Duncan Riley of TechCrunch blogged today about Damsels in Success, a new business-oriented social site for professional women. The name is of course a play on “Damsels in Distress.”

Duncan felt that because he was male, he was “totally unqualified to pass judgement” on the site. I think Duncan’s judgement would have been ok, but I admire his sentiment. I’m male, too, but I’ll try to give it an honest review. I will agree that, like Duncan, I’m not part of the site’s target community, and so I can’t promise to know whether it’ll meet the particular needs of women or not. So I’ll try to keep my review focused on how it does as a social network in general, based on my opinion (of course).

Features

Nice looking site. I definitely see the LinkedIn angle, w/ the Jobs section being so prominent. Then again, the site is about women & business. When you register, there are a number of required fields (e.g. age) that could be a turnoff.

The “stories” feature is neat, since they’re not just random blog posts, but instead posted as answers to specific questions, giving the site owners a chance to encourage users to contribute, steer the content, & keep it aligned w/ the theme.

The forums are run by up to 50 “damsels,” and only they can start threads, although anyone can comment on an existing thread. There’s also an advice/ask the expert area, where the expert blogs about community-submitted questions and people can comment.

Issues

Three main downsides that I see:

The name

Overall, more (female) TechCrunch commenters seemed to feel the name was a lame, cutesy pun off a sexist statement, rather than sharp and clever. I think the name is fine, but it may hurt their acceptance and turn off a percentage of the very people they want to attract. Then again, there may be people who love the name(?).

Profile section

The actual profile section feels a bit watered down, but I suspect that’s because the site is still pretty new. I’m sure they’ll flesh it out as the community grows. And maybe I’ve been looking at too many “fancy” social networks these days. There are a number of required profile fields (e.g. age) that I’m not sure why they’re required, and could be a turnoff.

Restricted User Generated Content

Maybe I missed it, but it doesn’t seem like ordinary members can initiate a new topic or line of thought anywhere (other than by thread hijacking, or by sending in a question to the Advice area & hoping it gets blogged about). You can only respond or comment on existing questions, posts, and topics created by either the site owners or the up-to-50 official “damsels.”

If I wanted to ask the community a new question (e.g. “What other social networks would you recommend for women in business?”), I wouldn’t be able to.

I can see how “steering” content can help encourage participation, strengthen a theme, and reduce off-topic threads, but I still think community members should be allowed to start threads to ask something new, otherwise they may go elsewhere if they don’t see their particular question. Even a “General Discussion” type forum would help.

I assume this was a deliberate design decision by the site, and I’d be interested in learning more about the rationale. And again, I may be missing something.

Technology

From a technology angle, it’s written in ASP.NET — something you don’t see very often for startups. I’m glad to see .NET being used, as Rails & PHP (or at least Rails) often get all the love.

Monetization

Since jobs are featured so prominently, my guess that the site will eventually offer some sort of fee-based “enhanced” job posting. I’ve seen loads of blogs & communities allowing me to post a 30-day job ad for $75-$300, so perhaps there’s some money to be made in the niche job site market. Most social networks’ revenue models seem to be restricted to “ads”, “get acquired”, and/or “huh?”, so perhaps it’s nice to see a change of pace.

Revenue could also be gained from advertising, but that’s pretty much a given.

Conclusion

Yet another social network, but I haven’t seen many in that particular niche, and I think the business/jobs focus and atypical revenue possibilities might help it rise above the tide. I really think they need to loosen the controls on the content, though, otherwise the community might go to a less restricted site. I’m also a bit concerned about the name, but maybe it just means that there’s room in the niche for more than one site?