We launched http://www.friendsforfamilies.com last week.
We are:
Colin Burch (me), BA English 1995
Andrew Burch, BA English 2001
Mary Jester Burch, BA Design 2000
We started the site along with a Meredith grad, a former NCSU student, and a former Meredith student.
Only a $1.99 for a full year!

9/25/2006 6:44:18 PM

haha its like friendster for grown ups

9/25/2006 6:44:54 PM

decent idea

good luck

and buy an ad... on another site since there arent many families on this one

9/25/2006 6:48:27 PM

We host that website at the company I work for.

9/25/2006 7:29:43 PM

damn... i read that " shameless PORNO"

[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 8:34 PM. Reason : needless to say, i'm dissappointed]

9/25/2006 8:33:54 PM

porno? meredith girls? what? what?

From a quick glance, the website looks professional. The idea has potential as well. If you can, I'd recommend ditching any sort of sign-up fee in favor of minimal advertising if you want it to grow. My $0.02 ... good luck with the website.

[Edited on September 25, 2006 at 9:12 PM. Reason : .]

9/25/2006 9:12:13 PM

excellent idea, I question how many people are going to shell out without any real content to see beforehand.

9/25/2006 9:12:22 PM

yeah you need to try a free trial thing and pimp the $1.99 thing as a donation model to help keep the community clean from spammers etc. You should be able to make money off selling ads and providing links to local businesses who have interests or who people have interests in.

9/25/2006 9:38:05 PM

^terrible idea.

Keep the subscription model for sure, just need to figure out some marketing avenues to show people the content without showing it.

9/25/2006 9:49:26 PM

you better hurry!!!

if yahoo ends up buying facebook they will release it to the general public and the "switching costs" will be even higher for a new service.

good luck though

9/25/2006 10:13:20 PM

it doesn't sound like you came here looking for advice, but just a general suggestion - redo the logo in the header. Save it as a gif and get rid of the anti-aliasing (the blurry blue pixels around the white text and pictures). It will look much crisper and professional.

also, it took me a minute to realize that the main navigation for the site was the little tiny text at the bottom of the page. At first I thought the only two options were "join now" or "take a tour". I think the text at the bottom of the page looks like a footer which 1) is usually non-navigational links like about, contact, copyright, legal, or 2) duplicate navigational links which are highlighted elsewhere on the page, and therefore, I usually ignore footer text and links.

9/25/2006 11:35:23 PM

^^^ terrible idea? Not really. The target audience isn't going to pay for something it can't test out. Now perhaps if you gave 1 month free or something that would be a good compromise. Then once they are hooked $1.99 is pocket change.

9/26/2006 9:43:18 AM

Thanks to everyone for your feedback and suggestions!
Everything that was said was great
-- almost as encouraging as our win over Boston College.

9/26/2006 11:10:59 AM

haha... I was just thinking about this idea yesterday as we had our first baby on sunday, and I was thinking to myself that there isnt really a good way to show pictures so that your "friends" could view them and automatically know when you have added more pictures and things...

webshots is old and not really a good solution in my opinion.

Congrats on your launch, and if you do a free trial, I will sign up.

9/26/2006 11:39:43 AM

On the demo profile thing, when I changed the base religion, the menu for the sub-religion didn't change. Is this just a demo thing, or is it a bug?

9/26/2006 1:16:21 PM