Variety Launches New Social Networking Site For the Entertainment Biz
Move over Facebook, there’s a new social networking site in town! Only this one’s geared exclusively towards entertainment professionals. Yesterday, the industry trade pub Daily Variety unveiled “The Biz” (variety.com/thebiz), which it’s billing as the first social networking Web site for the entertainment business. “The Biz will give our readers a unique new way to interact and forge relationships with their peers in the community,” Variety president and publisher Neil Stiles said of the site, which was launched in association with the career hunting Web site jobster.com. Although, his use of the words “new” and “unique” seems questionable. The site’s networking features include more of the same (linking up with peers and colleagues, meeting new professionals) with some career advancing components thrown in (recruiting, job searching, exchanging ideas and pitches). And, of course, users will also be able to upload photos, videos and portfolios.
It looks like Variety has some problems with that site. http://sensiblemarketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/email-gone-sour/
wow facebook is in trouble the biz is looking good
It seems that days after Variety launched their new, revolutionay site, THe Biz, the Big-Wigs, have decided to put up the group for sale.....to the highest bigger. Lets hope that the new owner of Variety can clean house in their inept marketing department and hire some people with the basic knowledge that securing user data and private information should be a top priority!
Last week, as I noted in my blog post, Variety.com sent out a blast email to dozens of their "The Biz" users warning of security isses with their passwords, but thats not all. In the email, they forgot to mask the email addresss of all the reciepients and everyone and their mother got the same email address which showed some very heavy hitters in Hollywood's personal emails and contact info!
Call that a big boo-boo. To make matters worse, I sent an email to their VP of Marketing, and she replied it was simply a "glitch". No further explanation or apology!
Does anyone remember Friendster? They bit the dust for the same type of reasons. If RBI-US cant control what the Variety people do or how they run that unit by the seat of their pants, I say good riddance and good luck to the next owner. Heres my link to the post, which you can see the email that divulges all the celebrity and producer emails, and you can see for yourself. Shame of Variety for launching a service, spending god awful amounts of money, but not giving a damn about proper user data security!!!
http://sensiblemarketing.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/email-gone-sour/