The New Dot-Coms: Web Sharing

You can tell the world how much you spend on your purchases, how many push-up reps you include in your workout, where you are at any given moment, and any thoughts you may have in between. Too much information? No one seems to think so. People seem to have an urge to publish every detail of their lives, and a new wave of Web start-ups are scrambling to offer them the opportunity. Blippy allows you to automatically share the details of every credit card transaction: the location, the amount, and the item. You can use Skimble to publish the details of your physical workout, and Foursquare to announce your precise location to the world. Dopplr shares your travel itinerary with friends, and you can share the social events you plan to attend along the way on Hot Potato. On DailyBooth, you can publish one photo of yourself per day. You can even publish your DNA profile on 23andMe. It’s a heyday for the exhibitionist. Do people really care that you spent $25 on a Snuggie at Wal-Mart this morning, are going to the dollar theater tonight, and are currently feeling irked by your co-worker snoring in the adjacent cubicle? Apparently, they do.

People don’t just use these Web applications to publish information about themselves, but to filter the vast amount of information on the Internet. People can search social websites to find out what real people feel about something in the news, a local restaurant, or even a humanitarian cause. Viewing the Internet through the eyes of your friends and even helpful strangers can make you feel more connected in a wireless world. Certainly, publishing your travel itinerary on Dopplr seems a bit loopy to the old-fashioned Internet user, but you can get travel trips from other savvy travelers, meet other people that share your interests, and find out when your travels intersect with your friends. Maybe you are hesitant to share the details of your credit card transactions online, but you can get beneficial consumer feedback by reviewing comments about items that interest you. By using these social websites, people find not just a comfortable dose of ego gratification, but also helpful advice and information.

So, what is in it for the entrepreneurs who are starting these social websites? The most obvious answer is advertising revenue. Once these websites have gained enough popularity to become valuable to advertisers, generate advertising revenue by including some promoted information among the shared information. For example, Twitter now has an advertising program called Promoted Tweets that will appear when Twitter users search for keywords that advertisers have bought to link to their ads. Also, these websites have ability to collect a vast amount of data published by users. Blippy plans to one day use this data directly to collect a commission when users are inspired to imitate their friends’ purchases. Other websites plan to monetize and resell collected data. Will this data actually be useful to other individuals or companies? Many venture capitalists are banking on it.