Cnet founder Shelby Bonnie and other angels have put another $2.5 million into Whiskey Media, which operates niche media sites such as ComicVine (comics), GiantBomb (gaming), and AnimeVice (anime). The company, which has been around since 2007, previously raised about $1.5 million in angel money as well.
Whiskey Media’s sites are wiki-like content sites in the vein of CrunchBase or GDGT, which built around structured databases which can be edited by the readers. (In fact, CrunchBase was inspired by Whiskey Media’s first site, now-retired PoliticalBase). → Read More
Former CNET cofounder and CEO Shelby Bonnie founded Whiskey Media in 2007 as a platform to build media and entertainment content sites. The company, located in stunningly beautiful Sausalito, California (north of San Francisco) has no outside shareholders pestering them for a quick exit – the five cofounders, all former CNETers (Shelby Bonnie, Mike Tatum, Ethan Lance, Dave Snider and Andy McCurdy) have funded the company to date with less than $1.5 million. I recently had lunch with Bonnie to talk about how Whiskey Media is doing. It has quietly grown in the last year and a half, and the team is preparing to unveil a number of new sites this year.
We first covered the company in October 2007 with the launch of Political Base. It was, and is, notable because it’s built as a “structured wiki” – freely editable by anyone, but the data isn’t just one big unstructured blob like you see on Wikipedia and other wiki sites. Each section of a page is a separate silo, making it much easier to slice and dice data, and cross link around the site. Political Base was the primary inspiration for how we structured our own CrunchBase database of people, startups and venture funds. → Read More
Last winter GameSpot, one of the web’s largest video game sites, was embroiled in a scandal that led to the loss of a number of veteran employees and, as far as many gamers are concerned, any shred of credibility. On November 28 the site suddenly fired Editorial Director Jeff Gerstmann who had been with the site for over 10 years. Rumors soon emerged that Gerstmann had been fired for posting a lukewarm review for the game Kane & Lynch after the game’s publisher (and GameSpot advertiser) Eidos Interactive put pressure on the site to take action. In the subsequent months, GameSpot lost a number of its core staff who had been with the site for years. Now Gerstmann has teamed with a handful of fellow GameSpot refugees to launch GiantBomb, a new videogame site that will feature both editorial content and a user-edited database of everything related to gaming. The site uses a powerful relational database that Gerstmann says will give users the tools to create professional entries, while still allowing administrators to effectively monitor edits. One of the biggest problems with modern gaming sites (advertiser controversy aside) is that they tend to cover absolutely every game. Gerstmann says that his small team (3 writers and a video guy) will acts as a video game “strike team”, forgoing the overabundance of news found on sites like IGN and Gamespot in favor of articles related to only the most important issues in gaming. These gaming articles and reviews will complement the site’s encyclopedia, which features entries on individual games, their characters, items, and a number of other elements. The site hopes to become a definitive resource for games, and while some might say such a resource is totally unnecessary (why should we care how many games Mario has appeared in?), gamers are generally a passionate crowd. Gerstmann’s experienced team will be facing long odds – the gaming space is very crowded, and is dominated by a number of well established players like Kotaku, IGN, and GameSpot. That said, GiantBomb may well turn into a place for gamers “in the know”, who respect the team’s experience and are ready for a change. CrunchBase Information GiantBomb Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
Yahoo already has a 2008 election site with deep content on the candidates and issues. But digging through all that content to find relevant stats comparing the candidates can take awhile. This afternoon the Elections team launched a new part of the site, called Dashboard, which contains basic polling and funding stats for each candidate in one easy to read screen. Each candidate is listed, Democrats on the left and Republicans on the right. Next to each candidate’s picture are four basic stats: recent polling results, based on aggregated poll averages from Real Clear Politics “buzz” which shows the relative popularity based solely on Yahoo search queries prediction market, which shows the likelihood of a candidate to win based on real world, real money bets placed at Intrade, an Irish company total money raised for each candidate Comparing the basic stats is fascinating. Ron Paul, for example, is only polling 4% versus other Republican candidates, but he has a whopping 37% relative to other candidates in searches. The prediction markets, though, are probably the most accurate data when it comes to predicting the actual winner of each primary. Hillary Clinton shows a current 61.3% likelihood of winning, even though she is only polling at 43%. When it comes to predictions, I’ll be watching the people betting real money vs. poll results. Users can also click and see the data on a state-by-state basis, and see other demographic data. Click on any candidate and a pop up window appears with more detailed information (see screen shot below). For people watching the elections, Yahoo’s election site, along with new startup Political Base (see our October coverage), are excellent resources. Of course, if you just can’t be bothered with following the news, this site will tell you who to vote for. If you’re wondering why Yahoo, Political Base and lots of other companies are being so aggressive in rolling out election-based content sites, here’s why: a record $1 billion or more will be spent this year by the various campaigns in selling their candidates. Everyone wants their share of that huge cash pie. CrunchBase Information Political Base Whiskey Media Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
In the event you’re in too much of a hurry to check out the presidential candidates yourself, the Internet can now do it for you. Connect2Elect is a new website that lets users add candidate attributes and issue positions that are important to them, and see who they should vote on. Issues are broken down by social (abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research), political (Iraq war, taxes, immigration) and core beliefs (welfare, gun rights). Clearly there is some overlap and room to argue over categorization, but the basic idea is that you click on issues that matter to you and order them. You then see a results screen with candidate values mapped to your own. Voila! You know who to vote for. Overall I think the service is well executed (it was built by introNetworks, a white label social network startup). But it strikes me as somewhat lame to choose a candidate based only on their official policies, which reflect little more than current popular opinion. In related stuff, see our recent coverage of PoliticalBase, a new database driven startup around candidates and issues, and let us know what questions you’d like us to ask in our upcoming podcast discussion with Mitt Romney, a republican candidate for president. → Read More
Shelby Bonnie left the company he co-founded with Halsey Minor, CNET, just about one year ago. This morning he launches his next startup, PoliticalBase. The site, which focuses on local, state and national elections and other political matters, is timed perfectly to take advantage of the 2008 presidential elections and the estimated $4.5 billion that will be spent on advertising to promote candidates and issues. PoliticalBase is a structured Wiki that encourages research and debate. Users can edit most of the text but can’t change the underlying database structure. That allows the site to slice and dice data for comparison purposes (something that can’t be done with the free-for-all Wikipedia) but still gives the site’s community the ability to create and edit content. The site is broken down into interconnected categories, including money, people, issues, elections, etc. Clicking on, say Rudy Giuliani shows information on that presidential candidate, including the amount of money raised to date, his religion and party affiliation and biographical information. At the bottom of the page his position on key issues is also shown (for fun, register for the site and click that you do not support him – see how his picture changes). The Money area of the site is fascinating. PoliticalBase has collected public information on presidential donations made by individuals. Click on any state and then click on a county and see information on each individual contribution, down to the last dollar. Want to skip to the good stuff? Go to the celebrity area and see that, for example, Marc Andreessen gave $2,300 to the Barack Obama campaign. Other areas of the site have hidden gems as well, such as integration of relevant YouTube videos into the pages. And as PoliticalBase attracts more users and gets more data, they’ll be able to do some interesting analysis and election predictions. PoliticalBase is located in Sausalito, just north of San Francisco. It’s been funded to date by the five cofounders, all former CNETers: Shelby Bonnie, Mike Tatum, Ethan Lance, Dave Snider and Andy McCurdy. CrunchBase Information Political Base Whiskey Media Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
If StyleDiary ain’t your thing, my guess is ComicVine could be right up your alley. The site is from the same CNET veterans that created the car social network, Boompa, which we profiled back in June. ComicVine has a very similar interface as the very well designed Boompa. ComicVine is user generated, wiki-like content. Every superhero has his or her own page, with basic bio information as well as a list of “powers,” such as intellect, super strength, and stamina. Here’s Spiderman, for example. Superheroes can also be tagged by users, and a discussion forum is avalable as well. The community, though still small, seems to be very active. Users can create their own superhero as well. This guy, for example, has called himself “Spader-Man,” described as “After being tapped lightly on the head by a radioactive shovel during a school field-trip to the local flea market, Pietro Parkour found himself with incredible, non-trademark-able powers.” Users can also create their own blog within the site. The best part about the site is the absolute rankings of one superhero v. another. Currently Superman is the top ranked hero, followed by The Hulk and then Spiderman. The rankings are user generated via a “HotOrNot” type system where two superheroes are put on screen, and the user votes to say who wins in a battle (see screen shot below). There are more features as well. The video below goes into more detail. http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/336811/comicvine_com_tour.swfComicvine.com Tour – video powered by Metacafe CrunchBase Information ComicVine Whiskey Media Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
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