New social site to provide a better way to remember and recommend things you care about.
West Newton, MA, October 20, 2008 – TrustedOnes, a new social platform with focus on trust-based recommendations, is open for business. TrustedOnes will help consumers and friends leverage word of mouth advice, and drive more customers to local small businesses, those which provide excellent service, but don’t have the marketing dollars to compete with bigger companies.
“When it comes to trusted advice, word of mouth is on top of everyone’s list. The problem is, people tend to forget and misplace most of it by the time they need it, and small businesses have no way of knowing who and where their promoters are. We can change that,” said Arno Grbac, TrustedOnes’ President and Founder.
TrustedOnes is applying social networking principles to practical knowledge sharing among friends. There are already many highly specialized and successful social networking websites that let their users connect with like-minded individuals and explore their passions for movies (Netflix), knitting (Ravelry), auctions (eBay), videos (YouTube), photos (Flickr), friends (MySpace), etc.
TrustedOnes takes a different approach. Instead of taking one particular topic of interest and building a large community of individuals around it, TrustedOnes’ emphasis is on trust and a much wider range of topics. “Our goal is to help users make better product and service decisions, based on trusted advice from their friends. Part of the fun is learning from friends on topics you’d never think they’d know anything about,” said Arno.
“We are not the only ones in this space, but so far, our competitors’ models are relying on financial incentives to make people share advice. While money is a great motivator, knowing that somebody benefits financially by making a recommendation, represents a clear conflict of interest,” said Arno. TrustedOnes business model is based on value added services for consumers and small businesses, in which no party can systematically profit by providing false information.
TrustedOnes can be compared to a free version of Angie’s list, where trusted friends recommend who’s good and who’s not. Providing a great environment for small businesses, TrustedOnes’ application goes far beyond local service providers. “We have created a new social platform that lets users post recommendation on anything, anywhere, be it a book, a local bookstore, or a restaurant in Venice, Italy. It’s all transparent, simple, fun and amazingly useful. Our private beta results indicate that your friends know a lot more then you’d ever think to ask,“ said Arno.
About TrustedOnes
Founded by Arno Grbac, TrustedOnes is a new social networking company that specializes in trust-based marketing in the consumer, and business to consumer space.
For further information, visit www.trustedones.com
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