David Rusenko

From the team that brought you Rock Band and Guitar Hero, a new startup that's a bit hard to describe. It's a little bit game, a little bit social, a little bit music discovery, and a lot of fun.

These guys are doing so much right, I don't even know where to begin. I was attracted to their game by a Facebook ad that said "Like Ladytron? We don't have it yet, but we do have a ton of indie electronic music." My kind of website, I thought to myself.

The idea is like Guitar Hero with the arrows on your keyboard. Naturally, a lot of fun right off the bat.

Add to that a very social experience. You choose to "dance" for people (either flirty, flashy, or funny), and leave a comment for them, sort of like an IM conversation. Comments are auto-generated, so even if you don't really want to say anything in particular, it's still quite funny to have this pseudo-chat.

Since they are advertising on Facebook and to a presumably younger crowd, they're attracting a real mix of male and female audience. I saw a mostly college-aged crowd while I was there.

The beauty of it, is that in order to talk to someone, you need to "dance" with/for them. All in all, it feels very flirty, and is much more like doing an activity with someone, as opposed to creepily talking to a random person.

Looks like their product is living up to their stated vision: "Are emoticons and pixellated panties the stuff that true friendships are made of? The activities and experiences that we share are what bind us together. When spending time together online is as fun as a night of clubbing or as intense as a great jam session, then social networks will truly be social."

I was a couple days late to the scoop: Venturebeat covered it on the 8th (Damn! If only I'd clicked on that Facebook ad sooner. Congrats guy, though, on some seriously cool sleuthing). Since Venturebeat's already let the cat out of the bag, I don't feel too bad pointing to the alpha url: http://alpha.loudcrowd.com/

Here's a video intro from Vimeo: