Thursday, December 27, 2007
Clupedia is a Santa Ana based startup that is trying to take a hybrid wiki concept and apply it to semantically marking up websites. They've received at least 1.3M in Series A funding from the Tech Coast Angels, the Pasedena Angels, and the Frontiera Group as well as 2M in funding from their founder Dr. David Saad .
The Good
Clupedia has an interesting concept on their hands that, at the very least, it is a sort of web2.0 model that hasn't been beaten to death. The metag everything idea has been around for a long time and we are just now getting around to realizing it, with things like semantic user generated layers on Google earth, the new Yahoo/Flickr geotagging map photo explorer, etc, etc. Clupedia is taking it to another level by letting you tag and review anything on the Internet; your reviews for one site/product you write about then get displayed on any other relevant website you visit.
Clupedia also apparently has a strong pitch as they've received good response from the early stage investment community. Besides the money, their pitch has been well received on the popular entrepreneur video site vator.tv. Clupedia's vator.tv success alone has generated a lot of their user interest and downloads.
Finally they have a pretty good scheme for building their community (which is always the hardest part in making a service built on user generated content). They give iphones and other gifts for contributions and referrals. From what I can tell the requirements to get things seem quite high (100 clues and 100 referrrals), but I guess its working, so thats a good thing.
The Bad
Despite my comment that their pitch has been well received, my personal opinion after seeing their Vator.tv video is that their pitch was not at all impressive. The whole clue thing is confusing, if I wasn't TRYING to figure out what Clupedia was for this review, I would have checked out long ago. It took me a bit of time to really get what clupedia was trying to do, and I follow this stuff daily, I honestly don't think the mass consumer is going to latch on to what the heck Cluepedia's "clue" concept is.
If anything I think, I think the strong investment support is probably less about a mind blowing business and more that they have confidence in the founder's background. With a PhD in Computer Science and a successful background launching a company previously, the leadership seems like a good safe bet. I'm not so sure of this, especially since I'm usually leery about "safe bets" but then again, I've never met Dr Saad, so I could certainly be wrong.
The biggest gripe I have with Clupedia was actually using it. I was expecting a slick toolbar like del.icio.us that integrated simply and cleany with a nice web 2.0 style website. My experience was nothing like that. First, the toolbar layout seemed to lack a clear thought on the user interface experience for discovering "clues". I'm sure if someone showed me what I was looking at it would have been obvious, but using it like most users (just downloading it and blindly trying it) finding clues was not easy or addictive. In fact the entire time I felt like I was missing something, even after reading through the FAQs. Whatever clues I did find just seemed like useless bantor. When I went to add clues it was also buggy, as selecting a category would not scroll beyond the first few entries, then when I actually submitted a clue about good ole Tech Coast Review nothing happened. So I'm not sure if that meant that the review was submitted or what.
Finally, beyond the Clupedias toolbar, the website itself highly bothered me. The look and feel of clupedia.com reminded me of some annoying flash site, not a hip web 2.0 company. Besides the asthetics, I could never get the actual website to work. Although I was logged in, and the clucast toolbar was working, I could never search, add, or look at any clues on the site directly. I tried on both Firefox, Opera, and Safari. Maybe it would have worked in IE, but I didn't have much interest in changing browses just to see if I could view clues. And frankly even if it did work, Im pretty sure that my hope of slick, simple del.icio.us like experience of tooolbar to website integration would not have been seen. This of course is troubling to me, as I use the website version of del.icio.us as much, if not more than the toolbar version of del.icio.us, and if Clupedia actually interested me, my behavior would probably be the same.
The Overall
Theoretically Clupedia could become a more evolved version of StumbleUpon. StumbleUpon is highly addicting, very useful, has great traction, and has a good business model. By adding a more intelligent semantic engine for reviews, and a slightly more evolved twist, Clupedia has the potential to be even better and become highly sucessful. Do I think they'll pull that off? Frankly, no, but might as well give them a chance. In the end I'd rather review a startup that may be rather bad in its current implementation but has a vision that COULD beat the industry leader if all the right things happen, then a startup that may be more polished but in the longterm really has nothing innovative to differentiate it from the competitors. Clupedia is the former.
Website: http://www.clupedia.com
Screenshot:
1 Response to Clupedia: User Generated Clues?
Thank you for reviewing Clupedia. I think your review is fair and objective considering that you were not privy of our strategy and plan, which I will be happy to share with you. In fact, I would like to invite you to our open house on January 9th at 5:00PM. You can visit our web site for more details on the open house: http://www.clupedia.com/Nav/Home/RSVP/RSVP.aspx?A=b9.
Let me now address some of the issues that you raised:
1. The pitch at Vator is targeted for investors and not for users. Even for users, the presentation is targeted for early adopters who are in the know and not for the mass market. So you are right that the presentation is not appropriate for the mainstream but that was not the intent in the first place. Of course, we realize that by the time we get to the mainstream not only that the presentation will change but the entire product itself will change to make it suitable for the mass market. That is quite typical of the majority of high-tech products. Clupedia’s pitch is by far the most viewed pitch on Vator and for very good reason, one of the highest rated, most commented on, and with the largest network by far even larger than Vator itself. The reason is because investors and entrepreneurs understand the value proposition and is well targeted for this audience.
2. You’re also right about the fact that investors bet on the jockey (the CEO) and not the horse (the business). That’s actually a good thing because ideas are a dime & a dozen. Unless you have the cure for cancer, it’s all about execution, especially in our space. Thus, investors typically bet on the jockey not the horse even though they do want to see a good horse. Our space in general and our business in particular (the horse) is the place to be, and as far as the CEO and the management team (the jockey), well, I think you for the complement.
3. You’re again right about the organization of the toolbar. The new version will address some of the concerns that you raised.
4. The current version is a first beta version. It is not at all complete, and admittedly, it includes some bugs. So again you’re right, but wait until you see the new version – it sets a new standard.
5. Our strategy is to offer a comprehensive open platform that delivers the wisdom of crowds with style on any device. We started with the browser toolbar, we will then empower our website with clueing capabilities, and finally, we plan to offer a mobile version. We are still at the initial stage. So there is nothing wrong with your browser, and it is not a bug, we simply have not delivered the clueing functionality from our web site yet. We plan on doing that in February. In that version, we will have just adding clues capability. Gradually, we will include searching for clues, filtering, reward system called Clupoints, statistical analyses, and customization. If you go to the web site, click on Clupoints, you will have a list of functions which will give you an idea of what is coming. Those functions listed in the accordion under Clupedia are still intentionally disabled.
6. As far as the graphical user interface is concerned, there are as many opinions as they are people. It is very subjective. We decided to be the innovator and not the imitator! We’re beyond web 2.0. We are also beyond the Digg, the StumbleUpon, or the De.lico.us of this world. We’re none of those. We’re Clupedia. We dare to be different, set a new trend, and raise the bar. The fact of the matter is that there are far more people who love it than the ones who don’t. In that department, there is no way for anyone to satisfy everyone. Hence, unless the balance starts to tilt the other way, we will continue on our path of innovation which is a very rich user experience. Give it a chance, keep an open mind, and you’ll love it because the fact of the matter is that our interface offers a very high functionality, usability, and proper navigation that is way beyond the web 2.0 crowd that you mentioned.
7. It takes about two minutes from the time you submit a clue until you can see it. We are currently debating whether we should allow instant posting or not. Of course, there is a downside in allowing instant posting because chances are that bad and offensive clues will creep in the system. So, we’re still debating on quality versus convenience.
Finally, I thank you for your semi-vote of confidence that we may pull it off. If you attend our open house and review what we have up our sleeves, I bet you’ll give us your full vote of confidence.
Something to say?