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Imanol Iglesias is starting a social network for travel called Genviajero and has done it utilizing Google’s App Engine platform. I think this is the first site I’ve come across that is being built using the App Engine and I think it would be worth talking about a bit.

As we can see in the video of the presentation of App Engine made by Joaquin Cuenca in the Campus Party, what Google is looking for is to support those web projects that have the most possibilities for growth. If Google provides them with solutions for scalability, then we will have projects with high traffic and both Google and the project will be able to earn more money through advertising.

Here’s how Google App Engine works: the programmer, in this case Imanol, develops the application in Python (the only language available as of now) and uploads it to App Engine to have his web operational. The programmer doesn’t need to worry about databases, servers and other such issues related to the systems. App Engine also permits users to log in to the platform using their Google accounts, so users with existing accounts do not need to register on the web. As I am not a technical guy, I don’t want to go into detail in this aspect. If you want to know more, I recommend this article by Andreas Krohn.

As for Genviajero, I must say that as a social network for travellers, its basic function is sharing information on travel destinations and based on these favourites, make comments, opinions, recommendations, … Images of the sites added to the social network can be viewed on Panoramio, and soon it will allow users to upload their own pictures. On these lines, I think that in a social network like Genviajero, it makes a lot of sense to aggregate the maximum amount of information available related to places like hotels, restaurants, weather information, etc.

Seeing the success of the private shopping clubs in Europe, it is logical that the model goes to Latin America as well. For now, Geelbe is functioning in Argentina and thanks to the efforts of Gaston Bercun, has successfully completed its first round of funding.

The investment in Geelbe comes from the club of business angels of Inversor Global (IG) and as Gaston Bercun puts it, the money should serve for strengthening the team and start with the regional expansion of the company. We understand that this regional expansion will be to other Latin American countries where, as far as I know, there are no such online outlets of this kind.

Let me also take this opportunity to say that recently I had a talk with the founder of one of these online outlets that function in Spain and the impression I got was that with the existing competition, the optimization of resources is going to be key in these companies that are growing at a fast pace and have received important rounds of financing. What I still don’t see very clearly is if one of the companies that have received the most amount of investment will consider purchasing one of its competitor to consolidate its leadership position.

It was time we dedicated some words to Psicofxp, an internet community founded by Ismael Briasco in the year 2000 and which is now one of the most important websites in Argentina.

I find it interesting to see how a site established since so many years renews its design and offers many new functionalities to turn itself into a site that is much more social. Psicofxp should become an example for all those sites who continue with their outdated design since years thinking that if they tamper with it, their users will leave the site en masse. As long as the interests of the users are respected and the main line of the site is maintained, a change of design should be positive as it shows that the site is evolving and adapting itself to the changing times and styles.

This new design of Psicofxp is the most visible part of the evolution of a forum towards becoming a social network, where the users, apart from sharing opinions and conversations, can upload their photos, videos and create their profiles to strike up connections with their friends in the community.

Lastly, the employment section of Psicofxp is managed by Bumeran, which I understand is some kind of commercial agreement. This contrasts with the tendency we were lately observing in other social networks of creating a classifieds channel with the platform of OLX.

Seen in Kabytes.

We love Failbeta, it’s a great work being carried out by Fernando del Pozo to recover those projects of the hispanic internet that have been shut down for some reason. So we thought it would be interesting to bring here to Loogic the projects that appear in that blog. During the coming days, we are going to publish articles written months earlier. These are the ones pertaining to the month of July:

Closebay: Came to light in July 2007. The idea of Closebay, what differentiated it from other classifieds sites was the possibility to sell, purchase or exchange objects with people close to you, from your neighbourhood.

Mypipol: Mypipol was a general social network for young people created by the company One Experience that came out in public in September 2007. It was supposed to be a social network a la Facebook, MySpace or Tuenti.

20 palabras: 20 palabras is an argentinian project that came to light in September 2007 and closed down in February 2008. The idea was innovative, a news blog where each entry could only use 20 words.

Time Machiner: Was a service for sending email to future dates. Is it possible to create a service that guarantees the sending of an email in 2099?

Agregax: Agregax was a search engine for spanish speaking blogs created by Pau Iglesias and launched in April 2006. It was classified as one of the best web 2.0 projects developed in Spain.

It seems that internet and the world of wines get along very well. Lately, there are a lot of blogs, online shops and social networks proliferating around this theme.

Vinogusto is one of those social networks about wine, which we talked of when it received a round of investment and now is worth talking about for the good results it is showing.

When i see cases such as the growth achieved by Vinogusto, I start thinking that there are internet entrepreneurs who have a kind of sixth sense and are capable of creating winner projects whatever they do. François Derbaix is one of those entrepreneurs who has made it with TopRural and is now helping this project succeed as an investor and advisor.

It’s worth taking a look at Vinogusto because i believe it’s a very good example of a social network with open content, where the users create value mostly through their comments. 100.000 user opinions in the community, a great example of what Jesus Encinar was describing the other day as businesses based on user opinions.

Another aspect that stands out is its simplicity, which in other words we call Usability, and that is the secret to gaining the involvement of basic users through their active participation in a web they find easy to use.