Technically Speaking

It is quite amusing to me to see the number of social networks on the scene today. First up is one of the newer niche social networking startups, fabfemme, who I talked about a bit the other day. Now even though it is a lesbian and bi-sexual woman’s network, I figured I’d tool around to see what it was all about.

I will have to be honest, I don’t see any user base yet. I did a global search on the social network. I only found less then 30 users. Now the distressing thought here is, even though one of the main complaints about MySpace these days is the only “5 tracks on myspace” music thing, they still have numbers.

This is in direct reference of course to MySpace being FREE, and fabfemme wanting to make it a pay social network. I am starting to think that FabFemme may need to rethink their business model, as they do not seem to be gaining any traction so far. I actually hope this post helps them gain some traffic, as you will see below.

Another social networking startup I recently talked about is Vertagio. They are free, and the last time I talked to the founder there, he told me that network traffic was up 2000%! That is a huge leap, and I am glad to have (I hope!) helped. Every time I log on, I see new users signing up there; new profiles listed.

When it comes to social networking, I believe the free is always going to win out. Allen of CenterNetworks even nicely enough syndicated that article.

Case in point. Look at the mass growth that MySpace China (MySpace.cn) has going on; talked about here/with screenshots. I read somewhere that one user already had 1500 plus friends on his friends list!

I guess that is like a few hundred in America, when you consider that China is 1 billion strong population wise! With regards to this, I have not heard any statistics about MySpace Espanol. Nor have I heard anything about MySpace LatinoAmerica, both which I talked about here. The other launch this past week.

I almost forgot one. There of course is the other new twist on social networking which is that place called - inpowr. The social network about yourself! Woo Hoo!

Their motto should be “When you get tired of looking in the mirror, jump on inpowr!” Please understand, I haven’t had a moment of sarcasm in a few days. Seriously, it does sound like a cool place, but I wouldn’t really classify it as a “social network”. Socializing with yourself is kind of, well, “weird“.

Technically Speaking, social networking is on the rise still, and to try to make money by charging is still not the way to go online; especially when everyone else is still running the free business model. Always stick with what works. When you are in beta, don’t charge; at least those are my thoughts on this.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 28th, 2007 at 11:27 pm and is filed under FabFemme, Inpowr, MySpace, MySpace Espanol, MySpace LatinoAmerica, MySpace.cn, Technically Speaking, Vertagio, social networks, startups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.