Sorry for the brief blog posts but the wifi here at TechCrunch 50 is a mix of unstable and unavailable. The first session featured four companies and my ranks are as follows:
1. Hangout 2. BlahGirls.com 3. iThryv 4. Tweegee.com
Hangout.net was outstanding and the demonstration was perfectly put together. The ecommerce integration is slick and provides an immediate business model.
I thought Ashton Kutcher's Blah Girls had terrific content - but they will need to be updating the content on a very routine basis (tough to scale). Interesting opportunity for Blah Girls to become a mixture of Sugar Inc + YouTube + MTV-quality production.
Chad Hurley: blah girls has best opportunity for advertising model. content is scalable based on distribution. Clearly two learnings out of YouTube.
Marissa: Hangout. questioned all of the business models. iThryv doesnt seem realistic - doesn't seem practical as to how kids save and spend.
Conway: would most likely invest in Shrynk but not without a couple major deals signed (ie Wells Fargo, Intuit). Dilemma for other companies: for their users they have to get allocated time on existing social networks and reduce time spent elsewhere - currently well saturated in networking offers, mindshare, etc.
CNet: Hangout is innovative. Blah Girls needs more content than couple times a week.
Conway: product placement is the next multi-billion dollar advertising platform.