With so many social networking sites now available, it takes something special to actually make me sit up and take notice.
But new Beta site www.flip.com has managed it for two reasons. Set up for teenage girls, it offers a lot of features over rival sites, with textures, animations, and customisation with stickers etc laid over profiles. Interesting, but not enough to really make it stand out.
The interesting bit is that it’s not the result of a tiny American start-up, funded by venture capitalists. It’s actually from magazine and website publisher Conde Nast. That makes it, as far as I’m aware, the first time a major ‘traditional’ publisher has got in on the ground floor of a social networking site. (I know Fox bought Myspace, but the site was already huge by the time they started negotiating).
I think it’s a very wise move. Not only does the site have a software advantage, but the publisher of the likes of Vogue and Glamour should be able to leverage enough of an audience from existing print brands to give it a head start over most similar start-ups and sites. The only question for me is whether a networking site is truly viable without the promise of interaction with the opposite sex.
(Incidentally, someone recently brought Flirtomatic to my attention, which does the job in the most simplistic and immediate way). Flip tip-off from downloadsquad.com.