User:Mckoss/Blue Dot Inc

'Blue Dot is a Seattle based company offering a Social Bookmarking service. The company's product combines features of social bookmarking web sites like del.icio.us with the social networking features of web sites like Myspace or Facebook. The company was founded in December 2004 by Mohit Srivastava and Sumit Sen and launched www.bluedot.us in June 2006.

General Description
Blue Dot is one of many social bookmarking sites to emerge after the development of del.icio.us. Blue Dot differentiates itself by focusing primarily on the social aspect of sharing bookmarks with friends, as opposed to saving bookmarks for oneself. When a registered user visits their Blue Dot home page, they see a summary of the bookmarks (called "Dots" by the company) that have been most recently shared by their friends.

As such, Blue Dot is as much a social communication service as a bookmarking service. The founders have stated that they started the service, recognizing that they wanted a better way to stay in touch with their friends and family members. They had the experience that, by sharing web sites they visit, they were able to not only find out more about their friends, but also to learn from their friends.

Blue Dot's investors and advisors draw from early Microsoft employees and executives, and include Rao Remala, Richard Fade, Mike Koss, and Mark Zbikowski.

Unique Features
Blue Dot introduced several innovations in the Social Bookmarking category.
 * Blue Dot's Ajax based Favlet enables the bookmark authoring interface to scan the text of the page and allow the user to select an image from the page to serve as a thumbnail image for the bookmark.
 * Unlike del.icio.us, where all bookmarks are publicly shared, Blue Dot allows users to restrict access to individual bookmarks to specific groups of friends.

News Coverage

 * www.thenewrevolutionaries - "The new MySpace is ... Blue Dot", The_Guardian, November 26, 2006
 * Blue Dot marks the spot for sharing best of Web - Profile of founder, The_Seattle_Times, November 13, 2006
 * Blue Dot Interview on KOMO TV - KOMO-TV, September 27, 2006
 * Blue Dot has a new way to share with friends - Seattle_PI, June 30, 2006

Blogs and Podcasts

 * BlueDot, Share your favorite sites with your friends - Video interview, Scoble Show, October 27, 2006
 * Blue Dot Popular in Japan -Bloggers Blog, August 21, 2006
 * Blue Dot is not just another social bookmarking system -Techcrunch.com, July 6, 2006
 * BlueDot Launches - MySpace Meets Del.icio.us -Mashable, July 5, 2006