by Brian Solis
Greg Narain, Stowe Boyd, and I attended the launch party for new social network startup, MingleNow.
We were greeted by a Slide host, who asked us if we were up for a Slide into the Club. Instead we opted for the stairs. I spent enough time on a financial slide during the bust of the first bubble.
Greg Narain and our Slide Host
By all 2.0 standards, this launch party was definitely bub.blicio.us in terms of grandjeur, but seemed to have succumed to the other six competing events including, SF Beta, San Francisco NewTech Meetup, Yelp.com, Vast.com, among others. With that said, it was a swank affair with the ability to actually talk with people while enjoying the best drinks and creative appetizers.
MingleNow is online/offline social network dedicated to connecting users to their favorite clubs and bars and the people who go there. The site’s initial focus will be on building a user community in the San Francisco Bay Area, with national roll out scheduled for early 2007. MingleNow was conceived and built by the founding team of BlueLithium with the help of BlueLithium Labs researchers and developers.
The social service is built along three fundamental dimensions: Profiles, Places and Events. Once users indicate which bars and clubs they frequent, their photos show up on the Place page of that establishment and they become part of the community that goes there to share photos and video, trade comments, plan events and in-person meetings. MingleNow has over 900,000 place pages representing the most popular drinking, clubbing and socializing establishments in the U.S.
“MingleNow is like a CitySearch meets eVite meets true.com,” according to MingleNow project lead Krishna Subramanian.
BlueLithium’s Krishna Subramanian, Nate Distel, Dakota Sullivan
Back to the party…
Julia French, formally of SocialText, was a gracious and informative host. She took the time to help us understand the company’s value proposition and market. BlueLithium’s Krishna Subramanian, Nate Distel, and Dakota Sullivan also took the time to explain the advantages of MingleNow and why it isn’t just another “me too” network. While the opportunity is clear, it’s a highly competitive space and it’s going to battle to reach its target demographic. I mean, there are plenty of networks out there dedicated to helping me find great booze, cool people, with killer ambiance, all while linking to pictures from recent events.
With that said, MingleNow has already done a respectable job engaging users through grassroots marketing efforts and with their knowledge of the online advertising and web 2.0 markets, hopefully they can leapfrog the competition. However, the company still has much work to do.
Julia French, Stowe Boyd and Ann Crane of Adobe
bub.blicio.us in action
STIRR’s Sanford Barr and Greg Narain
Julia French and Guba‘s Adriana Gasciogne reporting for bub.blicio.us tv
We had to call it a short evening, as my next step was the big Yelp.com party.
With the right ingredients and content, MingleNow might just serve as an online HQ for bub.blicio.us with side-support from services such as Upcoming.org, Facebook, and good ol evite.
For additional pictures from the event, vist the bub.blicio.us flickr stream.
julia+french minglenow bub.blicio.us bubblicious bubble2.0 bubble+2.0 web2.0 web+2.0 2.0 brian+solis slidesf yelp.com yelp launch party bluelithium stowe+boyd greg+narain guba adriana+gasciogne krishna+subramanian dakota+sullivan nate+distel social+networks social media evite upcoming upcoming.org facebook