Snapvine, another social voice messaging service, raises $10 million
Snapvine, a company that lets you leave voice message on profile pages in social networking sites, has raised $10 million. There are many competitors providing this type of service, without evidence any of them are making much money.
SayNow, one of Seattle-based Snapvine’s many competitors, raised $7.5 million last month.
The company, like other widget companies that are popular on social networks, is still experimenting with ways to be profitable. So far, it has done a couple of corporate advertising campaigns featuring banner ads and is looking at audio ads inserts — like Saynow.
To call another Snapvine user, you click on their widget in their social network profile to go to their Snapvine page (see screenshot at the bottom of the article), where you can leave them a voice message. Snapvine also gives each user a unique number, so you can call and leave messages on Snapvine from a phone.
Musicians and their fans are the most prominent users of these types of service, Snapvine, Saynow and others report. In part because of influential early adopters like musicians, voice-messaging companies have been growing fast. (See this Snapvine screenshot from 50 Cent’s Myspace page, incidentally a widget-heavy and slow-loading page even by Myspace standards.)
Snapvine claims to have five million installations across Myspace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 and other popular social networks since it launched last summer. Half the users are on Myspace, and the company isn’t saying how many people are actively using it, reports The Seattle PI. Saynow says it has
Bridgescale Partners led the round; previous investors include Draper Fisher Jurvetson, First Round Capital and angels.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.