CircleBuilder.com - Social Network for Your Church

Do you belong to a church, but would like to communicate with members and make new friends more often? CircleBuilder is a niche social networking site for faith-based organizations. You create a circle, add members, make it public or private, and then start connecting. Individuals within your circle can create profiles and start conversing with others members. You can announce events, create groups within your groups, start discussions, forums, list resources, etc. It is a clever twist to the social networking genre, as it creates networks within networks united behind a common purpose. The site also allows circles of any other type of organization, such as a mountian biking club, book club, bible study club, and the like. And, of course, different churches can connect if their sites are public (the best idea of all!)

"CircleBuilder is an online networking and management platform enabling faith-based organizations to increase their membership, improve fundraising, organize events and more efficiently serve their community. Through our simple to use web-based interface we create numerous "touch points"—personalized emails, shared calendars, blogs, text messages, online donations and storefronts, streaming media and newsletters—by which members can communicate with their organizations and with each other. CircleBuilder is a place where people of all faiths can come together to nurture their personal relationships and put their faith into practice. CircleBuilder is built on confidentiality. Only you decide who can see the information you share here. Whether it is your close friends, a faith-based organization, or the entire community, you select how much—or how little—is shared and under what context. CircleBuilder advocates no particular viewpoint nor do we promote any specific faith. That is not to say that we are without beliefs. The truth is that we believe strongly in the values of honesty, humility, courtesy, service and privacy."

Niche social networking sites are popping up all over the net, and quite a few are targeting the faith-based community. Given the millions in this community, it is a good target market, and I particularly appreciated the ability to create a bunch of different communities within this one site. This site also just received $400,000 in funding.

The site is new, so it is understandable that the traffic is low, but what is their marketing plan? What are they going to do with the money they just received? It would be great if there was an emphasis on creating circles and then having those circles connect...so there is more unity and peace among different faiths and backgrounds, as well as opportunities for joint activities (such as a joint fundraiser or charitable event, etc). Can the individual members of one circle connect with the individual members of other circles? Also, where is the diversity on the home page? There is a large African-American community of faith and they should be included on this site as well.