Beauty Seems Skin Deep With Beautiful Society

I first heard about Beautiful Society when Mashable featured it, which meant I had to check it out.  At first glance, it was certainly attractive, but I'm not sure I would call it one of the most pleasing to the eye out there.

Sign up was easy, but what really struck me were the number of comments and messages I received after only having been a member of the society for a short while.  Just as on MySpace with "Tom" being your first friend, you get the standard message from the powers that be to welcome you aboard. I was surprised to receive several messages from members as well, all welcoming me to the fold.

As far as social networks go, Beautiful Society loses a few points for me on intuitiveness.  It uses a combination of tags and tabs to navigate the society pages, forums and find other members. I know tags and tag clouds are an established Web 2.0 feature that has come to be expected, but I find them annoying and needlessly difficult to use.

The idea behind Beautiful Society is to list your favorite things, then find people who have similar interests. As you find people you can talk to them in the forums, leave them comments and messages and link them to your society page. To list your interests you have to use a tag cloud to find the tag words for the items you want to favorite. 

Once you list a favorite item, you are given a chance to explain why it is your favorite, kind of like a mini blog on each favorite thing. You can include links and formatted text if you want, or you can leave it blank and just have a straight list of favorites without explanation. Beautiful Society also uses external application like Google Maps to make the experience more detailed.

I thought Beautiful Society was a nice alternative for people who are tired of MySpace and Friendster, but as a whole I prefer FaceBook and similar  networks. That's just a matter of personal preference, though. For people who are looking for a new way to connect online, Beautiful Society might be just the ticket. A new way to find people who share common interests with you in an attractive package.