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OnOne Enters the Deadpool

By Markus Robinson | Fri, Sep 26, 2008 11:40 pm

OnOne Enters the Deadpool

Interactive One’s first foray into social networking, OnOne will be entering the dead pool on October 1st.  The death of OnOne is just a little house cleaning in preparation to unify the current OnOne users with Interactive One’s most recent acquisition, Black Planet. According to an email sent by the OnOne administrators, the “new and improved” Black Planet, will have the same functionally that OnOne users had come to expect combined with some new tools and the great ways to meet new people.

Instead of migrating OnOne users over into the new Black Planet, OnOne users will be forced to back up all of their blog information, photos, videos and music by Oct 1st to prevent any data lost. Not the best way to introduce users to your new product, but who knows if OnOne had enough users to justify the efforts.

A quick peruse of the “new and improved” Black Planet shows a new Digg-like voting feature for news, a free dating section, an instant messenger, and the ability to add 3 very simple proprietary widgets.  This is definitely an improvment from the old Black Planet of ancient times, but still, in my opinion, not compelling enough to invest the necessary time to build of a worthwhile community.

Category: News, Web 2.0

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  • Black Planet shows a new Digg-like voting feature for news...
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    They already have that...

    Still you have to wonder, who makes the decisions to purchase a given site, etc... All know BlackPlanet been dead for years... Oh well, still maybe Radio One can surprise us all, as I'm seeing a slow down when it comes to social networks...
  • blackweb20
    Great post Markus. I also wonder how hard it will be for Radio One to get rid of the "meat market" association the BlackPlanet brand has with many people, and turn it into a social network that includes valuable interactions with members beyond dating. Seems like a huge task to take on with over 10 years worth of that type of association however I am sure they are up for the challenge. Should be interesting to watch.
  • Does this mean all of their sites like Hello Beautiful and NewsOne? If so, what a big waste of money and time. How can one launch a product (s) and not give it the proper plan, team, strategy and budget to make it grow? It's been less than a year!

    At first glance when they initially launched the sites it looked like they were just trying to put something out there to "act & appear" like the get the online space, but when looking at their content specifically on at their sites targeted toward women and the masses I saw a real disconnect going on with their content. But, I kinda liked NewsOne. Also, with the massive connects/contacts that Radio One has they did not use it to benefit or help their web strategy. Like, you never (well at least I didn't) heard their radio stations hyping the sites or exclusive content. There was no synergy at all.

    I am no expert so I don't expect people to listen to me, but Radio One... take some time out and figure out what you really NEED to do and hire the RIGHT people to implement. Not people who front like they do, but people who live and breathe this.

    Sad.
  • oh...sorry but BlackPlanet's heyday has came and past. This too doesn't have a good chance at lasting either. (IMO)

    One more thing, how can you take over something (Black Planet) and try to make it successful, when you can't make your own stuff (OnONe) successful. I bet It's the same people assigned to BlackPlanet that was behind OnOne. --- OK, I'm done.
  • blackweb20
    Great thoughts Dede. The email we got actually only stated that onOne would be abandoned not their other suite of sites. This atleast makes sense to me, there is no need in having 2 social networks however I do think onOne had more promise. I do also understand BlackPlanet has the #'s (dormant or not) so it makes sense to merge onOne into BlackPlanet. i am just unsure why they would have wasted resources to develop onOne to begin with. Surely the BlackPlanet deal didn't happen overnight.

    Also RadioOne has started pushing their involvement with Interactive on their radio stations all the DJ's say something like "Interactive Hip-hop and R&B;," atleast in DC they do. You may not be hearing this in ATL because I think (and I stress I THINK) this may have been one of the stations that were recently sold.

    I agree, off the top there is no clarity to their web strategy. Maybe they will hook us up w/ a podcast ;)
  • Thanks for explaining Angela! Yeah, I have heard them say"Interactive Hip-hop and R&B", but they do not mention any websites or direct listeners to any of these sites - yet.
  • "I also wonder how hard it will be for Radio One to get rid of the “meat market” association the BlackPlanet brand has with many people, and turn it into a social network that includes valuable interactions with members beyond dating."

    They might not have a problem at all. They may well have brought BlackPlanet because of it's image. (I've read interesting stats on dating sites online and next to social networking, they're most profitable.)

    What I find AMAZING is that BlackPlanet is still doing the numbers that they are.

    This proves what we already know, but "others" haven't realized yet is that Black people are not a monolithic group. BlackPlanet and BET gets no love from sooooooo many Black people, but clearly they're still around and doing big numbers.

    However, every time I see one of the big site go down, I have to wonder what the hell were their employees doing all day? Clearly they haven't been working on improving, creating original content or promoting the site.
  • Radio One is starting to push there Interactive here in Atlanta but there are calling it Digital Hip Hop. I have asked a couple of people and they don't know what it means.

    Black Planet has been resting on the dark side of the moon for a while now. I am wondering if the user and traffic numbers are inflated a bit. IMHO; sure the original owners are glad they sold when they did because of the emergence of the other social media sites. Most of the accounts are probably dormant. I know mine is.

    Radio One telling the OnOne users to backup their junk to move over to Black Planet is a dumb move. The should have written an app to merge their accounts over because more then likely they already have profile on BP. By doing the other way they will lose users in the migration. Take the extra few weeks, write the application and make it easy on the end-user BP and save your OnOne user base. (If Radio One read this)

    Hopefully they can figure something out to start bring back their users and grow the community.
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