Australians Online

I could be wrong here, but it looks as though two Australian social networking sites have bit the dust.

Babbello.com

Appears to be down, however Google cache feature seems to have a few skeletons of it seem to be hanging around. With a reported 30,000 members the Australian based Babbello.com launched late 2005 catering more to the teenage group, and offered all the normal features with advanced profile customisation for a payment upgrade.

Studentface.com.au

Marketed as strictly for Australian college students, also seems to be permanently offline. While I genuinely applaud the intentions, it seemed to narrow to ever survive and projections were made in the blogosphere early on that it would quickly croak.

In order to sign up, one had to be an Australian college student with a valid Australian university college email. I think that apart from the issue that it was simply too narrow a niche to survive; registering with your college email destroys any potential anonymity which is one aspect of the internet which can appeal to people.

Exactly how many Australian college students are there, who wish to register with this exact social network with their college email? It appears not enough did to survive.

Although maybe these two sites are just down for maintenance or I am an idiot that simply cannot access them. If they are just down temporarily, I wish them well when they get back up.