Great feedback, thank you for taking the time to check us out :). I guess the reason that we haven't necessarily defined that we're a social network on the homepage itself, is because since we've launched, most of people heading to the homepage already know what we're about, as most of the referrals either come from articles written about us or friends telling each other about the site. But I completely agree, we do need to figure out a way to address this.

To answer your question, our target market is anybody who loves being social, but feels limited because of the restrictions and issues imposed on them by other sites. Buddify is for anybody who just wants something different than what they already have, and from what we've found, there are a lot of people in this position, and so far, a lot of people who come from that audience love the site.

Regarding applications, I personally feel that applications do not internally belong on a communication platform, and that they take away from the social experience. A lot of people would argue that applications on Facebook such as Farmville bring people closer through "Social responsibility". I disagree, I find that in a lot of cases they do exactly the opposite (there are exceptions though). Buddify is all about pure, unhampered conversation, and I think if people just want to tend their virtual crops all day then facebook serves that purpose well, and if people don't like how they're handling that, then I'm sure another site will come along to fix that issue too. You make the point that a lot of people love applications, but at the same time, there are also a lot of people that hate applications with a passion. We're really not into the idea of applications, that's why we're staying away from them.

Badges are a very interesting topic. At first sight, they just seem like just another gimmick that nobody needs, but in hindsight, they're a lot more than that. Badges say a lot about what that person is like. For instance, if someone who requested your friendship has a badge for posting over 10K comments and also has a badge to indicate that they've been blocked by 20 different people, it says that the person is potentially just an annoying spammer that you'll want to stay away from.

However, another example would be where a user has also requested your friendship and also has a badge that says the user has made over 10K comments, but they have another that says they're a member of over 100 groups, and have over 100 friends, and that their friends primarily consist of geeks and nerds. You then look over to their comment box and see that there's a lot of interesting conversations going on about stuff you're interested in. This could potentially be somebody that you'd actually like to add as a friend. It's something that you have to learn to interpret on your own, based on your own instincts.

The badges also encourage people to participate in other areas of the site that they might not normally use.

As for differentiation, what can I say other than we're starting off by taking a bunch of old ideas and doing them the way we think they should have been done in the first place. We have some cool ideas floating around in our heads right now that will hopefully soon start crystallizing when the time is right, and hopefully there are still many more ideas yet to come. By all means, if you have any cool ideas for the site, please let me know.

-Steve