Keep Your Finger On The Pulse With YouNoodle

Innovation and creativity happen fast in this technological society. YouNoodle aims to help you keep your finger on the pulse of what is going on in the university think tanks and labs and with the hottest start up companies. It bills itself as a place were you can discover the newest talent and companies and get involved.

What YouNoodle offers is business competition, event, networking and mailing list capabilities all wrapped up in a start up predictor and social network style platform. You can browse through start ups and “follow” your favorites, receiving updates on their progress and changes. You can even participate in some of them.

When you create your profile on YouNoodle, you are given several choices of how to sign in: club leader, educator, entrepreneur, investor, inventor, journalist, recruiter, scientist, service provider, start up member and innocent bystander. I signed up under journalist, though since I'm a freelancer I suppose service provider may have worked just as well.

You are provided a place to put your bio, resume, photo or logo and other information about your self or your company. Once you've gotten the basics down, you can also enter yourself in various categories (health, technology, education, media, etc) and list how you are available. The choices range from simple social (meet new people) to business goals like work for a start up. You also get to enter tag words to make your profile searchable. This all gets associated with your profile.

Once you're done with set up, you can browse the site by people or start ups, search people or start ups or manage a group. I liked the browse feature - it shows each person or start up one at a time and gives you the option to move on or follow them for updates. Some of the start ups are in “stealth” mode, meaning journalists and other media are blocked from access while they get ready to launch, but you can still set them to follow and be notified when stealth mode is lifted.

One of the things I'd like to see in YouNoodle is an RSS aggregator for the people and start ups you follow. I can see this site being useful in my work as a writer, but I can't see myself checking it often. I get the bulk of my information through an offline feed reader to save time and keep things sorted, so if a site doesn't offer a feed option, chances are it will fall by the wayside for me. There are plenty of sites out there I enjoyed or found useful that I never have time to visit and fall off my radar.

As far as using the site goes, the colors are nice - no obnoxious Web 2.0 teal or brown to be found. The navigation is super simple and extremely easy. YouNoodle has made nearly every page navigable with less than 5 clicks, which is nice. The home page could use a little work - right now there isn't much on it. I'd like to see a “breaking news” section for either all start ups or at least start ups you follow. Overall YouNoodle gets high marks for the focus and design of their site. I'll definitely be checking back.