What's white Hot in The Luxury Social Media by Lorre White, The Luxury Guru

This is part II of What's white Hot in the Luxury Social Media. 

Look at last Fridays postings for part I

 

The creation of NING which allows anyone to create a website/networking club instantaneously, based on their formula, has also facilititated ushering in a plethora of theses networking clubs.  NING also allows the member to instantly know if any other members are in their network, saving new members a great deal of time and effort discovering who is on the site.  However that also means that these folks are again being stretched thin as they are on multiple sites.

ASW (A Small World) is the grand daddy of the private invitation only social networking club.  It was started back in 2004.  There is even an “eliteness” break down within ASW.  Because ASW is now monetized and they need to grow in membership, the quality of the members as a whole is decreasing.  With quantity they loose quality.  Quality being measured in social connectedness world wide, wealth, education and international lifestyle.  So among it’s own members the closer to 2004 you were invited the more important and smaller your degree of separation, next consideration is the number of members in your network (they even have a category where you can look at the most connected members) and lastly the diversity of the nationalities of those in your network.  As ASW is growing, it is feeling growing pains, and the members have sought out their own method to prioritize members within ASW.  I am surprised that no one has thought to create a site ASW 2004, ASW 2005, etc ….depending on which year they joined ASW. 

ASW does not have video which is odd for such a elite group and the main page is very cluttered.  They have not done anything to appeal to their better educated wealthier demographic.  It requires a higher standard to meet the UHNWI expectations. Because of the poor layout, advertisements do not stand out very well.  The site freezes up and kicks members off.  It is “policed” and it’s Germanic rules are a lot like being in kindergarten.  They give you a virtual “time out” if your found conducting business on the site by taking away your PM ability or they won’t allow you to invite new members to connect to your network if the management feels that you are inviting people that you don’t know.  Members can be anonymously charged with an allegation, so there is no way to defend against just nasty or jealous people. The logistics of the site and the police state mentality of the management leave most ASWers utilizing other sites on a daily basis to stay in touch.  They keep their membership for status and for the early ASW contacts that they have made.  It definitely serves a purpose in aiding in international travel better than any other site.  If you want to rent a villa or find out about THE best restaurant or the hottest club of the hour…..ASW is the best site for that.

There is an AS Inner Circle ( A Small Inner Circle) site that has just launched claiming to be a spin off ASW and it is founded by Vally Sperber a seemingly lovely young woman from Tel-Aviv that joined ASW August 2008.  From every evidence, this site is trying to ride the coat tails of ASW name by an implied affiliation which is a clever but a misleading.  There is also another private site that was founded earlier called just “Inner Circle”.  This site seems to not be managed like a club and more of the personal interests of the founder.  People start these sites unprepared for the amount of time it takes to properly manage them and best intensions are deserted for lack of time or funding.  This is something that both members and advertisers need ponder before committing time and resources.   

Other sites that defined a niche missed by ASW, and targeted it, included SQUA.RE which is the 20 something Euro crowd that is very tech savvy and can run their own channel as apposed to static pages that all the other sites have.  I applaud the ingenious nature of this site and if you are at the single early 20s club hoping age or trying to reach the collage age and just entered the work force crowd this is a great site to invest in.  The management is much cooler and not wrapped as tight as the ASW management.  Many of the videos that they run are just advertisements and because of the age they hungrily watch the ads for “cool” things.  This would not market well to the slightly older 30, 40 and 50’s crowd that have the money to purchase the big ticket items and don’t historically respond well to advertisements.  Depending on the price point of your product, age targeted and geographic region, this could be a very interesting choice.

Qube which is Quintessentially’s private online club has interesting articles and has special offers in many of the major cities around the world for members.  There is no video and no opportunity to really interact with the other members to “meet” virtually.  They do have a blog and it does get used a good amount.  The majority of their members are of the age that they can afford to purchase so if your going after a group that can afford it, not just dream about it, Qube might make an interesting choice.  It has many of the ASW members with less policing.

I think the big disappointment has been how fast FaceBook has fallen.  It seemed to offer the easiest and most fun applications but they too are experiencing growing pains.  The site freezes up, many off the applications don’t work well and are launched before the bugs are worked out of it.  Many members are disappearing for no know reason.  When they come back on, they have lost their entire network and have the time consuming project of trying to build it back.  It is still huge and it crosses many demographics but what is surprising is the fact that the wealthy still utilize this site.  However, they are a group that not only likes exclusivity but good quality and if FaceBook does not get a control on the problems they risk loosing this demographic.

Comments

[Thomas Hodges]

I joined AS Inner Circle a couple of days ago, having received an invitation. Today I was banned ! I am accredited international artist, and joined a Group within AS Inner Circle entitled "The Art Group". Unfortunately, the Group was founded by the same founder as the site, namely Vally Sperber, described by yourself as

"a seemingly lovely young woman from Tel-Aviv".

Unfortunately, my experience leads me to proclaim that Vally Sperber is anything but. She found two of my artworks offensive, so decided to play policeman and censor my listing. The very same images she found offensive are loved by many and one of them even appears on my MySpace account (that should give you some idea of how offensive they are !).

Effectively, site like AS Inner Circle and the people who administer them, are just nobodies trying to make themselves feel important in this world.

My advice to allis, if you really want to be elite and recognised as such, stay right away from sites of this nature and people such as Vally Sperber. If anything, it will simply bring you down the ladder, not move you up it ! (IMO).

[Marielle Kraig]

I joined AS Inner Circle a few months ago and it seems like wonderful oasis. The invite to join this net is the best thing that happend to me for such a long time because I have met so many interesting people! this is the only place you can really meet like-minded individuals that you can TRUST.

I must admit it feels good being part of this one of it's kind club.

p\s it's true that ASIC is very strict,they keep only THE best and that is why I love it so much.

[Marielle Kraig]

I joined AS Inner Circle a few months ago and it seems like wonderful oasis. The invite to join this net is the best thing that happend to me for such a long time because I have met so many interesting people! this is the only place you can really meet like-minded individuals that you can TRUST.

I must admit it feels good being part of this one of it's kind club.

p\s it's true that ASIC is very strict, they keep only THE best and that is why I love it so much.

[Rachel Mayer]

I'm already a member of the ASInnerCircle.com's FB group but I need invite to join the real site (not the FB group)..
I have seen the post about ASIC on the Luxury Channel:

http://luxurylifestyle.typepad.com/luxury/

and it seems very cool and would could please send me an invite?

[Tina Jonasen]

Dear Lorre just looove your insights here, thanks a lot!!
Warm networking regards
Tina Jonasen
TheInternetNetworkingArchitect

ThinkInNewAreas
tina@thinkinnewareas.com

Ecademy BlackStar Country Leader Denmark
tina.jonasen@ecademy.com

Tel.: +45 50244044

PS:
would love to connect with you on Qube also - if you´ll invite me ;-)

[Valerie Collins]

There are more players entering the luxury,exclusive social networking market...Spire.com, qubers.com,Elixio.net, Decayenne.com....Asmallworld is not exclusive anymore...500,000 members...

[Sophia]

BORING!! ASW was alot of fun back in the days (2004-2005). Unfortunately when it began to grow and change, the trust diluted.
I remember wherever I used to go I was invited to people's homes. We were a wonderful group. Now I sometimes see some of these friends. They are all on my FB account.
ASW inner circle will never be able to recreate what happened in 2004. This website is a total wannabe. Hence the person that created this website was NOT even in ASW back in 2004.