Seasoned entrepreneur Bill Gross and owner of UberMedia of Pasadena is introducing a social media platform named Chime.in to attract more users by centering itself around particular fields instead of the wider potpourri of topics that come on Facebook or Twitter. Gross had launched UberMedia as TweetUp Inc. in April 2010 as a medium to generate money from the stream of tweets and tweeters. It was later renamed as PostUp at one point of time and third-party Twitter apps Echofon, Twidroyd (now called UberSocial for Android) and UberTwitter were also purchased. “I’ve been completely smitten with social media over the last few years. I think it’s a global phenomenon that is world changing,” marked Gross a recent interview.
The Chime.in mobile app was accidentally released into the iTunes app store Monday although he had decided to launch the media platform’s beta version today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. In the beginning of 2011, UberMedia pitched in to buy TweetDeck but lost the deal when Twitter submitted a larger bid. But it is, however, designed to perform with Twitter, Facebook and Google+ while making special networks based on specific subjects.
“We’re calling it an interest network. It’s not really competing with Facebook and Twitter,” chimed Gross.
Scott McNealy, ex Sun Microsystems chief executive also started a similar venture like Gross this month in Denver and christened his platform Wayin. With Wayin, that is available as a free iPhone and Android app, McNealy aims to pave a way for users where they can express their opinions about live events instantly.
Whereas Gross’ Chime.in is more of a mixture of Twitter and Facebook, that is armed with a more graphical interface that appears like Facebook’s new Timeline user profiles and comment boxes known as “chimes” that resembles tweets. Profile users can upload and share photos, video and links. They can even start their own polls. “Chimeline” (that is like Twitter stream / Facebook wall), that can be grouped by topics, popularity or the time of the posts, will be at one’s disposal as a Web browser application and as iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps.
But Gross hopes to have an edge over the others with the fact that his company assures to give content creators total advertising revenues for its Chime.in pages if they sell the ads themselves and half of it if they allow UberMedia handle ad sales. It has already drawn interest from the likes of E Entertainment Television, Universal Pictures, Bravo TV and the Walt Disney Co, and Gross believes the platform will let big companies as well as the small ones to have good audiences.
“The whole world is shifting to social. Every transaction online is going to have social embedded in it. The monetization of social media is going to be a huge opportunity in the future,” said Gross.
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