for our users around those brands. Brand Universe is designed to fix that problem. What we are really trying to do is create environments where fans of brands can hang out when they are online.”

Yahoo has already launched wii.yahoo.com and on Tuesday it launched another six. This shouldn’t be surprise to all of you who have been following the growth in vertical search and growth in social media sites such as digg and reddit. Yahoo is trying to move into this market with the wealth of information they already have. Yahoo will add contents from other bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, flickr and other properties of Yahoo.

It is not clear how Yahoo will profit from the Brand Universe but they claim to have received well over 1 million page views for the wii.yahoo.com site in December. Well we all know that traffic brings money. This means Yahoo is trying to keep their visitors in house rather than sending them over to other social media. In the last 20 months, Web 2.0 has picked up with the whole game of social media. Many people spent time at sites such as digg.com which dominates the social media in technology news. Netscape recently launched their own version of social media which covers a wide range of topics. These branding exercise from Yahoo seems like they want to get into niche social media market with their existing user base.

As per my previous post on Ty Graham’s claim about having the patent to where YouTube is headed. I’ve contacted Ty and here is what he has to say about all of this:

Hi Guna,

    Thanks for getting in touch with me. Let me introduce myself. My name is Ty Graham. I recently saw the press release today at http://mashable.com/2007/01/27/youtube-get-paid/ / http://www.startupbooster.com/2007/01/27/youtube-to-share-revenue-are-social-networks-moving-this-way/ regarding Youtube’s direction in the advertising space. I have watched the market grow and mature since 2005 and have a patent-pending advertising model which directly involves Youtube’s move into sharing revenue with users within their social network. I am confident that the patent-pending advertising model I have developed in 2005 is of benefit to Youtube. The patent explains in great detail how a social network can share revenue with it’s users with regards to user generated content.

    I have been sitting on this for a while waiting for the market and investors to mature. Waiting for the right moment that the idea can be easily understood by the general public because of the importance of the direction in video on the Internet. While I will not say exactly how the model works (without NDA), however, the general concept is to fuel advertising by means of the social network. If initiated, sites like Revver & Adbrite InVideo would not even be relevant any longer. Semi-competing networks like TheEggNetwork and  Plymedia will loose market share because of the sheer size of Gootube + origin of the idea. I was fortunate enough to envision and write the full concept in 2005 with regards to patenting the idea to monetize social networks like Myspace and Youtube. Furthermore, I include several forward-thinking models that can greatly enhance Youtube’s existing income and place a direct blow to the TV networks trying to compete. It’s stunning how no one has thought of this yet.

    I am in the process of launching a beta web site to monetize the idea so I was initially seeking investors. However, because of the nature of this press release it seems like perhaps it would be easier if Youtube integrated the idea since my goal is to get bought by Google and there is no way I am able to support the surge in traffic from the idea. Let me be clear, the idea does not compete with Youtube as it is today, yet extends the brand in a way that has not yet been done before that benefits both youtube and it’s users. If Youtube were to have this idea, they would no doubt put the nail in the coffin in everyone’s video advertising plans. Seriously. For the sake of all video producers great and small, and I have heard many interesting uses for this idea of mine as told to me by close friends, I hope it can be a reality one day so everyone can benefit. Simply duplicating Revver is NOT enough. Funny thing is, as a side-effect, it also hurts Paypal too in a big way, if Google checkout was used with my idea. Currently, there is no other model like this made known since 2005 nor has there been after, yet I still hold on to the concept which will lead one day to someone’s videos getting “Blipp’d”. (I coined that phrase for the idea.)

    The patent goes into great detail on using a network such as Youtube with regards to sharing revenue with the members of the social network. I am interested in being put in contact with the right people at youtube to start a discussion on on obtaining the rights to the patent and to protect them from their competitors who may license the model from me in the near future. I like Youtube and want to see them do more great things for it’s members. I hold the ultimate key for more tremendous Youtube success.

Contact me at (000) 000-0000 to discuss further and to set up a meeting.

I have said some clues as to the idea but I’m sure you can understand I cannot go into more detail than this without an NDA and a clear path to Youtube. I see that you have my post up on your blog. If things work out favorably, I’m sure I can show my gratitude in some way.

Regards,

Ty Graham

I’ve took out his phone number but the rest is in the above quote. He has provided me with the permission to post this on the blog as a follow up. Well I will leave it to you to contact Ty and find out what he has and what YouTube needs to make the most profit from video sharing social network.

Interestingly, I received a comment on my previous blog on YouTube Revenue Sharing concept. In that comment Ty Graham claims that he has the patent for the direction that YouTube is thinking about going. I am not sure of the reliability of this comment but as a blogger I feel that I should share this with you. Here is what he has to say:

“I live in Los Angeles. Anyone from youtube looking at this should contact me. I have a patent on this that pre-dates the direction you’re going in. I’m thinking it would be better to sell it to you and integrate the “big picture” into youtube instead of coming out with a separate service. My patent puts the nail in the coffin of any competitor of youtube. Seriously. I can be reached at gigaboy20 at yahoo.com”

I’ve mailed Ty to get some details on the patent he was talking about but if it is true that he has a patent to pre-roll ads before a video, then what does that mean to YouTube? Will this patent makes it difficult for YouTube to move in the direction they want to go? Well I don’t want to draw any conclusions before I hear from Ty to see if this is really true.

On January 14th, 2007, James Nardel launched freeweddingtoasts.net; a resource for wedding planning.  “The idea is to offer a unique collection of hundreds of wedding toasts, speech samples, toasting tips, wedding jokes, marriage quotes and more advice for the entire wedding party when it comes to wedding speaking”, said James when asked about his vision for his site.

Everyone, including the groom, bride, bridesmaids, best man, mom, dad and every other relative will want some help when it comes to a wedding. It is so easy to mess up a wedding if you don’t have a prepared speech or a good toast. I just went through a wedding not too long ago, yes about 5 months ago. I should know this! Wedding planning for the bride and the groom is not easy and most of them will want to sit and hear few good toasts on their wedding day. I believe if James makes his website a bit more popular then many will benefit from such service.

Freeweddingtoasts already has an abundance of information on wedding. You can submit toasts to be added to the wedding. This is the part that I like about it. I think James should make it a bit more user friendly and spice it up so it could be a Web 2.0 kind of site. I personally believe such site has a lot of potential as long as the content is produced on the site and it is unique compared to others. Let the site be a user driven site for contents.

I wish James all the best with his website. Visit his website at FreeWeddingToasts.net.

The co-founder of YouTube, Chad Hurley said Saturday that YouTube will start sharing revenue with its millions of users. Hurley said the move is to allow users to be paid for content they upload to YouTube. Hurley didn’t give much detail about how the revenue will be shared with the users but hinted that it will come within few months.

In November, YouTube was sold to Google for $1.65 billion. Google is said to be the place to work for and many people including employees and users love Google for what it is; Google allows employees to spend a certain amount of time every week in their labs to work on anything that they are interested on. Any interesting product that comes out of that lab usually ends up as a product by Google and that employee will also be well off with that venture.

Is this revenue sharing a Google idea?

I would say so. I think it is absolutely right to give users something back for the time they spend on these social networking sites. Users spend countless hours uploading contents or editing news on sites like http://www.digg.com and http://www.techtagg.com/. I predict digg will soon move this direction before any of their competitors begin giving away more incentives. Speaking of that, techtagg.com was the first one to share revenue in this social networks domain. I am very certain that digg.com will soon be looking at this sort of approach as well for the amount of users that spend time on digg, including me. Anyhow, going back to my question, I think this is a decision that would have been made by the Google gurus from the head office. I say Google because Google is very generous and millions of people trust and love Google because of its appreciation for their employees and their users.

WikiUpload was created by Jitendra Agrawal from Los Angeles, California to allow visitors to upload open-content video clips, music, images, media files, sharewares, etc. to create a freely available file library for everyone to use and share with others.

Jitendra’s mission is to get a large number of people using this service for free unlike many of WikiUpload’s competitors. Giving away 5GB to anyone who are interested in uploading a file is a bold mission because on the backend it would take up so much space as the user base grows. Jitendra has a plan to support the expansion of service as it grows by adding more servers on their end.  However, I am not sure how Jitendra is planning to make profit from this service. I am sure there is a plan.

The site design is decent and it looks like a service that I would trust. If you have a website that is hosted on a web hosting service that only gives you a limited amount of space then this site should help you out so much. You can upload your media files here and link it from your site. WikiUpload will also support files that are larger than 5GB as well; however you have to be a premium member for that.

You can visit WikiUpload here to give it a try. I wish Jitendra all the best with the new startup.

Upscoop was released by Rapleaf, a portable ratings system for commerce. Upscoop is a tool to get the scoop on all your friends. They will be joining number of other startups that are trying to add a Meta layer above social networks. Dump your contact list into Upscoop and discover which of your friends are on social networks including MySpace, Friendster, Hi5, and dozens more. I would be interested to know which other social networks they are referring to by saying that they will scoop friends from other dozens more networks. I wonder if they also scoop from social news sites such as digg, reddit, techtagg and others.

Well it is true that there are so many social networks right now. It would be difficult for anyone to track down their friends activities. However, are you willing to give up your username and password for your email accounts so that Upscoop can discover where your friends are? Well I would certainly not do that right now but I will be watching them. They need to gain the trust from their visitors in order for them to provide their credentials to this site. Upscoop basically takes your username and password for AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail and it will connect into your account to scoop your contact lists. Then it will go into their millions of profiles that they have from other social networks and search for your friends. The search and the site seem to be a lot slow now. Upscoop will then return the results with all your friends mapped to different social networks. Hence you will find out where your buddies are and which services they are using. Well I am sure some of my friends would like to keep their online activity private and I can appreciate that. So some people may find this a breach in privacy.

Seems like an interesting service though but I am very sure that they will have difficulty selling this to their visitors. I think Upscoop should allow people to upload their contact list or enter multiple email address in a form instead of having to give up their personal email account login information. If Upscoop offers an alternative then I believe more people will try the service. Also this will make them feel comfortable. Once they get people to be comfortable then they can add features such as this to get account information from people. Anyhow, I wish Upscoop all the best.

Well the title says it all. Online Stopwatch is a site that is pretty simple, fast and flash version of an online stopwatch for anyone who needs a stopwatch for anything they do online. Hey you could time your self when you digg! See how many diggs you get for every few seconds.

I had a chance to interview the founder of this website. The site was created by Aaron from UK. I’ve asked him about his vision for his website and how this is going to help the visitors. Aaron had this to say:

Over 45,000 people look for term “Stopwatch” each month, and 12,000 are looking exactly for the term “online stopwatch”. Here is a site that offers them exactly what they are looking for. It’s clean, easy to use, and has options for visitors to download, use in full screen, or use as a Google Gadget. This site was made because I needed a stopwatch while at my pc once, and there wasn’t a decent one available on the net, so I made the flash stopwatch. A friend needed it the next day in the office, then another the next day, so I decided to just put it on the web. Hopefully it will help visitors who are in the same situation as I was. By looking at the number of people who are looking for a stopwatch, it should help.

I’ve continued to see if Aaron has any plans to compete with his competitors. This is what he has to say:

Unfortunately, people who released a stopwatch before mine are the biggest competitors. There stopwatches are slow and old, using Java and ugly interfaces. However, as they were first, they now have lots of backlinks, keeping them high on the search engines. It’s a pity as they are not as easy to use as online-stopwatch.com — and do not offer the full screen feature that so many teachers have emailed saying is very useful in their classrooms.

Aaron is no different from many other entrepreneurs who are always seeking for opportunity to seize the moment and make it into a new startup. I am certain that your website will help many. I did a Google search for “Online Stopwatch” and Aaron’s site was on the first page. So he is not doing that bad. This flash version of the stopwatch should help attract more visitors.
Aaron is also hoping to add some sound to his stopwatch. This will make a “sound” when the countdown reaches 00:00:000. Seems like a much needed feature for people who will be working on different browser when they need a stopwatch to time something.

Check out the online stopwatch now.

MiniBikeVids is a video sharing site for a collection of mini bike videos. The site allows users to upload, share and comment on mini bike related videos on the site. David Di Cristo recently launched this site and is hoping that the site will be a great resource for mini bike lovers. Well who doesn’t love a mini bike?

With many video sharing sites coming online everyday, this really seems like a good niche for David to focus on. I really believe that a site that is truly focused on a niche market has a lot to gain in the long run.

Video sharing has become the “thing” of the current internet age. YouTube leading the way and as many others following behind but not very close to it. In October of 2006, Google purchased YouTube for nearly US 1.65 billion dollars. Today, Google unveiled the first integration between Google Video and YouTube today, when it announced it was adding YouTube video results to its Google Video search index. However they have decided to keep YouTube separate from Google. Google’s video search will remain as a search engine and YouTube will be a place for you to upload and share your videos with million others.

So back to Mini Bike videos, I just want to wish David all the best with his startup. Hopefully you find the niche working for you because there are many other video sharing sites popping up almost everyday. Keep it simple and let your users define the future.

Sweeble is a news site that is 100% generated by its users. Your news, not theirs’ and the site is about getting people to share the news and stories they tell each other but they wouldn’t see in a newspaper or on the TV. Anything at all - from what their boss is up to, to why their grandmother is too scared to leave her house; to the problems they’re having getting special tutoring for their child. But Sweeble’s founder claims that the site will also be much more than just news – there’ll be videos, music uploads, free classified ads and the ability to share profiles and send messages to members.

Well if you got something to say then Sweeble is the place to be! Say it and in return get some free exposure.

Sweeble was founded by Sue Greenwood from Staffordshire, UK. Sue believes that with their vision and commitment they can really over take some of their competitors. I respect Sue for her bold vision and I wish her all the best with her site.

Now back to basics and some helpful hints. I strongly suggest Sue to look into making this a bit more Web 2.0 friendly. Lots of news sites such as digg.com, newsvine.com, digitaljounrnal.com, techtagg.com, etc are all about Web 2.0. The site looks great already and with a bit of a twist Sue should be able to retain some of her first visitors.

Check out the site at Sweeble.com