pDon't be surprised if you haven't heard of a href="http://www.totalprestige.com/" title="Total Prestige"Total Prestige/a—you may not have made the cut. The NY-based, invitation-only social net is geared toward millionaires (boasting both Saudi Arabian oil magnates and former soap stars among its roughly 650 members); and it's about to get a $1 million cash injection from private investor Frank DeRose. /p p According to the a href="http://www.nypost.com/seven/11302008/business/high_society_networking_141503.htm" title="NY Post"NY Post/a, DeRose is backing Total Prestige in the hopes of transforming it from a mere social site into a hub for affluent types to actually broker business deals: "This is a place you can come for trusted networking with established professionals--and sure, you might make a new friend along the way, but that's not our focus," he said. DeRose, a founding partner of NY-based PE firm a href="http://ferratacap.com/index.html" title="Ferrata Capital"Ferrata Capital/a, is expected to be named CEO of the site as well. /p p A number of exclusive, luxe lifestyle online communities have sprung up over the past few years, including a href="http://www.asmallworld.net/login.php" title="A Small World"A Small World/a (whose European IPO was a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-a-small-world-well-remains-one-3m-revs-in-2007" title="held back earlier this year"postponed earlier this year/a due to market turbulence) and the California-baseda href="https://www.blackcardcircle.com/" title=" Black Card Circle" Black Card Circle/a. But given the VC belt-tightening, Total Prestige's focus on deal-making may help the network attract an influx of well-connected, hungry entrepreneurs that haven't been able to drum up funding through more traditional means. br / /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-a-small-world-well-remains-one-3m-revs-in-2007/"A Small World, Well, Remains One; $3M Revs in 2007/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/oh-so-exclusive-social-network-asmallworldnet-gets-funding-from-weinsteins-/"Oh-So-Exclusive Social Network ASmallWorld.net Gets Funding From Weinsteins, Bob Pittman/a/li /ul piSocial Media Deals Report: This 199-page report, filled with charts and data, examines the categories, number and size of VC and MA deal in social media from 2007 through 2008. stronga href="http://www.paidcontent.org/reports/"Visit the ContentNext Reports page/a/strongi/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=pq60gG"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=pq60gG" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=Z3jQO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=Z3jQO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=bPA7O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=bPA7O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=N0Zzo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=N0Zzo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=JGeFO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=JGeFO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=UdjFO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=UdjFO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/471628853" height="1" width="1"/

centera href="http://turbulence.org/works/tumbarumba/"img id="image1662" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2142/tumbarumba.jpg" alt="tumbarumba.jpg" //a/centerbr / pToday, a href="http://turbulence.org/"Turbulence/a announced a new commission by a href="http://www.ethanham.com/"Ethan Ham/a and a href="http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com/"Benjamin Rosenbaum/a. Titled ia href="http://turbulence.org/works/tumbarumba/"Tumbarumba/a/i, this Firefox extension allows the user to uncover twelve stories while surfing the web. Like a series of hidden doors, the user must discern the entry into a text via its apparent absurdity. By clicking through this outlier text, the story appears bit by bit. The project carries over elements from hypertext fiction, but through its implementation as a Firefox application, it becomes more firmly embedded in the user's overall browsing experience./p centera href="http://artzilla.org/"img id="image1663" src="http://rhizome.org/imagebase/article/2142/artzilla_flyer_frontsmall.jpg" alt="artzilla_flyer_frontsmall.jpg" //a/centerbr / pFirefox extension projects have picked up more recently, one of my favorites continues to be Steve Lambert's ia href="http://add-art.org/"Add Art/a/i. (Incidentally, also a a href="http://www.rhizome.org/commissions/2008/"Rhizome Commission/a.) For the Firefox-extension aficionado, a href="http://fffff.at/"F.A.T./a will launch "a href="http://artzilla.org/"Artzilla.org/a" next week, a collection/blog dedicated to experimental Firefox add-ons. They're kicking the blog off on December 13th with an a href="http://agenda.wormweb.nl/agenda.php?id=2253"exhibition/a by Aram Bartholl, Dragan Espenschied, Evan Roth, Theo Watson, Jamie Wilkinson, Timo Klok, and Tobias Leingruber at Worm Rotterdam. Once running, a href="http://artzilla.org/"Artzilla.org/a will definitely be worth checking out./pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/rhizome-fp/~4/471558308" height="1" width="1"/