• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 21, 2008

Does the world really need another social network? Konnects certainly thinks so. The startup formally launched its site Wednesday with the aim of filling what it views as a gap in the marketplace between business-focused LinkedIn and socially driven Facebook.

It may be onto something. After testing the site since last year, Konnects has attracted 350,000 users worldwide, and says it's on pace to have a million registered users by year's end. The company is targeting young professionals and early-stage companies with a social platform designed to be more open and informal than LinkedIn, but more business-oriented than Facebook.

"Right now, no one is serving this middle ground and we feel there's an opportunity there," said Jim Crabbe, CEO and co-founder of Konnects. On one hand, LinkedIn is geared to established professionals with profile pages laid out like resumes. But that may not be the best fit for someone just starting their career.

To that end, Konnects wants to more closely emulate the look and feel of broader social networks like Facebook with features such as photos, blogs, recommendations and the ability to share profiles with fewer restrictions. "You can set privacy controls lower or open it all the way up," Crabbe said.

Konnects allows users to create not just individual pages, but professional communities complete with tools such as Web analytics, videoconferencing, discussion groups and voice-over-IP software. While Facebook also lets people set up groups, the social network's offering isn't as tailored to professional users, according to Crabbe.

Communities on Konnects can also generate revenue from advertising or by charging subscriptions. If they choose to let Konnects sell advertising on their pages, then its hosting service is free. Otherwise, the company charges groups a $19.95 monthly fee or takes a share of subscription revenue.

The site sells three standard display units--a medium banner, a leaderboard and a wide skyscraper--at CPMs generally priced at $5 across the site. It also offers inventory on cost-per-click or cost-per-acquisition basis. CPC rates run $1 a click with a minimum $50 buy.

Konnects also allows marketers to target messages according various industry, management positions and professions and by company size. But advertising on the site is still at a nascent stage.

Beyond LinkedIn and Facebook, Konnects also has a host of competitors offering white-label social networking services such as Ning, Userplane, LiveWorld and KickApps. Even so, Crabbe believes allowing members the opportunity to set up communities for free or make money from advertising or subscriptions, as they do offline, will give the startup an edge in the social networking scrum. "We're taking the way people network in the professional world and transferring that online," he said.