You've got a life; online, it's livable

Site lets users network, share, support causes

By Janet Forgrieve, Special to the Rocky

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Darek Spring rarely slows down. Even on this April day as he battles the tail end of the flu, the 31-year-old co-founder and CEO of ViewMyLife.com can't stop the high-energy stream of enthusiastic shop talk as he details his latest venture.

Denver-based ViewMyLife launched in February and has attracted more than 5,000 members to its combination online-life toolbox and social and philanthropic network. Membership has been doubling each month, and the company expects to boast 100,000 by July, Spring said.

"We're not trying to create more virtual craziness but to take real goals and enhance them," he said.

The company takes the things many people care about in life and online, from reading e-mail to sharing family pictures to supporting causes, and puts them in one place. ViewMyLife also combines those functions with social and business networking akin to what millions already are doing on sites such as Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn.

Spring, an entrepreneur who also started PTF Financial Mortgage Co. four years ago, said the inspiration for ViewMyLife came to him while he was flying to Atlanta for business and chatting with a friend about building value for customers.

"I thought, 'What if we create a site that's totally about your life?' " he said. "I got so excited that, on the trip, I wrote a list of what people want, and most of those things are still part of our mission."

Membership is free and includes e-mail, instant messaging, a place to post and archive photos and videos, and a calendar function that not only keeps track of birthdays but also reminds users to send a card. Which, by the way, they also can do from the site.

Even more significantly, Spring said, members can go about their online lives while also supporting causes dear to their hearts and sharing philanthropic information with like-minded members.

This month, the company launched its community groups. Members can form groups around any topic of mutual interest, but ViewMyLife expects them to become especially popular when they're supporting charities or nonprofit causes.

The first cause, signed last week, was the University of Denver Relay for Life, a fundraiser to benefit the American Cancer Society. MBA students from the Daniels College of Business are also using the company as a case study, and ViewMyLife has pledged $1,000 to the cause if 500 DU students join the group. As other groups form, the company will donate $1 for each new member, through the summer.

There are signs that, increasingly, consumers are seeking social networks that support the causes they believe in, according to a column last summer by Tom Watson, chief strategy officer of philanthropic consulting firm Changing Our World Inc., and author of the soon-to-be-released CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World.

"Commitment and the desire to change the world run deep in our culture, just as deep as the more superficial social pursuits," Watson said. "These services must remain open and welcoming to causes of all kinds."

ViewMyLife has spent $5 million in two years, most of that from a private investor, to develop and launch the site and expects to kick off advertising sales with a model that allows advertisers to set up pages and target the members they believe will be most interested in their products, Spring said.

"We're not trying to do a MySpace or a Facebook," Spring said. "We're trying to wrap people's lives. It's a culmination of a lot of the most popular things, with the ability to customize it. The goal is to use the Internet in a massive way to bring information and people together to help them do what they do in life."