The Social Cloud: Promising Social Media Startups for 2012
While Facebook continues to dominate the Social media scene and rumors abound as to its next acquisition (probably Digg according to some people) many more startups are joining it by providing services somewhat different from the usual. Promising Cloud Based Social Media Startups to watch for in 2012 include Tumblr, Pinterest and Wooplr.
Tumblr
While it may seem like Tumblr.com is just another blog platform (or in their own words: microblogging) like WordPress and Blogspot, in reality it is much more like a social sharing site for pictures, text, media, video or whatever else that strikes your fancy, with more emphasis on the social than the media. The very design of this startup is streamlined so that you have minimal text and super-easy access to get your quotes, pictures, images and media online and into the Cloud where it resides for others to look through and interact with. This has no doubt appealed to a lot of people including the photographers, artists and designers out there with the startup seeing a massive influx in 2011. So far it has done this on its own and looks to be set for even bigger things in 2012 perhaps as they fine tune how they are going to make even more money from the millions of posts and reblogs done every day.
Despite the fact that it shares remarkable similarities with Tumblr, the approach of sharing for Pinterest.com is more like little snapshots with multiple comments on a big online or Cloud pinboard. While the format is more constrained than some other social media startups, the design is a whole lot simpler, so people can shoot from the hip, pin it up on their board, choose to comment or not and then wait for the comments to flood in. It all looks much like an IKEA catalog. While interest in Pinterest has been growing it could peak very soon as the very reason why it is so popular may be the reason for its downfall, that its own simplicity may limit it from doing more or providing people with other methods of expressing themselves or sharing further.
Wooplr
A completely new startup that looks to be coming out of stealth mode come 2012, Wooplr.com is looking to play the social media startup angle from the social shopping standpoint. While they have yet to come out with anything definite just yet, they have said that they have had very positive responses from the relevant people. From what little can be gleaned from their website it appears to be a startup that will provide users with the ability to submit mini reviews and ratings for shops in their cities while discovering new promotions, new shops and new items of interest (related to shopping of course) to be posted on the Cloud for dissemination. This implies that they will have backing from the relevant retail shops in an area but it is still unclear whether or not these shops will be physical shops that you must go to (which suggests that they might include some Augmented Reality) or if it is just through online shops. They have also said that there will be a point system to help encourage more reviews, posts, ratings and other tips.
With both Black Friday and the main gift-giving holiday season already past it seems a bit redundant to come out at this point as they have said that they are slated to come out soon in the New Year.
By Muz Ismail
