Three More

These sites are all attractive and ready for you to check them out.

1. Quechup – You can search for people, start your own blog, submit videos of interest, chat, play games and more. I couldn’t determine the target user for it, but the first Ad Sense ad in the que cracked me up. “Find Adult Here. Visit our Adult Guide.” So there you go.

2. Gather is a robust online watering hole that invites in-depth conversation you can sink your teeth into. Gather isn’t messing around. The site has attracted over $20M in corporate investors such as former Lotus Chairman Jim Manzi, Pittsburgh Pirates’ CEO Kevin McClatchy, Allen & Company, The American Public Media Group, Hearst, The McGraw-Hill Companies, and Southern California Public Radio. They claim to attract over one million”highly educated, highly informed” adults each month. I was sold the instant I saw “Read thought provoking articles” on the homepage. That’s a value proposition aimed towards me!

3. TierraNatal targets a niche with style. Launched by my good friends at Digital Telepathy, this social site is “a unique Hispanic social network grown to provide a connection between Mexicans living in the US with their hometowns (tierra natal) in Mexico. There are over 300,000 towns listed with a beautiful UI to display the towns and states their in.” Techcrunch ran a good review, giving it a positive heads up.

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Of course, the matter’s not as straightforward as a 100 percent increase in as many days.  “The Spanish networks Neurona (with over one million members as of August 2007) and eConozco, which were acquired by XING AG, have shown particularly rapid growth in their markets,” admits a press release.  “The eConozco business network, which was only acquired in March 2007, has doubled in members to more than 360,000 since its purchase by XING AG.”

Still, growth is growth, and one need look no farther than Google’s countless acquisitions to confirm that companies of all sizes like to buy it.

Xing also points to “a substantial rise in the number of email invitations sent from the platform by XING members,” and, in comparison to the mess created by Quechup’s invites, it’s a credit to the network that people would want to tell their friends, family, and coworkers.

I owe a hat tip to Mashable’s Stan Schroeder for word of Xing’s progress.  At the same time, one of his coworkers, Pete Cashmore, puts it in perspective with the headline “200 Million MySpace Accounts.”  And for perspective on that story, Cashmore adds, “Some are even real people.”

Quechup’s Spam Produces Disgust

Yes, Quechup is a social network, and someone probably thought they were being terribly clever with that name.  I prefer Ken Camp’s designation “Rat Bastard Disease of the Internet,” however.  Camp became upset after Quechup emailed everyone in his address book with an invitation to the site.

Similar tales of spam have been told by CNET, E-consultancy.com, and the Scobleizer blog; the “any publicity is good publicity” rule does not apply.

Quechup responded by updating its privacy policy, according to Robert X. Cringely.  Cringely wrote, “The ‘Who do you know on Quechup?’ page now warns you that ‘by inviting contacts you confirm you have consent from them to send an invitation,’ which isn’t exactly the same as saying ‘We’re about to ransack your email address book like frat boys after a kegger,’ but is better than nothing.”

Still, at this point, Quechup’s actions are probably a little late.  Is anyone else reminded of the tomato joke from “Pulp Fiction”?