Social Networking news and information

Some of you know I consulted on a social networking site's launch earlier this year that was flash-based.  So, as you can imagine I am intently watching Wallop's upcoming launch.

I'm already impressed they aren't basing their entire business model on advertising:

The other big difference is the business model behind Wallop: If you can program in Flash or ActionScript, you can create widgets, or "mods," and sell them to other users; Wallop takes a cut of these transactions. For example, if somebody has a gizmo that automatically displays airfares to your hometown, you can't just pop it onto your Wallop page without buying it. You also can't use the growing library of HTML-based widgets like you can on a typical social net such as MySpace.

Will people pay for code to spruce up their Wallop pages? Certainly Jacobs is right that more people are expressing themselves through their online sites. He points to the growing ringtone market as proof that people will buy little bits of code to express themselves. And to the developing economies in virtual worlds like Second Life.

They are set to launch today at DEMOFall.  I'll let you know what I find out as they give their spiel.