Gooruze launches with vibEngine

Gooruze was launched last week. If you are an online marketer, or want to learn more about online marketing, make sure you visit and join Gooruze.

Here is some information from the social media press release…

Gooruze is the NEW niche web 2.0 community dedicated to online marketers

With $41.6 billion to be spent on online advertising in 2008, Gooruze is a one stop
independent information source for the online marketing community

Online marketing is in hyper-drive - keeping up is almost impossible. Gooruze is a NEW professional community
where members inspire, share advice and learn. Gooruze provides a one stop source for ranked news and advice
for online marketing. Created and rated by the members.

NEWS FACTS:

• A new ranked advice and news community which will help online marketers view at a glance ranked news
and advice, created and rated by the members.
• Gooruze runs on the vibEngine, also the engine behind the successful parenting network www.minti.com
• Gooruze is endorsed by a line up of global industry gooruze from far and wide; from the UK to Australia
and the US, across all forms of online marketing; digital, direct, social, PR and search.
• The Founding Gooruze include; Malcolm Auld, Andy Beal, Drayton Bird, BJ Cook, PPC Kid, Matt Dickman,
Matt McGee, Marc Loveridge, Duncan Riley, Brian Solis.
• A level playing field - All members have the chance to climb up through the ranks to achieve “gooruze”
status by being active contributors and providing valued content to the community.
• Having completed a successful closed beta launch it is now ready to open to the public.
• Gooruze is celebrating the launch by giving away over $10,000 worth of Google AdWords traffic. 20 x $500
prizes will be awarded to members who are voted worthy by the Founding Gooruze judging panel.

INDUSTRY STATS:

• ZenithOptimedia’s forecasts internet advertising expenditure will increase by 85 per cent between 2006
and 2009. Global internet advertising spend is forecast to be $33.7 billion in 2007 and $41.6 billion in 2008.
• The Web advertising market in the U.S. will grow 29 percent this year to $21.7 billion and then more than
double by 2011, according to eMarketer Inc.
• Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers indicate that online advertising spending in
the UK increased by 41.3 per cent year-on-year in the first half of 2007. On the back of this growth, the
report predicts that online advertising spending in the country could reach £2.75 billion by year end.

QUOTES

Duncan Riley – TechCrunch & Founding Gooru
“The part of the Gooruze pitch that particularly appealed to me was the notion of making online marketing information
accessible. Let’s face it: this isn’t exactly an under-represented vertical, and there are many, many good SEO and general
online marketing sites out there. What does lack though is accessible content, particularly for folks who may be starting out or
looking to upgrade their knowledge sets. I’m confident that Gooruze will deliver just that and I’m happy to be helping out and
helping others.”

Matt Dickman – Techno//Marketer & Founding Gooru
“A very interesting idea in democratizing authority. This is the type of network that has the most potential in my opinion going
forward as there needs to be a weight and trust factored into content.”

Andy Beal – Marketing Pilgrim & Founding Gooru
“Gooruze is a unique opportunity to bring together marketers of all levels of experience. Working together in an online
community, we can learn from each other and discuss the latest online trends. Forums are useful for threaded conversations,
blogs are good for industry news, and social bookmarking sites help us figure out what it is popular. Take those channels, blend
them together, and you get Gooruze.”

Brian Solis – FutureWorks PR, PR 2.0 & Founding Gooru
“I’ve gone through my entire career learning lessons the hard way. Gooruze is an incredible resource that brings together the
best minds in the global marketing community. It is a one-stop directory for me to not only get insight into all things advertising,
marcom, PR, and SEO, but also it allows me to tap into trends and new thinking in order to help me continue to grow as a
marketing professional.”

Please contact Jackie Shervington to arrange an interview and/or for additional quotes.

ABOUT GOORUZE

Gooruze has been created to help online marketers better understand best practice online marketing and maximize
their dollar spend. Gooruze offers the online marketing community a new easy-to-drive, high performance platform
where all members can share, educate, advise and learn - shaping the future of the industry. The Gooruze
difference is dedicated, ranked, quality information. The content is created by members who share real
experiences and insights in the form of articles and news. The posts are tagged, rated and commented on by the
community to deliver quality articles and information.

Market United stake sold

Last week Vibe Capital completed the sale of all of its shares in Market United to strategic acquiror and listed company Q Ltd. 

The announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange can be found here: http://asx.com.au/asxpdf/20070820/pdf/3141k10c74rbml.pdf. 

The details of the transaction have not been disclosed beyond an initial payment of $4m followed by two subsequent payments based on MU performance over the next two years.  We are very pleased with the return on investment and even more pleased for Marc, Richard and the rest of the team at MU who will now be part of a substantially larger and listed organisation whilst retaining a lot of their independence.  Vibe Capital will also become a substantial shareholder in Q Ltd as part of this transaction.

This marks the end of our 9 month shareholder relationship with MU and we are now settling back into the role of a major MU customer for the foreseeable future.  I had a great time on the Board of MU and hope that I was able to add some value despite the short period of the role.

MU are also planning to move premises at the end of the week so there is oplenty of change afoot for the folks at the Old Swan Brewery building.

My best wishes to Marc, Richard and the team for continued success and growth into the future.

Matt

RWW covers vibEngine

ReadWrite/Web (RWW) covered vibEngine the other day in a blog post here comparing a few Social Networking platforms. The vibEngine is certainly not a “set up in 5 minutes free solution for anyone”, the vibEngine is more a “professional tailored solution for serious players”. We believe there is a need and market for both solutions.

Thanks to Richard at RWW.

By the way, we plan to announce a large licensing partner soon that is already signed and we are currently in the middle of developing. Stay tuned

If you are interested in licensing the vibEngine contact us here.

Ning raises USD$44MM in 3rd round

Some industry news…

TechCrunch announces (and Andreessen confirms) that Ning has just raised a 3rd round of USD$44MM on a valuation of USD$214MM.

We consider Ning and Wikia to be in a “similar” space to our vibEngine (the platform our sites run on) which we license out to companies looking to add a social community, or more importantly a ranked advice-opedia, to their existing or planned website.

Vibe Capital launches another vertical

Last month we launched our second wholly owned vertical; Refurber (our first was Minti in March 2006).

Here are some important quotes from the press release…

• “Refurber is a social and reference website for anyone passionate about renovations, DIY, landscaping, design and anything related to home improvement. Members can share and gain valuable advice on a wide range of home improvement related topics.”

• “We are excited to launch Refurber, our second wholly-owned advice-opedia website.” said Clay Cook, Co-founder and CEO of Minti. “Drawing from more than a year of user feedback and experience on the Minti site we believe our offering will satisfy the needs of home-makers around the world.”

• “Vibe Capital’s vibEngine platform is being licensed to other vertical sites worldwide. The first licensed partner is the niche city focused site http://www.buildinginlondon.com . Other licensed implementations of the vibEngine will be launched in the coming months.”

Welcome to Vibe Capital’s blog

Welcome to our blog.

In this blog will be information relevant to Vibe Capital.

You may also be looking for…

1. the Minti blog or the Minti homepage
2. the Refurber blog or the Refurber homepage
3. Vibe Capital’s homepage

You may be looking for the Co-Founders of Vibe Capital. If so try these links to start with…

1. Clay Cook Minti profile
2. Rachel Cook Minti profile
3. Matthew Macfarlane’s Minti profile