In this segment, Bambi interviews Steve Vachani, founder and CEO of Power.com. They talk about developing a tool where users can have access to portable data and how Vachani plans on making money for the uber social network.
BF: Let’s talk about your business
model. I think advertising is your model. In your terms of use, you
say that a Power may use your image for advertisement purposes. “These
advertisements will only be displayed to the same user whose image is
being used.” What does that mean?
SV: Well what we’ve done
that our in terms and conditions, is taken standard industry terms and
just made sure we’ve given those disclosures to users. At this stage we, just have a relationship with the user across all
their sites and at that point we don’t do anything with that at this
stage.
BF: What does this mean? Power.com to add URL website to MyProfile link?
SV:
So what we did is we give users the option to add their Power profile
link onto their social network page. And so when people come to their
MySpace page or Facebook page, that user has the option to promote
their Power.com profile with a wigit which then gives their friends the
ability to see all their profiles across all sites.
BF: I’m assuming that its targeted ads
that you’re going to try to deliver to these users. What’s your plan on
delivering and targeting ads without violating any privacy?
SV:
Sure. I think we’re no different than any other website. The users
consciously choose to use our Web site and they build a relationship
with us. While they’re inside our network, we go ahead and offer them
targeted ads.We do have a relationship with our users across many sites
inside of Power.So we have a more direct communication channel with our
users.
BF: And is it going to be advertising? Is that the type or form of your monetization?
SV:
Our business model is focused in two areas. First of all we do have a
deep relationship with the users and therefore can offer targeted
advertising. But we also are finding that many websites have an
interest in utilizing our platform and our technology on their
sites.
So they can let their users aggregate their emails, their instant
messengers, and their other social networks inside their sites. So we’re
also currently doing licensing and technology partnerships with a range
of other big social networks and other high traffic websites as well.
BF: Who are those names?
SV: At this point we haven’t made
any public announcements but we will be integration discussions and
business discussions with some very large names.
BF: Who do you see as your main competitor in this space?
SV:
Quite honestly the space that we’ve introduce social internet working,
is a new term but I think everybody on the Internet is trying to have
the Web be more interoperable and have data be portable.So rather than
pointing out a specific company, I think that we’re going after the
same objective as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and just about
every major Internet company. But I don’t think that makes us all
competitive.I think that we all want the same thing…a Web where all
data, all your content, your friends are portable and the user owns all
that information and not for one specific sight.
BF:
But we’re going to have you back to talk about the evolution of social
networks and some of the behaviors your seeing across multiple
platforms. Thanks, Steve
