Befriend a brand on Webjam
Written on 10th September 2008
1 COMMENT 
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
So far, London-based Webjam has resisted the temptation of going after the Facebook-kinda audience and remained the focus on B2B. I wrote about this start-up in July, when they closed a €1.9 million round of funding. The BBC once called the iWeb-like community builder “better than Facebook”, and this could have distracted them from their real objective: mobilizing the crowd for companies and organizations. They’ve now released a product that brings this goal closer, called Branded Services.
Brand managers can use the tools and structure of Webjam to give people an opportunity to “befriend” their brand. Sort of like a Facebook company profile, but then with more control for the brand manager. If you look at the page of The Other Side Magazine, only the top bar gives away that we’re dealing with a Webjam page.
Although larger companies won’t feel the need to join Webjam, simply because they have their own outlets, smaller companies might be interested in creating a Webjam-based community. Instead of hiring a developer and designer, The Other Side Magazine only had to subscribe to Webjam’s services and
now their members can write their own blog posts, comment on almost every piece of content, maintain their own profile, publish their own “art”, and have discussions in the forums.
So while many social networks are struggling with their advertisement-based business models, Webjam will happily sell licenses to mid-size companies.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
By Yann Motte on Sep 10, 2008
Thank you Ernst-Jan for your post about Webjam Branded Services. Let me just highlight that Webjam is about going beyond « befriending » a brand through the current Ads disguised as pages that you can find on the big social networks. Webjam is about giving brands the power to let users create and manage content & interactions within a branded environment : the Other Side readers do not « befriend » the Other Side but can actually create their own blog if not entire communities within The Other Side thanks to replicable templates (here the little TV screen on the right of http://www.theothersidemag.co.uk ) . In the same manner, a wedding magazine could let users create their wedding sites from the wedding template(s) they have prepared for them like on our example http://www.weddingcommunities.com/ ; Greenpeace also could let volunteers create in few minutes from « activist templates » communities to denounce a specific event. We indeed do believe that the next steps for brands and organisations is to let micro-communities flourish and inter-connect within their environment. Providing the market with tools to achieve just that is exactly what sets us appart as we think people will graduate from just managing profiles to spend more time achieving a specific purpose within their networks, as you can see on http://www.webjam.com/ym/eyesw.....t_anymore_
Yann Motte, co-founder & CEO, Webjam
http://www.webjam.com/branded_services
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