Yet another seed round, this time for MyLifeBrand

MyLifeBrand, the social network that offers private label solutions for online community-building, has received $750,000 in seed money. However, the angel investors were not disclosed. We have also read on a few blogs the company is still looking to raise more in another round, for an unspecified amount. In addition to creating online communities for established groups, the site allows users to manage their accounts at various social networking sites. Both sides of the business face plenty of competition. From what we have read below the company is brining in $300,000 in revenues and is on its way to $1M for its first year of operations. 

The site itself is very modest on what the company is doing. MyLifeBrand, the site says, is a new site offering the next generation of social networking and social media services.

Digging further one understands that it’s got a profile aggregation tool, a group-formation tool, private label options and more. In this way, it looks to appeal to individuals that already have existing profiles on other networks, those that would like to create their own network, businesses that are looking to offer an online group for networking purposes, and businesses that would like to incorporate social networking modules into their existing website.

It is also said that MyLifeBrand has teamed up with the Utah Jazz to offer a branded social network for team fans.

The company is based in Seattle, Washington but the firm is currently in the midst of moving down to Southern California. The company was in talks with local investors, and also has all of its business development folks there in Los Angeles. Here is what the firm’s Executive Vice President Daniel Scalisi has stated in an online interview with socalTECH’s Ben Kuo.

Daniel Scalisi explained MyLifeBrand was created to solve a few problems we saw in the market, and to take advantage of the opportunities. At the core, MyLifeBrand is a social browser platform. It’s a website that allows users to manage external and internal communities. That includes MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The internal communities’ pieces are being created on our platform by companies who are looking to engage their member base. It’s a single platform, where you can seamlessly navigate your external and internal sites they may want to join. What we recognize, is that people are part of multiple social networks. We are trying to create a single browsing experience for managing someone’s social life. For communities, who have recognized that their member bases are going to social networks which allow them to create their own groups around associates or companies, why shouldn’t they find a way to engage their member base in a similar form?

We launched in June of this year (2007), and were in Alpha mode until August, when we went into beta. Typically, our focus has been on building membership, where we have been partnering with communities of interest–faith based, nonprofit, sports, entertainment, and other communities by providing a free community tools platform. We’re essentially seeding our member community with their member base. That way, we are adding people thousands as a time, rather than as individuals. On the other side, we have started a search engine optimization and search engine marketing push to drive adoption from the individual user side.

That’s really what our platform does–number one, it’s a service which provides free aggregation, browsing, and syndication of all of your communities, social networking sites, and services. Number two, it’s a customizable tool to create a community; and number three, it’s a marketing platform that communities and users can leverage to market their own community and build membership.

The community is advertising based. Unlike other social networking sites, if you’re helping to drive traffic, we’re giving you a percentage of revenue. Individuals actually get rewarded in a number of ways, including converting rewards to cash, and for things like building their friends list.

The company has been in stealth mode for the past year, building out the platform. We brought in alpha testers, and have been shaping the user experience based on user feedback. We went live publicly in June (2007), announcing our platform. To date, we’ve raised three quarters of a million in seed funding, and have another quarter million committed. Since June, we’ve been producing revenues, and have accrued $300,000 in revenues so far. We expect to have more than $1M in revenues for our first year. In parallel with our bridge round of $1M, we’re now seeking a Series A. From a technology standpoint, we’re based in Seattle, but from a business development and marketing background, we’re based in Los Angeles. Jeff Jani, our CEO, is out of Disney, and he built and sold a company around some unique technology to Microsoft. I myself, have built three different startups–this is my fourth–all of them in the digital media/Internet space. Some of the rest of the team come from Kintera, which is a SoCal company, and our other folks have deep community building experience through their own prior experience as well.
More

http://mylifebrand.com/
http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-private-label-social-networking-service-mylifebrand-takes-in-750000-pur/
http://mashable.com/2007/10/10/mylifebrand-funded/
http://www.socaltech.com/interview_with_daniel_scalisi_mylifebrand/s-0011667.html
http://mashable.com/2007/09/21/utah-jazz-mylifebrand/

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