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Friendtrend – A social network for fashion

Posted on - 14th March, 2011 - 9:45am | Author - | Posted in - Business, People

Tony Smith (right) and John Walker

A rainy day in March and Tony Smith and John Walker, co-founders of the upcoming fashion social network Friendtrend are chilling on a sofa at the New Continental discussing their new venture.

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Smith, a graphic designer from Cumbria and Walker, a multimedia designer hailing from Northern Ireland, met while at university in Preston. Both have a keen interest in the development and application of social media.

“It’s similar to the the Like button on Facebook but for fashion” enthuses Smith. “What we propose to do is make brands and shops have their own profile pages as well as our users”.

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The idea of Friendtrend is to create a personalised recommendation service for people to compare and see what their friends are wearing. Smith got the idea for the service while working for a company developing 3D software. “I was working with a 3D project, so I started thinking how good it’d be if people could walk around 3D galleries and look at their friends’ outfits”.

Friendtrend will allow users to tag themselves depending on what area of fashion their style falls into; be that grungy, high fashion or formal. Clothes in photos will be able to be individually tagged so that others on the social network can see where the items have been purchased from. The service also promises to be fully integrated into Facebook so that users don’t have to waste time typing in all their personal information again and having to import new photos.

Currently in the development stages, the pair are taking an open approach to developing the product before making it public. But how will they test the service?

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“A closed beta testing period is what we’re going to do” says Walker, “we’ll give out a limited amount of invites for people to test the service and see what works and what doesn’t”.

Both are currently working full time but are now seeking funding in order to dedicate more time to the development and launch of Friendtrend.

“Funding means that we can all just focus on this one idea and not have to think about where the money is coming from. If I could give you an approximate date of launching in May”

Over the next few months Blog Preston will be periodically catching up with Smith and Walker, tracking the development of their business until launch day and seeing how they’re getting on. You can also keep track of them on Twitter @thesmithery, @walkerstudios and @friendtrendnet.

Introduction to Friendtrend at The Continental by JosephStash

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Are you a small business or startup in Preston? Get in touch at joseph(at)blogpreston(dot)co(dot)uk.

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