golfshake is a niche social networking site, targeted at golfers. In addition to the standard social features, golfshake adds many tools specific to the golf community.

Darren Ramowski originally submitted his site a couple months ago when it was golfscoretracker.co.uk. Since then he has done a complete overhaul and recently re-launched as golfshake.com. The new name and site are both big upgrades. As Darren explains in his blog, the main drive behind the switch was to promote the site to international (non-uk in the case) users. In addition the site has grown beyond a simple score tracking system to a full fledged community. The new name fits both these goals.

The original site was built seven years ago as a side project to help Darren’s golf game, as well as a way to refine his PHP/MySQL skills. The site has really taken off in the last 18 months as the user base has jumped from 1500 to over 16K. Darren attributes most of this growth to the additional community features which have encourages word of mouth advertising.

From Darren:

Within the last 2 years the site has seen some major updates to the code base and the introduction of lots of new features. Users can now get in touch with each other to arrange golf games, see how their golf compares with buddies, organize public events which other users can join and run golf societies online. It’s a bit of a cliche but it’s almost MySpace for golfers.

I’m a big fan of this sort of stat tracking/competition angle. It’s something that will keep users coming back and active on the site. The way Darren has incorporated the usual social networking features with features targeted directly at golfers is impressive. It is this integration of stat tracking and community that really set golfshake apart.

If you’re a golfer, golfshake is definitely worth checking out.

Popularity: 45% [?]

lib.rario.us is a social networking site focused on the media (CDs, DVDs, games, books) that you own or are interested in. Coincidentally TechCruch recently published an article about sites focused solely on cataloging books. The TechCruch article is mainly about Shelfari, butmentions others in the same space, although they fail to mention lib.rario.us. Social cataloging seems to be an up and coming niche.

lib.rario.us is the brainchild of M. Dave Auayan, who did all the original design, development and marketing. Recently his friend Jim Myhrberg has taken over primary coding duties. Like most of these projects Mr. Auayan started lib.rario.us to fill a personal need.

I started this project mostly because it was something my wife and I wanted, a site we can put up our media collection so friends and family can see what we have and what we like. I wanted to keep the data portable so that users would be able to use their info anywhere, not just lib.rario.us.

lib.rario.us has a great feature which allows a user to export their catalog into an excel spreadsheet. The site also has custom RSS feeds for each user, so you can track your friends without having to constantly visit the site.

I think the biggest issue with social cataloging is getting the information to the site. The thought of entering all my CDs, DVDs and books is quite overwhelming. The lib.rario.us form is simple enough and it uses Amazon’s API to ease the process. Also by using Amazon’s data the site can normalize the entries making matches easier.

I think this is an area where one site could take a huge lead over the competition. One idea would be to use bar code scanners, such as the CueCat, to make adding items much faster. An even cooler implementation, and one that is probably more likely to gain wider acceptance, would be to use webcams as the bar scanner. Imagine just waving a DVD in front of the camera and having the site automatically add the item. Flash could be used as the interface, since it can access a users local webcam (I’m pretty sure). The image recognition piece would be fairly tricky, but if it was easy then everyone would be doing it.

lib.rario.us is written in PHP and uses MySQL. The site is currently going through a major re-write which will be built using a custom framework. The site had been live for one year now and has grown through word of mouth and social bookmarking sites, such del.icio.us.

Mr. Auayan is currently trying to figure out how to monetize the site so they can grow it even further. In my opinion this type of site doesn’t lend itself well to the free/premium model (there is a buzz word for this, but I can remember it at the moment. Freemium? Anyone know?). I think there is too much competition who aren’t charging, plus I struggled thinking up a feature set that could be part of a premium package.

The first thing I would do, and this would be pretty simple since the app is already tied into Amazon, would be to add unobtrusive “Want this CD/DVD/Book? Buy it at Amazon” referral links. I don’t think users would mind this at all. Upon further review I see they’re already doing this. I think the key is tying the ads into the catalog so that they’re actually relevant to what the user is looking at. So rather than just sticking up some Google ads, I would become an affiliate at TicketMaster and have concert links for whatever band made the CD.

Another idea for monetization, although this is somewhat controversial, would be selling anonymous data. The type of information being gathered would be useful to companies doing market/trend analysis. If you had a big enough user base I think you could package the data in a way that protects the individual user’s privacy, while still providing valuable information to market research firms.

I would like to extend my thanks to Mr. Auayan for sharing his project. He’s facing some tough competition, but as a friend of mine always notes: competition just means there is a market for the product. Keep an eye out for lib.rario.us in the next Tech Crunch social cataloging post

Popularity: 17% [?]