Privy.net is an exclusive membership only community that is built on the philosophy of ‘it’s who you know’. The first thing I noticed about the site, is that it is made up of successful, rich, good looking, Asian American’s such as Lisa Ling of , Kelly Hu and Steve Chen of Youtube, an interesting niche sub-culture. The network aims to help members find out what’s hot from who’s hot, like what to eat, wear, travel, party and buy. Of course everything is of class and only available to people privy to such information and connections.
Like other exclusive networks like P1, in China for ‘wealthy’ Chinese people or A Small World for celebrities, Privy.net only gives access to approved members.
Some of the things they cover are events like the Miss Universe China crowning, Hennessy Tasting events in New York, interviews of cardiologist turned fashion designer or covering a story about rich Chinese women buying Maserati sports cars. To some it may seem pretentious but it’s rather natural for humans to want to feel a part of a group, this group just tends to be a class of confident, successful Asian Americans.
Now Privy.net has released an iPhone app for members to connect with each other when they travel and share what they are doing. Stephen Liu, Founder of Privy.net said “One of the original inspirations that led to the creation of Privy was to solve the logistics challenge of coordinating roving itineraries among trusted friends and people you actually do want to meet. Rather than telling the whole world you are in Taipei and hoping they respond back to you — with the Privy iOS application — you can now discretely share your itinerary with the people you want to know as well as find out who will be in town on precisely the same days you are, and then connect with them.”
In future developments they will create a “curated social dashboard” that answers what we feel to be three very basic but important questions when arriving in a city that’s not your own:
1. Who’s in town? (not only who’s based here, but traveling to the city at the same time)
2. Where to go? (trusted recommendations and perks on the latest and greatest to eat, drink and stay)
3. What to do? (invites to events hosted by Privy or our members)
Privy is planning to launch a Beijing network, soon and you can register your interest here.
For members, you can download the app here: http://bit.ly/privyapp
On what criteria do they approve members? Or is it by invite only?
Based on how cool you are? lol
Members can also invite their friends