Techno-fille

Social DNA reviews in top web 2.0 blogs

Great review of Social DNA by Kristen Nicole today on Mashable. Kristen clearly spent time playing with the product and the post makes it obvious how well they know their space.

Marshall Kirkpatrick convered Social DNA and eSnips on Readwriteweb and took a different very  interesting, angle:  Social DNA high monetization potential.

WebWare's Josh Lowensohn of CNET Webware also wrote a great post on Social DNA.  Josh was well on the point that quizzes in not something new, but the integration of the platform within your social life on a site, provides for a different user experience.

Mark Hendrickson of Techcrunch wrote a pretty short post about Social DNA too, but thought of it as dating service attempt and as addition to an already non-clear, or not differentiated enough eSnips offering. Would have loved to see a more in depth review though, even if it's not a positive one...

I just came across this great review by Graeme Thickins on Tech Surf Blog.  This is how it starts:

"You knew it had to be coming: a way to map your online social self. My god, how did we get along without this till now? Thank you, eSnips (I think)."

Great feedback. We're excited!

More excellent coverage for our Micro-portals annoucement at CES, Las Vegas

PC World – Dan Tynan covered the Micro-portals in his 'Top picks from CES' piece. Here's a quote:   

"Welcome to the Social: Imagine a salad of MySpace, YouTube, Digg, and Amazon's Marketplace tossed lightly in a vinaigrette, and you have eSnips.com. Here people can share in their mutual obsessions while posting and/or selling their art, music, photos, or what-have-you. The interface is terrific and the integration among different communities (pets, poetry, the paranormal) is very well done. Best of all, spammers and scammers have yet to discover the Israel-based eSnips--though if it continues to grow (now at 1.2 million users and climbing, according to CEO Yael Elish), they surely will."

eWeek – Brian Prince wrote an article following a very interesting phone interview and conversation we had earlier in the week. Brian focused on how the Micro-portals marketplace can benefit small businesses.

"eSnips MicroPortals Offer Business, Social Opportunities -  ...  For fans of everything from photography to poetry, eSnips plans to offer centralized communities called MicroPortals where work can be shared and sold."

On air interview on Computer America

I was interviewed today by Craig Crossman and Carey Holzman from Computer America for live one hour interview on air this morning. This is a national coast to coast radio station that has over a million listeners. They are also doing a Podcast and online coverage of the show now and Crossman frequently includes his guests/services/products in a follow up column that is syndicated. 

It was fun and refreshing to get away from the very tech oriented web 2.0 discussions and just talk about the plain benefits of eSnips. 

Here's the link:  http://www.businesstalkradio.net/weekday_host/Archives/cc.shtml    (It's the 11/14/06 - Hour 2)

The coolness factor – is it for everyone?

Yesterday, Rafe Needleman at CNET took a look at eSnips and wrote a great review (thank you, Rafe.)  His headline was “eSnips: where the cool kids aren’t,” and his article backed up the headline by saying that “eSnips … appears to cater to the more restrained among us.” 

While his review was generally very positive, it got me thinking about his point about the “cool kids” going somewhere else to join the social web.  It is true that eSnips caters to a different audience.  We don’t only cater to them, but we actually have seen that our audience is truly different than the stereotypical kid on MySpace.  First, they are older.  They’re not only out of their teens, but many of them are in their 30s and 40s.  Second, they’re not interested in content-sharing in the MySpace vein.  Rafe hit this one spot on when he said that “eSnips … is not about laying bare your tortured soul, as much as it is a utility for collecting content and other online resources you find interesting.” 

So, it leaves me with the question of coolness.  Does a new Web 2.0 company need to be cool?  Will “being cool” help us reach our target audience?  And more importantly, as we’ve seen when the cool kids moved from Friendster to MySpace in the blink of an eye: will being cool help me keep my audience? 

In fact, I am pretty comfortable saying “no” to these questions.   I believe that we can’t all be cool, and while being cool is fun while it lasts, you’re never really sure what got you there in the first place and what will happen when it ends.  Also, the users who like and use eSnips really take advantage of the fact that they really don’t need to be as committed and as competitive as the MySpace crowd.  They’re fine in the comfortable community that we’ve created.

So many of our brainstorming sessions here at eSnips tend to focus on our positioning vis-à-vis the other social networks out there.  We tend to chase our tails for a while, and then ending up with the statement that eSnips is really MySpace for the rest of us. 

Thank you Rafe Needleman for spelling out something we have felt internally for a while.