Boxxet offers sites on popular topics
Boxxet is a Burlingame, Calif. company that creates information sites for popular topics, such as the SF Giants — carrying relevant news, blogs and photos.
It has just opened the site to the public, having raised a seed round of $900,000 from New York’s Ascend Venture Group.
It is breaking the rules of Web 2.0, moving away from the trend of relying on user input. The company emerged last year, in testing mode, and we described its mission as wanting to be the About.com of Web 2.0. At the time, it hoped to rely on users to create these sites. However, the rise of other sites, such as Wikipedia, Wikia and Digg, all reliant on user participation, forced Boxxet’s founder You Mon Tsang to change his strategy. Users lack time to participate on many sites, he says, so he automated the generation of content at Boxxet’s pages. Boxxet does let users rate an article, say about the giants — a positive rating pushes that article up on its SF Giants site (see screenshot of SF giants site below). However, it isn’t relying on users to create and manage sites.
Boxxet’s chief competitors, he says, are the search engines, which are beginning to display summarized content for popular searches. Search Ask.com for “SF Giants,” for example, and you’ll find news, scores, and other things on top and to the right of search results.
Still, if you want the latest scoop or other info on the Giants, or on the Sharks, or on one of 450 other topics, this is a place worth trying.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
