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Opinion: 10 'Net services that will succeed, and 10 that will probably fail

Hulu
Slide 7 of 21
Hulu

Successes: While YouTube and other online video services wrestle with copyrights and other headaches associated with content uploaded by users, Hulu has the backing of major Hollywood studios and a growing library of legit studio content. It works in a Web browser (unlike Joost) and has a sharp UI. The business model is based on serving ads.
Why it hasn’t succeeded yet: It just came out of beta. Also, the library of back-catalog and fringe programming needs to grow a lot before it can start capitalizing on Long Tail momentum. Full profile ...

Comments

Hi, it's David G from Zillow.com, first let me just say, OUCH!

As traffic metrics go, comscore's way off - I just pulled up omniture - Zillow had 5,1 million uniques in March '08.

Thanks for the critique. Redfin's actually not a competitor, they're a brokerage who publish Zestimates on their site and have in fact advertised on Zillow.

Local CPM ads actually work really well for real estate pro's who want their phones to ring (something you can't do with CPC) but many of the ads on Zillow are CPC with some CPA. Zillow's a high-tech media business. The same folks who develop Zestimate algorithms are building ad targeting systems that can target cable ads for example to movers and lawnmower ads to people with large lawns.

As to Zillow's prospects - expect Zillow to change online mortgage shopping (launching very soon) and expect to see for sale listings on the site continue to grow now that brokerages are uploading listings in bulk to the site.


Zamazing!


This looks really interesting -- too bad it's spread out over 21 pages. Way to inflate page views :)


I could not agree more on Twitter and Spock being on the way out. Both go on the premise that the rest of the world actually cares what you think and spends time talking about you - it''s Vanity 2.0 rather than Web 2.0. Beyond the initial curiousity of how else you can waste your time with new web apps there is nothing sticky about them at all.

It's a great pity someone doesn't get to what are obviously two teams of talented developers with a decent business plan.

Ian Hendry
http://www.wecando.biz


Well, I have to say that all 20 net services listed look pretty retarded. They all look like copies of old ideas, or half-assed ideas from MBA dropouts.


Good site!


Best and Safest - People Search Engine - PeopleSearches.com

http://www.PeopleSearches.com


I revise my position on Twitter. I know quite a few companies using it with some success as a great way of engaging in easy two way dialogue with customers and prospects. They automate a lot of the content (mainly through RSS feeds via Friendfeed) so they appear busy without there being any overhead on staff to issue Tweets. They can just focus on how their market is responding, either directly through monitoring Tweets of followers, or using social media monitoring tools.

It's getting so much interest I am running a seminar on it next month.

Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz


None of the Slideshow links produce a slideshow. What's up with that?


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