I figured a lot of you would be interested in this site new website, Nextcat.com. It is built for professionals in the entertainment industry, by people who work in the industry themselves! I have had success getting a few jobs in the music industry through the site, and it is definately worth checking out and creating a profile. I've included the official press release below, too.
Again, that's www.nextcat.com
First Social Networking Site Exclusively for Entertainment Industry, Nextcat.com Launches to Public ?"It's All About Who You Know"
BOSTON, MA., September 6, 2006 ?Nextcat, Inc. announces the launch of Nextcat.com, the world's first entertainment industry-focused social networking web site. The site is freely accessible to the public in beta release:
www.nextcat.com/
The Nextcat.com web site caters to working entertainment professionals as an extension of the way their industry already functions?making it a natural application for a social networking site. "The old adage: 'it's all about who you know' has never been more true than when applied to the entertainment industry" asserts Jeff Pucci, co-founder and CEO of Nextcat, Inc. "Connecting talent (actors, models, musicians, filmmakers) with services (agents, photographers, studios, lawyers), when bolstered by peer-approved referrals makes all the difference," added Pucci.
To date, the alternatives for entertainment professionals to network with colleagues or to seek and offer work has consisted primarily of using the telephone or posting on (classified ad mega-site) Craigslist. While acknowledging that MySpace (NWS-A) has become a useful tool for one-way promotion and broadcasting information to a large fan base, Nextcat observed that entertainment professionals do not typically utilize MySpace for networking with industry colleagues or to find work.
"To me, MySpace is primarily a dating site masquerading as something else," said Hollywood actress Christine Elise McCarthy, best known as a cast member on television's "ER" and numerous other series such as "Law & Order" and "Beverly Hills 90210". "If I want to network with my contacts, I cannot get the job done on MySpace?Nextcat is terrific for what I need to do." McCarthy's Nextcat "connections" currently consist of some 198 industry colleagues.
"Nextcat's focus on the entertainment industry sets it apart," commented Pete Cashmore, a new media expert following Web 2.0 companies for the respected tech Blog site www.mashable.com. "I do think that ?Nextcat? stands a better chance than the generic MySpace clones," added Cashmore.
Nextcat, Inc., was founded in April, 2005 by longtime technology entrepreneurs/business partners Jeff Pucci and Richard Viard. Both men attended Berklee College of Music in Boston and have themselves had careers as professional musicians. Pucci and Viard also founded SmarterKids.com, a Nasdaq-listed e-commerce business later acquired by California-based school supply company Excelligence Learning in April 2001.
