Glee Network launched today
Glee launched today and is one of 4 gay and lesbian social networks that’s launching in the next month or so. So, I signed up … I’m so early I even got my very common name as my glee url.
I’ve been looking forward to Glee more than the other gay social networks. It seems more authentically a social network than a commercial marketing venture like Olivia and Showtime.
Olivia Connect will also lauch soon - it seems fuddy to me, as does Olivia in general so that’s no surprise. Off the bat, Olivia Connect is somewhat unusable for me because it requires the most recent version of Flash which isn’t easily available for my desktop. I’ve never really understood the whole Olivia cruise thing anyway so it’s unlikely that their marketing campaign thinly disguised as a social network will entice me.
The other soon-to-launch gay social network is the L Word offshoot Our Chart … when I first heard the name it elicited a vision of lesbian beanie baby collectors. I wouldn’t analyze that too much though. Maybe it’s because I think the L Word is a little creepy with too many long-taloned grimacing straight women actors in it. BUT, it’s creepy in an entertaining planet-of-LA “monkey/alien” sort of way.
A 3rd social network that will launch eventually is Social Butter which looks like it could be pretty cool, but it’s under development by a single developer and no real ETA.
Anyway, so then we have Glee which doesn’t appear to be a marketing campaign for any particular corporate conglomerate - they’re running ads from the Girl Scouts and the Navy Reserve (?!does “don’t ask, don’t tell” apply to web statistics?). My initial reaction is that in terms of look and feel it’ not as nice as Bebo but way better than MySpace (which friends have been forcing me to use lately instead of email. aaiiieee).
On Glee, when filling out my profile I was surprised to be limited to a single item text input. I suppose that handily prevents people from blathering endlessly like I chose to do on my MySpace account (which, lazy me, I was trying to copy and paste). I couldn’t edit an input if I’d made a typo, rather I had to delete it and retype it. I couldn’t order my interests which surprised me. Basically the interface looks similar enough to Basecamp that I expected Basecamp-like functionality. I’m sure they’re planning it since 37 Signals built all those whiz bang features into Rails .
Anyway, there are a few minor glitches, but it is the first day of launch and I’m sure they’ll get them all sorted out.
Things I like:
- The page editing tools are cool - the profile is broken up into modules and you can drag them around the page to order them or not display them as you wish. There is also a tab for editing your background and style. I’m a little confused because really I just want to write my own html/css. A help file would be good here.
- The HTML editor for the “personal message” is GREAT! Just about anything you can do with html and css is allowed. I have no idea if html/css will only apply to the “personal message” or to the entire page though. Is this where you customize your design?
- I like the professional networking tool. It’ll be interesting to see how that grows. It seems to me that gay social networks seem to become quickly dominated by sex sex sex. Maybe there will be a strange synergistic balance between gay men seeking husbands and married lesbians seeking escape from lesbian bed-death. I’ll especially be interested to see how this compares with LinkedIn.
Things I don’t like so much:
- The twirling banner ad at the top that makes it hard to read content on the page
- I wanna preview stuff as soon as I edit it. MySpace does a good job of making it easy to edit, preview, edit some more.
- When entering schools, you must select a school from their database, there is no free text input. According to their database, the Washington state capitol has no schools. .
Overall, I’m looking forward to seeing how GLEE develops. I’m sure they’ll iron out the obvious issues. Their network model is different from MySpace, the pathways are more tunneled and I’m not sure what I think about that. But I like it that I can see who’s viewed my profile, which for some inane reason, MySpace forbids.
[added] Obviously, the site is put together well enough that my complaints are all fairly trivial.
Add comment January 30th, 2007
