Palopia. Facebook/MySpace Competitor? Doubtful.
Posted by Brian Balfour in UncategorizedMay 7th, 2006 | 4 responses
I ran across a post on Steve Rubel’s blog, Micro Persuasion, talking about a new social networking startup named Palopia. Palopia founded by a group of USC business students, states on their website:
“Palopia is a social networking portal made by real students for real students with real lives. It’s not just about profiles and comments anymore. We’ve spent long days and nights figuring out what needs to be better to make our online lives easier, more rewarding, and more enjoyable. We built our network from the ground up–understanding what our friends wanted and what their friends wanted, and their friends’ and so on.â€Â
Basically they are gunning for (surprise, surprise) MySpace and Facebook. Steve Rubel says on his blog that
“I am going to bet that in three months we’ll be talking a lot more about this site. Why? If they put their innovation where there mouth is, people will migrate because Facebook and/or MySpace won’t be able to keep up because they’re primarily focused on managing growth.â€Â
Steve all I have to ask is what in the world are you smoking? This site won’t even make a tiny pin prick in either of those sites in a year, let alone three months. The problem is that people think they can beat MySpace and Facebook based on having more features, or enhancing existing ones. If this was true, MySpace and Facebook wouldn’t even be a blip on the radar today. How many other social networking startups are out there that have said the same thing? 10, 15, 20? I’m not sure of the exact number, but a few off of the top of my head are XuQa.com, MyYearbook.com, and VarsityWorld.com. I feel like I come across a new social networking for the 14-24 crowd every day.
The problem is that in order to compete on MySpace’ or Facebook’s level, you have to disrupt their core functionality. Unfortunately all of the features that Palopia has described don’t do that. But I’m asking Palopia now, PLEASE PROVE ME WRONG. I want to see someone come up with something that will disrupt the social networking scene. Who better to do that then a group of young college entrepreneurs? I wish them the best.
[tags] Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur, Young Entrepreneurship, Business, Web 2.0, Social Networking, Facebook, Facebook.com, Myspace, Myspace.com, Palopia, Palopia.com, Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion[/tags]
4 Responses to “Palopia. Facebook/MySpace Competitor? Doubtful.”
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Brian K Balfour
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good job!
Msn:luanshanlang@gmail.com
My main problem with my generation switching over from blogging-based personal sites like LiveJournal, Xanga, and DeviantArt to social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook is that while the emphasis formerly was on producing some kind of original written content and the community was based around the creative output of the people in the group, publishing web content on a social networking site is more about fitting oneself into the spaces on the form provided, and communicating with wall posts that say less and less.
The other problem with any walled-garden social network is that they have to have a near-monopoly over users in order to have value. People won’t be interested in joining a new website unless they know that a critical mass of their friends are already there.
I’m an I/O psych (Business psychology) grad student specializing in internet companies at Auburn University. And let me just say that Palopia is going to pull it off! Palopia is going to be the answer to every social networkers prayer. Steve is right, look for a big splash!
Then why is one of the three owners dedicated to another full time job? Personally I think if it was going to be so revolutionary a person would be dedicating all of their time to the project. So far Palopia has been all talk and hype.