Latest News from Me2everyone (more than 472000 members & growing every minute)
Q2: WHERE DID M2E COME FROM?
Date : 7th June, 2009
Every story has a beginning and Brenda Karayel (ID 18299) asked those questions about where we came from and where we will be in 5 years time. Brenda wanted to know how m2e was born? What inspired us and how did the seed of the idea grow? Brenda wonders where the will and energy came from to put such a huge plan into action. She also asked how we remain inspired after all the problems we faced and how sceptics have reacted. Finally Brenda wants to know where we see and hope m2e will be in 5 years time? It seems that the man with all these answers is new CEO Michael Leonard...
PART 1
You know, the story of me2everyone goes way back to a project I worked on in 1998. The inspiration came from matchmaker.com, whose graphics were playful and whose reach was global. The whole essence of the website was about friendship. Matchmaker was a dating site, but really it was probably the first true social networking website. I made friends across the world and visited often. I found business partners but after its sale to Lycos the playfulness seemed to disappear.
I became inspired and designed something called the World Park: a simple and colourful drawing emerged and I began to visit numerous web developers. I’m not web trained – not really. I was great in BASIC way back in 1986 but I never developed from there. I met web designers in England and California and was told: “Mike, the technology to run this website simply doesn’t exist...” The dream died there and then and my life went in a different direction.
Eventually the technology arrived but I was so tied up in other things that World Park remained a dream. Thinking back, I would say that if you have ever have a dream and someone tells you "it's impossible" – ignore them and find a way to achieve it or make a compromise – but at least start your dream with real action. Seven years later I see the successes of pioneers like MySpace, Friendster, Second Life and Facebook and I wonder: “what if”.
The story of me2everyone for real begins again in 2008, from the fires of converging problems. By now the World Park name had been “given” to a plan to create a golf resort in Africa, and in early 2008 I saw some news on Yahoo about a US-based organisation called Kiva.org. I was impressed by their micro-finance idea to help people in developing nations. They had endorsement from Oprah and Bill Clinton. Kiva lets members lend small amounts of money to needy people, which is then repaid over a period of time. From a career helping entrepreneurs across the world, I figured that whatever Kiva.org was doing for developing nations could be a way to help entrepreneurs everywhere.
The project started in March 2008 as the MYMoneyTree.tv concept – forecast to launch during the summer. Meanwhile we began to look at a simple way to create more members for both World Park and the emerging MMT.tv platform. The old files were dusted off and by September work had started to build me2everyone.
When the first MMT.tv website emerged it coincided with the first visible signs of the recession. The timing sucked and after 2 months the MMT.tv membership had reached a mere 300 people. The me2everyone concept had also emerged but due to the uncertain nature of business in late 2008 we opted to create a very simply “taster” for the website to gauge public opinion. The guess was 10,000 members by the end of January and if we were very, very, very lucky we would hit 30,000 by March 1st when we expected the new version of the website to appear... How wrong we were!
So here’s the birth of me2everyone. To discover the how me2everyone emerged as one of the hottest ideas on the web and what’s coming to lift me2everyone away from the crash, come back later this evening (if you can) (9pm – GMT) and the rest of Brenda’s questions are answered.
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