Please help with my college project :)

I would definately use it. Help with getting good value and recommendations for suppliers would be very useful.

Sounds like a good idea. Just wanted to wish you luck as i know business plans can be so much work.

Hi there...

Now, I'm not a bride, but from a business perspective...

Make sure that you differentiate it very well from ventures already in existence. Take hitched.co.uk for example. In theory, all the suppliers of different specialities can be listed, people can leave feedback through the forums and also as a "review" for the supplier. The facebook / myspace element is in some ways similar to a forum - there's lots of discussion and chat.

So bearing that in mind, how is it different to something like hitched? I think that's where something like your open bid idea comes into play - if prospective brides (and grooms...don't forget the grooms!!) feel like they're going to have an extra feather in their bow in order to be able to get a good deal, you might have something more unique.

Also, your idea about tying it all in with social media: There was talk right at the start of 2009 in the (still new) social media world that things like facebook, twitter, linkedin etc would start to replace a google search as the standard medium if you needed a product or service by the end of this year. Why? Because you'd value the opinions of your friends, families and colleagues more than you would a random company's website and their ability to get it near the top of a google search. How could you capitalise on that? How can you make your recommendation system work such that a company's ranking is based more on how many satisfied customers they have rather than normal search methods? Could you have targeted advertising to your members from the listed companies that you KNOW the members might be interested in? How do you do that without annoying the members with spam?

All interesting stuff! Good luck with it

Tony

Thankyou all so much! I have lots of things to think about now

I'm not actually making the site, its just for a project but obvisously I want it to be as good as poss ?

Especially thanks for the grooms comment...tbh I had mostly concentrated on brides...a silly oversight indeed!

Hopefully I am going to create a database were people can select prechosen catagories and only recieve communications from matching companies, or they can choose to make their choices public and recieve emails from all sorts of people.

Thanks Again!

Becky

Yup - dont forget about meeeeeeeee! hahaha!