• Business Week, Wednesday, August 22, 2007 10:45 AM

The rich and fabulous has an exclusive haven where they can congregate online. Social networks like Facebook are filled with droves of people who "are not generally well-networked themselves," says 22-year-old Roger Allen Conner, Jr., who founded a North Carolina-based consulting firm called SiloIQ. Conner is looking for powerful friends--the kind who can waltz into exclusive nightclubs in New York and L.A., or sell 1-year-old Bentleys to their less-wealthy friends when they want the latest Maserati. People with real connections; people you can only find (ostensibly) on aSmallWorld.

Yep, aSW is part of the growing sector of localized social networks "where big is bad." Like online country clubs, these networks are exclusive and well-guarded. Only members of a certain status gain the right to invite other users to join. As aSW founder Erik Wachtmeister says, "The site is not very valuable if it is polluted by people you don't know." The creation of a place "where people could be much more forthcoming with information" is the idea behind the site.

For luxury goods advertisers and rich people reselling old Ferraris, it's certainly a favorable group, but doesn't exclusivity limit its ad potential? After all, sell to the classes live with the masses; sell to the masses live with the classes, right? Predictably, that reality has forced aSW to start accepting less "valuable" members. Besides, shouldn't Wachtmeister and others charge these people a hefty monthly fee?

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