IMHO A Social Content Player & Ad Platform – Threading the Needle of Content and Ads

What is IMHO? Well besides being a net phrase that means “in my honest opinion” it’s also a new social content player and ad platform developed by a team led by former Sony Music Chief Executive Don Lenner.

Currently in alpha it makes use of facebook connect to link people with their friends and share content. This is a player for the social media world for accessing premium entertainment content from music, video to games.

The play is designed to be small and run in the background or be front and centre when watching a video or playing a game. It will show you related products to whatever you are currently listening, watching and or playing.

Taking advantage of the cloud they have access to a vast array of content. The interface is drag and drop making it easy to share content you find cool with your facebook pals. This platform takes a cue from gaming and adds in leader boards so you can get bragging rights for being the most badass possible.

How it works is that you get points for certain actions like viewing an ad and those points can be exchanged for content access. The more ads you see or friends you get on board the more your points get and your rep rises.

It is definitely tapping into your network of friends to expand its reach. The question that comes to my mind is how the ads will be implemented and what actions you will need to take in order to access content. The music and video content will be available on other sites so what is the drive to use this platform to share when I can find it on youtube and share it from there.

What are the advantages of using this platform for brands, does it go the Digg route and ask you to rate ads or is it the interaction that matters and what kind of actions will I need to take. On the ad side what the ads ask you to do to earn points will have a big impact on how the platform is received.

As an alpha release it is still in development and I am testing it out myself. No doubt it will chance a lot before it becomes available for the public based on feedback by the current users in the alpha and beta phases. It is my view that the user experience with the ads and the depth and how you interact with content will be what makes or breaks it.

I have many questions about how consumers will react to this and how it will work. Will IMHO have exclusive content that drives people to use it or is the content available from many sources? How in-depth is the content aggregation and is it in the plan to expand its reach outside of facebook to other popular social network sites?

Regardless I applaud Don and his team for jumping into the social media space with such an endeavour and I look forward to the ride. Everyone is has to learn about all this on the go and the fact that so many are jumping in with different models is what the Internet thrives on. I for one will enjoy the ride.

Credit: IMHO