The use of phony names and anonymous accounts in the online world creates a negative social cycle of fakery, non-accountability and ultimate distrust which is bad for everyone.

A lack of true accountability in the entire culture has created an environment in which many of us casually let each other down, creating an additional negative social cycle in which expectations of each other are sadly low, hurting our hopes for each other, and the possibilities between us.

The convenience with which computers can provide segregation services based on factors such as age and gender has become an unquestioned way for people to discriminate against each other without ever meeting, without ever appreciating each other's unique individual qualities, regardless of demographic slicing and dicing. This unquestioned ease of discrimination based on demographics damages opportunities for all of us.

It's time to change all this.

Our motto: "Using computers to get people away from them."

Linkup is here to help you spend less time on your computer, and more time meeting people in person.

Because our goal is to promote genuine interactions, we ask that all members use their real first name. For your privacy however, we ask that you not include your last name. We believe this combination of real first name but complete privacy provides the greatest positive effects for everyone.

In order to provide a positive social cycle and to promote justified trust among members of Linkup, we insist that members keep their social commitments to each other. In other words, if you say you'll keep an appointment, we expect you to actually do so, and we believe it is only reasonable to expect people to keep the social commitments they make with each other.

We have also found that when people have good reason to be confident in each other, good things begin to happen.

Linkup is entirely based on regionalism. In other words, we understand that you want to meet people who are in your area. Therefore each Linkup site displays the commonly understood areas in a region, and shows you which events and which people are in each area. This makes it easy to find both events and people who are nearby.

Though our goal is to get you away from your computer, the Linkup software system is highly advanced, but easy to use, providing such services as:

• Refined options for events, so that you can create precisely the kind of event you want
• Automated notification by email of changes in your guest list
• Automated reminders by email about your events, as host, guest and on a wait list
• Search of events by keyword, date and area
• RSS feed of events [Sample]
• A complete wireless version on which you can view events, sign up for events, and even view the photo of a host of an event, all on your phone or PDA
• A complete user's manual, always available on line

Linkup is currently available in 30 major metropolitan areas: 23 in the United States, 3 in Canada, and 4 overseas.

To see how active and successful a Linkup group can become, please take a look at Bay Area Linkup.

Welcome to the world of Linkup.