Bill Gross Unveils Chime.In at Web 2.0 Summit

Bill Gross thinks that social media will be the connected issue across the planet that will enable us to communicate, connect and engage. He said at Web 2.0 Summit in his announcement speech of the new social networking service Chime.In, "I believe that social is going to be embedded in every kind of transaction in the next decade."

"There are only two real problems with social media today," he adds. "Relevance and monetization."

He talked about the signal to noise ratio issue that has been raised a lot since the Summit started, which Twitter's Dick Costolo addressed as well (last paragraph).

"We need better filters. Any system that has a billion people contributing to it is going to have a serious signal to noise problem. In addition to relevancy, there's the monetization piece. Some revenue needs to go to publishers and content creators and that isn't happening in a real way today. The people who make the great content don't participate it."

They hope to address that with Chime In, what Bill refers to as the first interest network. By focusing on your interests, you can get more relevant information in the way of streams that you follow every day.

You can just follow part of a person or the whole person. You can choose a chime thread, all of this addresses relevance. For example, you may want to follow Dennis Crowley's thread on LBS but not necessarily on fashion.

On the monetization page, you can customize your page with your favorite chimes, sponsors, polls and as a publisher, you can earn the revenue from that page: 100% if you find your own advertisers. Publishers can make money alongside the content they create. Ahhh, life as it should be.

They've already signed deals with E-entertainment, Bravo, Disney, Comcast and others are are going into beta now. See Harry McCracken's write-up on the new service on CNET.