CATEGORIES
- NYC COVERAGE
- WEB STARTUPS
- WEB NEWS
- CONFERENCES
- WEB TECH JOBS
- VENTURE CAPITAL
- MICROSOFT
- INTERVIEWS
- ADVERTISING
- VIDEO
- ALL TOPICS
- ALL COMPANIES
CONTRIBUTORS
- ADRIAN CHAN
- ALICIA NAVARRO
- ALLEN STERN
- CORSIN CAMICHEL
- DRAMA 2.0
- DARREN HERMAN
- HANK WILLIAMS
- MARK DAVIS
- RICK TUROCZY
- SANFORD DICKERT
- SHANNON CLARK
- Comment on YouTube Down for Maintenance by Killer
- Comment on The Absolute Most Awesome Google Maps Mashup Ever by Google Maps Gets A New Layer ? The NYC Subway | CenterNetworks
- Comment on Google Maps Launches NYC Subway/Public Transit Directions by Google Maps Get Layered With the NYC Subway | CenterNetworks
- Comment on T-Mobile USA Outage ? Service Down by khrtt
Meetup Recap: Confabb and TrustFX
Tonight I attended the "New York Web 2.0 Social Networking Tech Meetup." What a name – covers all bases! We met at a club which unfortunately had horrible acoustics. I was one of three presenters, and it was nearly impossible for me to hear myself over the club music, and the noise coming from the bar. I would suggest that they move it to somewhere that is a bit quieter. I counted about 75-80 attendees. I had a chance to meet the editor of the new AlleyInsider.com, which is a tech blog focused on NYC.
There were two presenters for the evening: Confabb and TrustFX. Below are my comments and thoughts from each presentation.
Confabb
Confabb is a site that lists conferences around the U.S. and provides detailed information on each. Along with the conference information, you can also signup to a social networking option which lets you create a profile which others can "friend" you on. This is a better version of MyContags.
Here are my live comments/thoughts from the presentation:
- Launched November 2006
- Do they have travel information for each conference?
- Have to create yet another social profile?
- You can create branded URLs for your conference, they showed a bunch of "issue" related conferences
- Is it real-time, so if something changes on the schedule, do they update?
- How do they get the word out, do they have promos at conferences? Will this replace Twitter at SXSW?
- Seems like a ton of manual labor to keep this site updated
- Seems like a good idea as long as they can get every conference into the system and get a large number of conference attendees active
- My suggestion would be to tie into a social network like facebook so users are not required to create yet another profile
- What about a tie with Meetup or Upcoming?
- Might also be nice to let me save to Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.
Claim to have the largest database of conference information
TrustFX
TrustFX is attempting to create a way for consumers to "trust" a business by the ratings and reviews posted about the same business. One of my friends called it "yellow pages with ratings". Their mission statement is: "To create credible online reputations". The service just launched.
Here are my live comments/thoughts from the presentation:
- CEO Andrew Ward noted that the system can't be gamed, but from what I could tell on the demo, it looked like it would be easy to game
- They only list businesses that have registered with the system. My suggestion is that they start to fill the database. I searched for dentist in my ZIP code and no results were returned. I think they would have more luck returning as much data as possible and highlight those with a trust score.
- Andrew said that businesses can tie incentives to ratings. I think this could be a big no-no as it could create a payperpost type issue
- The last slide discussed market opportunity: potential for 250k customers in year 4 with sales of $100 million and they are open to acquisition
Overall I enjoyed the event (outside of the location) and meeting many new people. I look forward to hearing from the contacts I made and hopefully covering their startups here on CN.
Allen,
Thank you for you kind words, we enjoyed your presentation on revlayer and wish you the best of luck.
To answer some of your questions…
• Do they have travel information for each conference?
We do not have travel information at the moment unless the conference administrators come in and post it, but it is on its way.
• Have to create yet another social profile?
While you can get the most out of Confabb by creating your online profile, it isn’t needed to use most of the site, just to post content and communicate with other users. Searching, reading discussion posts and reviews and browsing the social media portals do not require an account or even a login. We do welcome the opportunity to work with other networks to share profile information, however at the moment it seems like many others are not as willing, fingers crossed we will soon all be working together.
• Is it real-time, so if something changes on the schedule, do they update?
The session information does not automatically update, however as conference organizers claim there conferences they tend to make updates on our site as well, that is even one of the draws for them claiming a profile (to ensure we have accurate information). On our hosted sites however the content is shared between the branded site as well as Confabb’s main site.
• How do they get the word out, do they have promos at conferences? Will this replace Twitter at SXSW?
We get the word out first by being the largest resource for finding events, as we partner with more and more we are gaining users by the 1000’s who can then take their experience on Confabb to their next event. We gain more traction with great folks like you blogging about us and most effectively is conference organizers who are encourage the use of Confabb both within their companies and to their audience.
• Seems like a ton of manual labor to keep this site updated
There is a lot of work at the beginning and we are glad to do it. Over time the community will take over a lot of the load and many conferences happen annually which helps to. We will however never slow our efforts and do whatever it takes to bring the conference community the best information we can.
• Seems like a good idea as long as they can get every conference into the system and get a large number of conference attendees active
You are 100% correct, to all those reading, we cordially invite you to join in on the conversations over at Confabb.
• My suggestion would be to tie into a social network like facebook so users are not required to create yet another profile
We are going to be integrating Open ID and creating a facebook app in the upcoming month to lessen some of the burden of creating another profile.
• What about a tie with Meetup or Upcoming?
While potential partnerships with Meetup and upcoming have possibilities, we see our selves as focusing on the conference and tradeshow industry specifically. No need to do it all, there are many players in the event space; we would rather ‘own’ the conference space. It is certainly large enough.
• Might also be nice to let me save to Outlook, Google Calendar, etc.
We do some work with exporting your conference schedule now but there is certainly more to come in that area.
Allen, you raised a lot of great points in this piece, and it is feedback from folks like you that keep us on our feet and give is the feedback we need to consistently update our product offering. There are lots of great features coming down the pipeline, you can check out our blog at http://blog.confabb.com to stay up to date on all the exciting things happening and we would love to hear what others think as we move forward. So thank you and all those who attended the meetup, keep the feedback coming.
Thank you and all the best,
Jon with Confabb
Jon Mandell
jon[at]confabb.com