Wednesday, June 23, 2004

More Meet For the Social Networking Grinder

I received an email today from the development director of a new social and business networking site called Co-unite based in Altrincham, a town in the Cheshire 'stockbroker' belt between Chester and Stockport. They had apparently culled my name from existing sites that I has subscribed to.

In the mail I was offered "We will provide you with a free 12-month subscription and would just ask for you to visit the site on a regular basis after the launch, invite some of your business or social contacts along and provide us with some monthly feedback on the site performance. We can ensure you that you will be impressed with the features and functionality, and will greatly benefit from this membership."

Little bit perturbed by the free 12-month subscription statement that implies it may get expensive afterwards unlike LinkedIn, Orkut or AlwaysOn Ziabatsu.

Some of their own words about Co-unite "This exciting new site takes a global approach to networking using a complex contact management application that identifies your connection to other Networkers. We believe it will be the most comprehensive networking site ever launched with the industry's most advanced communication tools including Voice over IP." So the project is buzzword compliant for any vulture capitalist with some pennies burning a hole in their pocket.

The sites launch follows the demise of some of the UK's first generation of networking sites: BuddyNetwork and Pollen, so we'll see how they go.