Boston WebInnovators

Tonight I went to the latest Boston WebInnovators session. The cat is out of the bag on this one, I think there may have been more than 200 people there. A bunch of social media folk were in the house including Steve Garfield, C.C. Chapman, Bryan Person, Chris Brogan and Dan Gorgone. There was also staff from EmergePR including the principal, Mara Bartucca who I always enjoy catching up with.

But most important were the concepts!

• Guild Cafe – Jon Radoff showed off their Social Network for Gamers. Pretty cool for that niche, but I imagine competition is going to get fierce in this space between established players like Gamespot and existing networks such as XBox Live. However I can see it making money if it can build a critical mass and allow it to become a marketing vehicle for new games without an established base. Something like Diablo 3 could stand on its own. I wanted to ask what they thought about the social stigma of being a gamer but decided to shut the hell up.
• MyPunchbowl – Matt Douglas showed evite on Web 2.0. Lots of cool AJAX… no, lots and lots. I’m not sure how hot this spot will be, but the guys that can set up that many partnerships and integrations that fast will make it big. It’s not a matter of how, but when.
• Goombah – Diane Sammer showed off their client app that enables a social network based around what’s in your iTunes library. Also very cool but there’s a lot of fighting in that space. I don’t follow it close but I can think of iCueMix and Pandora right off the top of my head. This is also a space that iTunes could take if it wanted to (although maybe that would include buying Goombah….)

It’s all about the social networks. I get the feeling these will all be dogfights, I didn’t see anything that I would consider new, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to make a lot of money but they’ll have to be more persistent than the guy next to them on the web.