The Web 2.0 List -- and news about Healthia, YackPack and Grouper's good fight
Updated
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| VC Karadogan |
It is huge, and he rightly remarks: "Who says there is no hype?"
And the Web 2.0 beat goes on. The list doesn't contain many of the latest players. Sunnyvale's Healthia, for example, is the latest site to help you compare healthcare products and services. It announced it has received $7 million in a second round of funding from Trinity Ventures, Bessemer and others. So add it to the list of healthcare related search companies like Healthline and Kosmix. The company, founded last year, apparently isn't getting much traffic yet.
One company on the list, but which we haven't mentioned yet, is What People Love's YackPack, a social-networking company in Santa Rosa (just north of Silicon Valley) specializing in audio messages. Hmmm. It got seed funding last year from folks like Omidyar Network, Esther Dyson, Ron Conway and others. We're wondering how these guys will make money, when there are dozens of other social networking companies out there, and it is pretty easy to just pick up the phone to talk with someone these days. Other social networking companies like Meetup, or Palo Alto's Renkoo, which we mentioned recently raised $3 million, aren't on Baris' list.
David Hornick, venture capitalist over at August Capital, sees the list and wakes up to the fact that four of his companies now have 33 competitors, and that's only counting ones on the list. "That is mind blowing," he remarks.
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A couple of weeks ago, Grouper chief executive Josh Felser told us they'd released some new products and that Grouper had tripled traffic metrics in a few weeks. Still, there's a long way to go to catch YouTube.
http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt331/mt-tb.cgi/1307
Links to blogs that reference this entry:
Baris's Web2.0 List in SB
Excerpt: The Mercury News's Silicon Beat blog has a post highlighting Baris's Web2.0 List, with comments on the huge size of the list and how even a list of this size can not keep up with the Web2.0 pace. A nice
Tracked: April 20, 2006 8:56 AM
Focusing on technology (e.g. Web 2.0) rather than a solution for a real problem, or taking advantage of a real opportunity, is a pattern repeated over and over and over... I don't care if its Web 2.0 or RPG or COBOL or AJAX, how does it relieve my pain? Will we never learn? [Actually some of us have, and that itself creates opportunity.]
Lee C. on April 19, 2006 1:38 PMComment link
Of the sites listed here, Healthia is the only one that seems to be using the technology to address a real problem - the crying need for better information and marketplace dynamics in the purchase of healthcare goods and services.
Lee is right - Web 2.0 is a set of technologies. How about focusing on the problem these companies are trying to solve?
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Sure, let's remember services. YouTube, for example, makes people crack up, and so now it has 6 million people visiting every day to watch vidoes -- and so with those figures, you should be able to get some advertising. My point is that there's 20 other video hosting companies out there, offering similar services, but don't have the traffic, and so can't depend on advertising. And similarly, there are hundreds of other Web 2.0 type companies that depend on advertising, which is why i'm lumping them together. Point taken, though. There are exceptions.
Matt Marshall on April 20, 2006 1:28 PMComment link
I can't go into the details yet, but for the record YackPack is generating revenues today in various ways. The big announcement depends on another party, not us. We're working to get to profitability soon.
Thanks for writing about us!
BJ Fogg
Founder, YackPack
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Too bad for Healthia that they do not have anyone with real healthcare experience onboard.
Lack of traffic shows that the dogs are not eating the dog food.
Skeptic on April 20, 2006 6:53 PMComment link
