How Power.com plans to make money

CEO Steve Vachani plans to license the underlying social network technology

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