HoverSpot Tries To Score Points Against MySpace

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HoverSpot is another new entrant in the MySpace-wannabe category, offering profile pages, networking and photo galleries. But they've also tried to come up with a unique twist: a points system that rewards users for uploading photos, inviting friends, logging in regularly, adding blog entries and leaving comments. The more points you have, the more chances you have to win prizes like an iPod Nano (note that XuQa is trying similar concept). The service has rolled out very quietly over the last few months, and currently has around 20,000 members.

The feature set is fairly predictable - there's messaging, search, rating and on-site IM. However, the profile editing is fairly in-depth - you can apply one of eight themes, or customize the text color, background, table styles and more with the AJAXy profile editor. This is something many of the MySpace rivals have tried, and it's not clear whether it's a big selling point: seasoned MySpace users are already familiar with copying and pasting chunks of code. Nonetheless, HoverSpot also allows you to post code into the About Me field, so YouTube videos, Frappr maps and MySpace slideshows are easily added. Additional features include clean URLs (hoverspot.com/myname) and Memo Blasts - the HoverSpot equivalent of MySpace bulletins.

All in all, it's an underwhelming experience - there's nothing here that hasn't been done before and the points system isn't all that compelling. It may be a tad prettier than some of the other players, but that ain't gonna cut it. Without some major new features or some kind of unique angle, HoverSpot really won't take off.

Attention HoverSpot Users!

Mashable's HoverSpot account is at hoverspot.com/mashable - feel free to add Mashable to your friends list.

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