The Fabbri brothers built a social media platform called prollie to measure how well we use each channel available to us – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Tumblr to start. The beta is worth a look. They raised $500,000 from angel investors in their first round of funding. I did not see anything about the revenue model. It does not yet offer support for social media like YouTube of Google+.
Prollie outlines your passions, based on your content. My four categories – social media, pets, sports and travel – were pretty much spot on.
It also offers you the opportunity to be listed within prollie and to connect with “prolleauges.” Once they grow the database, this will be a list of people who share my interests with whom I might want to connect. Currently, I am the only person with my interests using prollie – or this feature has not yet been fully turned on. In either case, the brothers politely listed themselves as my prolleagues.
The networking opportunities will be of interest once this is fully developed. I suspect people will focus on their own grades, which is the hook to get you into the database. I suspect their are quite kind in the algorhythm used to create the assessments. But the true utility of the platform is the opportunity to find like-minded people across a range of social media networks.
I suspect at least one revenue opportunity will be to put vendors in touch with those like-minded networks of clearly self-identified prospects. Targeting will be easy and very accurate, because our content identifies our passions. If we’re talking about it on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, we’re interested in it. If we are checking in at particular retail places on a regular basis, targeted offers can be based on that data. It’s so much more accurate than a generic form with a slate of check boxes. Plus, it’s totally current, so, for example, my emerging interest in photography will be reflected in my posts once I have some mastery. Or, my passion for my Auburn Tigers will show once the college football season begins.
The Fabbri brothers look like they know their way around the craazy startup world, and their funding sources seem solid. They also know how to get press. Their service is feature rich and easy to understand. And, with one brother’s background in communications and journalism, they have a great, easily identifiable online “voice” for their platform. So, all the necessary elements are there for this to be successful. Definitely worth watching – and using.