If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Join Digg

Video sharing site MetaCafe launched a new area of their site today - it uses the Digg API to show the most popular MetaCafe videos.

Viewers can sort by most dugg, highest rated, most discussed, most viewed, etc. Only Metacafe videos are shown.

Digg’s video channel and Metacafe overlap somewhat, particularly for people who just want to quickly find and browse interesting videos. That makes this pairing somewhat unlikely - I would have expected Metacafe to simply build their own Digg-like voting system or use Pligg’s open source software (see VideoSift’s similar functionality, which was recently in the news). The fact that they are working with Digg shows that they are willing to hitch their brand to that shooting star, damn the competitive angle.

Metacafe released a press release this afternoon on the new functionality. Notably absent from the release was Digg, who did not jointly release it, or provide a quote. (Update - see comment #2 below).

Lypp’s Free-n-Easy Conference Calling Coming In September

Lypp.com (site is not yet live) is a new group calling service set to launch a private beta in September. There are a lot of conference calling services out there already, not least among them being the full blown meeting applications (GoToMeeting, WebEx). However, Lypp wants to make initiating a conference call dead simple (download free) over IM, SMS, and email. The service will be free at the time of launch (each user will get 500 minutes of free calling, no per-min charges, no monthly fees).

IM will be the first mode for initiating conference calls. Users will associate an IM ID with their service and add Lypp as a friend. You’ll then be able to initiate a call by sending a command to that IM buddy, such as call [number, number, number]. Lypp will call your phone and those of your friends, connecting you all in a conference call. Most likely the calls are initiated and tied together over a VOIP bridge. Typing in my friends numbers instead of just selecting contacts on a downloaded application seems like it could get annoying, though.

They’re keeping it simple for launch, but have plans for an API, advanced in-call controls, recording, and possible location based. The API will integrate with calendaring, address books, and other complementary applications.

http://www.techcrunch.com/

Leveraging Facebook To Compete With eBay Won’t Work

Buy.com made a splash tonight with their announcement of a new Facebook application called Garage Sale.

Facebook users can use the application to sell thing directly to others via their Facebook profile. Buy.com charges a flat 5% commission on completed sales (the seller will also have to pay Paypal or other payment fees. The application says “thanks to Garage Sale, Facebook users don’t have to leave their profile page to advertise and sell personal goods.”

There are other Facebook applications doing nearly the exact same thing. Mosoma, for example, is one that I tested a couple of weeks ago. It also allows users to sell items on their Facebook profile.

There is an argument that a closed network is a better way to sell items because the people who view the listing know you and, presumably, trust you. That gets you over a big hurdle - eBay’s feedback system provides information on the buyer and seller which helps them get comfortable transacting. Without that feedback system to encourage sales, it’s important that something else takes its place. In the case of Garage Sale and Mosoma, user familiarity is the key.

But in practice this doesn’t work so well. Sellers are looking for a big base of buyers to sell into to leverage the network effect. eBay obviously does an excellent job of this. Otherwise there is no reason they would command a long term leadership position with their high fees. Buyers and sellers put up with the fees because it is the place to go to conduct p2p transactions. The network effect perpetuates their success and newcomers have a very difficult time gaining market share.

With Garage Sale and Mosoma, sellers can’t access this large pool of buyers because only their friends will see the listings. And sellers who are looking for a specific item are still likely to hop on over to eBay and do a quick search. They’ll only buy from friends if they serendipitously happen to catch site of an item in a friend’s news feed that they were already looking for.

Microsoft experimented in this area in late 2005/early 2006 with their Live Expo product. Originally Expo was a way to buy and sell items to your MSN IM buddies, or coworkers at a company, which is very similar to the Facebook experiments now being conducted. But over time they seem to have expanded Expo to become a more generic listing service. People want deep listings when they are looking for something.

Closed networks work for some things, but they don’t seem to work for trading physical goods. My bet is that Garage Sale and Mosoma fall short of expectations, and that eBay is looking on with, at best, bemused interest.

SONY ERICSSON - W830i This 116 grams phone has a Lithium Polymer battery type, which allows you talk time of 450 minutes and stand by time of 350 hour

SONY ERICSSON - W830i This 116 grams phone has a Lithium Polymer battery type, which allows you talk time of 450 minutes and stand by time of 350 hours. It has added features like 262K colour TFT display with resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, fm radio, push email client, voice dial, voice mail, call conferencing, triband, vibration mode, predictive text input, polyphonic ring tones, stopwatch, calculator, calendar, tasks, handsfree speaker, ring tone composer, countdown timer, SMS, EMS, MMS, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, Infrared, USB connector, flight mode, inbuilt Dictaphone, equalizer, mp3, mpeg4 and media player, and is WAP enabled. It comes with dual camera - 2MP camera with 4x zoom, flash, white balancer, self timer, night mode, multi-shot, light effects and video recording. This phone is PDA enabled and has a cHTML, WAP 1.2.1, WAP 2.0 browser. It has an inbuilt memory of 16MB and slot for memory stick pro duo. View More Price Rs. :- 17,000 User Rating : 9.00 Spectacular

SAMSUNG - SGH-D900

SAMSUNG - SGH-D900 aaaThis 85 grams phone has a Lithium-ion battery type, which allows you talk of 198 minutes and stand by time of 250 hours. It has added features like 262k colour TFT display with resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, voice dial, voice mail, call conferencing, quad band, vibration mode, predictive text input, document viewer, currency converter, tv-out port, polyphonic ringtones, mp3 capability, handsfree speaker, inbuilt dictaphone, flight mode, email client, SMS, EMS, MMS, GPRS, EDGE, Bluetooth, USB Connector and is WAP enabled. It comes with a 3MP camera with features like 14x digital zoom, flash, auto focus, photo effects, image quality adjuster and video recording. This PDA enabled phone has an inbuilt memory of 60MB and comes with a microSD card slot. Price Rs. :- 19,990 User Rating : 5.50 Good