Next Please

So Noah started an interesting conversation about Facebook, which prompted me to express my fondness for themed social networks - with a distinct hobby-centric purpose - over general ones like Facebook or Myspace.

The one I've been using mainly of late ( besides Flickr, which is hands-down my favorite ) is ThisNext, where you basically can recommend any type pf product, or peruse other people's recommendations. 

I guess it's true that the type of people on niche networks have more in common with each other than a userbase like Facebook, which is really cool, because most of the products people post on ThisNext are design-y cool things I happen to really like. 

I should also admit that I'm pretty lazy, and ThisNext caters to this by providing a bookmark button for my toolbar - so when i find something cool, all i have to do is save it ( like i might post something to del.ici.ous), and the magical elves can sometimes even find pictures within the site for me to choose from to display in my ThisNext post.

see? i chose to display those green pods


then i made a sticker thing that said "eggcellent" (sorry)


and so on and so forth.

So i guess my point here is, I'm a lot more likely to spend a bunch of my time on a site like ThisNext than I am on Facebook.  Advertisers, come get me! ( not sure if they're ad supported yet, but it can't be far behind)

Comments

[Nicole @ ThisNext]

We're blushing. You like us, you really like us. We like you too.

I'm digging that cave shelf you recommended. Makes it easy to grab a new book when you're done with the old one! Now if only it came with a built-in coffee maker...I just might never leave it.

Would you be open to sharing some of your savvy opinions about ThisNext? I'd love to hear them. If so, drop me a note at nicole at thisnext (dot) com.

Thanks for the love!

[Noah Brier]

I totally agree with you Amber. A while back I wrote an entry that basically said "Social networking works best when it's not the primary objective of a website" -- http://www.noahbrier.com/archives/2005/04/annotating_on_f.php -- The point is that as humans most of the "social networking" we do is under the guise of other activities. Outside college and some business settings, there's very little room or patience for networking for networking's sake, hence why I think sites like Flickr or ThisNext work so well as social networks: This is really the stuff people socialize about. It's providing the content and context for socialization . . .