That's what we have attempted to create. BlueSwarm.org is your one stop site to gather all your different services in one place so you or your friends can get an idea of what you find intersting on the web, all in one place.
Since BlueSwarm.org pulls the information that you already have on all the other services you are already using it's a breeze to sign up. And then just keep doing what you've always been doing and as you digg, tag or upload using your favorite service, your BlueSwarm.org page will update automatically.
The Flipping Pad is a new social network for those involved in real estate, at pretty much every level of involvement.
Within this community are areas to post properties for sale or others that are of commercial interest in one way or another. You can also create a user profile, find other members to conduct business with, or join in a forums discussion to share thoughts about the industry. The listings seem to be the life blood of this site, and you can leave comments and ratings for each listing. The “pads” listed here have accompanying icons indicating if the property is a case study listing, if it’s looking for partners, if it’s a potential bargain, and if it’s actively for sale. As one would imagine, a large amount of the user interaction takes place around these listings.
User profiles will also display their listings as well as their forums comments, and in the forums, there is the ability to subscribe to a particular user’s thread if you’d like to keep up with them. There’s no way to send direct messages between users, or add them as friends.
As Facebook marches towards a potential IPO, savvy (some might say shameless) entrepreneurs around the globe continue to develop foreign clones of the red-hot social network. Many of these have been around for years, and some have been very successful. Here is a look at 10 of the most profitable copycats so far.
A Facebook clone for the German market, the founders of StudiVZ have already sold the site for more than $100 million. StudiVZ is nearly identical to Facebook in terms of features, functionality, and interface.
The largest Facebook clone in China, Xiaonei sold to Oak Pacific Interactive, a Chinese Internet conglomerate, and was merged with another social network called 5Q.
The Russian Facebook makes no attempt to hide the fact that it’s a clone; Vkontakte.ru almost exactly resembles Facebook’s design. Russia is also home to rutube.ru, a popular YouTube clone. Maybe a sign that existing social networks aren’t releasing Russian versions fast enough?
This Facebook clone is designed for India, and prominently features familiar Facebook features such as profiles, friends, groups, and classifieds. Ironically, the site features an embedded YouTube video on the homepage.
Student Social Network is a Facebook clone available in four different countries – Turkey, Russia, Germany, and Great Britain. Its success appears to have been limited, however.
The name roughly translates to the “Pupil Register”, and Schuelerregister.de is another German attempt to copy Facebook. The site is said to be getting a little traction, at least according to Alexa where it has had a 5-digit rank recently.
This German clone appears to be more intended for the 50+ set, but is worth noting as it claims more than 100,000 users.
Schueler.cc (your “community center”) is yet another German attempt at cloning Facebook, claiming more than 30,000 schools as part of its network. They have changed the look and feel a bit, but it’s still built around academic and regional networks.
Drawing inspiration in both features and name, StudentFace is a social network for the Australian market. They have added a feature similar to Facebook’s News Feed, allowing you “to see which one of your friends have updated their profiles and/or added friends.”
Last but not least, this Turkish Facebook clone also targets student networks. Google Translate wasn’t much help on this one, but the design is clearly Facebook-inspired.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Facebook must be blushing beat red. At this point, most of the clones will have trouble keeping up with Facebook’s rapid feature rollout, but that won’t stop them from trying to bring the basic model of collegiate and regional networks to their home countries. Those who do it well (Xiaonei, StudiVZ) have proven that a well-done copycat can not only be popular, but a viable means to getting rich quickly.
SocialStream, as the project is called, would let you post content to and from social networks. There’s a demo video below, and the project aims to be user-centric, rather than network centric. It assumes that all services have APIs, however, which isn’t yet the case with the leader, MySpace. From the site:
Socialstream allows users to post content to any participating network. Because of this, it can inherit the ability to handle any type of content: photos, blogs, video, audio, events, and many forms of structured data. By consolidating the controls for publishing in one place, users are free to consider the content of their posts, and only as an afterthought specify the people who should see it and the sites that host it. By consolidating content in one place, Socialstream increases the benefit of commentary and referring posts, and lowers the barriers to participation.
“Google-sponsored” doesn’t necessarily mean “Google will launch this”, but it’s nonetheless interesting that such a project exists, and from the shots and description, it could be very impressive.
YoYo Games is a community for game lovers and developers.
This site acts as a directory for games that have been created and uploaded by users. It doesn’t look like games are reviewed by YoYo Games prior to their being available on the site, which is somewhat surprising. You can search for games by tag word or genre, and viewing a game profile gives you the basic info about the game, related games, other games by the creator, ratings, reviews and comments. You can also take a game badge to embed on your blog, or social networking profile, like MySpace, hi5, Piczo, etc. Most importantly, you can download the game to play on your computer.
You cannot, however, play the game online. Unlike Kongregate, YoYo Games is a directory more than anything else. Adding the ability to upload a video along with the game description could help others know more about the game without having to download it first. It’s also done well to offer resources for the game developers, such as forums and downloadable software, to help users make their own games. In this sense, YoYo Games offers most of its value by way of game developers.
myWdot is a new social network that is looking to let you create the type of online presence most people are going for with their existing communities.
You get five pages for your profile, and each page is fully customizable. Insert photos, videos, text, slide shows, and profile information, among other modules. You also have the choice for which kind of profile you’d like: artist, musician, etc. In this sense, myWdot is essentially enabling you to create your own website. While you can do some nifty things for your personal site creation, the goal of making it easier than customizing your MySpace profile hasn’t quite been achieved.
iHipo is an International community for college students and business professionals looking for networking opportunities.
There are two different types of profiles available for iHipo: business profiles and professional profiles. As a business you can post jobs and utilize iHipo’s user database to search for new talent. As a professional, you can search for jobs and others in your industry. The profile options leave a lot be be desired, though the community forums are laid out in a more practical manner. You can search for jobs on a global map or by tag word, though there aren’t enough ways to filter out your search, and every time your search is modified, the global map reloads, slowing down your search overall.
