Anyone that knows Julia French will attest to her ability to passionately evangelize the things she believes in. Over the last year I've had the chance to see Julia successfully put her weight behind Socialtext, the Office 2.0 Conference and, most personally gratifying, the Enterprise Irregulars.
It's with that backdrop that I know BlueLithium his a home run when they brought Julia aboard to help build out their new social networking initiative, MingleNow.
In MingleNow's own words:
MingleNow connects your offline life with your online life by allowing you to connect to the places you go and the people who go there. The places you like to go define you. MingleNow enables you to meet other people who are attracted to the same places. You can also use MingleNow to discover places in other cities and areas that attract the type of people and have the type of vibe you're looking for. Most importantly, MingleNow has a built in calendar to organize your weekend without having to wade through calls, emails and IMs.
To be honest, despite being an ardent supporter of the power of social software, I'm not generally considered the target audience for the mainstream social networks. While I appreciate the power of MySpace, Facebook, et al...at the end of the day I would be labeled "advocate" or "observer" long before someone would call me a "participant." Why, you ask? Well, for lots of reasons. I'm 32 (out of the target demo for the big networks), married (not looking for "new friends"), and busy as hell (I don't have hours to spend asking to be added to people's friends networks and/or approving requests from others).
Recognizing that I'm not the target demo, I still gave MingleNow a good once over because I fundamentally believe Julia wouldn't have joined the company if she didn't see a differentiated opportunity here.
So far, I like what I see...
- Easy-to-use interface, with solid, intuitive heuristics (for example, it immediately defaults to my home town and offers me people and places in the area)
- Clear target demo (young, urbanites who like to socialize in clubs, bars, restaurants)
- BEER
I may not go club-hopping much these days, and I may not spend hours on social networks, but I DO love beer. And in an interesting twist, Anheuser-Busch has partnered with MingleNow as part of the beer industry's "Here's to Beer" initiative.
I can't begin to speculate as to what this partnership ultimately means for MingleNow, but it's a nice start in their quest to differentiate themselves in an ever-crowding medium. Best of luck to Julia and her team. The next time I'm out on the town, I know where I'll go to make sure the place my friends and are I heading to isn't janky.
minglenow anheuser-busch julia french social network blue lithium enterprise irregulars
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