Mediameme

I posted a couple of months ago about friendfeed — the killer app that lets you be a voyeur on steroids. Now there is a site called Grouply that lets you aggregate all your Yahoo Groups AND Google Groups communications in one message or in one place.

It also has a calendar feature so you can see all the dates being posted by the community — helpful for networking groups. AND like all good social media, it offers connectivity to people who share similar interests.

Sounds great, right? I was hooked right up to the point I saw the big red box asking about the rumors I might have heard…and then when they asked for the Yahoo ID and Password.

<double-take> Whaaaat?

One click search told me who was behind the site and if the TechCrunch and TrustE badges were for real. They are; however, I’m not the first to question their credentials.

The Grouply business model seems to rely on trust — go on, give them your password that may also be the key to the credit card information you keep on your Yahoo ID to access their stores, any finance information if you use Yahoo to watch/trade stocks or funds, your personal contacts, possibly your flickr images and community…the list goes on and on. I’m posting this to also highlight the dark side of social media that often gets buried.

Benefit: all your groups nicely organized in one place.

Risk: spambait and compromised identity.

I’m thinking the risks outweigh the benefits on this one.

Federated Media is an intriguing web 2.0 ‘advertising’ agency model.  It caters to Technorati 100 content developers (aka authors) — popular sites like Boing Boing, Cool Tools, Destructoid and Mashable as well as blogs like Guy Kawasaki’s: How to Change the World; Stowe Boyd’s /Message;  Fred Wilson’s A VC and Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch.

Yet the rumormill is wondering if John Batelle (founder of the Industry Standard and Wired) is, once again, in danger of premature solicitation.  He’s building what many feel (including me) to be an institution far ahead of its time.  It will be worth 100x more in a year because it’s not *just* monetizing blogs.  He’s developing platforms for brands like American Express Open and teaching us all what the next advertising model will be (hint: page views and CPM don’t enter into the conversation, but monetizing the Long Tail sure does).