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Galway based social networking site Kotalk has been nominated for Best Social Networking and community website in this year's 2009 Golden Spider awards. Founded by Mike Russen and Maire Daly, Kotalk has been quietly gathering a following. It began as a response to the boom and bust, with Máire desperate to de-clutter her house.
"There were very few car boot sales and the Irish equivalent of Americas Craig's list just didn't seem to cover Galway. I had started a group on Facebook and I was regularly using freecycle sites too. I figured there were plenty of other people like me who had houses full of stuff and nowhere to get rid of them, so I had started a little group on Facebook at first.
"Mike, my neighbour, watched amused as I hooked up with his wife Giselle and we plotted our de-clutter. We went off to a car boot sale early one morning in the pouring rain and I think that's where Mike got the idea," she says.
Mike asked Maire if she wanted to put all the energy she had been putting into her car boot projects into a site.
"Right now the site is still small, however folk have been joining up from outside Galway too. We have various groups and blogs going like 'Fifty things to do in Galway for free' and 'Pimp my junk' as well as the 'Car boot group'.
"I insisted on a classifieds section of course and I'm down to a couple of bags and some books, so it's actually working. Some folk who we've met through the site have even gone on to organise a local car boot sale!" she says.
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Where? http://www.kotalk.com
What? A Social Networking website that helps people keep in touch, pass on unwanted free items from classified ads and listings, share photos etc.
Kotalk means that people can search for friends and unwanted items at local, regional, and national levels. Kotalk simply brings people together.
Why? To help people keep in touch locally, nationally and internationally.
Who? Kotalk has been developed by ShoeString Enterprises: http://www.shoestring-enterprises.com
When? Devised in 2008; launched in September 2008.
Free? Yup!
This project is about the creation of a local social network based on concepts of distributing information in a similar fashion achieved by successful projects such as facebook etc.
The project was founded in late 2008 by Mike Russen and Mare Greaney (Friend to all).
The development work and hardware is funded by "Shoestring-Enterprises".
What are we really about?
If you are reading this then you must be online and will probably agree that the Internet has become so important to our everyday lives that we can hardly think of living without it. During the Internet's very beginning, it has always been important to be able to find information quickly and accurately.
Had it not been for the invention of the Myspace, Facebook and others, then the social network aspect of the Internet would not have become what it had become today. In layman's terms, social networks are like signs and maps, they point us in the right direction for the information about friends and family that we are looking for.
Maire's and Mike's idea is for a local social network starting in Galway, Ireland and that will spread across the rest of Ireland as time goes by.
The site is useful for Irish expats, in fact all nationalities to keep in contact with family and friends and differs from the other sites as it is firstly based on local Irish communities that Maire and Mike hope will spread worldwide and be a useful addition to peoples lives.
Posted 25th August 2008
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