Community Sites - Show Me The Money
Posted on July 26, 2007
Filed Under Content, General, Internet Marketing, Surveys, Useful Tools, Web Development
You have probably seen many different rankings and listings when it comes to sites that are revolving round communities. Most of them have been ranked by a combination of Inbound Links, Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast. I am about to shed some light on the ten most expensive community sites. This ranking has been done according to verified deals in the past. Have a look and learn who the big boys are:
10
A communities service that empowers authors and readers to operate at the same level. For the first time, everyone who reads a web site or blog can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level. This tenth place goes to MyBlogLog with an estimated value of $10 - $12 million.
9
This popular social-networking site is based out of San Francisco. The site has all the usual social-networking features including video, music and classifieds. The site traffic puts it near the top of social-networking sites, with the bulk of its users located outside the US. Hands up in the air for Hi5 and its recently raised $20 million.
8
Discover websites and content with this amazing service enabled via a browser toolbar. It uses positive and negative user ratings to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When users vote, they will only see pages which friends and like-minded members have recommended. More often than not, it’s something almost serendipitously interesting to the reader. The company expanded into video discovery in late 2006 and the site is estimated at the amount of $40 - $45 million - StumbleUpon
7
When this site launched in 2004 as a teen-only social network, security was a top priority. In October 2006 the site made a drastic change and went from being under-18 only, to allowing users of any age to join. This change has helped user registration skyrocket. In fact, the site was adding more users per day than MySpace in May of 2007. In addition to all of the new users, this site has still been able to bill itself as safe environment for teens by keeping security in place for the under-18 crowd. The site with a $102 million valuation - Tagged
6
This is a user driven (I call it a mob) social content website. Ok, so what the heck does that mean? Well, everything on it is submitted by the community (that would be you dude!). After you submit content, other people read your submission and vote what they like best. If your story rocks and receives enough votes, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see. See the Digg on the sixth place with its $200-million.
5
The high five position goes to a social networking company which revolves around its music recommendation engine. Recommendations are made by comparing user data to the rest of the site’s user community. Unlike competitor Pandora, this site’s recommendations are not generated by matching similar musical attributes. However, its community driven engine gives it more potential to grow into media other than music. Will they last on this fifth position? I don’t know but it will take a long time to spend their $280 million - Last.fm
4
This site has steadily risen from a small baby site to become one of the world’s most popular social networking sites. Users can create profiles on the site for free, stay connected with friends, watch videos, and listen to music. Currently, it has over 34 million registered users and 7 billion monthly page views. I guess Bebo deserves the $1 billion price.
3
Originally launched as a destination for college students to connect with one another, the site has expanded to include companies, professional networks and geographic regions. What about continents? I wonder whether the penguins have signed up yet :). The company recently announced a set of APIs to make integration and support with third-party services even easier for consumers. C’mon you penguins, you are missing the fun on Facebook and all the stuff that are worth $1.6billion.
2
I tube, you tube, everybody tubes. This is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email. I don’t need an explanation on the price, probably you don’t need as well. YouTube deserves the $1.65 billion.
1
And the winner is… the site where you can create your own private community and share photos, journals and interests with your expanding like a bubble network of mutual friends! See who knows who, or how you are connected. Find out if you really are six people away from Kevin Bacon. MySpace with the cool $12 billion
What makes these sites so expensive is the community element in them. They have managed to attract a shed load of members which is seen as a tool for earning big bucks by the giants like Google, Yahoo, CBS and other companies that have online or offline businesses. This could be regarded as wild west times of the online world. Everybody is fighting for his piece of web ground.
P.S. Don’t kill the messenger! All the valuations and rough prices were acquired from information posted on various blogs which was examined and then converted into this ranking.
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