Quick Pitch: The only company that builds and manages branded online communities specifically for long-term care (LTC) organizations.
Genius Idea: There are dozens of solutions for private label social networks, in addition to create-your-own socnet services like Ning. That said, there are still underserved niches within the social networking space, and CareNetworks looks to fill one of them by providing online community building services to long-term care organizations, aka, nursing homes and retirement communities.
The software itself actually comes from CollectiveX, who builds social networks and collaboration sites to hundreds of businesses and organizations. What CareNetworks does is customize that software for individual long-term care organizations, like this one, providing them with what is essentially a closed social network for members and their families.
The features themselves are fairly basic and primitive compared to the social networks you probably frequent – member profiles, photo galleries, and activity streams, for example. But it’s all about the implementation, and with the goal of retirement communities generally being to get members engaged in activities, keeping it simple seems to be the right approach.
Essentially, CareNetworks is a service and sales based company with a repeatable business model, since the customizations required for each implementation are mainly aesthetic. It’s not the sexiest startup, but one that should be able to find success by serving a niche on the outskirts of the social networking space.
Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark