Charitable Social Networking Site Jumo Gets Overloaded with Users on Day One

On Tuesday, Facebook (News - Alert) co-founder Chris Hughes launched the beta version of Jumo, an innovative social networking site that connects donors with charities. The good news for the non-profit company is that the website garnered an unbelievable amount of initial consumer interest. The bad news, so many users tried to access the site it nearly crashed just a few hours after being launched.

Apparently, the unexpected number of people who tried to log on to Jumo caused what the company referred to as "load-related issues," according to Information Week. Users reported experiencing major delays while trying to sign up for the social networking site and had trouble with connection speeds once they finally were able to log in.

Hughes (News - Alert) took the issue in stride, referring to the crash on his Twitter account as a good problem to have.

"While we anticipated great interest, we've seen an unbelievable response from people in countries around the world," Jumo officials wrote in a company blog. "This is beyond our wildest dreams."

Not surprisingly, Jumo is set up in a very similar way to Facebook. In fact, the website requires that people sign in to their account using the Facebook ID.

Once logged in to Jumo, users can choose to "follow" and support as many as 3,500 causes and organizations, Business Review reports. Each page includes news articles, blog posts, YouTube (News - Alert) videos and outlets for users to offer their feedback and share content with their friends. The website also aggregates an organization's posts from various social media sites, including Twitter, Flickr and Facebook, into one repository.

"Our real mission is to make it as easy as possible for people to be able to find these organizations and then connect with them in a substantive way," said Hughes.

He added that anyone can create a page for a given cause, but organizations will need to be vetted by the IRS to receive donations via Jumo.

As of last check, the website was still experiencing delays.

Beecher Tuttle is a TMCnet contributor. He has extensive experience writing and editing for print publications and online news websites. He has specialized in a variety of industries, including health care technology, politics and education. To read more of his articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Tammy Wolf