Wallop, the social network that began as a Microsoft Research project before being spun off as an independent business, launched officially today - however, you still need an invite to gain access. The San Francisco-based company has taken $13 million in funding and has 27 employees. What's more, CEO Karl Jacob is a serial entrepreneur, having founded and/or acted as CEO for numerous startups - On Ramp, Dimension X, Keen (now Ingenio) and Cloudmark. I took it for a spin earlier today, and it's an extremely interesting effort.
It's also worth pointing out that start pages like Netvibes and Pageflakes are trying hard to build ecosystems around their products, but these widgets are always free: since many of the developers are trying to get their sites in front of start page users, it wouldn't make sense to charge (ditto MySpace - it's all about promotion).
I like Wallop a lot, but I'm completely undecided on whether they'll succeed or fail - it's too hard to assess whether users will take to the Flash interface, or totally reject it. Wallop also walks the line between being open and being closed: yes, they support outside development, but only through their own proprietary marketplace - it's not the same as hacking together a Flash widget and sticking it on MySpace, hi5, Piczo, Friendster, Xanga and the rest. In short: interesting idea, but I'm clueless as to whether people will use it. Personally, I can't get used to having the entire site in Flash - I just find it irritating. Wallop will have to hope that I'm abnormal, which seems like a distinct possibility.
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