The world is going social. And, Bill Gross, veteran tech entrepreneur wants a share of his pie of the world and that is why Chime.in. Unleashed on the public in the beta stage at the ongoing Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Chime.in, a brain child of UberMedia, Pasadena, is designed to work with Twitter, Facebook and Google+ while creating niche networks based on specific topics.
Dubbing it the ‘interest network,’ CEO Bill Gross said that his network is not really competing with existing giants like Facebook and Twitter and tackles completely different problems than them.
Like all other social networks, Chime.in allows users share content with others. Users can post photos, videos and links and start their own polls. It does not differ from other networks in that it has a newsfeed, profile pages and a system for following other users. However, it does not have status updates but has ‘chimes’, which is something between a Facebook status update and a blogpost.
Users can write short articles, up to 4,000 characters, on Chime.in. A chime displays a headline, a few introductory sentences of a chime, an image, video etc. a profile picture, interest tags and options for liking, commenting and sharing. Chimes have threaded comments that include a up or downvote system (Reddit-inspired?) for listing the best comments to the top of a chime.
True to the nature of an entrepreneur, Gross knows what will make Chime.in lay golden eggs. He realizes that being yet another social network is not a winning strategy, being different in a matter that counts, is. So, Chime.in has a few differential features. The main one is that users have control over their profiles, including the advertising and sponsors that run on the page. If the sell the ads themselves they can retain 100% of the revenue, if they let UberMedia handle ad sales, they split the revenue 50-50.
The jar of honey already has bees buzzing around it! E! Online, Universal Pictures, Bravo TV and the Walt Disney Co. have evinced interest in the company.
The sequence of events which led to the setting up of Chime.in is as follows:
-
Gross launched UberMedia as TweetUp Inc. in April 2010 as a way to make money from the stream of tweets and tweeters.
-
Christened as PostUp, later on, the company then purchased third-party Twitter apps Echofon, Twidroyd (UberSocial for Android) and UberTwitter. It also launched A.plus, a branded Twitter app for actor and tech entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher.
-
In February, UberMedia ran afoul of Twitter, which briefly cut off UberTwitter, UberCurrent and Twidroyd for violating Twitter’s policies and trademarks.
-
On Tuesday, 18 October, 2011, at the Web 2.0 Summit at San Francisco, CEO Bill Gross launches the beta version of Chime.in
Chime.in also seeks to tap the ever-expanding world of mobiles. Mobile apps of iPhone, Blackberry and Android allow for all of the actions the website contains. The mobile versions of Chime.in work very much like the website. Gross explains that the social network’s app allows quick access to content, as against getting content from Twitter’s mobile apps, which he says is a ‘painful process.’ In his own words, “In contrast to Twitter, Chime.in content loads almost instantly, thanks to caching and Chime.in actually hosting the content rather than just linking to it.”
The social media world is already flush with popular social networks and niche social networks, and, UberMedia will not find the going easy. Not only will they have to convince users that they are different but that they are useful too . Le us hope that Gross’ belief that the website’s focus on interests and offer to let publishers keep the revenue they generate will make it an attractive proposition for users, publishers and businesses.
Gross got it right when he said, “Every transaction online is going to have social embedded in it. The monetization of social media is going to be a huge opportunity in the future.” It remains to be seen whether Chime.in is the channel to do it.