network bust?
Sex and the City meets Facebook– Luluvise is the newest online social network claiming to provide “girl talk, all the time.” In the early stages of public access and with a mobile app on the way, Luluvise aims to provide the busy 18-35 year old woman a space in which to share juicy gossip and tales of her love life with her closest girlfriends.
The founder, Alexandra Chong, has a PR perfect story of an inspiration. A great Valentine’s date and numerous close friends to tell, but the hassle of making numerous telephone calls, organizing Skype sessions, sending BBMs and text messages, all highlighting the same juicy details was just frustrating. Her solution? Luluvise: a place where she could create a social network to share this “girl talk” with her BFFs.
Now, we might not all have the perfect Valentine’s Day dish (or rather, it might not be quite so positive) but I am willing to bet most female young professionals can relate. At some point you have found yourself off to work sitting on a bus covertly(ish) telling close friend number 4 about that date you had just the other… well by now its two week old news, but hey you are a busy woman and so is she, you talk when you can!
Luluvise to the rescue?
The basic idea: a private place to share private information with more than one person anywhere at any time is a good one. So good in fact women have been using group email, Facebook messages, and Google+ circles for quite a while. Ok, ok, not G+ circles, but the other two! So what new does Luluvise have to offer?
Well, they connect with Facebook which makes getting in touch with your Internet loving girlfriends pretty simple (though their search function needs some work). They also have “WikiDates” which is essentially a database of men. You and your close friends can disclose your rankings and comments to each other. The general public gets only an averaged rating for any given man. And the world gets a peak at what grade 8 girls talk about at sleepovers.
Ok, maybe that isn’t entirely fair. We all know drunk girls do the same thing (albeit often with a distinctively less heteronormative slant). Jokes aside, it’s true: There is a market for this kind of gossip, and targeting a niche market as Luluvise has done seems like a wise business move. As our social lives are increasingly mediated by social networking sites companies are finding new ways to (1) cater to our social needs and (2) make money. If Luluvise can secure a group of 18-35 year old women to advertise to they are golden. The question is can they secure us female young professionals?
The appeal of a tool which can make me feel like the multiple time zones between me and my best friends doesn’t matter is intriguing. But I’m not convinced. Aside from my skepticism about the actual possibility of any online social network accomplishing that feat, Luluvise at first glance feels kind of young. Right now the site feels a little more like CosmoGirl meets MSN messenger than Sex and the City meets Facebook.
But hey, we went through that awkward phase and came out mostly ok, so maybe Luluvise will too.
