RollAName, a Montreal startup launched 2 months ago, is a pure web2.0 product. The two founders, Vasily Klimko and David Nadezhdin, are promoting the service with a “web3.0″ and “web startups” group they created on facebook, are using the latest SEO techniques to rank high with Google, and hope on advertising and affiliates to monetize the service. In itself, RollAName is a social networking site where one member gets greater visibility if he/she had more friends than any others.
The bigger your network is, the higher you and your profile are listed and visible. Use this visibility to start promoting yourself, your business, events, websites, parties, books, blogs, video and audio and much more. Be Creative!
The most popular profiles will then be “featured” on the homepage, will get more traffic and have an opportunity to promote their videos, photos, listings etc. They also plan to include jobs and allow members to sell and buy via RollAName.
That said, I am not sure about the mass market appeal of RollAName. People don’t register on a website to be more popular, they do it to find information about a product, communicate with friends, buy stuff, etc. I’ve got my real-life friends to take care of, thank you, and it would be really a burden to register to yet another social networking website, just for the sake of it. I went through the website’s features, and concluded that people would register to RollAName if they are member of the media, bloggers, or in the marketing and PR industry etc.
That said, RollAName has sure some value with it, if you have a list of friends, and want to play with the “who is the most popular” game. The concept seems fun, for a moment, and would get my attention if I could just go into it right away. RollAName would then be perfect as a facebook application. Users would have already their data and list of friends, and RollAName would display some sort of tag cloud or another visualization tool to show how popular you are and what are the most popular stuff among your friends. If done right, they could also get at the same time traffic for their main website and build the service from there.
Comments
blognation Canada » Blog Archive » RollAName Interesting, But Incomplete October 13, 2007
[...] That said, RollAName has sure some value with it, if you have a list of friends, and want to play with the “who is the most popular” game. The concept seems fun, for a moment, and would get my attention if I could just go into it right away. RollAName would then be perfect as a facebook application. Users would have already their data and list of friends, and RollAName would display some sort of tag cloud or another visualization tool to show how popular you are and what are the most popular stuff among your friends. If done right, they could also get at the same time traffic for their main website and build the service from there. Source: RollAName makes you popular in the web2.0 world | Montreal Tech Watch [...]
Montreal Tech Watch October 13, 2007
new post: RollAName makes you popular in the web.0 world http://tinyurl.com/2hb2nq
apbnews.com October 13, 2007
Good and bad critics about Montreal based Social Networking Startup called RollAName…
This article talks in depth about the newly launched Montreal based social networking site called Roll a Name (http://www.rollaname.com) on MontrealTechWatch.com by Heri….
Annick Robinson October 14, 2007
Since putting up my profile on rollaname, my website now hits the top of every search engine list.
I’m not a programmer, not even close, but whatever these guys are doing behind the scenes delivers exactly what they promise – my website is getting noticed, in a way that is making sense. Dollars and cents. My time spent on rollaname is worth a thousand fold the exposure I get on facebook.
Check it out, put up your profile, make connections. Test your ranking before and after…see?
Heri October 15, 2007
I didn’t say they should be like facebook, I thought that by building upon facebook, RollAName would make more sense.
Also, there is one thing that RollAName should make it clear: either they present themselves as a social network, i.e. a place where you have friends, or a website where the goal is to promote your company/products/whatever. In the latter case, RollAName is then more like a directory, and should not use the word “friends” in their website. maybe use something like “connections” instead.
Montréal Tech Entrepreneur Breakfast, November Edition | Montreal Tech Watch November 14, 2007
[...] also met Vasily Klimko, who started RollAName, previously reviewed here in MTW. Our paths crossed in previous barcamps and facebookcamps, but I guess we never had the time to [...]
RollAName Interesting, But Incomplete | A View from the Isle December 18, 2007
[...] That said, RollAName has sure some value with it, if you have a list of friends, and want to play with the “who is the most popular” game. The concept seems fun, for a moment, and would get my attention if I could just go into it right away. RollAName would then be perfect as a facebook application. Users would have already their data and list of friends, and RollAName would display some sort of tag cloud or another visualization tool to show how popular you are and what are the most popular stuff among your friends. If done right, they could also get at the same time traffic for their main website and build the service from there. Source: RollAName makes you popular in the web2.0 world | Montreal Tech Watch [...]
Alex Harrold February 17, 2009