Web 2 Ireland

Joseph Kelly let us know that LoopThing went live this week. It’s a business social network that starts with a simple directory and builds from there. You can register your company and enter all the relevant details about the business. Others can then be friends/fans and interact with you on the site. They also have a ratings system and the ability to share files and media.

One particular aspect of the site which works very well is its openness. All of the information and interactions are there for all to see rather than requiring logins and rights management.

Whilst LinkedIn has become a huge site, I always feel it misses the mark. I go in to add or reply to connections and immediately leave. The groups feature has also become a quagmire of marketeers/spammers/recruiters. There is still lots of opportunity for other business social networks to grow and it’ll be interesting to see how LoopThing gets on.

I was thrilled to hear from Campbell Scott that IGOpeople is in public beta starting today. They’ve been in stealth mode for a long time and we’ve all been looking forward to seeing it in action.

Campbell describes it as:

a Network for the Real World that brings people together to Find, Connect and Converse, with their friends and with the businesses and organisations they deal with.

Sounding like a very useful mix of Social Networking, discussion boards, GetSatisfaction and UserVoice, it looks like a great way for companies to see what people have to say about them.

An interesting new Irish Social Networking site called Hobeze launched recently. As its name suggests, it’s broken down into hobbies, sports, interests etc. Apart from general social groupings, the most popular sections of the site are soccer, golf, scouting and rugby. At the moment they have 670+ hobbies created.

There seems to be a lot of activity in the Sports Social Network space and (like hyperlocal) it’s all about scale. The business models vary from Ad based to white label like ClubW to paid-for sub-networks. The latter seems to be the angle Hobeze is taking.