Lycos plans to launch a social networking site that, unlike many of its competitors, is more focused on letting users communicate with people they already know than on letting users get to know strangers. The company plans to release a test version of the site this week.
Called Circles, the site will be announced officially at the DigitalLife conference in New York City and can be found online at circles.lycos.com.
Circles lets users share a variety of things via the site, including text, photos, video and audio clips, and greeting cards.
Building Groups
The site lets a user define multiple groups of acquaintances, such as a group of co-workers, a group of family members, a group of neighbors, and a group of school parents. What the user shares with each group can be established independently of the other groups, or can overlap more than one group.
The Circles user controls what he has shared with each group from a single Circles interface.
The people the user shares content with don't have to be Circles members in order to view what is being shared with them. They do have to sign up with Circles if they want to make comments. Signing up for Circles is free.
Other Circles features include the ability to conduct online polls among a user's acquaintances, to share a Web site snapshot annotated by the user, and to send an invitation to an event.
Lycos, which is based in Waltham, Massachusetts and owned by South Korean company Daum Communications, plans to improve the site during this test period and already has plans to add new features such as a photo printing service in conjunction with Shutterfly and the ability to share playlists and download music.
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