Social Network Sites in the Real World

Grabbing some lunch in a local pub on Sunday I came across a poster advertising a social network I had never heard of:

This particular SNS's angle is to encourage you to buy 'X-cards', which you can hand out to people so that they can look at your x-me profile. However, despite being around since at least 2007 (according to the date on the homepage), X-me.co.uk fails to show any traffic on either Alexa or Compete; this means that the 'social' network gets less traffic than Webometric Thoughts!!

It's not the first time someone has tried to link the offline world with the online world (you may remember my world famous qr code t-shirt), but it is the first time I have ever seen a SNS advertised in a pub toilet. I would be intrigued to know what sort of money they spent on this inappropriate advertising campaign, surely the site would have gained more coverage by sending a press release out to a few technology blogs.

The X-Me cards are a rather flimsy reason to join a SNS, and the site owners would have probably been more successful building an application onto an existing SNS and focusing on the creation of some high quality business cards (e.g., moo.com).

(Nb. Taking photos in men's toilets is becoming a worryingly regular occurrence ).