Consider this hypothetical situation: You, a wealthy socialite, want to make friends over the internet, but without encountering any of the riff-raff that hangs out on traditional social networking sites. What do you do?
If you’re former Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra conductor James Touchi-Peters, then you would have resolved this dilemma by launching Netropolitan — an “online country club for people with more money than time.”
And for everyone else “Seeking a place to talk about fine wine, fancy cars and lucrative business decisions without judgment,” then Touchi-Peters’ new project may be the perfect place — his social networking site began accepting members on Tuesday this week. In order to get involved, however, you’ll first have to write a $9,000 check for membership in the web’s newest, and likely most exclusive, online club.
“All members of Netropolitan must use their real names, and must be truthful about their cities of residence and their background,” the rules read in part.
“We’re going to create the service and let the members decide what to do with it,” Touchi-Peters toldABC News last week. “We expect most of the activity will be on the discussion boards.”
But with discussion boards and other parts of the site only available to registered users, a significant chunk of change is required to see what kind of conversations are actually occurring behind Netropolitan’s velvet rope.
“It is just my opinion, but does anyone else think that this is either a really bad scam or just really sad?”one person posted on the Netropolitan Facebook page.
“$9000 for a crappy WordPress Social Network. Must say a great scam and I can’t stop laughing – I hope this guy make a bundle off of these suckers,” added another.