Koolanoo: Myspace-style Jewish space

(VIDEO) Koolanoo has been growing under the noses of the dating-website industry, aimed at linking Jewish people from around the world
Ehud Kenan

VIDEO - A good-looking girl in a bikini, wearing a gold Magen David around her neck, dives into a swimming pool and, oops, loses her bikini top.

This has become a standard formula in advertisements, but in this case, it has an original ending.

When she comes back up, a young man who is also wearing a Magen David chain covers her breasts. All of the guys sitting by the pool, who were ogling her just moments before, turn away in an "oy vey" gesture.

Not quite the type of humor expected from a site created for Jews all over the world.

Another video clip based on manga, Japanese cartoon art, portrays the executives of the dating-website industry as covetous swindlers who associate with hookers and indulge in drugs. They sell their soul to the devil for riches and start charging membership fees of tens of dollars from innocent surfers.

The Koolanoo (All of Us) social network ninjas come to the rescue and save the surfers from the villains in battles full of blood and gore.

Meeting Jews from all over the world

There are countless Israeli and international social networks on the web, MySpace being the most prominent one. However, Koolanoo, launched in September, is the first Jewish network in the world.

For those who do not understand what we are talking about, a social network allows web surfers to open up a personal profile page and connect with friends, write a blog, paste audio or video clips, etc.

This makes it possible for others to learn quite a bit about the member and to map his/her relationships. This is inspired by Milgram's six-degrees-of-separation theory, whereby any two people on earth are linked through no more than five other people.

Like any other social network, Koolanoo affords its members the option of managing lists of friends, looking for (kosher) dates, chatting, finding social events and writing a blog.

A new feature also enables surfers to hear Psalms while they surf.

Unlike dating websites, this is all provided for free.

A standard member profile page will include the member's name, picture, marital status (most important), profession (even more important), whether the person smokes or drinks and more specific info such as ethnic background (Sephardic or Ashkenazi), religious affiliation and whether the member keeps kosher.

The directors of the site have future plans for development that will also enable people to find other connections based on places of work (like in the network LinkedIN), to post classified ads and even to broadcast live events such as a kabalat Shabbat at the Kotel.

Meeting place for Jews

"It is no secret that we marry and also do business within our community. That is what the Jewish people are like," Oded Kobo, who created the site together with his childhood friend Guy Greenberg, told Ynet.

Kobo, who speaks a mixture of Hebrew and English during the interview, did not grow up in Israel. "I've been connected to and with the internet since 1996 and couldn't find an online place to meet Jews from all over the world."

Kobo has initiated online raffles and in the past also sold domains. When the high-tech-bubble burst, he left the field in favor of real estate in New York and London and importing and exporting products from the Far East. Three years ago he returned to internet together with Greenberg.

Not an Orthodox site

The Koolanoo launch was not accompanied by marketing activities and its existence spread by word of mouth until the video clips were released. These video clips are a new internet marketing strategy targeting mostly young public.

In another one of the Koolanoo clips, a hit-woman finds time for a date during a job. The message: you CAN mix business and pleasure. Kobo is not worried about the bold advertisements insulting the target audience and says that "Koolanoo is not a religious site....It is insane how popular these ads are. People love them and think they are funny," he says.

Kobo adds that he received the blessing of Rabanim (multiple for Rabi) on the site. "They told me thank you for what you are doing for the Jewish world."

Dating sites are outdated

Kobo thinks that the paid-dating-site industry is going downhill. He explains that these sites generate tens of millions of dollars a year but they end up losing money because their expenses per member are higher than the fee he pays.

Unlike dating sites, a social network "connects people and allows them to get to know each other for purposes other than romantic ones. Koolanoo also has married members," stated Kobo.

Thirty-five thousand members, mostly between the ages of 18-35, have registered since the launch of the site in September. Sixty-five percent of them are men. Kobo stated that any given moment, there are approximately 15,000 users online.

There's no way of checking that everybody who joins the community is Jewish. However, Kobo believes that lack of anonymity on these sites will uncover impersonators rather quickly.

A friend of a friend of a friend

"On a dating site, you can never know if someone presents himself misleadingly, but in a social network you can 'judge' a person by his friends or the people he 'hangs out with'.' If your brother is going out with a girl from Italy, and you have a Jewish friend in Germany who has a friend who knows her, you can find out much more about her."

All the services on the site are free and there are no bothersome advertisements. "Koolanoo is not my main business. I'm not in it for the money and development costs are not very high," said Kobo. He promised that all the service will continue to be free in the future too.

Myspace was sold to media conglomerate News Corp. for $580 million. It is now one of the most popular online meeting places in the world among youngsters. Kobo says that he does not believe Koolanoo will ever get such a hefty offer. "Anyway," he says, "Koolanoo is not for sale."