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COMMON.net Demos MORCA™ at Microsoft Symposium

Mobile “icebreaker” discreetly shows two people what they have in common; first to integrate online networking with a mobile social software application.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB via PR Web Direct) May 6, 2005 -- COMMON.net was invited to demonstrate MORCA™, its second product, at the Microsoft Research Social Computing Symposium in Redmond, WA. MORCA™ is the Mobile Relationship Capital Application. MORCA™ acts as an “icebreaker,” allowing two people to spontaneously and discreetly see just what they have in common, using a wide variety of Internet access devices.

MORCA™ is used during conference breaks, at networking events, at the beginning of sales calls, and in virtually any social or business venue. It takes advantage of the large and growing number of wireless laptops, data-enabled cell phones and other mobile Internet access devices. Tradeshow and conference sponsors, meeting planners and other groups promote the use of MORCA™ to give their attendees a free, fun, and easy-to-use relationship development tool for use in face-to-face encounters. A patent is pending for the Company’s intellectual property.

The demo was well received by Symposium attendees. Elizabeth Churchill, Senior Research Scientist at Palo Alto Research Center, said, “MORCA’s appeal lies in its promotion of social interaction while treating rich personal information with discretion. It requires neither the projection of intimate details for others to scrutinise nor the fabrication of an identity that supposedly makes me interesting. It allows connection to potentially like-minded people, yet it’s polite and undemanding.”

Mitch Ratcliffe, co-founder of Persuadio LLC, the social network analysis technology provider, said, “MORCA is an intriguing application of mobile and networking technology. Its promise is lower social barriers with context that breeds familiarity, an essential ingredient for trust.”

MORCA™ complements COMMON.net’s existing online business networking application. Members create their COMMON Ground™ by listing the people they know, the places they’ve been, and the things that interest them. Trust is established when two parties see their shared affiliations. COMMON Ground™ supports the online networking application by serving as a trust mechanism. MORCA™ extends the COMMON Ground™ feature into mobile settings. Comparing COMMON Ground™ avoids the privacy issues associated with open profiles, which are prevalent in social networking (friend-of-friend) sites.

MORCA™ gets people to the COMMON.net site to create their COMMON Ground™. Members are motivated to put lots of names and other data into COMMON Ground™ so that they will have something ‘in common’ with others. They also may be inclined to engage in online networking by making a portion of those names into searchable Contacts, and shift the visibility of those Contacts from just their friends to the entire network.

COMMON.net CEO Craig Callé said, “We are the first to combine online networking with a mobile application, seamlessly connecting people in the online and offline worlds.”

About COMMON.net

COMMON.net, based in San Francisco, is a provider of relationship capital management applications. You can build your COMMON Ground™, list searchable Contacts, manage your networking activities, and activate MORCA™ at www.common.net