PR NEWSWIRE — May 10 — JDate, the leading online community for Jewish singles, took the top prize in the 10th Annual Webby Award competition for outstanding social/networking site, beating out MySpace.com, Bebo, Flickr and Xfire.
Mark Brooks: Can someone pleeeaase explain this to me.
I think you are looking at a company in a niche community that that has completely dominated its market by word of mouth. If you are considering a social network by “modern terms” on pure technology “6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon” stuff http://www.cs.virginia.edu/oracle/ , then it doenst make sense. But as a true social network, they are awesome and not in any way a fad. A close cousin of mine passed away a few years ago at 43 from cancer. I told her husband a while after her passing that when he was ready to start dating, give me a call and I would use my connections in the business to take care of him. He knows I have been in the business 20 plus years and he said to me “I’d probably just start with jDate.” That is a social network if I’ve ever seen one. So considering they are a subscription site and not a free posting site, I might have given them the vote too. (Though I think I couldn’t have passed on myspace) My reason would be if anyone had dominated the generic dating the way jDate has dominated their community, you would be looking at a firm that would dwarf Yahoo personals and Match if you combined them.
Just because they’ve built enough of a brand that people talk about them, doesn’t make them a social network.
Allow me to define a n online ‘social network.’ A social networking site is a site that shows links between profiles. So if you look at someones profile you should be able to see some sort of additional content or linking to that persons network of friends. Not strangers, friends.
I saw Blogger.com listed as a social network recently. It really isn’t a social network. Just because people comment on posts, doesn’t make a social network out of a blog. OPW is not a social network.
Mark Brooks
editor, onlinepersonalswatch.com
That may be the definition on Sand Hill Road Mark, I am just making the analogy that their brand was built completely though social networking. You may not be able to trace the connections with hyperlinks, but the whole community is definitely socially networked.