Interact Hawaii

[mel]

As if Hawaii and the world needed another social networking site, I got a spam mail this morning for Interact Hawaii:

Main URL: http://www.interacthawaii.com/

Interact Hawaii is a service similar to Myspace and Friendster, but which focuses on Hawaii's local community, kamaina who have traveled abroad, or people who have ties to Hawaii.

Some things you can do RIGHT NOW with Interact Hawaii:

# Connect with people you know: family, school friends, co-workers
# Join and create "Groups" around your interests
# Write blogs and read other blogs
# Promote your events, parties, and conventions
# Make new friends

Don't look for me there. I am not joining this one.

Next thing you know all of these sites will start selling downloadable music too.

[pzarquon]

Re: Interact Hawaii

Compared to "I Am Hawaii," this one is very MySpace-y. And they're definitely running on a more robust social networking platform. You can upload photos and limited multimedia, fill out a multi-faceted profile, and have those answers "pivot" to others who've entered the same answers. You can blog, promote events, post or browse classified ads, and run a pop-up Instant Messenger -- all things lacking in Iamhawaii.com. There's even a "Forum" listed... but there's nothing there.

But Yet Another Social Network is worth nothing without members, and as far as I can tell, there's basically no one in there yet. And if they're resorting to spam as the basis for recruitment for their launch, they certainly aren't going to earn much goodwill.

Oh well. As MySpace proves, you never know what the kids'll end up flocking to in the end. So if anyone wants to give Interact Hawaii a spin, feel free to "Friend" me.

[pzarquon]

Re: Interact Hawaii

Noticed that Interact Hawaii is popping up in the Google Ads for HawaiiThreads. Decided to see what's been going on lately, and found my account had been deleted. As it turns out, everyone had to start from scratch:

We have completely redesigned both the design and backend system of our website! Because the backend is completely different from our old system all profiles that were in our database couldn't be imported from our old system. We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused anyone, but we can guarantee that this won't happened again.

It's tough to get any social networking site off the ground, especially with so many MySpace wannabes sprouting up as part of this whole "Web 2.0" bubble. Hitting the reboot button is definitely not the best strategy when memberships are basically your currency.

Anyway, if anyone's sucked in a second time, my new profile is here.

[scrivener]

Re: Interact Hawaii

I did it too, just to see what it is. Whatever it is about MySpace that appeals to people seems to be there, too. And I've never been a MySpacer. I think I'd like sites like these a lot better if it didn't seem as if everyone who wants to friend you is doing it because he or she's got something to sell you. I've UNfriended several people on iLike just because all they did was recommend songs to me by their own bands -- in one case, the same song six times over a period of a couple of weeks.

It's enough to give a guy a complex: Nobody wants to be my friend just to be my friend?

[mel]

Re: Interact Hawaii

I ended up signing up for that after I got another email from them. Now I forgot what my login is... I think macpro. Or maybe macprohawaii. Wasn't all impressed with it after I briefly looked around.

[Cameron]

Re: Interact Hawaii

I came across the script they're using a few days ago(can't remember the name), and to be honest the default skin looked a lot better than than that site. Then again myspace looks like complete, and utter crap and look where they got. Though, I doubt this will get anywhere at least not with out some work.

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Interact Hawaii

to those 30somethings who have public pages:

-do you worry that someone will stalk you?
-have you had bosses/clients and/or other people in your professional orbit happen upon those sites and you wince for a moment, wishing that they hadn't?

these kinds of sites rattle me to the core.

[damontucker]

Re: Interact Hawaii

Pua'i -
I don't and it appears many others don't either:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - You were named Time magazine "Person of the Year" on Saturday for the explosive growth and influence of user-generated Internet content such as blogs, video-file sharing site YouTube and social network MySpace.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061217/wr_nm/time_dc

[Pua'i Mana'o]

Re: Interact Hawaii

that horrifies me. Are we pissing away our children's chances for discretion because of our immediate selfish/egotistical need to (((share)))? Even today, my paranoia is earned, because all of my immediate relatives up through two generations above me are completely googleable, for their professional marks, notorious achievements, and sordid situations.

Living in a small town is bad enough!

[pzarquon]

Re: Interact Hawaii

I came across the script they're using a few days ago(can't remember the name), and to be honest the default skin looked a lot better than than that site.

It's "Handshakes Professional" out of DZOIC. It runs all kinds of cookie-cutter "social network" sites, like Friendseed, Party Utah, HipHopWorld.NET, MormonCafe, and so on and so on. Nothing, really, to differentiate this local attempt from everything else out there. A more evolved engine than Iamhawaii.com is using, perhaps, but... that's not saying much.

[tutusue]

Re: Interact Hawaii

[...]these kinds of sites rattle me to the core.

I am so with you on this, PM. We've all heard of people losing their jobs when the boss stumbles on a blog or a myspace page. I remember, over a decade ago, an acquaintance mentioned he would never, ever use email because of the possibility of a message getting into the wrong hands. Never? Really? Anyway, I suggested that he should still take advantage of the convenience of email but:
just...don't...send...anything...he...wouldn't...w ant...the...world...to...read!!!
If it's confidential, don't send it. Pretty simple! Why anyone would intentionally upload anything to a public web site that contains anything of a confidential nature is beyond me! And that includes home address and phone #. And don't even get me started on internet dating!

[scrivener]

Re: Interact Hawaii

So far, it's quite a loser of a website. I found myself with one friend whom I never invited, a guy I'm assuming is the SysOp (or whatever they call them nowadays...admins?), so I immediately dropped him from my friends list. Is the point of these things to collect as many friends as possible? I don't think I get that.

On iLike, I've already dropped "friends" whose recommendations were getting annoying; I have solicited a few "friendships" when I saw that musical tastes were similar. In fact, recommendations from these fellow music-lovers have led me actually to purchase music. In this case, I can totally see the value of these quick "friendships." I don't think I get the point of (and therefore am too old for, probably) these social networking sites. There are all these people there just collecting friends, but nobody's posting to a "blog" or in the forum. Even the admin doesn't really use these features. He (or she) has, however, posted some mildly entertaining (and borderline obscene) videos shot in a nightclub somewhere.

[pzarquon]

Re: Interact Hawaii

It's a mess.

The last e-mail I got was another apology for a system glitch and notice that they're no longer requiring verification of e-mail to set up an account... basically laying a red carpet for spammers.

Whenever I get an e-mail notification of a new message, it's bad enough that I have to visit the site to see it (why not just send me the message, since they've got my e-mail address?)... but they don't even include the URL to their own site, so I've got to head over manually.

I think I found Mel's profile, but I can't friend him because I can't see it. I understand privacy settings for these things, but better-designed sites give you some way to authenticate a relationship or at least request an "add."

I agree, there are more features plus a kitchen sink, but no single one is compelling, and there's no one there. If they are numbering accounts and profiles sequentially, looks like they got their twentieth user today. There are truly hundreds of "social networks" out there, and Interact Hawaii doesn't stand out at all. A fun distraction, maybe, but... "Hawaii's #1 Online Community"? I don't think so.

[scrivener]

Re: Interact Hawaii

On the other hand, since clicks on the Interact Hawaii ad that keeps popping up generate at least some small amount of money, maybe we should be hyping this thing.

[pzarquon]

Re: Interact Hawaii

Um. That's probably a sure-fire way to kill any limited benefit.

Having run Google AdSense ads on several sites, including client sites, I can say that their algorithms are smart enough to smell concerted ad clicking campaigns, which of course cost them and the advertiser more money. Clicking on ads that are interesting to you is exactly what you should be doing to help the sites you visit, but going nuts to unnaturally boost things will most likely just get them in trouble.

I will say that I'm impressed with the persistence with which Interact Hawaii's ad appears here on HawaiiThreads. It certainly doesn't seem quite as random or "contextual" as the usual array. I think HawaiiThreads may actually be targeted in their campaign. So we should at least revel in feeling wanted!