ITcommunity - a new social network for IT professionals

Today, a letter from RuBoard fell into the box with the following content:
Launched the first Russian social network for IT professionals www.itcommunity.ru

The first social network for IT specialists and developers www.ITcommunity.ru officially opened in Russia. The 8-month beta test has successfully completed and now the resource is working in full-featured mode.
ITcommunity.ru is a centralized resource for IT people, where you can store not only personal data and contacts of friends, but also to unite in interest groups, start new blogs or mirror existing ones. Here you can communicate, share professional experience, share the secrets of skill. Over the past 8 months of the resource's work in beta mode, the technical part of the project has been fully adjusted, the functionality has been improved based on the analysis of user requests, and the basic principles of work have been improved. In addition, during consultations with users of www.ITcommunity , such distinctive features of the project were added as the ability to create fan communities of your favorite projects, search for specialists by cities, and also filter content by author and blog.

So, Habrakhabr has a competitor who proudly calls himself "the first social network for IT professionals." Like many users of Habr who are interested in the web and, in particular, in social networks, I could not pass by.

check in
First of all, to feel like a full member of the community, it was decided to register. Of course, there is no OpenID on the site, and registration requires a login to Windows Live ID. Since I don't have a Live ID for my passport, I had to create an MSN account. Why did he know the date of birth, gender, occupation and administrative district I did not understand, but having satisfied the curiosity of the registration service, I was skipped ahead. Having created an account, I received a message stating that Object moved. What kind of obdzhekt and why he muvd remained a mystery to me. Successfully "confirming the Windows Live ID Web site email address" (in which language?), I finally decided to log in to the community site. But not here it was - I was upset by the message that technical problems had arisen in Windows Live ID, and the repetition of attempts later didn’t bring to anything. As a result, it was decided to inspect the site from the point of view of the guest.

Home page
ActiveDirectory article: DyrSync. ?? ????? ?????? .. I remind you that in the courtyard of 2008, Unicode rules and beeps, and the site, which has been in beta testing for 8 months, still has problems with encodings. Well, the topic itself is displayed normally, and that is good. (already repaired)
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Communities
Virtual communities. They are clubs. MSFT, MVP, MCP, MSP. Since ITcommunity calls itself the Russian social network, maybe it is worth writing in Russian: instead of MSFT, “Microsoft employees”, etc.? In addition to clubs, there are community sites.

Topics
Topics can be tagged and then searched for them using a tag cloud, which can also be presented in a list, sorted by weight. Bookmarkable del.icio.us. Judging by the stars, you can probably vote.

By the way, you can manage a blog through the client - Windows Live Writer, but this is an opportunity, as well as creating and commenting on blogs, viewing the profile of participants were not tested - “thanks” to the Live ID.

The portal also contains a forum in which, however, now you can only leave a bug report or add a wishlist. There are no forums on topics not related to the site itself.

Audience and content
There are currently 3410 registered members. The main topics of topics: Microsoft, Windows, SQL Server, .NET, ASP, and other MS technologies, social networks, forex. Despite the large number of posts on the main and frequent updates, views rarely exceed two hundred, and there are no comments at all, which indicates a small user activity. The lion's share of all articles is crossposts.

About the site itself, the placement of blocks, page navigation, etc. and there is nothing to say - everything is so clear. It is not clear why on each page show 3 random participants. But there is no live broadcast. PDA-versions, by the way, also (in Pocket IE it looks awful, in Opera Mini is much better). Validation fails. By the way, there are no banners on the site (however this does not mean that there is no advertising).

I didn’t find other references to this project in Habré, except that the link jumped in the IT Quiz contest. I wonder what the community is thinking about this site?

In short, my opinion is this - yet another dismal social network, outright plagiarism, Microsoft's ridiculous attempt to expand its influence on Web 2.0.

I wish SuperHabr to complete β-testing as soon as possible and not to repeat the mistakes of ITcommunity :)

UPD: login via Live ID still earned. The truth is it is not clear why he, since on the site itself it is also necessary to register and drive in the data that already exists in the Live ID. In addition, the site for some reason needed my name and surname, passport data is not required yet.
Also in the profile you can specify the date of birth (which, of course, it was impossible to take from the Live ID), MSN address and ICQ number (of course, Jabber is not) who you consider yourself (3 points to choose), organization, education, interests and field "about yourself".
As in any social network, it is possible to invite friends (if you think of what to write in the "To / Address" field) and view friends of your friends. It is possible to filter (prohibit) by author and blogs. In general, nothing special.