At The Urbane Way we spend our days using, perusing and pondering the world of social media. So when we learned about a new social network designed for business leaders in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community we wanted to hear more about this niche.
Created by Surface magazine founder Richard Klein, dot429 is as sophisticated and sleek as it is social media savvy. I logged in looking for something basic along the lines of LinkedIn and what I found was much more suited to an online magazine style.
We were pleased to have an opportunity to learn more about this endeavor, and all that helped bring it to light. The network is expected to reach 100,000 members nationally by the end of 2010.
UW: Tell me a little of the backstory behind creating dot429. What is the significance of the name of the network and what inspired it?
RK: I felt like there was something missing in the LGBT community. We were all interested in helping each other but there wasn’t any good national mechanism. I started talking with my friend Don Spradlin and together we designed a new type of networking community. I named it dot429 because 429 spells G-A-Y if you’re texting on an older phone, It’s actually an old code word for gay.
UW: How did you become interested in social networking?
RK: It’s hard to miss the power of social networking. I became interested years ago, seeing the power of sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. I realized that online social networking could provide the national component of dot429. But we wanted our offering to be more intimate and interesting, so we added lots of great content, including videos which introduce you to members, and we added live events as well.
UW: What made you feel that the the LGBT community and their straight allies were in need of a niche business network like this one?
RK: There’s always been an informal network, this just makes that network more powerful. Do we need to be more powerful? I think the 2008 election in California and the 2009 election in Maine proved that we’re still a long way from equality.
UW: I noticed in addition to the profiles, videos and events, you also feature articles on art, architecture and more. What specific site features were really important to include, in your mind?
RK: As I mentioned, we wanted to create an online experience that was more intimate and interesting than other sites. The content is extremely important. The videos let you get to know new people and the articles push you to think in new ways. We’ll be adding more features as we move forward as well.
UW: The site itself is very sleek and well-designed. How much did the design itself come into play when you initially began working on creating this network?
RK: We knew that our target audience would demand something sophisticated and intelligent. That was the design brief. We worked hard to ensure dot429 had a feel that makes our members comfortable and that we had content that intrigued them.
UW: I like the way dot249 focuses on both on and offline connections – both very important in business – was that one of the founding principles? Tell me a little of the impetus behind that concept in the creation of the site.
RK: We felt that there would be a backlash to online connection. People love the power of the Internet but they also crave real human contact. We also felt that our specific membership would be more excited about meeting each other than the membership of larger groups. We were right – the events are a lot of fun and we get a tremendously diverse crowd.
UW: When did you launch? What ways are you spreading the word about the site? How is it going so far – how many members are there currently?
RK: We began our events in January 2010 and launched the website in April. Our biggest marketing tool has been word of mouth. We hand-selected 500 founding members who were especially well-connected and asked them to help bring in thier networks. That’s worked great.
UW: What plans can we expect to see in the next few months on the site? Over the next few years?
RK: Right now we’re working on tools to help make our members more successful in their lives. I can’t give too many details right now but we’re focused on adding features to let members enrich their careers and lives. Over the next few years you’ll see the community really spread out – to smaller cities and towns in the US and to countries around the world.
UW: How large of a staff do you currently have running the site?
RK: We’re a group of around 15 people.
UW: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
RK: It is really gratifying to see the community come together at a dot429 event. We get an incredibly diverse crowd and find that everyone mixes really well. You may run into a movie director and an investment banker who are laughing with a small business owner and someone just out of college. And then you’ll see them figure out a way they can all help each other. It’s great.
From events to career opportunities to articles crafted by industry leaders, we at The Urbane Way were truly impressed by dot429 and think you will be too. See it for yourself or sign up for a profile at dot429.com.
Post by Stephanie Angelyn Casola, director of PR and Marketing at The Urbane Way and @Steph_Urbane on Twitter. At The Urbane Way, we specialize in social media marketing and PR and lifestyle branding. How can we help you?
Related Posts -
Stop Selling Features, Start Selling Nieghborhood After writing the post All Blog Posts Are Not Created Equal, I have really been thinking more and more about just how much our prospect know and understand our Urbane Brand when they arrive at the Urbane Underground to start their apartment search. With that understanding come perceptions and expectations...... - Turn Key Social Media for Apartment Communities Well, it has happened! Someone has created a Turn Key Social Media Product Offering for Apartment Communities. That someone, being Daniel McCarthy, chairman and CEO of Network Communications, Inc. (NCI), one of the nation’s largest local media companies, with web sites and local magazines serving the housing market are......
- Apartment Marketing: 10,000 facebook fans for your apartment community Good Morning Apartment Marketing Friends,We are starting to work internally much more intensely and are putting much more focus on "Growing the Numbers" of our Urbane Life Twitter following and our The Urbane Life Facebook Fans which will over all expand our Circle of Influence and Digital Footprint for Urbane Apartments.One......
-
A new type of comment spam popping up in community sites For those who run online communities, the battle against spammers is a never-ending struggle. Even as community managers get good at spotting shills and spammers, the enemy comes up with new ways to try to use your community to help their business.One thing you have to keep in mind about...... - What Social Media Isn’t I read a great article written by David Finch over at Social Media Explorer I aliken Davids example to what we are seeing from a lot of folks in the apartment industry. Posted by David Finch in June 12th, 2009 Social media is everywhere and for a lot of businesses......
Related Websites -
SEO Experts Tips Making Your Business Click PPC stands for Pay Per Click – a popular advertising technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser...... - Is Manual Link Building For You - It May Be There are a lot of SEO methods out there. And all of which have their pros and cons and manual link building is not an exception. This is nothing more than looking for the sites that you want to link back to yours and add them to that site or......
- Professional Blogging Roundup: All Saints Day Edition Happy All Saints Day, one day late, from Buildify. We hope your weekend has been productive and if it hasn't been yet, well we have another list of links for you to read through for some blogging ideas to help you get started. Corporate Blog Medium Shifting in Large Way......
- Weblogs Give You A Distinctive Social Networking By Allowing Comments Together With Buyers. An Important Website Can Be Quite A Area Of The Website Link Juice To Your Main Company Web Site. Always be really frugal with the collection of advisors. Choose one web marketing strategy at any given time. Become the next expert, study the ropes to make some funds so that you can try yet another. Open up your mind and listen for those right answers. Theyre coming. Search for......
-
Ou" title="paperfigs src="http://agingparentsauthority.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/paperfigs-300x199.jpg" width=300/>Ou" border=0>New Aging Parents Community Site Launched Our new aging parents community site has just launched and we're very excited about all the possibilities. We have set up a forum where we can all go in and talk about those things that matter the most to us. Let's face it. Taking care of our parents is not......
