Acobay is a social network with the idea that you should get along pretty well with someone who uses the same kind of phone you use, or drives the same kind of car, or reads the same type of books. This actually makes a bit of sense to me. That whole like attracts like thing.
Where as other social networks seem to exist primarily to provide links of one sort or another, acobay doesn’t appear to allow linking. Which is too bad, as a blogger I am always looking for one more link, and acobay doesn’t even give me a spot on my profile page to add a link back to my blog. Acobay needs to add a Blog Category and not just have blogs fall under Anything.
Acobay has a number of categories under their Stuff Map such as Cameras, Computers, Media Players, Toys, Music, Anything, Hotels, and Resturants. Since the site is still in beta there are not yet millions of listings of everything under the sun.
When you choose a category you are taken to a page filled with thumbnails of items and give the option of seeing Titles, Top, Hot, Kudos, Gallery, and Articles/Topics. Kudos is like a Digg or a Stumble, so far as I can tell. There seems to be a list of actions that get you Kudos points, such as posting an item or image and replying to topics.
There are no Google Ads or any ads that I can see on Acobay. So I am not sure how this Social Network is going make it’s zillions of dollars. And without links or Diggs or Stumbles, why will link hungry bloggers want to use it?
There are a couple of odd things-they ask how much an item costs when you are giving your description of it and they ask for a description of an image when you upload one, but don’t seem to use the description.
Most of the categories are a little sparse at the moment, Music, for example, has 189 items and they are mostly items with only one or two reviews. You automatically get a Network as you add more stuff that other people have added as well. This takes out that depressing aspect of Social Networks like Facebook where no one wants to be your friend unless you are famous or already know them in the real world. So the key to getting a big network would seem to be adding all the popular items to Your Stuff.
There is a link at the bottom of the page to what looks like a Stock Photo site, though it doesn’t seem to have any ads or charges either.
Acobay is a different kind of social network, we’ll just have to see if it the kind that will last.
