Koolanoo: Why Didn't Jewish Social Networking Work?

there are so many new ones now. check them out
http://www.mypanim.com

I seem to remember that every time I logged on to Koolanoo there was a lack of content and lots of inactive members. I don’t recall ever getting a response from anyone. I think what is needed is a core base of people, proper management and proper publicity in the Jewish press, internationally. Then it might stand more of a chance.

I agree with Daniel Sieradski, in his comments on why Kollanoo and so many other social networks targeted to the Jewish community either don’t work or have limited success. Having started and still running my own http://www.mypanim.com
the content is king formula stands as the most important. But even providing good and interesting content seems not quite enough to hold a Jewish audience for very long.
Jews for the most part are so integrated into the mainstream that its rare for a site to be able to meet the undivided attention in competition with Face Book et al.

After spending countless hours on design,content and moderation (within the limited scope of the ning platform) with little return (number of contributing members) I reverted the site to its generic design and left it to its own devices (with some minimal work from myself)The site has been successful in bringing many together as friends from across the globe, but for the most part many join and visit infrequently. There are are a core , as there always is, that contribute. But for the most part it seems many are unwilling to extend themselves beyond signing up,the curiosity syndrome,and leave the engagement to others.

I would be interested in the views of others especially those ex-koolanu members. take a look and let me know.

It was about three zealous Jews and one Messianic name David Vienna!!

Can you remember that!!!!!

I absolutely disagree with the dysfunction of Koolano.
First of all I met my current boyfriend who I will marry in just a few month on Koolano!

Second of all I think Koolano was special because the focus was on social site not a dating site like jdate. This made the atmosphere much more comfortable and it was possible to actually also just make friends and see what is out there.

I think concepts like this fail nowadays because of competition even among Jewish social sites. Yet, I do believe Koolano had a unique character and due to my own story I am said it does not exist anymore.

People who joined Koolanoo hoped for a less pressured social site by Jews for Jews. Many imposers came in; lots of Arabs, Messianics and Anti-Semites, under false names, who created multiple profiles and harassed the Jews there. At first, people were relieved that they could write to the site admin and get a response. After some time, the admin was apathetic and insensitive to members’ complaints.

These things, IMHO, contributed more to the site’s failure than the degree of personalization it afforded the users.

Eventually, the site announced that it would shut down temporarily. Regular members kept in touch with one another and asked when it would reopen, hoping that all the information they stored and submitted would not be lost. The site did shut down and despite promises to notify members when it would reopen, the information landed in G-d knows whose hands and members were told nothing.

Coolanoo worked. It worked quite well for me, I liked it. It grew and had some success. Did you know there are just 13 Million Jews out there. A Jewish social network won’t ever be able to have more than 6 Million members, given the Idea that 100% of all Jews consider themselves to be Jews.

Compared to Facebook, Facebook should have 3.000.000.000 Users (half of World’s population). In fact, these are just 200 Millions.

So I do think, Koolanoo was successful finding members, the chat rooms ware busy all day long, some groups ware successful too. But some day it suddenly stopped working. One day we found a sign telling us that Koolanoo will be down for a week or so, I kept trying for several weeks, but it did not come up again.

So if I read, Koolanoo has not been successful I do think it has been unsuccessfull in a commercial way.

However there have been some issues with Coolanoo: Some languages not well known to most of the Jews out there have been overrepresented (Turkish). It was mostly used as a dating site, and being there was sometimes misunderstood. But I’m still sad that Coolanoo stopped working. I’d instantly give up facebook for a new Coolanoo!

Koolanoo didn’t work — as none of the other Jewish social networking sites worked — because there is nothing to meaningfully distinguish those sites from more popular and more functional mainstream sites like Facebook and MySpace. “Self-segration” is less the issue than added value is. User generated content in the form of profiles and wall postings is not a substitute for professionally created, engaging content nor unique functionality. Koolanoo and the dozen+ other lame Jewish social networking sites have offered nothing other than the presence of other Jewish users. They don’t provide killer content, killer functionality, or anything else particularly interesting or useful to make the sites valuable. However, if a site came along that helped you build a minyan with your neighbors, or that helped you plan local Jewish events, or which facilitated online and offline Jewish education, like chevruta matching, and things like that, the site would stand a far better chance of success than a generic social networking package like phpFoX with a magen david slapped on it.