Layoffspace: The Social Network for the Unemployed

Una points to this Red Herring article about Layoffspace, “the only social network for the unemployed”:

LayoffSpace.com, based in the Philadelphia suburb of Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, addresses issues that go beyond sites like Monster.com, whose primary role is to list jobs, Jake Ludwinski noted.

“People who are unemployed are really down on themselves,” said the former business analyst. “They have all this time on their hands. What do they do with it? We need a place where we can get them together.”

Soon we’ll have a social network for everything, and for subsets of everything:

• OrkOrk: A social network for walrus enthusiasts
• OrkPhile: A social network for walrus lovers
• OrkWidows: A social network for the ignored spouses of walrus lovers

And so on. There’s an interesting side effect of launching a network for the unemployed–do users leave when they find new jobs? And is that a problem?

I’m not crazy about the name. I generally advise against a name that’s a take-off of another, more recognizable brand, unless it’s a short-lived satire or something. Brands change over time, and so MySpace’s reputation will, in some way, always stick to Layoffspace. Plus, I definitely would have capitalized the ‘s’.