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Netropolitan Is a Facebook For the Affluent, and It's Only $9000 To Join
MojoKid writes Facebook has become too crowded and too mundane. With around 1.3 billion Facebook users, it's understandable to be overwhelmed by everything and want to get away from it all. However, unlike Facebook which is looking to connect everyone to the internet, there is a new site called Netropolitan that focuses more on exclusivity and privacy. The site was founded by composer and former conductor of the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra James Touchi-Peters who wanted to provide a social media site for affluent and accomplished individuals. People wishing to join need only pay a mere $9,000 to join. Of that amount, $6,000 is the initiation fee and the remaining $3,000 is for the annual membership fee which users will continue to pay. So what does the initiation and annual fee get you? For starters, Netropolitan will offer an ad-free experience and will not promote any kind of paid promotions to its members. However, it will allow the creation of groups by businesses in which members can advertise to each other under certain guidelines.
and you only need to pay me $100k to join! Hurry, offer is limited!
$6,000 to join $3,000 pa and they only have a .info domain? Nothing says "exclusive" and "accomplished" like a .info domain...
Nope. But you can start your own version of Slashdot, and ask $9000 to join.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
It's rich people. Let's just put that down in here in black and white. A nine-thousand-dollar entry fee doesn't test for your contributions to medicine or the arts, or whether you've taken your hard-earned wealth and invested it in a nice brownstone filled to the brim with the best contemporary art has to offer. That $9000 bouncer will be just as happy to let in every reality TV star, pop artist, flash-in-the-pan record producer, and fleetingly-wealthy action movie screenwriter.
And if you think that a $9000 fee is going to stop somebody from registering just so they can grab all your "private" communications and put them up on the public web, you have seriously underestimated human puckishness.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
That $9000 bouncer will be just as happy to let in every reality TV star, pop artist, flash-in-the-pan record producer, a
Those TV and music starlets will stay on FB because they want and need to stay in touch with their fans.
The wealthy have always segregated themselves. That $10k membership fee in the golf club is not because keeping the grass short is so expensive, either. It is to make sure everyone you meet there is in your class.
Frankly speaking, I'm mostly surprised that this doesn't already exist.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I tried your http://127.0.0.1/ website and all I see is porn.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
I've done work for country clubs and "keeping the grass short" is very expensive. The equipment and grounds crews for a 18 hole golf course are both extensive.
Most operate at least one full-service restaurant and bar area, sometimes more than one in certain seasons (ie, fine dining room and a more low-key grill type food service) and they staff them like they were going to be 3/4 full despite being empty or only 1/3 full much of the time. Food waste is huge, plus they usually feed their employees a separate meal.
A lot of clubs have big, old clubhouses that are maintenance nightmares. They don't get replaced because its a multi-million dollar expense that has to be paid for through assessments on members and there's a romantic attachment to the clubhouse because someone famous played there 100 years ago.
And your $10k initiation fee? That's a joke, $10k is for some low-rent club with a bowling-alley class snack bar. Try $100k, which usually buys stock which is refunded to members when they resign the club. It's usually $2k/month with dues, food and beverage and golf fees. And this is for a better Midwestern club, I'd double those figures on the coast, or more in certain places.
The fees aren't to keep people out, either, even if they have that effect, they're just to keep the place running. The members openly practice discrimination on who gets to join, you don't just apply for membership, you have to be asked and sponsored by a current member. But despite the veil of exclusivity, most really make ends meet by renting the place via their banquets office and low-cost "social" memberships that enable use of the foodservice areas. They need them to keep the place running.
Frankly speaking, I'm mostly surprised that this doesn't already exist.
It does exist, but it's in a real-world setup. You know, if you want to have a discussion with your buddy that lives 1,500 miles away, you can email/chat/facebook/twitter them. And there you are, holding your $device in your hand looking silly to anyone that's not doing the same. But you don't see really wealthy people standing around with their eyes glued to some $device. That's because they can just get in their private jet and go talk to their friends, or vice versa. They can afford the time to do so because they have people that do their lawn, people that clean their houses, and people that make them money. Rich people would have the poorer people believe that time=money, but they know that time is waaay more valuable than money. If you spend your time making money, then they can spend their time living life.
So what we have is not so much the need for a private club that keeps the 99% out, as it is a need for a free place for the 99% to go to stay out of the way of those in the 1%.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
What's to stop you and 8,999 of your closest 4channers from pitching in a buck each, sharing the login creds, and wreaking havoc on the place?
A big part of exclusivity is secrecy. The most exclusive establishments do not advertise. Their names are passed around hand to hand. The simple fact that we the unwashed masses know about this service means its ill suited for its purpose.
Perhaps it might serve as an effective trap for the new rich... but the whole thing strikes me as more then a little absurd. Especially when you can find the royal families of a few countries on Facebook.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
People.
The reason is people.
They put their bar and siting room and tennis court in their leaflets, but you buy your membership because of who is sitting, drinking and playing there. And the information they have.
bickerdyke
Necropolitan is even more exclusive.
It's free to join but only open to the dead.
There's a prominent and well-known orchestra in Minnesota: the Minnesota Orchestra, renamed quite a few years back from the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra. The Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra, which the Netropolitan founder was affiliated with, is something entirely different, being founded recently as a specifically GLBT-friendly orchestra. Just trying to avoid confusion.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Frankly speaking, I'm mostly surprised that this doesn't already exist.
It does. There's a Craiglist-type feature on Bloomberg trading info terminals. Yachts, rentals in the Hamptons, that sort of thing. You can message other people via the Bloomberg system if you see something you like.
There's a paid social network for rich conservatives. This is independent, not a Bloomberg thing. It's only $5/month, which is apparently enough to keep the noise level down.
There's a persistent rumor that there are special news sources for rich people. There are, but they're very narrow. There are lots of newsletters you can buy for $50 to $1000 a month that provide detailed coverage of obscure business subjects. If you really need to know what's going on with bulk carrier leasing, oil drilling equipment activity, or wafer fab capacity shortages, there's a newsletter for that. Offshore Alert, which covers offshore scams, is one of the more readable ones, and you can see the first few lines of each story for free. There are expensive newsletters devoted to security and terrorism, which give the illusion of inside information, but they tend to be marketing tools aimed at rich paranoids.
If you want to know what's going on in the world, read The Economist. After you've been reading it for a year, you'll have a good understanding of how the world works.