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"Normally the beta testers of new social networks are tech pundits, journalists, bloggers and developers.  But that's not the case with Conde Nast's new social network Flip.com, which has invited 200,000 girls to participate in a beta launch this week.  Everyone else will have to wait until the site opens up in February.\nFlip is basically a more feminine version of MySpace: users create \"flip books\" by posting photos, videos, blog entries and the rest.  That sounds a lot like what people are already doing on MySpace: importing MySpace layouts and posting RockYou slideshows, videos from YouTube and photos from Photobucket.  Piczo, which appeals to young girls, is another potential rival.\nBut Flip is more about telling a story, it seems (similar to Scrapblog) and the infuriatingly small screenshot sent out to the media makes it look as though there might be Flash involved.  It'll also include groups, commenting and a different take on advertising - rather than banner ads on flip books, they'll use interstitials when you move from one page to another (these are the super-annoying ads that fill the whole screen when you try to view some online newspaper articles).  Personally, I think they'd be smarter to try commercial profiles from the start: MySpace discovered the value of opt-in advertising by accident (becoming friends with a brand, aka MySpace Marketing), and YouTube took the idea further by launching its brand channels.  Now the model is established, you can make sure it's implemented properly from the start.\nThis generation won't read magazines, and the publishers are starting to realize that blogs and social networks are the future of their industry - blogs for content, and social networks for community (eg. TeamSugar).  As a result, there's a mad scramble to build or buy these sites.\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2006/12/21/flipcom-launches-but-only-for-girls/>