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Wiley Coyote — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 11:22:07 -0700

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Spire.com: Where the rich share tips, and I get jealous

Venture Beat — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 21:13:38 -0700

Spire.com, a social networking site for the rich, has just raised $9 million in a first round of funding. Through articles and member recommendations, the site does a pretty good job of packaging “the good life.” Heck, I signed-up this afternoon, and I’m already feeling vicariously wealthy — golf, anyone?

The Boston-based company isn’t the first social networking company to target the rich — last September, Robert Frank of the Wall Street Journal wrote about two competitors, DiamondLounge and aSmallWorld. But both sites focus on the networking side of things — helping users connect with their rich friends, finding rich dates and so on. Spire.com’s strength, on the other hand, is its content. The company has acquired Suzanne’s Files, which published articles on travel and beauty. Suzanne Aaronson (the Suzanne of Suzanne’s Files) now works as Spire.com’s “curator,” providing her content exclusively to the site’s members.

Spire.com waffles a bit on the whole “social network for the rich” angle; sometimes it hides behind euphemisms like “in-the-know” and “savvy.” (Because we all know that non-rich folks aren’t savvy — if they were, they’d be rich!) Still, while filling out my profile, I got a pretty good sense of the audience that Spire.com is aiming for. The categories for household income are “under $100K,” “$100K-$199K,” “$200K-$400K” and “over $400K.” (I won’t say which category I chose, but here’s a hint: I’m a journalist.) I also knew that I wasn’t in Facebook - and MySpace-land when I saw that the youngest age category is “under 35.”

Despite my knee-jerk misgivings, I have to admit that most of the articles — both the editorial content and the member-generated posts — are pretty good. They’re chatty, fun and informative, pretty much what you’d expect to find in an upscale magazine. My only real complaint is that the site is designed around a fairly vanilla idea of what the lifestyles of the rich and famous entail. Thus, we get a sports section that focuses on golf and yoga, a culture section that’s focused on opera and classical music, and so on. I, on the other hand, have met real-live rich people who don’t care about golf or the opera — I swear.

Still, Spire.com’s strategy should help it attract lucrative ads from luxury companies. I am curious if advertisers will be turned off by the site’s non-exclusivity; even though it bills itself as a network for the rich, not-so-rich schmucks like me can join, too. ASmallWorld, on the other hand, is invite-only.

The funding comes from Hearst Interactive Media, Trident Capital and TL Ventures.

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Spire.com: Where the rich share tips, and I get jealous