Welcome!

PHP Authors: Salvatore Genovese, Michael Sheehan, RealWire News Distribution

Related Topics: Web 2.0, SOA & WOA

Web 2.0: Article

Viacom, Owner of MTV, To Launch "Flux" As a New Hub to the Social Web

"Flux enables you to add community tools to your website and push your content further"

MTV Networks is launching a social networking site, Flux.com. The new site encompasses Viacom's network of websites and external sites such as Sk8site.com and the Pussycat Dolls' official site. "Flux powers the communities on your favorite websites and lets you take your profile, friends, and
content with you across the social web," says the site's current (introductory) home page, currently headed "Coming Soon..."

"Whenever you see the Flux logo on a website, you can join that community with a single click and take all your stuff with you," the site continues.

Earlier in 2007, MTV Networks invested in social networking start-up Tagworld  there are also social networking features already on the Subterranean blog, another MTV property.

Flux is an open platform that allows websites and bloggers to add community tools to their sites – the sites they control and monetize.

A note on Flux.com says:
"Got a cool website or blog? Flux enables you to add community tools to your website and push your content further. The Flux Platform is robust enough for large media companies, such as MTV Networks, and flexible enough for influencer blog sites like Aquarium Drunkard, Vinyl Pulse and X17."
The new venture is housed in a separate, new company, Social Project Inc.

In the introductory Flux blog is the following explanation:
"Key elements of the idea for Flux started taking shape in late 2006. Back then, Social Project didn’t exist, and the company you see today was working on TagWorld. TagWorld was a traditional social network with lots of innovative features, but we realized that waging a feature-war against Walled Garden Social Networks wasn’t where we should be focusing our efforts. We began thinking about disaggregation of community – allowing it to occur in a coherent way across the full spectrum of the web - and how to reach audiences outside of the walled garden of the TagWorld.com website.

At the same time, MTV Networks was also exploring the disaggregated model. In December 2006, MTV Networks became a minority investor in TagWorld.

We hope to help websites and bloggers embrace the disaggregated model that has made each of them so unique, original and interesting – not just Viacom, but content creators everywhere, of all shapes and sizes.

Our goals are straightforward:

(1) Empower content creators with a robust platform of community features and functionality.

(2) Bind communities together with a connective tissue that allows the seamless motion of content, user identity, and personal relationships across the social web.

- The Social Project Team"


 

More Stories By Web 2.0 News Desk

The Web 2.0 Journal News Desk keeps you up to speed with all that's happening in the world of the read/write Web and all its mushrooming new facets - from tagging, wikis, mash-ups, and image-sharing to "Advertising 2.0," podcasting, and The Writeable Web.

Comments (1) View Comments

Share your thoughts on this story.

Add your comment
You must be signed in to add a comment. Sign-in | Register

In accordance with our Comment Policy, we encourage comments that are on topic, relevant and to-the-point. We will remove comments that include profanity, personal attacks, racial slurs, threats of violence, or other inappropriate material that violates our Terms and Conditions, and will block users who make repeated violations. We ask all readers to expect diversity of opinion and to treat one another with dignity and respect.


Most Recent Comments
Flux Launch Fan 09/16/07 10:56:29 AM EDT

Viacom invested around $40 million for a 40 percent plus stake in Social project Inc. (it was then called Tagworld). It is based in Santa Monica.