SparkSocial.Me – A Social Hub On the Rise
In the world of social networking, there are several big players everyone knows about. The top five by Alexa at this moment are: Facebook, the most famous and infamous because of its constant changes; the short and concise Twitter; LinkedIn for business people and those who want business; Pinterest for anyone who likes cooking, DIY or just about anything pretty; and Google+ that is… Um, well, Google. So, being a new social network in this day and age is a tough business, but SparkSocial.mewill is on a roll just the same and wants to be the social hub.
Fresh Start
Fresh off the factory lane and still in Alpha, Spark.Social.me has yet to hit its first month anniversary, so don’t say that you didn’t hear about it early enough. At first glance, you may say that it took several cues from several social networks, but don’t let the first impression fool you. By browsing and playing with its options you will soon get a distinctive feeling of its own. One of the first things that caught our eye was the easy way in which you can change your color scheme, and customize your profile.
Opening your account is easy, but two things were a bit hazy. First, if you try to browse for your time-zone, you will have to find it by browsing through list that is set by actual time zones. Cute, but not helpful when you are searching for your town among all others, unless you are a geography enthusiast. Second, log-in ID is your username, not your e-mail. It was a bit confusing, because during sign-in you are asked for those two and you get asked for the third one.
What Can You Do?
These two things aside, everything else was smooth sailing. The interface is clear and it incorporates a lot of things that other networks support and some more. You can update your status, upload a picture, a song, a video, link something, add your blog entry and even set a pool. You can also create listings (helpful for those of us who have trouble picking out gifts for others!), events or a page.
While there is an option to see who is online, that is easily nicked in your privacy settings. The hub is neatly organized and you can customize it easily and for literally every type of item that is published by you or your friends. The Arcade section is very interesting. There you can play a ton of games without leaving the site and you can see how you rank among others.
SparkSocial.me is a very young social hub that is off to a good start. With a few tweaks it could become great. However, anything social is as good as their users, and so far there are few too many to distinct them by that criteria. But there is no doubt that it will find its target group and slowly spread to the rest of the population.
