Lunch.com: Not yet quite sure I'll really need and use it so much

I was invited and joined Lunch.com a few days ago.

If you are into social networks this is a new twist to the original thing.

But that is my first "but": I am on a few social networks and somehow never really got friends with them - facebook, twitter, perhaps I just do not know enough people at the beginning or perhaps as a German I am somehow on the wrong continent, or perhaps I am not - any longer! :-) or :-( - spending so much time in front of a computer, but somehow I feel quickly bored or somehow cannot find reasonable uses. Well, that's me. Two expections, btw: Flickr, the photo sharing community, but I got disillusioned by some of the ways Flickr dealt with its customers some time ago - and Librarything, a library social network, which is cool if you own books and want to catalogue them and get into a social network in the process. Librarything so far is the only social network site I regularly use and visit, and even there once all your books are registered I tend to feel a bit lost at times.

As social networks go, Lunch does have a few interesting new ideas, though: "At Lunch, you can contribute facts and opinions about almost everything. Based on your contributions, Lunch connects you to a similarity network of people who share your opinions and ideas." (from the Wiki text). This is something appealing to your creative energies and interests: if you like writing reviews (as I sometimes do on books at amazon or librarything or on politics in my very erratic blogs) this is a very useful place to put them and make them read and recognized and at the same time you personalize the social network site you are engaged in as Lunch adapts what it presents to you to your reviews (and ratings) among other things.

And of course it works the other way round, as well: if you look for reviews on almost anything that interests you, in the end you might find them on Lunch.com, along with the people who wrote them and share your interests and possibly more.

Lunch.com seems to be trying to blend with other social network sites or make blending easier (like e.g. posting your reviews to your facebook account). This is a reasonable approach, as well, as ending up with all those different browser windows (twitter, facebook, myspace .......) tends to become a bit tedious and time-consuming.

Another "but": Lunch.com is only at its beginning, as a far as I can see the membership base it quite small, yet (or am I wrong?). And it is mainly an American membership - while I have always loved contacts with Americans, all these people are geographically really very very far away from me (pity!) and the selection of Lunch.com's topics is very US-centered at the moment, as well - I don't know 90% of the breakfast cereals, energy bars, table waters, TV celebrities and such being talked about here; and as for TV shows if I know them at all I am a few season's behind usually. This would not be a problem worth talking about if it would not make calculating my similarities to other Lunch.com users and thus finding contacts and networks a bit more difficult.

To sum it up: Lunch.com could become one of the better and more interesting social network places I have encountered yet - and yet I am not quite sure about its value for me and whether I am the social networking guy after all. Perhaps I am simply too old and ancientand that is a very depressing thought, isn't it? Anyway, Lunch.com is definitely worth checking it out for yourself. Do it!