I've been working at Orbius since Oct. 1 helping the team to develop a new social media platform.  If you follow any of the news stories lately in the social networking arena, you've seen several problems being talked about.  The first is that there are lots of governance problems with the current state of social networking.  You've heard a lot of stories about people's photos and information being seen by the "wrong" people. For example, my wife works for a school district and a few months ago the superintendent asked all of the teachers to remove their profiles from several popular sites because the kids in the schools were looking at pictures of the teachers at parties, etc.  That's just one example.  The other issue that seems popular these days is that brand marketers are trying to figure out how to get into he social game.  There are lots of individuals using these social networking sites but companies can't figure out how to make it work for them.  It's because of issues like that that Orbius was created.

Here are a few reasons why Orbius stands out:

• Orbius is different from other players in the market because it is specifically designed to support not just individuals but groups - companies, brand marketers, clubs, and organizations.  We call these community sites Orbs.   It's really easy to create an Orb, apply themes, configure security and start communicating with groups of people.
• Orbius is designed to support multiple Profiles.  For instance, I have a public profile that everyone can see.  I also have a Family Profile, a Friends Profile,  and a Professional profile.  I can decide who get's to see any of my personal information.  For instance, in my Professional Profile I have my resume, links to technology sites and blogs that I like, etc.  In my Family profile I can keep family photos and a calendar that keeps track of where we'll be for different holidays, etc.  In my Friends profile I share pictures with Friends and I have a comment wall so we can joke around.  But these Profiles would be useless if I couldn't control who had access to each of them.  With Orbius it is really easy to organize my connections into various groups and then allow them access to whichever profiles I want!
• Orbius offers a unique way to join communities and "hide" your identity through Personas.  While this may not be useful in all situations, in many communities members share sensitive information about themselves (medical information for example).  In these Orbs, members can safely discuss important issues because the other community members will never know their real identity.
• Orbius provides a simple dashboard view of changes and updates to all of the communities you belong to.  In addition, all messages among Orbius users come through a central inbox, even if the communication is from different Orbs.
• By the way, Orbius is free to use.  Anyone can set up Orbs and/or Profiles.  However, companies who wish to take advantage of extra features including advanced themes, removal of advertising, custom applications and more can do so with a Premium, Corporate, or Enterprise Level Edition of Orbius.

Here is a list of some of the features we support.  Most of these can be added to Orbs or Profiles!

• Blogging
• Image Gallery
• Calendar with Events and RSVP
• Comment Wall
• Polls
• Discussion Forum
• Content Library
• Ask an Expert
• Fan Club
• RSS Feeds
• and much more!

There's a whole lot more to it than this, but I thought this would give you an idea of what we are up to.  Want to take a sneak peak at Orbius?  Send me an email and I'll add you to our Preview List (unless we fill up to quick).

I'll be posting more information about Orbius soon.  Meanwhile, here are a few screen shots from Orbius (click to enlarge them):

• Here is my Public Profile.  Note that since no one is logged in, only my Public Profile is seen.  You can see that in my Public Profile I have a Home Page, Connections, Pictures, Blog and more.

• Here are my Additional Profiles.  This time my wife is logged in.  You can see I've given her permission to see all 4 of my Profiles.  Also, you can see my photo gallery and calendar in my Family Profile.

• The last thing I'll show today is a screen shot of an Orb.  This is the start of what will be the Philly.Net Orb.  You can see that within this community we have a Calendar (named Meetings and Events) a Members list, a Discussion Forum, Document Library, Newsletter, and other pages.  I'll go into more detail on those features soon.