The World Venue, the next generation Social Networking Site

www.TheWorldVenue.com

The cultural networking site that will change the world.



Introduction
There is a missing link social networks; a place where people connect and exchange ideas from a cultural and political point of reference.
There are over 1 billion registrants on social networking sites. Social networking has become the life blood of Internet 2.0 and has connected people in a way that has changed the way we socialize. Facebook, connects people by family, circles of friends, and schoolmates and LinkedIn does it through professional contacts. There are many sites for singles, such as Badoo.com, Match.com, Friendfinder, Woome.com, Tagged.com as well as smaller sites that fill specific niches. The social networking space focused on family, friends, schoolmates, work, dating and flirting is very developed, and while there may be new entries, the competition is fierce.

Social Networking                Professional Networking                    Cultural Networking

Facebook, Myspace,                     LinkedIn                                                ?
Badoo, Match.com,
Odnoklassniki
Tagged, Orkut                                                                                        

The Opportunity

There is a major gap in Internet 2.0, and it is the lack of a cultural networking site. www.theworldvenue.com will fill this gap, which in terms of social change is by far the most important. The World Venue will literally change the world by connecting and organizing people primarily by their cultural, political, social and artistic preferences. Theworldvenue will not only connect people, it will give them a place to exchange ideas and organize themselves globally around those ideas, and potentially transform a virtual global organization into a brick and mortar local one. “All politics is local” but concepts and ideas can be global.

Theworldvenue.com will connect people by finding other people with similar tastes, ideas and philosophies. The site will allow the user to search by affinity, city, state (province/region), country or the entire world. There will be a global site in English, and localized sites by country and language i.e. www.badoo.com. People will be able to freely communicate with other users using an internal instant messaging system, i.e. www.badoo.com , create and join groups i.e. www.facebook.com and www.linkedin.com as well as create and attend live forums ie ZeroHedge. Each user will be able to create a public profile, as well as a personal cultural space, (library/study) where they can express themselves in the classic “you know a person by their books”, and in this case, their books, their music, their paintings, their press, media, magazines, personal portfolio as well as design and furniture.

The site will be free and generate revenue through advertising.

The site will eventually pass on 25% of ownership to ten thousand ‘early adopters’ or ‘trend setters’ once the 50,000,000 registrant threshold is reached and at least half that amount are active on a weekly basis. This will be a new online concept, a public space really owned by the public. The buzz and excitement not just of the ownership, but of the chance to change the world will catapult the site into the most important online phenomena since Google. Theworldvenue will change the way politics, power, and even money is distributed in the world.

From an advertising perspective, this is a much higher end user than a Facebook user, much closer to a LinkedIn user. One of the keys to the success of www.theworldvenue.com is finding an effective advertising eCPM somewhere between Facebook and LinkedIn.

                  Registrants (Millions)       E-CPM’s          Valuation (Millions)        Valuation Per-Registrant

Facebook                    500                             $1.00                        $50,000                                  $100
LinkedIn                        50                             $7.00                         $1,000                                     $20
WorldVenue(Target)     50                             $2.00                         $1,000                                     $20

There is room in the Cultural Networking Space for more than one player, and these sites might develop by political ideology, (ie. some more conservative, liberal etc.) But there is a big advantage in being first.

Features

The main features of site are:

Profile

There was a time when a person was known by the books, journals, and press they read, the music they listened to, the art on their walls. It was something for the privileged few, with grand libraries and big fortunes. People still listen to music, read and have art preferences, but the personal library is a rare component even of today’s elites. The virtual world of Kindles and I-pods needs a new library. www.theworldvenue.com will create it. Anyone in the world with a computer and internet connection can create their own library and invite their friends over for a chat in the intimacy of their books, music and art.

To register for the site a user creates a profile. Only users who create a full profile and fill out all mandatory fields will be considered ‘Registrants’. The profile will ask for city, address, region, education, profession, country, email, age, and gender. Future ownership will be a big incentive for users to give real data; any false data will void future ownership. Part II will ask the user to select preferences from the sites database in the following areas:

Area To Select                    Min                 Max                    Mandatory

Books                                       10                  50                            Yes
CD’s                                         10                  50                            Yes
Films                                          5                  50                            Yes
Political Orientation                  1                   1                             Yes
Spiritual Traditions                    1                   3                               No
Artistic Movements                     1                   2                               No
Architectural Movements            1                   2                              No
Historical Periods                        1                  3                               No                                                                                   
Economic/Environmental           1                  1                              No
Philosophical Movements          1                  3                              No

The Mandatory fields must be completed for a person to have a completed profile with a private library and access to profile matching, as well as group matching, and ownership, . Obviously, the more fields that are completed, the better the matches for people, groups, and forums (venues). Again, all mandatory fields must be completed, and email verified, for a person to begin to qualify for future ownership.

The profile will be put into the database to find matches of people, groups and forums (venues) that have affinities. Just as Amazon digs into its dbase to finds books that other buyers with similar patterns bought, www.theworldvenue.com will offer you the person, not the book.

This will create a public profile that will show as much or as little as the user prefers, ie www.facebook.com and will have a place for one picture.

Once this is completed, shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes, the user will be asked to customize their personal library. This room will have bookshelves and an LP or CD holder that will display the CD’s they choose from their profile, three frames on the wall for paintings, a coffee table with place for 3 media sources, a bar (several versions – old fashioned hidden in a globe, art deco, modern etc.) with three bottles of the users preferred beverage, two picture frames (can be user, famous person, whatever they want as long as it is not indecent or copyrighted) an optional ashtray ( with pack of cigarettes, cigar or pipe of the users preferred brand). Each brand, book, CD, etc. will have a link out if chosen brand has bought the “library sponsorship”. All books and CD’s will link to an Amazon, (or equivalent) affiliate program.

The library will also have a Private Shelf, for the user’s portfolio, blogs, paintings, videos etc. There will be an option to make this area visible on the public profile also. www.theworldvenue.com should have a strong appeal to artists, writers, musicians and creative folks in general, and the portfolio will be an important part of the profile.

There will be several designs available for the library, and there is the possibility of selling sponsorships to companies like IKEA etc...

This will be the user’s private area, only other users who are invited to a private conversation in the library will be able to see it.


Matching- (Profile/Group/Venue)

Once the person’s preferences are put into the database, matches will be made for other people, groups and forums (venues) where the affinity between profiles is high. For example, it could begin with low, medium, significant, very high. This will allow the user to meet people, join groups and participate in forums with other users that have similar affinities, or for contrarians or evangelists, it could function as a tool to look for people with opposite ideas. Organizations, political parties and companies can join directly by creating a group, and a profile for a group. If a private user creates a group, the user can use his or her profile as the ‘group’ profile. For Forums, the same thing would be true, the user or group can create a profile for the forum, or use the user’s or group’s already existing profile.


Profile Search

Users, including group managers, can search for users by city, state/region/province, country or world. They will be able to sort by affinity, age, online, etc… i.e. www.badoo.com


Messaging

There will be a Messenger button in a person’s public profile, which will show if they are online, and allow the user to send them an instant message, very similar to www.badoo.com  Up to15 people can chat in the messenger, as Skype group messaging creating an opportunity for intimate conversations in ones library. Users will be able to block, or ignore users, all within a privacy control panel.


Forums (Venues)

The Forums will be a very important part of www.theworldvenue.com They will be the place where ideas are discussed, policies and political parties created and molded, books and films promoted etc. To create a forum, a user must fill out a registration form and give an agenda for the forum, covering each 10 minute period, between 30 – 90 minutes. Each forum will have a setting that makes it open to the public or by invitation only. Forums will also have an imbedded video feature where the monitor of the forum can upload a video introduction for the forum. Finally, each forum will have an area with uploaded documents, images and videos pertinent to the topic and valuable for users to view before or during the forum. All discussions, comments, and uploaded materials will enter www.theworldvenue.com with their corresponding SEO value. This will be very important for the commentaries and discussions, as much of the content will be original.  Something similiar to ZeroHedge, but with the potential more accompanying information.

Forums will have an instant messaging system that will allow users to instantaneously comment (comments will be limited in length, and a there will be a pause between posts for attendees to read posts before new ones are loaded as well as turns for posting. Forums could have a several formats, for new books, it could be short video upload of author reading or discussing their book, than Q & A. This would work with films, journalists, politicians, and artists. Another format would be the open format. The monitor of the forum will choose the appropriate format. An aficionado could have a forum on Blood Meridian, with their own intro created with on their webcam, and their own notes, or Sony Pictures could have a forum on a film to open, with a professional clip, and interview with major Hollywood star.  Political and economic topics could be treated in the same way, ie Zero Hedge. There is no fee for the service. There will be a sponsorship of forums by topic and region, and Pay Per IM system that would be fully automated ie, Industry Brians, Ad Sense etc to select and send IM’s to folks by interests to promote forums. To attend forums, users must click on a link that adds their data to a database of that forum. It will be possible to rent email lists of attendees that have opted in.

Political parties and politicians will also be able to run Forums, and generate attendees by sending Pay Per IM’s to users within their preferred demographic.

Each user will have in their profile a Forum Ranking, which will rank them as far as attendees to Forums they have created.

Groups

There will be three types of groups. Commercial, Political, and Private. There will be no fees to create groups, but Groups created to promote the purchase of a product of service must be designated as Commercial. If it isn’t, it will be immediately designated as SPAM and eliminated. All political parties that form groups must identify themselves as such. The forming of groups will be crucial, and complex. There can be different levels of an organization, for example, Global Greenpeace Group, Spanish Green Peace Group, Catalan Greenpeace Group, and Barcelona Greenpeace group. As global concepts created by a few members in a chat become a forum, which becomes a Global group, eventually that chat in someone’s library can become a physical meeting in a coffee shop. This is the beauty and power of the www.theworldvenue.com.

Groups must be started by at least two unique members, with unique ip’s. A president and secretary. Starting a group will require some documentation regarding objectives, etc. All groups will be subject to approval.


Revenue Generation

                                Registrants                  Annual Ad Rev            Ad Rev Per Month/Per Registrant


Facebook                          500,000,000                        $1,000,000,000                                    $0.15
LinkedIn                              50,000,000                             $75,000,000                                    $0.125
Worldvenue (Year 4)           50,000,000                           $120,000,000                                    $0.20


Opt-in Email Lists: All members will be asked to opt-in to accept promotional emails. To register one will have to confirm email. Users will only receive two promotional emails a week if they opt in, on Tuesday and Thursday. All demographic information, preferences, group memberships, and forum attendances will be available for selects.

Pay Per IM: These instant text messages on the internal IM system will be offered through an interface similar to Adsense. All demographic information, preferences, group memberships, and forum attendances will be available for selects. This can be used for internal groups and forums as well as outside campaigns; users can only receive two PP IM’s per 24 hours.

Sponsorships: When a forum is created, one of the initial ten areas of interest (Books, Films, Music, Art, Architecture, Economic/Environment, Philosophy, History, Politics and Spirituality/Religion) must be selected. Beginning from that level, sponsorships can be sold. For example, a new film is opening in 10 countries on a specific weekend. A sponsorship can be sold for those ten countries for all forums regarding films, the same for new CD’s, books, galleries, etc..

Contextual Text Links: Contextual text links will be sold through one of the major networks on the Forums, Profiles, and around the Messenger.

Affiliate Program. Every library will have books and music, with links to Amazon.com’s affiliate program.


Promotion

There are several campaigns that will launch. ‘Change the world’ , ‘Take the Power’ away from the elites, etc… and ‘Use it, own it’. Revolution, Capitalism, and a bizarre form of multi level marketing all in one.

www.thewordvenue.com will try and take as neutral a stand politically as possible. The initial promotion will be for the global site in English, and localized sites for all English speaking countries including India. Once the English version is ready, the site can move into beta, while localized versions for the rest of the world role out in order of importance.

Viral. The most important form of promotion will be viral. People will be asked to send a message to their email contacts as well as their contacts in the major social networking sites. The difference between www.theworldvenue.com and other sites is the www.theworldvenue.com will be owned (25%) by its 10,000 most active users (the early adopters) once the 50,000,000 registration threshold is reached as long as activity levels are 50% per week. To become a share holder, one must be active at least once a week for the previous 26 weeks AND you must have at least 1000 members who registered with your code (emails will be sent with source codes of users, and new registrants who register with the links will be put in the data base as such, each user can see how many users they have registered and how many are active, but not specifically who) who are active. An active member is a member who has registered and has been active at least once every week in the previous four weeks. Of course, there will be a major counter on the home page with registrants, online now, and active registrants. Just the buzz about this will generate many registrants.

Organic. A major PR campaign must be organized, cadres of paid commenter’s on blogs and forums. The campaign must be institutional and guerrilla at the same time. Major Astroturf buzz, becoming real grassroots groups and members. All clichés, fear mongering labels, anything for attention. Revolution, multilevel marketing, and the world elites rolled into one. A no holds barred barrage.


PPC. A major PPC campaign will be put into place to bring the site to critical mass. Sites such as Salon.com, Huffington Post, Newsmax, DrugdeReport, ZeroHedge will all be tested and cost per new active user identified. Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin will also be prime testing areas. A very wide umbrella that will eventually focus on the prime sites. One key metric will be used, and that is number of active users generated (including residual virals) after 3 months. Target acquisition = $5 Cost Per Registrant. This will become a marketing mantra.


Ownership

As mentioned above, once the 50,000,000 registrant threshold is reached, 25% of the shares will pass to 10,000 qualified members, 25% will go to vested employees, in equal shares, 25% to investors and 25% to partner sites. The partner sites will be paid in ‘equity’ to generate active registrants. For example, in the Russian speaking world, a partnership with Mail.ru where 1 million registrants, half of whom are active, would be exchanged for equity.


Please see this link for Financing Requirements and Revenue Projections

Please contact Robert Bonomo at rfbonomo@gmail.com for more information