Jeden Tag liken Menschen die unterschiedlichsten Dinge auf facebook: Musiker, Filme, Orte, und sogar Jahreszeiten. Doch haben Sie schon einmal überlegt, was diese Likes über Sie aussagen? Was wäre, wenn all diese Dinge plötzlich bunt und hochauflösend auf Ihrem Profil zu sehen wären? Eine neue Social Media Plattform namens CircleMe macht jetzt genau das möglich. Was genau dahinter steckt und wie es funktioniert, erklärt uns der Macher von CircleMe und CEO des Internet Startups Cascaad, Giuseppe D’Antonio im Interview.

1. What’s the idea behind CircleMe? Behind CircleMe there is a very specific vision that me and Erik Lumer (my partner, and founder of Cascaad) had when we came up with this concept. We believe that the web experience should become more personal, to be more valueable for each user. Social networks are important because they help us connect with people, but first of all it is important to connect with our passions and interests in life. The people we interact with often come as a consequence of what our interests in life are. CircleMe is a place where you “connect” with all your likes and passions in life first, so that that you can enjoy them more. You can manage all your passions in one place; feel in control  and use the system as a place where you can track all the things that interest you. Then, as you connect and engage with all these passions in life, you will get benefits from the technology and the social environment around you: you will get information about those interests, find like-minded people who might enjoy your same interest, and discover events around these things. But the first step is to tell to the world who you are, by stating simply what you like: as we like to say, in life it is important to “Be What You Like”.

2. How many members does CircleMe have right now? We have been in a closed Private Beta (by invitation only) during the summer, and we preferred to have a community of few hundreds of users to make sure we could hear their feedback one by one. Since we worked well in the summer in making sure the product was robust and easy to use, this past Tuesday (just 6 days ago!) we changed the access method to what we call a Viral Beta, and now we have already thousands of users. Sign-ups have been overwhelming and they are growing rapidly. Now we have to make sure on one side to continue to have people interested in joining, while providing a great experience to all the thousands already using our service.

3. Why should people join CircleMe? What is it that makes it unique? I would say at least 2 reasons. On one side, I believe CircleMe is revolutionary as it puts the individual in the “center” again, not as one of the connections of a social network, but as the person who is defined by all the things that in life he or she is passionate about (we say that “CircleMe makes you ‘re-connect’ with yourself”). And secondly, because CircleMe will provide an easy, friendly and elegant way to manage someone’s interests and be able to do more with these ‘likes’ in real life. With CircleMe a person finally gets information and events related just to the things s/he likes, because s/he has everything under control. This second reason also implies that CircleMe becomes a great tool to discover (through serendipity) new things to like, as both technology and the social aspect will allow people to share things liked by others.

4. CircleMe is in a beta phase right now. How can people join in the network? Simple. Today people can sign up to CircleMe by either getting an invitation from a current user of CircleMe, or by using the Facebook Connect button, which will check if there is at least a Facebook friend already using CircleMe. In both cases, the person can sign-up to CircleMe and start enjoying this new web experience. If by any chance none of these two cases applies, no worries: the person can still leave us his or her email address and we will invite them in the near future. We use this system to make sure we can grow with a steady pace, to provide everyone with a stable and good service. To sign-up to the service, go here:http://circleme.com/users/sign_up

Wir haben uns die Plattform einmal näher angeschaut:

Die Profilansicht ist sehr auf Big Picture angelegt. Die Statusmeldung besagt, womit man sich gerade beschäftigt. Leider kann man bisher nur Interessen angeben, die von CircleMe vorgegeben werden. Das bedeutet, man kann nicht einfach “Arbeit” eingeben, sondern wählt aus generierten Vorschlägen, die “likeable” sind. 

Links sieht man die Menschen, mit denen man connected ist (“Trusted”) und Menschen mit ähnlichen Interessen (“Neighbors”) sowie ToDos. Der Rest der Profilseite ist ganz den Likes des Users gewidmet. Über die persönlichen Vorlieben bekommt man sofort einen Eindruck über die Persönlichkeit des Users und sieht, ob gegebenenfalls gemeinsame Interessen bestehen.
Wir finden, CircleMe ist eine schöne und übersichtliche Plattform, auf der sich alles um unsere Vorlieben dreht. Hier steht der User im Zentrum seiner Likes und präsentiert sich eben durch diese.