When you look at the social networking space for 20-somethings in the US, you’ll see a crowded space that would make any entrepreneur shy away. But, as soon as you widen the field outside this age range or outside the US, the space is considerably more open. Miaplaza, which has been through a year long private beta, aims to grab marketshare in the untapped demographics of social networks.

Miaplaza centers around the idea of plazas, which are basically groups of people who share an interest–think Yahoo Groups, but with a tighter integration around social networking. All the usual features of social networks are there: the ability to add friends, look at the links between friends, messaging each other, and perusing member profiles. The plazas are grown organically, which is to say that members make their own plazas, and passionate members keep them alive with activity. This is similar to the portals at Zimbio, but with a stronger emphasis on social networking.

The key behind the plaza paradigm is that users are able to post various types of media, including photos, news, discussions, and recommendations. You can also surf these media types across all the plazas via the top navigation menu.

I met the founder of miaplaza, Johannes Ziegler, at Stirr, and he is a strong proponent of organic community growth, and looking for social networking oppurtunities outside the demographics of the usual players. For example, they have seen a huge growth in World Cup Soccer plazas, which have sprung up with users all around the world. Indeed, some of the other plazas that I see are “Parents of the Silicon Valley Area”, “Peninsula Bible Church”, and “Fly Fishing and Bird Hunting”–not the usual social networks you’ll see on the other popular sites. And a lot of them are garnering a decent amount of activity.

Right now, Miaplaza offers localizations for US, Canada, and Germany. They’ll be rolling out other countries soon.

Miaplaza is a social network to look out for. If they tap just a slice of the untouched social net, that may bring enough people and value to the system. However, I’m not crazy about their faded khaki color scheme, which I think should be made more colorful and friendly.

Remember Hot or Not? Not very useful, unless you really want to know what anonymous visitors think about your new hairdo, or, if you want to play a prank on your roommate by submitting his picture. But, what if we could use collective intelligence to decide if two people would be hot together? This is the premise behind the new dating site, MatchMake.Us.

Usually, dating sites involve submitting your profile, then browsing endless listings in hopes of finding that one fish in the sea that is compatible with you. But how likely is it that you’ll find that one profile that matches well? Even with the state of the art matching algorithms, there are still a lot of profiles to weed out. MatchMake.Us aims to turn the whole social dating site paradigm on its head by allowing users to essentially take part in match making other users.

Visitors are presented with two profiles and three buttons: “yes”, “maybe”, or “no”. After contemplating the viability of the two people’s relationship, they cast their vote. After a particular pair gets enough “yes” votes, they will both be contacted about the potential match, in which case they can contact each other. They just launched, so there aren’t that many profiles or voters yet, but I could see this being highly effective with a large user base. Why search through profiles when you can let other people suggest matches for you?

I had the chance to speak to Dale Thoms, founder of MatchMake.Us, at the Stirr Mixer 1.3, and he said that he has been getting great responses from women who love to play matchmaker in real life. Some of the upcoming features include support for matchmaker accounts, which will let matchmakers track how successful they are in making matches, and how they compare to other matchmakers. In a way, this is kind of like digg, instead of being first to find interesting links, you can be the first to suggest a successful couple.

Other new features to look out for are the ability to make lists of friends you may want to try to matchmake, and better searching capabilities. They’re really trying to be user-driven, and keep things simple and fun, which is a great philosophy.

When they get more votes in, it would be interesting to see on the front page lists of the most compatible couples, and most uncompatible couples, as voted by visitors. Another idea is for match seekers to message successful matchmakers to request to find a match for them. Matchmakers could either do this pro bono, or even charge a fee for doing it (if they’re good enough). There are numerous variants on matchmaking that could be done.

Overall, MatchMake.Us is a simple idea that could go a long way. I haven’t seen any service like this in the dating space as of yet, so it looks like they have a really original idea here.

Netscape recently launched their new beta portal, which will later replace the front page at Netscape.com. And suprise suprise, the new beta is a digg-clone, allowing users to democratically vote for stories, which are placed on the front page after they attain enough votes. The fact that they are placing this right on the front page is a sign that they’re taking the social news space seriously.

The interface is all-too familiar for us digg-ites out there. Users submit stories which are voted upon by other users. The stories then proceed up (or down) the ranks as users vote for them. The question is, will Netscape be able to overcome digg and the other social news sites out there?

Netscape has the advantage of volume–they have many more pageviews than digg, which could potentially bring in more quality stories and votes. However, Netscape is still hesitating about allowing users to control the content in its entirety. The stories on the absolute top of the stack are chosen by editors, instead of placing trust in the voted content. Netscape probably still has qualms about letting the mobs create the content on their most heavily prized web real estate, so I’m sure we won’t see those editorials go away anytime soon.

There are a few differences in the interface, most notable of which are:

• Photos are pulled in for some of the stories.
• Users are able to tag their submissions.
• Visiting an external link brings up a sidebar navigator frame along with the content.

The tagging function is sorely missed at digg, which I hope will make it into the next version when it comes out later this month. The sidebar navigator is simply annoying. I hate external sidebars, which should never used in my opinion. If I want to visit an external site, let me do it without dragging a klunky framed interface with me! (that goes for you too, Google)

But, other than these two elements, Netscape is pretty much identical to digg. I personally like digg’s design better than Netscape’s, which seems to have been crafted more haphazardly. Perhaps we’ll see another iteration on the design when it comes out of beta.

Amusingly enough, it looks like digg users are gaming Netscape’s system. The top story right now is about how Netscape is copying digg (along with a photo of Kevin Rose):

Looks like the Netscape people will have a lot of these kinds of issues on their plate in the next few days.

In the end, I think Netscape has a chance against the other established sites, simply based on their traffic ranking. And who knows, perhaps Netscape will help foster the idea of user generated democractic stories to the average internet joe, since a good chunk of them have Netscape.com as their homepage.

Rooftop Comedy has the goal of becoming the leading interactive media distributaion and syndication site for up-and-coming stand-up, sketch comedy and comic films. Launched in February of 2006, they currently have a large collection of comedy videos that are hard to find anywhere else. In addition, the interface is slick and the videos load quickly. Comedy fans that are looking for an alternative to traditional comedy channels should definitely pay attention to this site.

RC is powered by a comic, a computer geek, and former broadcasters (some of whom were from the interactive agency IconMedialab) who have realized that the traditional media channels haven’t been fully successful in connecting comics with comedy fans. There simply isn’t a place for comedy fans to enjoy a wide array of comic videos–RC is currently trying to fill this space by providing an online comic video vertical.

Users are able to search videos by comic, rating, or club. With literally hundreds of comics and thousands of videos to choose from, comedy fans of all tastes should be able to find videos worth watching. The interface for watching videos is intuitive and familiar, with a right hand menu allowing users to browse top clips and related clips. All videos are delivered via Windows media player, and they suggest that your connection be able to sustain a 600kbps downstream. In my experience, the videos started quickly, and were on par with the other video giants like YouTube and vimeo. They are also working on delivering content via podcasts. What I would like to see are options for video podcasts and audio podcasts, which would allow users to choose the best option for them.

When viewing clips, you’re also able to rate them and send links to friends. They mentioned that commenting would be available, but I didn’t see any forms for that on the video page. Being able to comment and discuss clips would be a great feature for fostering a community on the site.

RC’s business model is based on a combination of advertising, merchandising, and premium subscriptions. Right now, there is no cost to join, and they will never charge to view the newest content. Premium subscriptions (which have yet to be established) will allow users to access the entire video archive. There will never be a cost for comics to participate. Rooftop Comedy could be very successful, especially if their content keeps growing. They could potentially be the iTunes of comic media.

As RC matures, they say that they will be rolling out some never-before-seen interactive features, and they are hoping to expand their video content to even more comic performances around the world. They are doing this by partnering with local comedy clubs, allowing them access to syndicate their content.

Overall, Rooftop Comedy excels at bringing quality comic content to users. Watch out for them as they trump the traditional comedy media outlets by providing the long tail to users who are just craving for that comic that they saw at a small club that will never be broadcast on TV.

There’s been some buzz about bloggerkit, which allows any blogger or content creator to automatically pull in Amazon ads that are relevant to specific keywords. There’s no registration required, and the process looks like a cinch to set up. The catch is that bloggerkit takes 15% of the referrals, and you end up with the rest. For a small blog with limited resources, this looks to be a good alternative to the endless clicking that all Amazon Associates are familiar with. However, for a site that depends a lot upon ad revenues, it may not be the best choice to lose 15% off the top. If you have the know-how, you should be able to write the code that grabs the Amazon ads based on your content.

Bloggerkit raises a question that I’ve been trying to answer: why doesn’t Amazon provide this service directly? It’s a huge incentive for bloggers to be able to provide context relevant Amazon ads, and it would only make Amazon’s Associate program stronger. It wouldn’t be too much effort for them to get it implemented.

Now here’s an idea: a social networking site that doesn’t thrust you into popularity games with all the excluding of “unpopular” people, and the idolization of a few lucky profiles. This is exactly what the recently launched social site, The Impersonals, is trying to do. They plainly state on their front page that the inspiration behind The Impersonals is that

We couldn’t find a personals site we weren’t embarrassed to join, so we made our own.

The site takes the social web to a new level of minimalism. Users can create a profile, which consists answering a few questions (we’re talking about 5 or 6), and send up to three messages a day to other users. You can also bookmark users you find interesting, and, you’ll be notified if they bookmark you. In terms of functionality, that’s about it for The Impersonals. But in this case, their strength is derived from the ease of entry–there are no long questionaires that make you rack your brain for the best answers, there are no complicated popularity ranking schemes that would make anyone’s head spin, and there is no exclusive referral system that restricts joining the network. The Impersonals is a site that simply allows you to post your profile with a few witty comments, and see what responses you get.

I’m a sucker for simplicity, and, The Impersonals is doing the right thing at the right time. Hopefully, we’ll see their network grow.

Right now, it looks as though they’ve been dugg, and, as it turns out, their male to female ratio is severely skewed to males (goes to show who the typical digger is). They’re trying to get as many women to join as possible now, so invite your girlfriends, or they’re going to have a social network imbalanced meltdown.

Consumating, which is part of CNet, has recently relaunched with a fresh new design and attitude. Consumating’s users are mostly young workers in their 20’s and 30’s who probably scoff at networks like MySpace. Right now, the emphasis is on social networking, with some shades of dating.

There a few features that sets Consumating apart from the crowd. First, users are able to tag other users. From what I’ve seen, tagging is used pretty creatively, from tags like “brings_the_devil_out” to “physicists_can_be_quarky”. Of course, you can also tag yourself with your own set of tags. Consumating is successfully bringing tags into the social networking world, just like Flickr did in the online photo world.

But, what would a social network be without the aspect of popularity? Consumating allows you to rate users with a thumbs up or down, which goes into a point-based calculation for that particular user. You can see who the most popular users are on the Popularity Leaderboard. What’s interesting is that you can also sort popularity by tags, which allows you to focus in on a particular set of users that might have similar interests as you (as deemed by the user, and the other users who have tagged him or her).

Consumating also does a good job of prodding their users to be creative. They run interesting weekly questions that are posed to all the users. If a user answers the question, it shows up in their discussion (which is kind of like a blog for a user’s stream of messages). This continually generates interesting content that can be funny, witty, or just weird. It’s really a great way to create a sense of community. Some other features include polls and contests, all of which make for interesting user generated content.

Even though the site design is a little cluttered, I think Consumating has a great chance to break into the social networking space, especially for the age group they’re targeting. They’re doing a lot of great content related things that would bring back users for more, and, at the same time, allowing users to discover other user’s who have something in common with them.

There’s already a multitude of reviews, both good and bad, about Google Spreadsheets (Techcrunch, rev2.org, Solution Watch). And, there’s even a screencast at sitening for those of you not lucky enough to get in on an invitation.

Instead of doing an extensive review, which many of the other bloggers have already done, I’ll just give some of the highlights and first impressions.

Pros

• Fast and instant access anywhere (what we’ve come to expect from Google)
• Ability to share and chat on the spreadsheet with other users
• Excel users will be very comfortable with the interface (maybe, even a little too comfortable)
• Nice file exporting and saving features

Cons

• No search, as Techcrunch pointed out (although, we wouldn’t be banging on this issue if it were another company, like Microsoft)
• No advanced features like graphs, which may be a deal killer for a lot of people
• Lack of right click context menus, which is a difficult problem to deal with in a web application

In the end, the question is, will people actually use it? Or will it go the way of many of Google’s other applications, which seem to be merely experimental. There are other spreadsheet apps that are more feature complete than Google’s, including Numbler and NumSum.

The advantage that Google Spreadsheets has is the potential integration with other Google services, like Gmail, Writely, or whatever other web app it decides to deploy next (online Visio and Project anyone?) The collaboration aspect to Spreadsheets is quite clean, and if they could emphasize and extend the ease of sharing across apps and with many people, it could be very useful.

Again, before any company would jump to using this app, there’s still the privacy and security aspect. Would you be comfortable holding all your important (and potentially classified) spreadsheets on Google’s servers? I think the answer for most companies is a very simple “no.”

TagFetch is a search app that will do a quick tag search of some major sites that support tags. The current set of sites include flickr, reddit, del.icio.us, Technorati, Feedster, YouTube, NewsVine, and Tailrank. The feature set is small right now, allowing you to do tag searches, and save searches (if you log in) for use later on.

But, the key is TagFetch’s speed. When I’m trying to track a subject, it can get cumbersome to search through a lot of tagging sites. Most of the time, I find that tag searches are pretty slow, especially for the larger sites that have huge tag clouds. It’s nice to have TagFetch do all the heavy lifting.

Some features that I would like to see:

• Searches for digg, other photo and video sites, wikipedia
• A more robust “View More” feature that expands the search results (instead of clicking through them four at a time)
• RSS feeds for searches that aggregates results when they change
• Suggestions for related tags

Overall, TagFetch is a nice, simple service that works as advertised.

After seeing Richard’s chmod 777 post, and reviewing a new mega-reviews site, it got me thinking that it’s a great time to have an opinion on the web. There are a vast number of reviews and rankings sites out there that will let you throw in your 2 cents (and many more launching each day). So, here I present my list of reviews sites.

Notice that I’m leaving out social news and simple voting sites like Digg. The focus of this list will be on individuals making their voice heard through reviews on specific items.

Products
Amazon
The Mint Pages
iNods - A product reviews aggregator
ResellerRatings
MyPickList
Epinions

Media (Books, Music, Films, etc.)
All Consuming
Books Well Read
Reader2
MyFilmz
Criticker

Housing
Apartment Ratings

Brick and Mortar
Yelp
Judy’s Book
Burritophile
Zipingo
Add Your Own - Manhattan restaurants and reviews
Insider Pages

Anything and Everything
The Best Stuff in the World
RateItAll

Web 2.0 and Websites
BuzzShout
Web 2.0 List
Neobinaries
StumbleUpon
BringALink

Wine
Cork’d
TastyDrop
Nosewine
Wind Diary

Computer, Electronics, Gaming
gibbity

Travel
TripConnect
Epic Trip
43 Places
Trip Advisor
TravBuddy
IgoUgo

Education
RateMyProfessor

This list is by no means complete, so please comment below with your favorite sites that let you rant and rave about your favorite things.