Luluvise is claiming to be the first exclusively female social network, aimed at young women. Guys, don’t even try joining—unless you want to trouble yourselves with creating a fake Facebook profile. And gals, unless you’re still in high school, promiscuous and perhaps a tad intellectually challenged, Luluvise is probably not for you.
The network connects through Facebook and LinkedIn, but information posted on Luluvise does not get shared on any other network, said 30-year-old creator Alexandra Chong.
So what is Luluvise like?
A pink-it-and-shrink-it Facebook, with a smattering of Google+. Upon entry, you are immediately greeted with a make-up essentials poll. You can invite friends, and put them into a circle known as “My Inner Circle,” reserved for your “BFFs.”
Besides posting a status update, called a “scoop,” there isn’t much else to do… except rate men who are not allowed on the site. I went ahead and rated my co-workers based on their looks, sense of humor, our first kiss (which, full disclosure, has not happened or I’m not telling if it has), their manners, level of ambition, how good they were in bed (see disclosure above), and their level of commitment.
Interestingly, there was no way to rate men based on their intelligence—and the network is exclusively for heterosexual women only, as you can’t rate fellow females.
The ratings were entertaining but juvenile, clearly intended for a young audience that most likely isn’t using LinkedIn, or actually having sex. You rate a man’s sense of humor through emoticons and Internet abbreviations like ROFL, and one of the highest ratings for a man’s kiss features an image of a dolphin jumping out of the sea.
The challenge Luluvise faces, wrote Belinda Parmar on the Huffington Post today, is “understanding women’s needs.”
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but my needs do not revolve around answering makeup polls and rating men I have “slept” with.
Perhaps Parmar had not signed into the network before writing her 500 word piece lauding the exclusive network, because Luluvise is exactly what she says the network isn’t: a “ ‘pinked-up and dumbed-down’ version of existing social networks.”
Parmar signs off her piece by urging her readers to join her “campaign to end the stereotyping of women in technology.”
Facepalm.