Appropriate for this Thread: Will this be the next model of a Silicon Investor type of site?
If we look to this site here, we come here to learn a lot and hope others will get a little from our postings. Could it be that enterprises, such as keen.com, in a near future, will enable us to purchase and sell releveant information on demand? I would very much appreacite the Thread thoughts on that.
Net firm to connect users by phone
By Jeff Pelline
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 7, 1999, 9:00 p.m. PT
Karl Jacob, who launched one of the first Java start-ups and sold it to Microsoft, tomorrow is
expected to announce the launch of a new Net venture, Keen.com.
As previously reported by CNET News.com, the start-up will focus on a trend among e-commerce firms:
providing expert advice and services through the Internet. The difference between Keen.com and other
expert-advice sites--such as Xpertsite.com and Exp.com--is that the information is delivered over the phone.
Keen.com will offer what it calls the Live Answer Community, in which people can find others with similar
interests or information to share about a given topic, and the company sets up a phone call between the
parties. Keen.com calls both participants, so neither has to reveal his or her identity or phone number, the
company said.
"The phone is the natural way for consumers to communicate and is much more personal and effective than
any of the current means of communicating on the Internet," Jacob, chief executive of Keen.com, said in an
email interview.
Jacob previously spent two years as a top executive at Microsoft after the software giant bought his
company, Dimension X. Among the first Java start-ups, Dimension X was a software and professional
services firm. In July he became an entrepreneur-in-residence at venture firm Benchmark Capital, which is
funding Keen.com. Benchmark's other ventures include eBay, E-Loan, Red Hat Software, Webvan, and
PlanetRx.
"Anyone can come to the site and find people who share their interests or make money by listing themselves
in areas where they know more than others," Jacob added. "This could be as simple as a person who lives in
New York and can talk with you about the top places to go to on a Friday night or having an in-depth
conversation with a physician about why you are feeling ill at 4 a.m. in the morning."
During the conversations in which one participant is charging the other for the information being imparted,
Keen.com will collect a percentage of that per-minute fee, Jacob said.
The company also will offer user-generated ratings of other members to better ensure the quality of the
information, the company said. A member wanting information about a topic from another member will be
able to see if others have dealt with that member and how they rated the experience.
Keen.com--as in sharp-witted or mentally acute--is based on an idea from a New York-based entrepreneur
named Scott Faber. Under Faber, another name had been considered as well: Ether.com. |
