Thursday, February 01, 2007

Bona - Social network for high school students


Lately I'm seeing first signs of how local social networks are emerging and are penetrating Israel's web sphere. One of them is bona. Bona is the first verified social network in Israel for high school students. There are two ways of joining, one is by invitation and the other a bit strange is by a hidden code located in the high school student phone book supplied to each student by the school. Bona are aiming at making their network more intimate and safer by this precaution. The approach is a bit naive in my opinion considering the high school phone books to be accessible by any person.
Bona is a kind of MySpace Facebook combo focusing only on high schools, my estimation is a population of 200 thousand in Israel.
The bona user profile page reminds me of the MySpace layout. You've got your photos, tags, friends, classmates and of course you can play around with the page layout and background.
I'm not sure if the Israeli internet users are ready for the online socializing yet but who knows it might catch fire.

Oh ya, bona in Hebrew means 'come on'.

bona_screen

1 comment:

TimeShare said...

Ram Bracha did a wonderful job, and I know it will become a leader in the social scene.
(Mainly among more settled kids that dislike the sleaziness of other networks.