LocoGopher.com (Oregon, United States) is a free local community search engine and review site that provides an unbiased focal point for local businesses and community members to connect with each other. Community members or users can search for big city businesses and small communities along the West Coast (CA, OR, WA) for details. On the other hand, local businesses or merchants can register onsite and market their products or services in an unbiased ad-free environment, and can read their customer’s reviews.  In addition, these local businesses can also submit relevant material (coupons and discounts, menus, services and product lists, business location via google maps, and documents) for prospective users to review.

I had to chance to talk to the creator of the site, Don Jensen, and this is what he had to say:

What is your business plan or model?

Our primary business model is backend services for merchants. Due to the competitive field right now, I cannot disclose more information here.

How is your site different from your competitors?

LocoGopher is different for a couple of reasons: No advertising or sponsored search results; that way when people search locally, they find everything. Secondly, we focus on both the user and the business. Our goal is to better connect local people and local businesses. Thirdly, we offer merchants a free listing, which includes the ability to add a description, pictures, coupons and documents. It is free now and will always stay free.

Why did did you start this website?

The website was started for two reasons: We saw the market and said, “Wow, we can really create a much better service that will benefit communities more than any other service currently out there.” Secondly, we loved the idea of pioneering a new way for local communities to interact and local search is just the first step.

How are you planning to market it?

Currently we operate on the west coast and will be expanding nationally very soon. Our primary target market is online users, who currently see value in local search. In other words, we are not trying to change people’s behaviors. We are just offering current users a better solution. Our marketing activities include mass media, pr, online ppc and more.
     
LocoGopher.com launched Beta on June 11 2007 and later, publicly launched the local search engine on August 15 2007. The site has a great advantage among other local fares due to its simplicity and the lack of commercial elements such as advertised content and manipulation of content to suit the likes of particular businesses. I definitely applaud the site for taking an unbiased approach to the local needs of our communities.

Comindwork (Ukraine) is a business development tool for companies to improve their communications technologies for superior “knowledge intensive” collaboration. The site provides a tool for businesses struggling to manage information that arrives in various communication mediums (face-to-face, ICQ, video-conference, email) by creating a tool that enhances the technologies needed to collect and manage all this communication information. The technologies used to create a knowledge intensive medium for communication information to be shared among intended parties is top-notch. Some of the collaborative technologies and bug tracking tools are supposedly the best in the industry: Wiki, Trac, Wiki, Jira, Basecamp, Clearquest, CentralDesktop, and lastly MS Project. Comindwork moves a step further by improving on these technologies to create their business development tool.

I had a chance to talk to the founder of Comindwork.com, Andrew Uminski, and this is what he had to say:

Why is your site different than your competitors?

Our main difference is that we strive to build something more than just ticketing, issue, and bug tracking system. We are trying to build a unique BPA (Business Process Automation) system, that will have everything what our various competitors can offer - but in one place and more usable. We will make Comindwork the best place for project management and enterprise knowledge sharing.

What is your business plan or model?

In the future, the main income will be from completely custom installations (yes! we actually offer companies to adopt our system to improve their business processes, completely customizable) and additional support as well. But please keep in mind that our original system is, and will be, completely free, with all the features available, for small distributed teams.

Why did you start this website?

Our company tried several systems to help us manage knowledge-based companies’ business requirements. As the proper solution was not found, we decided to develop own system. But it came out powerful. This is a system that supports management and communication inside and outside company and we named it CoMindWork, Collaborative Mind Work.

How are you planning to market it?

We are starting an intensive marketing campaign, that will include, but not be limited to, creating buzz in the blogosphere, article marketing, online advertising, and of course SEO. Last week, we launched our blog, we will use it for a jump start to blogosphere.

Any other information that you believe is relevant to your startup?

As I have mentioned before, our vision is that Comindwork will be an ideal system for business process automation, we will work hard to achieve this. Now, we are positioning it as free online project management system. There are no trials, it’s completely free for teams up to 5 team members. The system is being actively developed, currently, our system offers such features as collaboration, project management, knowledge sharing, resource management, issue tracking, and more.

Comindwork.com Beta was launched on February 6, 2007 and was funded by a privately owned company “NewtonIdeas”, to which the CEO happens to be the founder of Comindwork.com. The fact that the site utilizes technologies as a functional tool to enhance the real world communications needs of businesses is noteworthy. It is a welcome relief among sites that use technologies just to win fanfare among the technology savvy users out there. I hope that this sets a trend among prospective startups to take note of the businesses struggling to cope with information overload and help them with technologies that matter. 

Click here for information on the system and here for features

Box.net (Palo Alto, CA) – Acts as a virtual hard drive or backup storage medium that allows users to edit, share and safeguard their documents online. The founder and CEO of Box.net, Aaron Levie, has now launched an OpenBox platform on November 13, 2007, that permits users to link information from Box.net with other applications and services across the World Wide Web. In essence, OpenBox permits developers and businesses to integrate applications and services on the Box.net site.

I had a chance to talk to the CEO Aaron Levie about his new platform and this is what he had to say:

Why is your site different than your competitors?

Box is different from its competitors in that we offer more features making a complete service comprising of online file backup, large file sending and online work groups and collaboration. We do all of this with a user interface that is easier to use and more visually pleasing than any other existing service. Quite simply, we offer the most functionality while remaining simple.

What is your business plan or model?

Our business plan is to offer a free 1gb account, to encourage users to try and use our service. We then make money from upgrades to a user’s storage and business account features like collaboration.

Why did you start this website?

The website began as a college project idea while Aaron Levie was attending USC.

How are you planning to market it?

Fortunately, most of the marketing is done for us from our fans. The largest proportion of our growth comes from ecstatic fans writing blog posts which not only puts us in top results in search engines but also sends traffic directly to our site.

Any other information that you beleive is relevant to your startup?

We are very excited with our recent announcement of OpenBox, a platform for developers to add services directly to the Box.net website. We hope to remain the most open, easy to use and powerful online service for accessing and using files on the web.

The site launched 3 years ago solely as a pay site, and a year later with free accounts. Now, they have created a new platform to complement the existing user accounts with greater functionality. The new Openbox platform will allow users to edit photos and images online, work on word and excel files, publish work online, sign documents and much more. The Openbox platform has definitely created more depth to a great document storage site. 

Tonebee.com (United States) – lets users create their own personalized cell phone ring tone by simply uploading their favorite Mp3 songs onto the “Mp3ToneBee Ringtone Maker”. Once uploaded, users can then choose 30 seconds or less of their favorite portion of their song and save into onto their computer. The stored song can later be transferred onto any cell phone as long as the phone has Mp3 capabilities.

I had a chance to talk to the creators of the site, Jeremy Tang and Ajmal Saifudeen, and this is what they had to say:

Why did you start this website?

Seeing ads from conventional ringtone companies we realised that people were getting ripped off. People have a right to create ringtones from the songs they own so we naturally thought it made sense to provide the online tools to help people do this themselves. The ringtone industry is a large and growing global market so the online tools we provide fulfils a good niche of not only people who want to save money on ringtones but like the flexibility to create whatever ringtone they want.

Why is it different than your competitors?

Beyond the fact that to use our system doesn’t require download and installing of any software it also has the patent pending ability to learn how ringtones are made e.g. if someone creates a ringtone for Justin Timberlake song “Sexy Back” then subsequent users with the same song will be able to reuse how that ringtone was made, thereby practically automating the ringtone creation process. I guess you could call our ringtone maker a social ringtone maker as it gets better as more people use it, a concept that is core to success of web 2.0.

What is your business plan?

ToneBee.com is designed to provide people with the tools to create ringtones from the music they own at a fraction of what it would cost to buy it from conventional ringtone sellers.

How are you planning to market it?

Right now we are getting strong traffic growth through search engines. Our site has millions of pages of music related content which helps attract people to our site through search engines. Also looking for complementary websites to partner with.

Any other information that you believe is relevant to your startup will also be helpful.

Although we intend to charge for the service, the site is in Beta so people are welcome to use our tools for free. It is fully functional. We will soon be implementing the ability to transfer ringtones created direct to the mobile phone. We welcome any feedback.

The site offers users the option of accessing an extensive range of content related to music via a search engine query on artists, albums and songs. The result of the query yields related songs, videos, pictures, news and events. In addition, it is quite easy to create favorite ring tones and it is definitely a better alternative to paying ring tone companies and cell phone carriers high fees for songs that users already own.

Marblejars.com (Denver, Colorado, United States) – launched on September 18 2007, is an innovative fundraising initiative to help members of the community raise money for a worthy cause via video uploading. The site has a genuine interest in helping community members reach out and help one another achieve their respective goals, and achieving that directly via video interface. 

The concept works quite simply. Individuals interested in fundraising for themselves or others purchase a marblejar, which provides the purchaser with the privilege of uploading a single video associated with a single cause. However, once purchased, members are not restricted to a single marblejar and can have an unlimited set of marblejars. Next on the list, members set a goal on the number of marbles the jar can hold to a maximum of 1 million marbles, equivalent to one U.S. dollar per marble. Marblejars could be held for a year by members, or until the member cashes out the marbles in the marblejar, or until the jar reaches its intended goal. On the other hand, Individuals who rather donate towards a worthy cause can purchase individual marbles and contribute to their favorite marblejar.

I had a chance to talk to the CEO of Marblejars.com, Robert O’Dell, and this is what he had to say:

Why is your site different than your competitors?

We feel we do not have any competitors and refuse to be compared to cyber beg sites.

What is your business plan or model?

Our exact business plan is very basic, we are a small business with one goal, One world, one mission; to connect and empower individuals throughout the world by providing a trusted and safe online community that will help enrich the lives of those less fortunate.

How are you planning to market it?

Although we have already been contacted by company’s wanting to buy our site, we are not at this time interested in selling. and as far as marketing the site we will continue with press releases, and we will sponsor some athletes along with contests on our site that will start the first of the year. We do have plans for a small television commercial and other conventional advertising.

Personally, I found the concept of helping the community via video to be quite innovative. In fact, there is a definite ingenuity in the implementation of the fundraising concept. The options for payment, including payment by company cheque, wire transfer, and a possible prepaid marblejar credit card in the future is comforting. In addition, members can take advantage of an embed link to promote their video on other social networking sites, which is another great asset. I sure hope that Marblejars will provide great satisfaction to those who donate with good heart and those who attain their worthy goals. 

Listomi.com (San Diego, LA, United States) – an online list management portal that allows its members to store all kinds of lists according to predefined categories. The lists can be anything that members deem important such as a list of cities within a province or a list of favorite movies. The lists are automatically posted on site once submitted, under the following categories: Animals, Art & Literature, Geography, History, Leisure, Life, Misc, Music, People, Plants, Politics, Religion, Science, Sports, Technology, and Tv & Movies.

I had a chance to interview the creator of Listomi, Travis P. Walter, and this is what he had to say: 

Why is your site different than your competitors?

Listomi is the first major online repository for all lists. Because any user can create an unlimited number of lists we will soon be the leading site for anyone wanting information that might be organized into a list form. If you actually think about the number of lists that might be possible you begin to realize that the number is virtually infinite. Listomi aims to be the repository for those lists. Additionally, Listomi organizes the list data in a very easy to use format where any list can be easily copied in a column-like format for use elsewhere.

What is your business plan or model?

As is common in today’s tech startups the business model of Listomi is fairly flexible and will evolve with each piece of valuable user feedback we receive. Because of the amount of traffic potential available due to the extremely wide audience our revenue model will primarily be Advertising and Sponsorship Revenues.

Why did you start this website?

The idea first came to me while I was working on another project where I needed an extensive list of music venues in certain large cities. I soon realized that there was no central place to look for lists of anything. With the amount of scattered information out there on the web it became clear that a service offering a concentration of lists would be extremely useful. Thus the concept for Listomi was born.

How are you planning to market it?

We hope to get a majority of our traffic through organic search engine traffic. Other marketing will be done through various advertising channels and word of mouth.

Any other information that you believe is relevant to your startup?

Listomi has been privately funded so far but may be looking for early stage investors in the near future. The Listomi service is still in a beta release and we are constantly working to improve the service. We have many feature enhancements planned for the site and as always welcome our users valuable feedback and criticisms.

The concept of hosting unlimited lists under categories is quite an interesting idea. The possibilities are endless and users will definitely be creating all sorts of lists. The lists can also be marketed to the social arena via Digg it, del.icio.us, technorati, and stumble this. Listomi, launched in November of 2007, has great potential for growth. Personally, I really liked the fact that the lists display the title as well as the number of hits each list received, including the member who submitted as well as the size of the list. Organization of these lists in a manner in which they are easily accessible to users as well as engaging more participation in creating these lists will be key to the site’s success.