Conduit Labs, a stealth startup that is building a mix between social networks and "immersive online gaming", today announced a $5.5 million Series A investment from Charles River Ventures (CRV) and Prism VentureWorks. Unfortunately we weren't able to get any screenshots of the product, but the promise of a totally new form of social network product intrigued us.
According to Nabeel Hyatt, Founder and CEO, the rise of social networks and virtual worlds has also left "a huge gap in the current experience". Conduit Labs believes that gaming is the way forward. The company is employing people from both the Web and Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) Gaming worlds. The team already includes some of the developers behind Guitar Hero and Rock Band (two successful social gaming products) plus Asheron's Call and Lord of the Rings Online (large scale MMOs). In an introductory blog post, Nabeel implies that what they're building is similar to Club Penguin, a virtual world for kids sold to Disney recently for $700M.
Is this, as one of the investors said in the press release, where the Web is headed? I asked Susan Wu from CRV, who has joined the board of directors at Conduit Labs, why Conduit Labs represents the future of the Web. Susan has evaluated "many dozens" of online gaming and virtual worlds startups in the past year and her blog reality.org is one of the best sources of information about those topics.
Susan told me that "this space is new and undefined." She said "it's not about making MMOs more casual or putting an MMO in a browser or grafting casual games to Facebook. I've seen a lot of MMO folks pitch Runescape 2.0 and I've seen a lot of casual games folks pitch Miniclip 2.0, but I believe that the next major innovation to come out of this sector is going to be neither of those." Conduit Labs, she said, is aiming "to build a new type of social entertainment product that combines the best of multiplayer online gaming and social networking."
According to Conduit's Nabeel Hyatt, the product's interactions will feel much more like the types of social games we play offline. Just as Facebook augmented offline social networks by taking the relationships Harvard students had and building on and complementing those pre-existing interactions online, the same thing will happen with social online gaming. Nabeel said that it'll be everything from the hoops people play on weekends, to dancing at night clubs, to Guitar Hero and the Wii. But in a way that's integrated with the social lives that we live online.
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all Read/WriteWeb posts
Guys, there seems to be no reason to read your and TechCrunch's blog any more. It's all the same info it seems any more. What's up?
Posted by: Michael | August 21, 2007 10:50 PMI don't know if you've noticed Michael, but many of the top tech blogs frequently write about the same stories. We're all aiming to deliver news about web tech, so there will be some overlaps.
But one thing we always do at R/WW is put our own product-focused analysis into our news stories. So I would argue we're differentiated that way.
Also we do write a lot of content that the others aren't doing - e.g. this week we're focusing on Online Video.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 21, 2007 11:02 PMhi Richard, I have noticed, but it's exactly the same timing (and yes I understand the embargoes etc). Just seems that some companies get all the press, while most get nothing. How about some distribution, some diversification? Lots of great companies out there doing interesting things that get no coverage. (I think TC, Scoble, Om etc etc would say they put their own analysis into their own reviews as well).
Just longing for more diversity from the blogs that I care the most about to read, not just five opinions on the same product(s).
-M
Posted by: Michael | August 22, 2007 10:01 AMRichard,
Small correction: The Club Penguin deal was for $700M ($350 in cash) ... I guess not that small of a correction for some of those involved :-)
This space of social-networking meets gaming is seeing a lot of attention, innovation and money. The result should be interesting in a year or two from now.
Posted by: Oren | August 22, 2007 10:38 AMThanks Oren, updated.
Michael, duly noted. I didn't know the others would be covering this when I wrote it (and I can't second-guess what others will post about). But I hear you re diversity...
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 22, 2007 6:57 PMWith all due respect Michael.. that's ridiculous. Maybe posting about duplication would make sense between Mashable & Techncrunch. But I find Read/Write Web to have a fairly unique perspective and voice that I really enjoy.
Sometimes, though, news happens. It's no surprise that if something of note happens you're going to get multiple angles on it. And I definitely think Read/Write's coverage of this particular story was better than Techcrunch.
Posted by: James McDisi | August 23, 2007 6:34 AMFind the interview of Conduit Labs CEO and Co-Founder: Nabeel Hyatt
http://us.intruders.tv/index.php?action=article&id_article=658186&preview=1
Posted by: Bruno | September 4, 2007 2:17 PM