14 DAY TRIAL // The real-time web is still going strong and buried under all of the hype there actually is a legitimate concept and a real need and usefulness. Twitter is pretty much the poster child of the real-time web but its greatest strength, its simplicity, is also its greatest weakness and there have been those who have tried to add some sort of media component and richer content. For most it has proven rather tricky but up-and-coming service DailyBooth seems to have cracked it judging by the plethora of investors that have banded to provide the startup with roughly $1 million in funding.
Sequoia Capital, Ron Conway’s SV Angel LLC and Betaworks are joined by Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake and Digg cofounder Kevin Rose to raise the sum, as the Wall Street Journal reports. DailyBooth was launched in February this year and has managed to grow at a pretty solid rate since then. The company previously raised seed money from Y Combinator, a firm that specializes in funding early-stage startups.
The site is similar to Twitter in concept but instead of short tweets DailyBooth allows users to post photos of themselves, or anything they want, along with an optional accompanying text message. The idea may not be overtly original but the execution and the simplicity of the site has created a compact but diverse community. The photos vary from the works of amateur photographers to webcam shots and most of its users are from English-speaking countries as it is the only language it currently supports.
Created by Ryan Amos and Jon Wheatley, DailyBooth's still only two employees, the site has been growing by about 35 percent per month and already sees about six million unique visitors per month. Considering that Twitter is somewhere around 40 million to 50 million worldwide, probably significantly more when counting those who don't visit Twitter.com, and that the company is less than a year old, it's doing very well and could prove quite a success if the growth rate can be sustained.