CrowdVine is ready for beta users. This is my roll-your-own social-network site. In a few clicks, you can create and customize a social network for your group or community. The service and hosting are free.

There’s a lot I’m excited about here, the potential for commodity social network software to connect people in niche communities and of course CrowdVine, my first business.

Social Networks Deserve to be First Class Social Software

When people talk about the types of social software I want them to list blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networks. We’ve all had enough experience with Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook to know that this class of software is extremely useful. Turning social network software into a commodity means it can be treated as a stand alone class of software.

Social Network Evolution

You can’t predict all the ways that niche social networking software will be useful (but I will list all the ways I know of in a second). Just like people came to understand blogging as a distributed conversation rather than merely a light-weight publishing tool, people are going to find unexpected uses for social network software.

One purpose that I enthusiastically recommend is events. Throw-away social networks are unbelievably fantastic for helping people connect at conferences. My entire page of press clippings comes from people who loved using CrowdVine to connect at the SoCon conference. Also check out PodCamp Atlanta and Maker Faire.

I’ve also had good luck using social networks to reconnect alumni. The Graduates of O’Reilly network is like a more personal version of LinkedIn. I also started one for former teammates on my college’s cross country team. That network was so successful and so accurately recreated the locker room experience that I had to rush out my privacy features so that I could make those pages private.

Simplicity Helps Social Software

My vision for social network software is to put the people front and center. There’s huge value in helping people craft an identity and then helping them connect with each other. I’m sure there’s room for several visions for this type of software. Mine is simplicity.

Business Model

People often ask what my business model is. I’m dead set on avoiding outside investment–it detracts from the type of company I want to build. So far everything is self-funded and I’m going to continue with that. While I was building the site I took some work on the side and now that it’s more functional I’m transitioning to CrowdVine related consulting work.

But I also want to make sure to always offer a free ad-supported version. For one thing, having more public feedback will lead to more polished software. More importantly I want to build software that people makes a difference for lots of people. If the ads pay for the servers then I’m sticking with the dual consulting/ad-supported model.

Dreaming of something better

One of the goals of CrowdVine is to connect you to people that share your passions so that you can lead a happier and more successful life. I’ve already had that experience just by building CrowdVine. My passion is for building software and by starting my own business I’m now connected to the people who can get excited about my software, the users. When it’s your software and your users even the tiniest code change can become incredibly fulfilling. If you have a passion, I can’t recommend highly enough that you take the time to find and connect with the people who share that passion.

I’m calling this release beta while I work out some kinks. But I know there’s enough working bits to give you a good experience. So go ahead, bang on it!

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