Event Robot started as a secretive company offering a customizable, white-label social networking platform. The firm, founded by Tim Young had some early successes including building a platform for the Van’s Warped Tour and more recently, Ozzfest 2007. The initial business model included a network customization fee, followed by a revenue share from in-network advertising. Event Robot was originally based in Irvine and is now in San Fran (with a pit stop in Minnesota?) The company largely evaded PR, maintaining one of the more basic websites around.

This past summer VentureBeat reported that the company had taken an angel investment from Ron Conway aka Baseline Ventures. After running a few searches to check on the Event Robot’s status, I noticed that a link to the CEO’s LinkedIn profile shows that the firm has switched its name to SocialCast. A few more keyword searches revealed SocialCast is entering the corporate social networking arena (see PDF download). The new strategy will pit SocialCast against competition from the likes of Select Minds, BlogTronix, IBM and a host of enterprise 2.0 platforms also including social networking functionality.

Event Robot had a great reputation prior to mysteriously disappearing under the radar and it will be interesting to learn how the new monetization model will work and what clients they can pick up with Conway’s help.

As I have said before, the enterprise space is still anyone’s for the taking.

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