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This blog is about the lives of a few entrepreneurs who are aiming to establish the next trend in social networking and the concept that will make it happen. Since our venture is all about connecting people together, we want to be involved and connected to you and we want you to be involved and connected to us. We'll be sharing with you: who we are, how we got started, how we’re doing and where we’re going...we're taking you along for the ride!!

Friday, September 21, 2007

Still Out of the Local DC Web 2.0 Loop

How does this happen…I am invited to participate in helping out to test a private Alpha start-up in London, but I don’t know about Razoo until last night, and Mixx until this morning, when both are in the DC/VA area!?!?

The kicker is—I didn’t find out about either one of them through my networking in the DC and VA area. To make matters worst, in Razoo’s case, someone I know actually took part of developing the Facebook application for them, but never mentioned the site/organization.

This is frustrating. I’m obviously not networking enough in the area and not in the “know”, just yet. Or is the web 2.0 community in the DMV (DC, VA and MD) simply working in stealth mode, and not in a... "let’s really support each other mode"?

I came across Razoo from Vince who posted about Razoo on his blog Try Change.

Razoo is the Platform for Social Good. Razoo is a community united around making a positive difference in the world. Where passion leads to action, and a whole lot of collective good comes from individual contributions.
Razoo is definitely a community developed around creating and doing good. It’s a wonderful community for people who want to have a positive impact in the world, and for all the amazing people, who work and dedicate themselves to good causes.

The site is very well done, has an excellent purpose and I’m impressed with the back end development. I have more thoughts on that….but, will keep them for another post.

The news of Mixx came from…yep, Techcrunch. From Techcrunch’s post:

Mixx is a new social news site. To put it into context, it’s a sort of cross between Digg, LinkedIn and MyYahoo. In a nutshell, its a social network that lets you find and share news based on your interests and location.

One aspect of the service - each user has a customized Digg-like experience, effectively creating smaller niche versions of the popular social news site. That means niche publishers get to play, too. Today they are largely shut out of Digg. But popular stories from more obscure topics can get traffic traction through Mixx. Stories, video and photos can all be bookmarked.

Ironically, I read the post from Streamy, which is where I aggregate a lot of my RSS feeds now…and since I’m not on Mixx I can’t truly compare the two, but they sound similar. I submitted my email to take part of the Mixx private beta.

May be it’s just me…but you would think they (Mixx team, lead by Chris McGill, formerly the General Manager of Yahoo News and more recently the VP Strategy at USA Today) would reach to the DC Tech Community to test their private beta and get feedback. Or may be they did and I missed it, or they are planning on it, and I’m inserting foot in mouth right now.

Last night I went to Refresh DC’s monthly meeting where ClearSpring presented on Widgets. I didn’t attend the after party because I had (without thinking) scheduled a development team meeting at the same time. Perhaps, I missed the exciting passing of information because I wasn’t there.

Like I said…I shall pick up my networking around the area and find out what’s happening and figure out how to perhaps bring the community together a little more. No point in being so quiet and tight lip about our Web 2.0 companies within our own local community. It makes sense to support each other.

It’s obvious that there is, and starting to be, more and more Web 2.0 start-up activities going on around the area.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Ann,

Don't worry, you're not too late to the party! I'm glad you now know about Razoo, and we'd love to get to know you better.

On that front, we're hosting our next Brewing Good happy hour next Thursday (9/27), and we'd love for you to join us. Just shoot me an email w/ your email address (and addresses of anyone else you'd like to invite), and we'll be happy to send you the invitation.

Cheers,
Rebecca
Razoo.com
Good Happens: http://blog.razoo.com

Unknown said...

Hey Rebecca,

Thanks for the interest! We have only let in a few people because we want to beat on the system first.... but you are in! We'll send you an invite and let you brng some friends in as well. We'd love to hear your feedback so that we can improve the product.

Cheers,

Chris

Unknown said...

umm- if you can't tell- I have been multitasking a little too much.. I mean to address the last post to you Ann. Apologies.

Ann Bernard said...

Chris, no problem. I completely understand...many things on your mind and on your plate, which explains why you are still at it a 10pm on Friday night.

I know all about it ;-)

Thanks for the invite!!