Social Media

Hotspottin Launches Social Network For Hotspots


Hotspottin, which launched last week, is a new social network that helps users find new restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels and places to hang out. One of the major features is a Digg-like voting system for hotspots, and frankly I find that a big turn off. We see scores of new Digg clones being released every month (most of them based on Pligg) and none of them will go anywhere. Digg seems like one of those ideas that only works once - even Netscape, with its huge audience, is struggling to get any traction. And niche versions of Digg aren't like niche MySpace clones - connecting with friends has universal appeal. But voting on news items? Not so much.

That said, the Hotspottin feature set is a bit more advanced than most. Users have their own profile pages with a picture, a list of their favorite hotspots, a list of friends, a photo gallery and all their hotspot submissions. Profile pages also include your stats - rating and submitting hotspots earns you points which determine your rank. You can explore hotspots by city (including a few international venues) or find the top Hotspotting contributors. What's more, it's not just events that you can rate - there's also a voting system for photos, making the site much more visual. The business model seems to be charging for featured hotspots, which would only work if they get a significant number of users.

Hotspottin isn't a bad effort at all - if you overlook the striking resemblance to Digg, that is. The design is fairly appealing and I like the focus on photos. Perhaps they could look into building an events widget for blogs and MySpace pages, or creating a browser bookmarklet for adding events from around the web. Maybe they could even partner with some tourism sites - providing a dynamic list of the "top hotspots in New York City", for instance. Even so, it seems like a long shot - all these niche networks have problems building a user base.

    Hotspottin User?

    Mashable's Hotspottin profile is here - feel free to add Mashable to your friends.

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