Social Networking with the Elite
Bala Pillai
Special Report November 15, 2007, 6:00PM EST text size: T T
Social Networking with the Elite
Tired of the Web masses? Now you can find your own gated communities on the Net—if they'll let you in
by Douglas MacMillan and Paula Lehman
SPECIAL REPORT
- Editor's Memo
- HP's Cultural Revolution
- Slide Show: Why Startup Founders Drop Out
- Case Study: Yahoo!'s Hot Innovation Incubator
- Proposed Presidential Innovation
- Slide Show: Is America Losing Its Edge to India and China?
- Mapping the Crowd
- Ford Flexes Its Design Muscle
- Social Networking with the Elite
- Slide Show: Innovation Tools and Trends
- Slide Show: Mad Ave Clicks With the Gamers
- November 26 Issue of BusinessWeek
Are you on the digital A-list? It's no longer enough to get invited to exclusive conferences or be asked to join professional organizations—many movers and shakers are taking their hobnobbing online, where a new crop of social networks aim to keep out the riff-raff by demanding credentials at the virtual door. As MySpace (NWS), LinkedIn, and Facebook have expanded to people of all ages, classes, and affiliations, there's a backlash against the open culture of social networking. Walls are going up. The scene is more velvet-roped club, not open-mic night. These three gated sites are among those with tough membership requirements and, presumably, more elite social networking.
REUTERS SPACE
In October, British news giant Reuters (RTRSY) launched a private online networking community for hedge fund managers, traders, and analysts. Dubbed Reuters Space ( space.reuters.com), the industry-specific site leverages its own pool of proprietary data on thousands of companies to verify the employment status of applicants, be they futures traders or chief investment officers. Members each have a feeds page, where they collect news from Reuters and other sources tailored to their financial specialty. Each one also has a profile page—a personal blog where they post notes to colleagues and close industry contacts and set privacy controls to determine who has access to their contact information. The site has potential for companywide rollouts: For example, London-based Schroders Investment Management, a global asset management firm, is planning to adopt the platform to give more of a sense of community to its employees in 24 offices around the world.
INMOBILE.ORG
Launched in April, 2006, INmobile.org is a network of more than 900 executives who work in or close to the wireless industry. To qualify, you have to be at least a director at a large company, a vice-president at a midsize company, or in the C-suite of a startup. So far, members include executives from carriers such as Verizon Wireless, content providers such as Walt Disney (DIS), and handset makers such as Nokia ( NOK). Arthur Goikhman and Stephen Dacek, co-founders of New York mobile-games startup Cellufun, joined in February. They were able to make connections with Yahoo! (YHOO) on the site and struck a deal with the search giant to place ads with Cellufun's games. "I'm glad it's not a free-for-all," says Dacek. "It really does make it a lot easier to network."
DIAMOND LOUNGE
This invitation-only social and business network, making its debut this month, relies on a selection committee elected by all members on the site. The committee has already chosen 100 members out of more than 7,000 applications that came in before Diamond Lounge (diamondlounge.com) went live. Members, who pay a monthly $60 fee, can hail from any industry and have two identities: a social profile in "the Lounge" and a business profile in "the Boardroom." For the social profile, members set limits on who can view them based on such characteristics as age, physical build, and gender; for the boardroom they provide their income, industry, and job title. They can exchange gifts, much like Facebook, where members buy icons of cakes and teddy bears, for example—but Diamond Lounge gifts include real Gucci bags or tickets to business events.
MacMillan is a reporter at BusinessWeek.com in New York. Paula Lehman is an editorial assistant for BusinessWeek in New York.