Brand new Ireland-based social-networking site IGOpeople officially opened its shiny new beta doors to the public today, and straightaway you can throw out the comparisons to Bebo, Facebook or MySpace because it has a slightly different mission – to be a ‘network for the real world’.
So how exactly do you go about being a real-world network? Well, the IGO stands for individuals, groups and organisations, which each get their own category on the site, but can cross over.
So if you join as an individual, you can also become part of special-interest groups where you share information with others, and you can also contact the official firms through the organisations part of the network and ostensibly ask them questions about their products or services as a customer or potential customer.
Straight off the bat, what I like about IGOpeople is the fact that you have a clear timeline of your updates and of those you follow. Yes, I know Facebook does this rather well, but IGO cuts out the clutter and has a really clean, straightforward display.
One of the stronger features by far on IGO is the messaging feature. Instead of declaring ‘I am doing x or y’ like on Facebook, or tweeting out a simple message as you would on Twitter, you have a full WSIWG editor with which to declare your presence or what you are doing by adding in pictures, web links, formatted text and so on.
Another good addition is the ability to follow and see threaded conversations – much easier than keeping track of tweets.
Speaking to Campbell Scot, CEO of IGOpeople, gadgetrepublic.com discovered that Darragh Curran, lead developer, knows the Twitter API pretty well. He is currently looking into auto-tweeting IGO updates, as well as developing a technique to refine the newsfeeds based on trust. Can’t wait!
By Marie Boran
