TechCrunch wrote an article today about ModelsHotel, a social network for models only. You have to be a professional model to join. The writeup was prompted by an article about ModelsHotel in the WSJ, which mentioned that the site just got a $10,000 banner ad deal, and is looking to raise $1.5 million in capital.
Normally this would be a pretty ordinary story about a vertical social network in a decent niche.
However, I noticed that ModelsHotel is running AlstraSoft E-Friends, a $300/year social networking package (good ol “view source”). In fact, other than removing the standard header & footer, ModelsHotel doesn’t look that tweaked.
Granted, I’m not a model, so perhaps there’s more custom functionality that just isn’t visible from the outside.
So what’s my point? Well, I have one point and one concern:
Point: (Initial) success in the web can come from innovative technology, business prowess. Having both is great but not required.
In the case of ModelsHotel, it’s not the technology. ModelsHotel isn’t getting $10,000 advertising deals, Wall Street Journal articles, & the hope of $1.5 million because they spent paid $300 for some software and spent a week installing it and tweaking the template. They’re getting this action because of the niche they chose, the company focus, the effort they’ve put into the business (outside of the actual software effort), and the business skill and connections of the owners, management, and staff.
Their technology isn’t winning them anything — their business side is. The technology merely enables their business focus to succeed (at least for now). You cannot pay $300 for off-the-shelf SNS software, do nothing else, & wait for the money to roll in.
Concern: ModelsHotel will need to do something with the site to prevent competition
From what I can tell, the software they’re running seems very similar to the default eFriends install. If I’m right, that means that someone could create a same-or-“better” ModelsHotel clone in a weekend. And since ModelsHotel has a very restrictive entry policy (apparently it only has 1000 members), a competitor might be able to quickly get the same number of members.
I’m not saying that ModelsHotel can’t successfully fend off competition purely through non-technical means (marketing, partnerships, contracts, significant market/mindshare, covert model hacker squads sent to destroy competitors’ servers, etc). Because again, you can be successful through non-technical means.
But still, especially given the fact that it’s a web company … it’s going to be much harder to stave off competing networks if they stick with the default install. My $0.02.
