UK-based Horsesmouth, a social network built around mentoring and volunteering, has come out of beta to give people and organisations a place to swap information around the topics of education, careers, health, families and relationships. So far it has picked up 2,000 users and launch partners include Everywoman, Media Trust and Youthnet. The site was founded by advertising entrepreneur MT Rainey, who co-founded ad agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R. The £2m not-for-profit venture has rejected video mentoring in favour of emails on the basis that mentors may want anonymity.
Interestingly there are already several mentors appearing on the site claiming to be experts in Web 2.0 and startups, such as “michaelh“. Users can add tags to mentors, which should prove for some interesting profiles in the future.
Looks like a potentially useful site although I do have serious reservations about the data privacy policy of a site which makes it mandatory to hand over your date of birth just to register (however search for ‘universal internet date of birth’ as a workaround) and also gathers such material ideal for ID theft via an insecure webform….