Loogic English

Beezzer is a project that started in Brazil and it offers its users the possibility to participate in or create communities that revolve around brands and products. The idea is very good, all of us are fans or followers of particular brands and we like to express our opinion about them whenever possible.

Beezzer allows users to create new groups around brands and other users can then join those groups providing comments, suggestions, uploading photos and videos. Each group has an administrator and the users become part of a ranking in function of their participation in the group.

A community like this should be very interesting for the brands. If a group formed around a brand is able to attract a good number of interested people, it could be proactively leveraged by the brand to get the first hand opinion of its most admiring customers, test out new products, etc.

Seen in wwwhatsnew

At the beginning of June, we exclusively presented Vi.vu and now we have come to know that Caja Navarra, through Eurecan, has invested 200.000 euros in the form of a participative loan.

It’s interesting that in the blog of Eurecan they talk about the confidence of the investors in the management team of the company, mentioning the names of Jorge Villabona, Jorge Maestre, Ignacio Parada, Humberto Matas and Joaquín Guirao (some of them from the management team of dnx), as the people in whom the entity has deposited its confidence.

This investment stands out, in my opinion, for the support that it brings to a pioneer project, a social network focused on the world of health and medicine, the kind of project that are having a lot of success in other countries, but for which we still don’t know if there is sufficient interest for users in Spain. With regards to this, Rodolfo Carpintier recently commented on his blog about projects of this kind and I guess that more investors would be interested in such initiatives.

My friends of ASPgems have launched the community of professionals Befreelance with the incentive that the people who register will be able to earn money for using certain tools that the application offers.

The model is the same as Beruby but applied to a particular sector of web users, something that makes a lot of sense for specializing and the sector that they have selected could go on to make a great use of certain online tools.

I liked especially the integration that they have done of tools for managing SME (small and mid-sized enterprises) and freelance professionals developed by ASPgems (Facturagem, Gastosgem, Listagem, …) (literally named after Bills, Expenses and Lists). I also like the direct access from this web where the freelancer could have access to his/her favourite web applications and besides can make the professional CV accesible to his/her clients. That gives a lot of potential to Befreelance.

The section of the curriculums of freelancers is called BeCV and as the users go on registering, it could form an interesting directory to turn to in search of qualified professionals. I have already registered myself, you can see my personal page here.

For quite some time Lanetro was a portal of reference in Spain, an example to follow for many internet entrepreneurs. Their founders wanted to take it public and then it was acquired by Planeta.

Now Lanetro is going through a profound renewal and it wants to turn itself into a social network based on entertainment in which the users share their experiences and opinions about the places they visit.

In the new Lanetro we will be able to see content generated by an editorial team coexist with user generated content. As in all social networks that are springing up, users can create their profiles, connect with their friends, and express their opinion on the places or events they have been to.

Another important aspect of Lanetro used to be its street map. In this new version of the site, the street map accounts for the records of all the places that are mentioned in the entertainment guide, something that will be of great utility as a complement to the contents of the site.

Lastly, the design of the web is worth a mention, very cool in my opinion and also the profiles of the users that reflect very well the activity of the user within the community. Salir.com and Gentereal.com will have an important competitor in the new Lanetro.

 

Sincerely, I wasn’t expecting that Viadeo would jump into buying communities or social networks in Spain and I think it’s good news to continue to stimulate the market.

Viadeo acquired ICTnet as announced by Pedro Sanchez Pernia, their country manager in Spain.

ICTnet has 300.000 users which will from now on be a part of Viadeo, which means an important thrust to the competition with Xing and LinkedIn.

How much did Viadeo pay for ICTnet? As per the valuations in the purchase of Neurona and Econozco, I would say somewhere around 3 million euros.

More information in the web of Viadeo (in Spanish).