Social Network

Three days ago, I read the first time about Swing Elite – The Social Network:
Silvia Palazzolo was spreading the word on Facebook.

Curious as I am, I promptly joined the network – as number 43 🙂 – and checked it out.

Three questions appeared to me pretty soon. So I thought, I'm going to ask them Silvia directly.

Interview with Silvia Palazzolo

Silvia, who exactly is behind Swing Elite?

Once upon a time Bruno Rossi and Vincenzo Buldrini were smoking a cigarette and Bruno told Vinz: why dont› we make a swing social network? And Vinz was like… Mmmmm.. don't know! Maybe, why not?

Then days went by and suddently Vinz texted me telling me he was ready. Ready for what – I asked. Ready to start our project. I was so excited and brought some amazing ideas under Bruno's supervision, and Vinz challenge after challenge brought them to reality. And today the network is open and new functions are added everyday thanks to your enthusiasm.

Now what? Now its your turn.

Who is the swing elite?
It's you.

What is your main goal with Swing Elite? Everybody is using Facebook, why should one change to Swing Elite?

Of course we don't even think to compete with Facebook! 🙂

We don't think people should choose between SE and FB; both networks should be used in a complementary way. Swing Elite will complete FB and vice versa! For this reason, we're going to complement SE with FB more and more in the future, so that they can be used together.

The big difference and the reason for which a swing dancer, musician, teacher or addict should use Swing Elite, is that it allows you to find swing events, swing related websites, new friends with exactly the same interest as yours, while facebook is for everybody, and has every kind of events and groups.

Swing Elite is not a boring platform where people can just read and watch what's going on, its users are the most important part of it! They can join events, add their comments and their opinion, rate them, and maybe in the future they might be able to take advantage of special offers on these events, thought and dedicated to them exclusively!

At the same time they can find out about new events they didn't know about – it's not so easy to find specific events on Facebook, if you are not a friend to all the organizers and the dancers in the world… on Facebook, at the end, one gets to know about the most advertised and popular events. Here on SE, all the events are advertised in the same way, you can see them day by day as they are getting closer, and you can interact with them whilst having fun.

So, our goal is to put together all the features of a portal/platform with those of a social network, giving the users› opinions and interests the importance they deserve!

We aim to bring together people with the same interests and to entertain them with the typical social network features, whilst providing interesting and easy to find information!

For now we provide events and websites, besides pictures and videos, but we're just at the beginning and a lot of new things and interesting tools are on their way! For example, we're already working on a mobile version of the website, so that people can keep in touch through their cell phones, or find things to do in every corner of the world, just having a look at their telephone.

«Swing Elite» indicates only a certain group of swing dancers resp. only the better ones. Why was this name chosen?

We posted an explanation of the name on our forum here on the website. But, maybe what follows is easier to understand.

Yeah, this point has been controversial and we didn't expect it. Maybe our concept of elite has been missunderstood: we are a group of people with the same interest: swing. And we are here to have fun together.

The main idea is: yes, its an elite (because not everybody all over the world is interested in swing!) but its also open for everyone who wants to be a part of it! its not like we're examinating subscriptions or doing selections: everyone is welcome! You wanna be part of the swing elite? Simply press the join button and you're in! You don't wanna be in the swing elite? Well, you don't know what you're missing 🙂

Elite has not a negative meaning: we are not talking just to the best swing dancers or musicians or whatever. That has been misunderstood. We're talking to everybody who's part of the swing world. Which is itself an elite, because not all the world is part of it. Do you understand what I mean?

If you allow me too, I would like to use this little interview to explain better who we are and what we do also to other people.

We have great ideas to develope this social network: new languages, new tools, and a lot more. We think that everyone should really join it.

***

The interview was held in writing.

Now my question to my readers: Is it necessary to have another social network? Are you joining Swing Elite? Leave a comment!

UPDATE
It seems that Swing Elite couldn't attract enough dancers to keep the service up. The website is not available anymore.