An invitation-only online community, not open to the general public. That’s how aSmallWorld introduces itself.
Looks an interesting addition to the community of social networks. Its website description states: “We list the most popular restaurants, hotels, and night clubs in over 40 major cities, summer and winter resorts and we keep track of major events, parties, exhibitions, film and music festivals and sporting events such as motor racing, tennis, sailing, golf, and others. Our goal is to become the leading global social networking community.”
The service has been in beta since March, according to info on the website, and plans to launch during the autumn this year (autumn = Sept-Nov).
Difficult to find out much more as none of the info links on the website works. I guess you need to be logged in to access anything (makes sense). And to do that, you need to be invited to join…
Related note – the LinkedIn network has now passed the 1 million membership figure, according to a 31 August press release on the LinkedIn website.
My comment to the people asking to enter ASW is: If his friends were in ASW, they would have invited him already. If they have not, it means they are not in there. Why would he need to connect then?
After being invited, I found at least 150 friends already in the web site. I only invited 4, who immediately found the same number of friends inside.
This is quite a unique web site, it’s basically my own phone book of good old friends/relatives, only shared online by the same friends, and we all know each other.
I perfectly understand why it is selective and needs to remain so. I don’t understand why it keeps growing so much. Or better, I know why: people don’t understand its policy and keep inviting work colleagues or people they don’s share family roots with. It is really not meant for social connections made at work but other ways.
Another interesting site I found on private network is called Invisible Dot (http://www.invisibledot.com) which is mainly target at commerce within a private social network where friends, family and co-workers can list, advertise, buy and sell within their social circles easily. It is built on a real-time IM infrastructure so people can exchange and broadcast information very quickly. Also, it provides a lot of control for privacy and security. Even though people can download applictaion, the network itself is very private — means that it is you who build your own kingdom and you can block any request based on the privacy criteria you setup. Pretty cool concept…