Touring Craig Newmark’s brain is no easy task, but Wired Magazine’s Gary Wolf asks the ultimate question. How come when you arrive at the most popular dating site - heck the most popular classifieds site in the US - you find a stream of anonymous come-ons intermixed with insults, ads for prostitutes, naked pictures, and obvious scams? In a design straight from the earliest days of the Web, miscellaneous posts compete for attention on page after page of blue links, undifferentiated by tags or ratings or even usernames. Is this really the best we can do? 
In spite of all the hoopla over sex ads on Craigs list, frauds and scams abound in online classifieds and ecommerce sites. So Genmobi Technologies is marketing Check-Mates, a buyer-seller personal ID verification service that individuals and media can use to eliminate most common frauds. The service is marketed as a solution for heavy users of Craigslist and Ebay, but it can be used for any web site transaction. CEO Michael Schultz says he is in talks with media companies interested in embedding this option into marketplace, similar to the way Zvents embeds a Buy Ticket button. As local media sites continue to look for ways to create and sell low cost high quality video to small businesses one contender is Spotmixer. The product is simple enough, a set of 200 video advertising templates by industry, that media can customize with voice overs, text, music, photos, mood and pacing by following a wizard (or use SpotMixer’s experts for a fee).I spoke with Leslie Latham, Vice President of Business Development just after she signed up Comcast Spotlight in San Francisco. Read More »
Everyscape, a provider of software that creates interactive panoramic video tours, called “webscapes” has an interesting play for local media companies. So far the company has partnered mostly with merchant associations using its own sales force to sign up the merchants. But there is no reason media companies can’t do the same thing, obtaining video content for “experiential” guides like dining and nightlife, or for hyperlocal communities. Read More »
“Best of” contests gain new life online when media companies partner with Web-savvy CityVoter, a site that let’s visitors vote for their favorite establishments. So far mostly broadcast sites with no established “Best of” brand have taken advantage of the opportunity. “TV is a no-brainer. Its like a megaphone,” says Joshua Walker, founder and CEO. “I’m still looking for the print that can activate as well as TV. Print companies tend to get caught up in Church and State issues.” According to the Kelsey Group about half of the traffic from contests comes from the media, the other half comes through the CityVoter site. Read More »
