Global Grind: Ajax, Finally, For The Hip Hop Demographic
New York based global Grind launches this morning with some serious backing, a venture round (size undisclosed) from Accel Partners and Russell Simmons.
The service is essentially the same as Pageflakes, Netvibes and other customizable Ajax home pages.
A lot of the pre-made content is directly related to Hip Hop, though, such as one that shows the most recent beefs between rap artists (just like blogger wars apparently, plus money, sex and guns – see image to right). Users can also make tabs public and share content.
The company was founded by Navarrow Wright, formerly the CTO of Black Entertainment Television. The company has twelve employees.
So…will it work or will it drown in the competition? Frankly, I’m in favor of any experiments which bring technology to people beyond the early adopter tech geek crowd. The Global Grind user base is already tech savvy, though, and aware of a lot of the new web products out there. That means they have to be cool and edgy enough to attract and keep users who wouldn’t think of using, say, Netvibes. Having Russel Simmons involved will certainly help in that area. We’ll check back in on them in six months or so and see how things are going.