Category: Uncategorized

PR NEWSWIRE — Sep 12 — TripConnect, a social networking site for travel advice closed $1 million of first round funding led by Masthead Venture Partners and individual private investors. TripConnect helps people obtain travel advice from friends and family.

Mark Brooks: WAYN.com is their main competition, and has a more compelling service. WAYN is unusual because of it's travel focus, and it's paid membership model…which is actually working quite well for them. 

PR NEWSWIRE — Sep 12 — Digication Spotlight targets the academic community, and presents an opportunity to showcase their work, expertise and personality to employers, colleges, grad schools, teachers and other students. e.g. Smithfield High School Art department. The Digication Suite opens the lines of communications by combining elements of social networking and learning management systems. Available for free to the first 1,000 users at any U.S. accredited institution. FULL ARTICLE @ SYS CON

Mark Brooks: Facebook has grown quickly. Academics want their own system for teaching and sharing information and making more serious connections online. I'll interview the CEO of Affinity Circles. They have been quietly working on in-house walled garden social networks for groups associated with universities. As Facebook's focus becomes diluted, the opportunity for new, high integrity, even more highly focused 'private' networks will open up. 

ALL HEADLINE NEWS — Sep 5 — Google agrees to turn over records of Orkut users in Brazil who are suspected of racism and distributing child pornography, among other crimes. Brazilian Judge Jose Lunardelli had ordered the search engine to disclose the data and IP addresses within 15 days or face fines of about $23,255 per day for each request it withholds. Orkut, a social networking site, has about 27 million users worldwide, and about 17.6 million subscribers in Brazil. Brazil authorities are investigating Orkut communities linked to racism, homophobia and pedophilia. FULL ARTICLE @ BIZREPORT

HBS WK — Aug 28 — Users of online dating sites often struggle to find love because the sites themselves make it more difficult than it needs to be. Enter 'Virtual Dates,' an online ice-breaker application from Jeana Frost of Boston University, Michael Norton of HBS, and Dan Ariely of MIT. Technology influences the tone and trajectory of relationships. The interface of online dating sites should be improved to help people filter better. "People spent hours and hours and hours a week online to generate one cup of coffee with one person. That's not a very good system," says Norton. What's more, users often found that the person they were meeting for the first time was not what they had expected. Virtual Dates: After two people find what looks like a good match, the couple meets over their computers for a five-minute Virtual Date ice-breaker that allows two people to communicate in real time using colors, words, and images. Couples may pick up more cues about each other than they would through a chat client. Online dating is not in the end so fundamentally different from regular dating, adds Norton. "It's the people who think it will be quite different from their regular experiences who end up being the most disappointed. FULL ARTICLE @ HBSWK

Mark Brooks: I met Professor Ariely in 2004 in Boston. He and his PhD students have performed some significant research with dating sites  to come to these conclusions. Dating sites should also consider introducing online games to help singles interact in different ways.