Website with similar concept

I found a site based in America that has the same concept of my Dining with Strangers. It is a social dining website, social dining is when a group of people meet either at someone's place or at restaurant to enjoy a meal together. It is a philosophy of using meals specifically as a means to connect with others: eat to socialize.

Grubwithus arranges family style meals at restaurants and signs up participants to book and pay in advance at a discounted price. Grubwithus builds friendships over great meals. Similar to Meetup and OpenTable but instead of booking your own table, you're booking an individual seat at a table with other social diners.

I now need to redefine my concept but still sit within social network.

Possible Research topics

• Journal articles on social networking
• Journal articles on human relation especially between strangers (e.g. psychology, media)
• Survey on ideas about meeting strangers
• Survey on restaurants to see what they think about the idea

The Project

My project is about dining with strangers, meeting people with common interest online and through a dining experience.

My hypothesis is because of the facts on the previous post my assumption is that by combining the elements of the success social networking on the internet and meeting strangers face to face Meeting strangers with common interest online and then face to face will create a long lasting network

The method

• To create a website which enables people to dine with strangers.
• It is a cross between Grab a seat, Treatme and social networking websites. 
• The website will feature dinner plans for set at a date, then people would be able to buy/book a seat on a table at the restaurant. And other buyers who book will sit at the same table as them.
• People would need to have a login to book a seat and enter have a small profile of themselves so that other people would know some information, such as interests in travel, music, art, business etc.

Social Networking and more

We all know how important networking is, there is a saying "its not that you know but who you know"

So a background on how social networking has evolved. Some times is hard to imagine the days where you can just take a picture and share it with all your friends or type in somebody's name and be able to find the online, but things have change dramatically.

Some of the ideas of social network theory are found in writings going back to ancient Greeks.

In late 1800s both Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Tonnies foreshadow the idea of social networks in their research of social groups.

Social groups has been defined as two or more humans who interact with one another, share similar characteristics and collectively have a sense of unity.

As we know social network on the internet is already the norm, for example people are on Facebook, Twitter and more. Web-based social networking services make it possible to connect to people who share interests and activities across borders.

Facebook it self and other social networking tools have become so large that they have become objects of scholar research.

The other fact that I would like to mention here is that there are reality shows in which people meet face to face through the show. For example 'Come dine with me' which is a program brocasted in the UK for a number or years. In this show a number of strangers  meet for dinner everyday of the week to each other houses.