Facebox, a new social network that sounds a little too much like FacebookFacebook
, is getting a few mentions in the comments after going from zero to hero on Alexa over the past 10 days or so. The reason is pretty simple: Facebox isn’t a new site, but rather a relaunch of an established brand. The site is the product of Belgian company InCrowd, and began five years ago as a community site called ASL.TO – it then became Redbox, a social network for Belgians. Beginning late last year, they rolled out more “-box” sites across Europe, and this month it seems they’re trying to consolidate those under the Facebox brand. Hence the appearance of a site coming from nowhere. At the moment, they’re reporting 10 million European users and more than 1 billion monthly pageviews – presumably that’s an aggregate of all their existing networks.
Despite the company’s confusing past, the software is pretty good. Users have profiles at clean URLs (en.facebox.com/mashable) and you have a dashboard where you can manage your settings, statistics, messages and credits. In fact, the credits system is interesting: like Cyworld, Habbo Hotel and Xuqa, Facebox has an internal currency. You can earn credits by adding friends to your network, or buy them via SMS – credits are needed if you want to share more than the default number of photos. This is an interesting trend: incentivizing users to grow the network for you. There’s also basic blogging and a complete video-sharing platform ala YouTubeYouTube, with the ability to find clips by tag, popularity, date, rating and the number of comments they’ve received. One limitation, however, is that you can’t embed these videos on external sites – this is one of the features that made video-sharing so popular in the first place.
Profiles are skinnable,within limits – you have to choose your design from a selection of ready-made skins, and there’s no way to add external modules or paste a design from elsewhere (see MySpace layouts). There’s also a groups feature called “clans” and a system called “Trust” that dictates whether you can leave comments, sign guestbooks and send private messages. Finally, there’s a music section, but this isn’t the standard setup of MySpace Music and Bebo Bands: instead, you download a piece of software that monitors your listening habits across iTunes, Windows Media Player and WinAMP – you’re then connected to people who share your musical tastes (yep, it’s just like MOG).
Facebox is a great service – the only problem is that it’s another silo, with no obvious way to insert external widgets, import a blog or share your media outside the site. For those who want everything in one place, it’s a great choice, but personally I find it limiting. However, its focus on Europe may be an advantage: the site is available in multiple languages, and already has critical mass in some countries.
- Attention Facebox Users!
MashableMashable
’s Facebox account is HERE – feel free to add Mashable to your friends list if you sign up, or you’re already a member.
