Personal Bee, yet another Web 2.0 news site
Personal Bee is yet another Web 2.0 news site where you can tailor your own news portal, or "bee."
Personal Bee plans to launch publicly within the next thirty days. Right now, you can register to request to tinker with it.
We will not quibble with their initial news judgment (SiliconBeat is first on their home page, at least as of this morning).
To be blunt, though, we think there are too many of these sorts of sites out there, so we remain skeptical until we see more. We're a bit surprised Personal Bee, which is venture backed, is not slicker than it is, especially since it has decided to talk about it publicly (see VentureWire link below). No slick bee logo. No, uh, buzz.
Anyway, the idea is that it lets you, the editor, organize blogs, newspaper articles and other media on a particular topic. Others can subscribe to your topic feeds, and the "bees" continue to edit the topical offerings.
Sam Jadallah, a venture capitalist at Menlo Park's Mohr Davidow apparently helped incubate the company over a year ago. It now has six employees, and Mohr Davidow has invested $500,000, according to a piece today by VentureWire (subscription required). According to the story, the company might get another $2.5M if it hits certain milestones. It is based in Berkeley.
We wrote about Boxxet yesterday, which is doing something similar (btw, our readers can sign up for access to Boxxet by clicking on a link at the bottom of that post). There's a host of other sites trying to rank news on particular topics for you, including Memeorandum, Digg and Tailrank, and then there are bunch of newsreader sites out there too that make their own recommendations on blogs you can read, and which offer up similar blogs to those you are already reading.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/1200
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Hey Matt! Thanks for being interested in the Bee. The story that VentureWire was writing was pitched to us as being about MDV and their recent investments. We warned the reporter that we have an "engineering releease" live at our URL today and that our "slick bee logo" as you put it won't be coming until later in March -- along with a UI that allows users to easily see the value and differentiation that we provide. I agree with you, by the way, that there are "too many sites out there" and that you SHOULD remain skeptical until you see more. That having been said, my belief is that while there are many products in the market, none of them have precisely the right formula. So this is an open ecosystem with a lot of immature organisms floating around and evolving - keep watch as some of the organism identify successful evolutionary strategies and others fail. And if you'd like to talk more, you are welcome to call or write. I am not seeking publicity for what we are doing, but I am not of the opinion that companies should hide if people come knocking on the door and asking questions! Best, Ted Shelton - CEO, The Personal Bee, Inc.
Ted Shelton on March 9, 2006 10:32 AMComment link
At least Ted chimed in - but he must now better than anyone that of the 30 or so news blogging web2.0 community sites, in 2 years only 2 or 3 will be left - and it looks like his won't be one of them....
DoubleAces on March 9, 2006 10:36 AMComment link
This is a bubble. We all know it. These web2.0 social news ranking services are hardly even features.
John on March 9, 2006 1:55 PMComment link
Why is it a bubble if people just keep building the same sites over and over again? That's not a bubble. That's just stupid. There's a difference.
Vanilla Chin on March 9, 2006 4:36 PMComment link
I'm glad to see a little bit of conversation on this topic but am surprised to see the quick judgements. Here are some thoughts in response:
"Double Aces" writes "...and it looks like his won't be one of them..." huh? Just sounds like someone being unneccessarily negative - no rationale provided for this opinion, so shall I learn from what this person has to say or simply disregard as a troll? The latter until proven otherwise.
"John" writes "...hardly even features" Every product starts out as a feature. Whether it evolves into a product or not is determined by the vision and the execution of the team. How can you judge any of the offerings on the market today and write them off as not having vision or ability to execute? Do you think that any of us are going to stop where we are now? We, for example, have only exposed a fraction of the functionality we have under development.
"Vanilla Chin" writes "...that's just stupid..." Sure , if we really thought we were all just building the same site it WOULD be stupid. But that isn't what is happening - it is much more complex. First of all, we each have a vision for what we are doing and we are trying to execute on those visions. The things you see today may look similar but they may be headed in very different directions. Secondly, we are all watching each other and the web allows for this rapid pace of innovation that causes each party to adopt the things that work (or seem to work) from other parties. So you see imitation - but we still all think there is some secret sauce in what we are doing that makes us better and different.
Stay tuned. This is going to be an interesting space with a lot of innovation to come.
Ted Shelton on March 9, 2006 5:12 PMComment link
I'm no expert on the space, but Ted's persuasive. I do know that when eBay launched, there were at least 150 other auction sites, "all doing the same thing."
Or in social networking today, consider the trajectory from Friendster to MySpace. The development environment is just too dynamic to be bashing ideas out of the gate.
Obviously, the competition -- and funding -- in this personal-news area means that a lot of people think there is a market here, one which can be addressed from various angles. The successful companies will be those that execute well.
Gordon on March 10, 2006 9:42 AMComment link
