TalkingApes

Yfly.com, a potential competitor to the internet giant MySpace.com, launched this week. From the Minneapolis StarTribune:

The difference: celebrity and technology. Yfly is touting itself as the official online home of athletes, musicians and Hollywood celebrities. The site has made deals with such stars as singers Nick Lachey and Justin Timberlake, NFL quarterback Matt Leinart and MTV personality Kristin Cavallari.

Yfly will offer fans the opportunity to interact with stars on “certified celebrity” home pages and plans to develop online marketing campaigns around the celebrities. The site is targeting users between ages 13 and 26.

Yfly also is using a new operating platform, Ruby on Rails, that its creators say is superior to MySpace’s technology.

“It allows the users to run more applications and make the site more interactive,” said Dutch Thalhuber, operations director for Space150, the Minneapolis digital-marketing firm that created Yfly and is handling marketing and advertising for the site. “This is the biggest Ruby project on the Web right now.” Upstart site takes on Web giant MySpace

YFly operates using Ruby on Rails, a relatively new open-source framework that’s built for programmers to write code favoring convention over configuration.

Other notable web applications running Ruby are Basecamp (project management), Campfire (group chats), 43Things (goal achievement), Odeo (audio management) and Shopify (e-commerce). Yfly’s creators think that with this superior technology and a focus on authenticated celebrity presences, it can realistically contend with MySpace.com for internet supremecy.

YFly boasts that they are the only site with authentic celebrity profiles and content, boasting the likes of Nick Lachey, Chris Brown, Matt Leinart, The Subways, JJ Redick, Justin Timberlake, Kristin Cavallari and Pharrell Williams. Profiles are viewable to non-members, but to use the features, one has to be a registered member. Yfly is currently open to registration of young adults 13-19 years of age only.

Those worried about security, (especially of impressionable and sometimes un-thinking young adults) will be glad to know that Yfly has already thought about how to best protect you and your information. Internet Security expert Parry Aftab is working with Yfly to make sure everyone stays safe and has fun.

YFly.com is dedicated to making their site fun, innovative and safe for its users. It has the most innovative programs to teach teens safe, secure and responsible technology use. These include “ThinkB4UClick”, “Best Foot Forward” and “Don’t Be Stupid”, as well as public service messaging and announcements designed to teach them to look out for themselves and each other online. But no matter how careful a site is, whenever lots of teens hang out online, it’s inevitable that some things will go wrong. Some teens forget their manners and smart behavior when they’re online. They may do this thinking they can’t be discovered or held accountable. They may think they are invulnerable or not realize the risk involved. Sometimes they don’t think at all.

That’s why YFly.com has a powerful reporting system designed to refer reports from the teens to those in charge, including me. Ultimately it is up to users (even teen users) to act responsibly and not put themselves at risk in cyberspace (and up to parents to protect our children). We will help parents and teens learn how to do that. Expect many more guides coming soon. We’re typing and coding as fast as we can.

YFly – Safety

technorati tags:myspace.com, yfly.com, celebrities, social-networking, ruby