Yawn, another social network for beautiful people
Social networks for the good-looking only.
Entrepreneurs keep trying to pull this off. There were efforts back in 2004, when social networks first arose, to create exclusive social networks for beautiful people – velvet roped sites that kept out the plain Janes and Joes. But they didn’t seem to go anywhere, struggling with what criteria to use in order to keep standards high.
Now there’s ModelsHotel.com. Here, only professional models are accepted. They can post videos and information about themselves, find dates, and get advertised to by cosmetic and retail companies.
It was launched by Jesper Lannung with $100,000 in angel backing. A former communications intern at Deutsche Bank, Lannung, 25, is apparently based in New York, and is now seeking $1.5 million in venture capital. The WSJ has a piece about the company.
At least it isn’t based on voting, which has been a challenge for other sites. If you let outsiders vote on who is good looking or not, they have different tastes. If you only let insiders vote, there’s no fun. Sites in this genre are Beautifulpeople.net, and Hotenough.org (see outside coverage). Niche community Web sites have proven promising overall, but sometimes they are just too narrow, and this area may be one of them.
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About the Author, Matt Marshall
Matt launched VentureBeat in September of 2006, with the realization that no one else was covering the entrepreneurial and tech innovation scene with the velocity or depth that he was. Prior to founding VentureBeat, he covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. In 2002, Matt was awarded "Journalist of the Year" by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists. Prior to working at the Merc, he was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 to 1998, and a writer for the Washington Post in 1994. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University. In addition to VentureBeat, Matt is also the Executive Producer of DEMO, the leading launchpad event for emerging technologies.
