I didn’t really want to write this post, but felt an obligation to play devil’s advocate. (Clarification – playing devil’s advocate isn’t necessarily taking the dissenting view merely for dissension’s sake – I’m troubled that no-one else is seeing the other side of this release and I feel obliged to correct that….) Sam Lawrence, ex-marketing honcho at Jive software and something of a legend amongst the marketing uber-classes has just launched a new social network-y kind of a deal called Blackbox Republic.
Apparently Blackbox Republic is “focused on reinventing the online relationship market” or whatever that means. It’s a $25 per month social network for “sex positive” individuals or people who are “open enough about sexuality that it’s not an issue.” All the big names have covered this, and my cynical side says that’s due to the fact that in his former life Lawrence dealt with the commentators on a regular basis. Colleague Dennis Howlett was positive about the offering rationalizing that;
As people, we gravitate towards others with whom we have affinity on a particular topic or issue. Most of us have several passions in our lives that go beyond a transaction. Ask trainspotters, hang glider aficionados or Man Utd fans. Each shares a deep and lasting passion that connects one with another. In our cloistered world that might translate into folk who are deeply into tax planning or systems integration. You can fine slice these again and again. But…where can you find those places where you go beyond the transaction? They don’t exist.
To which I’d suggest that any one of a host of user-customizable social networks (Ning anyone?) suffice in this way – in the past I’ve been involved in communities of interest built around Ning – while admittedly they weren’t paid sites they had similar attributes of being closed, community rated and controlled and able to be tailored to the specific requirements of a particular interest group – the very requirements that Dennis raises above.
In their press release, Lawrence and co-founder April Donato say that;
The sex-positive creative culture is made up of tens of millions of people who don’t have issues with their own sexuality or that of others. They gather at mega events like Burning Man, Love Parade, Electric Picnic and Afrika Burns, as well as thousands of smaller regional and local meet-ups. Blackbox Republic will be a members-only experience that will unite the sex-positive community and give them a personal, private and secure way to connect online and in person
Great, but I’m not seeing much that I haven’t seen from other customizable group spaces. true they’re wanting to bring some elements that aren’t obvious in the mainstream social media offerings today – gift-giving and transactions stuff for example – but again that’s not a mental leap for those already in the space.
Call me a prude, but I can’t help but concur with Dennis’ initial thought (which he goes on to say is completely misguided) that “…Sam’s finally gone over the edge and is developing a sophisticated porn site dressed up to look cool” – I realize and accept that people are much more open and comfortable with their sexuality – but it seems to me a very fine line between this and the more *overt* adult sites.
Lovely guy, and non-sensationalist enterprise blogger Oliver Marks points out that;
Anyone actually using collaborative software in business knows how vital groups are – groupings of users around specific interests and projects hidden from other users by permission model. I see this thinking applied here on a personal level, applicable to your life and respecting your social needs.
This more granular approach enables a deeper integration with your intensely personal life, safe in the knowledge that it won’t be exposed to the world without your explicit permission (unlike those pictures of you in a fountain wearing a Tutu on Facebook you though only two friends could see).
Sure Oliver – but all of this is pretty much doable with one of the incumbents – with the added benefit that it doesn’t require yet another profile to create, maintain and access (although given the subject matter I’ll admit that alter-egos may very well be a desired aspect of this locale).
I can’t help but think that what we’re seeing here is another Cuil – remember the “Google-killer” launched with much fanfare a year or so ago – it seems all the marketing hype, driven through big name funders and backers, got them nowhere once the glam was polished off and the actual offering was analyzed – Sam’s a lovely guy and all – but I’d rather we all performed the double-blind test on this offering, looking at it detached from the profile of its founders.
As I said to the Twitterverse this afternoon, “Would anyone (especially peeps like @jeffnolan and @rww) be even mentioning Blackbox Republic if Sam Lawrence wasn’t involved? I think not” – to his credit Marshall Kirkpatrick from ReadWriteWeb replied saying that; “Niche social network raises $1m, charges $25/mo & hits privacy hard? Yes I’d cover that!” – an argument that despite my respect for both Marshall and ReadWriteWeb I’m not really buying seeing as how many well funded start-ups aren’t being covered by the mainstream blogs – need an example? How about youcalc that, despite nearly $4 million in funding, is yet to be covered in depth anywhere than on CloudAve.
Anyway – there’s a bunch of well respected commentators who seems to disagree with my perspective, have a look at what Jeff, Dennis (and part 2 from him), Marshall and Oliver say and judge for yourself. It’ll be interesting to watch this one going forward…
Ben,
I thought about your question to me quite a bit last night. It’s impossible to answer whether or not Sam’s involvement is why I wrote about his new company because there are many variables, but I will point out that I get pitched things all the time and I’m just as likely to not write about something a friend is doing as I am.
As it happened, Blackbox caught me as I was knee deep in research on social networks (specifically location based varieties) for affinity groups. Sam hit on several high notes that really connected with me, the trust factor in networks, the economic value of these communities, and most importantly how the generalized networks like Facebook simply are not working for affinity groups.
On that last point, I am struggling with that as it relates to my nonprofit organization, we want to be in social media venues but the donors are not on Facebook and the limited branding capabilities present a real conundrum for us.
Now that I have had an opportunity to air my thoughts on this issue let me turn it around and ask you a question… if Blackbox did not have the word “sex” in it’s description would you even question why people like me are writing about it?
btw with regard to youcalc, on demand analytics is a tough sell. There are a ton of these companies out there and they all suffer from the same shortcomings… they are good at identifying an anomaly or trend, not so good at telling you what to do about it, and none of them get behind the firewall data very well.
youcalc’s SFdC dashboard demonstrates this point rather well, there are all kinds of charts and visualizations about leads and opportunities but so what? This is a better version of Crystal Reports, it’s not an app that is telling me how to improve something I do.
Jeff – totally appreciate the reply – it’s great to have some reason rather than knee jerk attacks. Appreciate the honesty and, as you say it’s hard to know what any of us would do with a different subject matter or a different CEO. With the NFP example you gave, I can’t quite see that blackbox republic will solve “the donors aren’t on Facebook” conundrum – I would have thought that it’s easier to attract them to Facebook than it is to Blackbox – and if you can attract them to blackbox (ie your org is enough incentive for them to join a network) then surely they’d either join a Facebook group or alternatively a well branded, obviously above-board and professional ning page?
Anyway – this isn’t an anti Blackbox tirade so back to your counter question (hey – it’s normally my religocultural group that answers a question with a question but hey!) – you have a point, IF blackbox wasn’t sex related and IF the big names hadn’t all come out so positive about it then no, I probably wouldn’t have posted about it. My perspective is primarily a “wow – did getting some of the big names in blogging to all post about a startup on day one of its release – that’s unusual” perspective and so my counter was framed in that way – if you guys hadn’t written there would hardly have been anything to write.
Once again thanks heaps for your thoughts…
@Jeff – re your second point – it was a reply to Marshall’s justification for posting – he said;
“Niche social network raises $1m, charges $25/mo & hits privacy hard? Yes I’d cover that!”
to which I’d counter
“Analytics company makes high level analytics available to SMBs, raises nearly $4m, wins tech awards and solves some nice data-warehousing issues? Yes I’d cover that!”
Anyway – this isn’t about youcalc – they were just the (unlucky) handiest example I could find….
re youcalc – analytics for sales and marketing stuff is a total snoozer in my book.
(Disclosure: I am CEO/founder of youcalc)
Great to be mentioned in this blog, I wish youcalc were the main point of discussion though ..
I won’t try to pitch youcalc here, we have not been able to communicate to bloggers yet why youcalc is “sexy”, that’s hardly anyone else’s fault. (We are of course sexy: we’re are building youtube for analytics apps: the world’s largest library of user generated shareable analytics apps for any imaginable purpose – open platform, open source, crowd-sourcing – all the “sexiest” web 2.0 concepts)
Ben, you’re a fantastic blogger. Most of the “mainstream blogs” that you refer to have turned into massive news feeds that pump out any category of news, with very limited “crunching”. In “the old days” the big blogs would analyze, digest and put technology into perspective – today it seems they mainly compete on the amount and speed of news stories.
Obviously they aim at expanding their audience to increase advertising revenue on the blog – unfortunately they are diluting their brand and quality. I used to read everything on e.g. TechCrunch because the guys gave me new perspectives and technology and the business models around it – now it feels like a massive spam feed (as I am writing this the headline on TechCrunch is that youtube will stop support for IE 6 …)
When quality blogs turn into mainstream news feeds, the catchy/sexy titles, the famous founders, the amount of venture funding, etc. become crucial. And it becomes a lot harder for stories that require research, crunching and analysis to get attention .
Rasmus Aaen Madsen
CEO/founder
http://www.youcalc.com