Social networking companies feel pressure

Friendster and its counterparts are having trouble building commercially viable businesses.

The story "Social networking companies feel pressure" published May 31, 2005 at 10:35 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

[System Tyrant]

Thought

I didn't read the artical, but I will comment of the headline.

I figure part of the problems is the cost. I have tried a few of them and the cost is prohibitive. $25 to $50 or more a month to get one or two hits a year is a bit steep. I would rather pay by hit. Make it $5 a match should you choose to pursue it and charge extra for extra services. Or something like that.

The other problems I see with them is the fact that their is no way of verifing who the other person really is. For all you know you could be linking up with some serial killer guy posed as a shy single woman. I'm sure their isn't a lot they can do about this without getting into some kind of expensive privacy thing that most people would sign up for anyway.

New Interactive Community for Research & Higher Education

The start-up company academici Ltd., has launched the first networking platform exclusive to higher education and scientific research at http://www.academici.ac. This new community is free to join and already unites thousands of stake holders from research & higher education in over 120 countries, allowing for discussions and the exchange of ideas with a high degree of specialization across disciplinary, geographical, political and economical boundaries.

Prof Dr Markus Vinzent (University of Birmingham), one of the founders of academici, states ?Academici provides a community building platform uniting those who write about findings with those who do research or teach and people who finance research.? Examples of such communities are the forums on e-learning, Cytology, Communication & Media, Social Networking, Humanities and the Press Community. These hubs allow academics and business people to create networking and human resource communities.