What may be the most impressive thing about these new apps/networks is how much venture capital pours into these things

CALGARY, AB, Feb. 2, 2012/ Troy Media - I do a lot of public speaking all over North America. After almost every engagement someone comes up and asks something like “Have you heard of SquigglyWoo.com? It’s the bomb!”

No, I have not. That’s because there are literally thousands and thousands of social networks that even a full time practitioner can’t keep up with it all.

While the big ones like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, SlideShare, flickr and Google+ prevail, there are lesser known ones on the horizon that are creeping into the public’s consciousness.

Six to watch

Here are six that have caught my attention of late:

Pinterest is a kind of photo sharing meets scrapbooking meets web clipping site. Wikipedia describes it as “a vision board-styled social photo sharing website and app where users can create and manage theme-based image collections.”

SoundCloud is not new but seems to be surging in popularity. A sound clip sharing service originally launched in 2007, it is “an online audio distribution platform which allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings.” (Wikipedia) What makes it especially useful is each sound clip has its own URL and is easily embeddable into blog pages and such, making for easy sharing.

Instagram is a photo sharing service that allows you to apply retro-style filters to your pics. Imagine a photo of your living room today tinted to look like 1975 and you’ll get the idea. Thick-rimmed glasses not included.

Rdio is a subscription based Internet/mobile delivered music service that challenges both terrestrial and satellite radio. From a recent news release Rdio claims to be “the ground-breaking digital music service that is reinventing the way people discover, listen to, and share music. With on-demand access to over 12 million songs, Rdio connects people with music and makes it easy to search for and instantly play any song, album, artist or playlist without ever hearing a single ad.” At $9.99/month that seems a fairly good deal.

Storify is a content curation site that allows users to gather up tweets, posts, photos and videos from disparate sources, package them up, and then display them on your own blog, complete with your own added colour commentary. In other words, it helps users build and tell stories on the social web. A great example is the Calgary Herald’s experiments, which you can see at storify.com/calgaryherald where local issues such as bike sharing and snowplowing are explored.

Color is a video-snippet sharing app, with no sound. Originally launched last year as a “who’s taking photos near me” app, Color reinvented itself this past fall when the photo proximity idea failed to catch on. Now with Color 2.0 you can get your inner Charlie Chaplin on in 30-second bursts and post those silent movies to Facebook.

Rolling in money

What may be the most impressive thing about these new apps/networks is how much venture capital pours into these things. Pinterest got $27 million last year. Color got $41 million.

Clearly someone is betting these things are going to take off. Come to think of it, I should launch SquigglyWoo.com and snag myself a cool $41 million.

Doug Lacombe is president of Calgary social media agency communicatto. Find him on Twitter at @dblacombe.

About Doug Lacombe

As president of social media agency communicatto, Doug is a social media speaker, strategist and consultant. A 20 year media and marketing veteran, Doug was one of the first in North America to put a daily newspaper on the web in 1995. Prior to founding communicatto inc. in 2009, he held senior roles in the newspaper, software, wireless, and newswire industries. Speaking and working all over North America, Doug is based in beautiful Calgary, Alberta Canada where he lives with his wife of 24 years, Sandra, and a spoiled Mexican rescue dog named Bug.

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