Montreal Tech Watch

Capazoo provides revenues for their members’ content

By Heri Oct 24th 2007 in Design

capazooCapazoo.com, which was under development since late 2006, has been officially launched publicly monday in New York City, and tuesday in Montreal.

It’s presented a social network, with a focus on monetization through a virtual currency named zoops. Registered members can tip another profile page, video, music or a photo; if you reach a minimum of zoops in your account, you can then cash out, although you need to to upgrade to a VIP account, which costs $35 a year. 1 zoop is actually worth a cent, which should encourage members to give away more zoops. Capazoo also extended the monetization system to referrals, shared advertising revenues and savings.

I have to say though I find Capazoo’s presentation a bit akward, when I read “make money from” and “friends” in the same sentence. I think that at some point, you have to be honest and present it as a just a place where you earn money from your media. In the “real world”, this would be the equivalent of a shop owner using the words “friends” and “social network” to name his/her customers. Capazoo doesn’t cross the line as weblo did; they indeed have an innovative idea with the zoops system, but I think they need to clear things out.capazoo

The website in itself has a very myspace-like feeling to it. Capazoo also follows myspace’s marketing path by focusing on music, celebrities and a young demographic. Is capazoo going to be the next myspace? you tell me…

Mashable has another review of capazoo. They also report that capazoo has raised $25 millions in private capital, with no VCs involved. Capazoo’s offices are in Notre-Dame street, and they were reported to have the largest ASP.NET development team in Montreal.

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Comments

  • stephdau October 24, 2007

    Wow, raising $25.00 without a VC is indeed quite a feat! Is that part of the whole micro-loan trend. ;)
    (sorry, couldn’t resist…)

  • Heri October 24, 2007

    sorry, it’s 25 million

  • Montreal Tech Watch October 24, 2007

    new post: Capazoo provides revenues for their members’ content http://tinyurl.com/3btppc

  • Vas October 24, 2007

    The company was founded by Micheal Verveille, which I met at the beginning of the summer. Being a very wealthy individual he has funded most of the project as well as some of the private investors including his own employees.

  • Sylvain Carle October 24, 2007

    I also heard that Paul Delage Roberge (Les Ailes de La Mode) was one of the private investors.

  • Heri October 24, 2007

    I think $25 m is a lot of money. These days, you could build a company like facebook with that. Micheal Verveille and all of those private investors must be really confident in what they are doing

  • Vas October 25, 2007

    I totally agree with you Heri that $25mil is alot of cash. Facebook was built with $28.5mill of VC capital so $25mil is very close to it. Lets see how far it gets them.

  • Thierry October 26, 2007

    I have a good friend who worked for Capazoo, before being downsized. When they let him go, they owed him over $20,000. It was in his contract. A written, legal document. Guess what: they haven’t paid him, and they don’t intend to, as lawyers letters have gone ignored.

    Imagine being cheap with $25M to the point where you don’t respect contracts. One wonders what will happen when users try to take their money off the table.

  • Mathieu October 29, 2007

    Capazoo also got some funds from poker online people…to be researched…

  • [update] Capazoo’s misguided efforts | Montreal Tech Watch November 23, 2007

    [...] Akoha, Standoutjobs, or Mobivox, there have been numerous worrying reports about Capazoo, which was officially launched last October. People are calling the founders scum bagss, another MTW reader said they were dishonest with their [...]

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