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Wallop, Inc.

Product Name

Wallop

Market Segment

Consumer Internet

Funding

Privately funded. Series A: Venture funding from Bay Partners and an equity stake from Microsoft.

Competitors

No direct competitors. Secondary competitors include MySpace.

Product Description

Wallop, Inc., a spinout company built around a Microsoft Research project, delivers the next-generation of social computing and redefines how people interact online. Wallop solves the problems plaguing current social networking technologies. For example, today’s networks have difficulty enabling people to interact in a way similar to the way they would in the real world. Wallop tapped legendary Frog Design Inc. to conceive a next-generation user interface enabling people to express their individuality like never before.

Market Opportunity

Social networking has seen major growth in the last two years, with the most popular networking sites counting over 50 million users in the United States (ComScore Media Metrix, May 2006). According to a recent study from Jupiter Research, a phenomenal 12% of U.S. Internet users say they’re registered at an online networking site. ComScore states, “The popularity of social networking is not expected to wane in the near future.”

Demo Says

As a market segment, social networks are rapidly evolving from their roots as relationship search engines to a next generation of social expression. In this newest era, where credibility and transparency will drive online reputation, we won’t want to rely on cute avatars to represent ourselves. Online image is important, and providing the means to project that image is big business. Wallop is a see-and-be-seen social network that capitalizes on our desire to represent ourselves online with the same ease and individuality as we do offline. In a world where the lines blur between our online and offline lives, Wallop may well be the business to watch in order to understand the dynamics of reputation management and self-expression.