Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Welcome to my blog!
Welcome! I’m Dan Pelson, the founder of uPlayMe and this is my blog.
For the past decade, I have been creating “youth-focused” sites that offer people an opportunity to express themselves any way they want. I am the guy behind Bolt.com, Concrete Media, the fabled “Girls On Network,” and for those of you who may have heard of it…..the first Webzine: Word.com.
Here’s a little about my background and what I’ve learned over the years. I launched Word.com in 1993. I left in 1996 to start Concrete Media, a services company that launched and acquired Internet media properties and offered custom publishing and distribution of Internet content.
When speaking at conferences to promote Concrete, I was fond of saying things such as “Content as we know it is DEAD! DEAD I TELL YOU!!” or…. “Content may be King, but CONTEXT is Queen, and we all know who runs the house.” I also discussed the idea that people not only want to control their content, but they want to be the content. I still know these statements are true.
The first media property we launched at Concrete was Bolt, the first social networking site to empower teens. The basic premise of Bolt threw people at the time because 1) people weren’t convinced the teen market was that important; 2) people didn’t think that the Internet was a viable advertising medium; and 3) a media property that didn’t create any “professional” content didn’t make sense to them.
We realized quickly that teens didn’t care what a bunch of 20- or 30-somethings had to say about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. But they absolutely wanted to know what their peers were saying. And they wanted to chime in, without the risk of being beaten up for saying something uncool. It was simple—there was (and still is) a massive disenfranchised community of people around the world called “teenagers” who suddenly had a safe way to express themselves.
Bolt launched in 1997, and by 1999 some three million teens visited Bolt per month. Today 10 million are on Bolt! (I’m no longer involved.)
Today, the Internet continues to become ever more deeply engrained into the social habits of the world’s youth, but the same lessons that powered Bolt endure. Young consumers want to connect with each other and maintain control of their world. So, those companies that make it simple to connect and offer the control to youth will win.
Today, youth are downloading and consuming digital media at an exponential rate. At the same time, consuming digital content, usually music, is becoming an increasingly solitary experience thanks to the iPod and other players. To build on these trends, “music discovery” sites are popping up all over the place.
As I see it, these sites have created two obstacles for themselves. First, young consumers don’t care about discovering music. They just want to discover people. Put more bluntly: they want to meet chicks and/or dudes and if music is the great connector, all the better.
Second, these sites are too complicated. They have created barriers to making real connections. People have to update their profiles as often as their tastes change. It can be kind of a pain. Then there’s all that reviewing of profiles before seeking connections.
uPlayMe offers a new approach. We have created an app that is focused on making connections based on interests teens care about: mainly music.
Here’s how it works. uPlayMe runs totally in the background on your PC (and soon your MAC) and sends you matches based on the music and other online content you consume. From there, you can see their profiles on whatever sites they use, and look at the music they’ve recently played. Once you sync your iPod or MP3 player with your PC, uPlayMe will also track the songs played on those devices to send you matches. This isn’t pouring through lists of stuff you were digging last century! uPlayMe updates to keep track of your tastes in music right now.
We would love to get feedback on the features we have introduced already that you like and even what you don’t. Tell us what to add; there’s no committee making decisions here. I’m accessible – e-mail me at Dan@uPlayMe.com. And I hope you like this enough to keep uPlayMe– and the music – playing on.
‘Cause the idea is: You never know who you’ll meet–or who likes that song you can’t stop thinking about. Thanks.
Best,
Dan
Dan@uPlayMe.com
For the past decade, I have been creating “youth-focused” sites that offer people an opportunity to express themselves any way they want. I am the guy behind Bolt.com, Concrete Media, the fabled “Girls On Network,” and for those of you who may have heard of it…..the first Webzine: Word.com.
Here’s a little about my background and what I’ve learned over the years. I launched Word.com in 1993. I left in 1996 to start Concrete Media, a services company that launched and acquired Internet media properties and offered custom publishing and distribution of Internet content.
When speaking at conferences to promote Concrete, I was fond of saying things such as “Content as we know it is DEAD! DEAD I TELL YOU!!” or…. “Content may be King, but CONTEXT is Queen, and we all know who runs the house.” I also discussed the idea that people not only want to control their content, but they want to be the content. I still know these statements are true.
The first media property we launched at Concrete was Bolt, the first social networking site to empower teens. The basic premise of Bolt threw people at the time because 1) people weren’t convinced the teen market was that important; 2) people didn’t think that the Internet was a viable advertising medium; and 3) a media property that didn’t create any “professional” content didn’t make sense to them.
We realized quickly that teens didn’t care what a bunch of 20- or 30-somethings had to say about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. But they absolutely wanted to know what their peers were saying. And they wanted to chime in, without the risk of being beaten up for saying something uncool. It was simple—there was (and still is) a massive disenfranchised community of people around the world called “teenagers” who suddenly had a safe way to express themselves.
Bolt launched in 1997, and by 1999 some three million teens visited Bolt per month. Today 10 million are on Bolt! (I’m no longer involved.)
Today, the Internet continues to become ever more deeply engrained into the social habits of the world’s youth, but the same lessons that powered Bolt endure. Young consumers want to connect with each other and maintain control of their world. So, those companies that make it simple to connect and offer the control to youth will win.
Today, youth are downloading and consuming digital media at an exponential rate. At the same time, consuming digital content, usually music, is becoming an increasingly solitary experience thanks to the iPod and other players. To build on these trends, “music discovery” sites are popping up all over the place.
As I see it, these sites have created two obstacles for themselves. First, young consumers don’t care about discovering music. They just want to discover people. Put more bluntly: they want to meet chicks and/or dudes and if music is the great connector, all the better.
Second, these sites are too complicated. They have created barriers to making real connections. People have to update their profiles as often as their tastes change. It can be kind of a pain. Then there’s all that reviewing of profiles before seeking connections.
uPlayMe offers a new approach. We have created an app that is focused on making connections based on interests teens care about: mainly music.
Here’s how it works. uPlayMe runs totally in the background on your PC (and soon your MAC) and sends you matches based on the music and other online content you consume. From there, you can see their profiles on whatever sites they use, and look at the music they’ve recently played. Once you sync your iPod or MP3 player with your PC, uPlayMe will also track the songs played on those devices to send you matches. This isn’t pouring through lists of stuff you were digging last century! uPlayMe updates to keep track of your tastes in music right now.
We would love to get feedback on the features we have introduced already that you like and even what you don’t. Tell us what to add; there’s no committee making decisions here. I’m accessible – e-mail me at Dan@uPlayMe.com. And I hope you like this enough to keep uPlayMe– and the music – playing on.
‘Cause the idea is: You never know who you’ll meet–or who likes that song you can’t stop thinking about. Thanks.
Best,
Dan
Dan@uPlayMe.com
# posted by Dan Pelson @ 6:59 AM 
