Wirral woman launches challenge to Facebook

Jan 26 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

A Wirral mother has launched a website to help people make friends and hone their language skills at the same time. Laura Davis reports

FIRST came My Space with the promise of thousands of “virtual” friends you’ve never met in real life.

Then there was Facebook with its thousands of interlinked networks and addictive games.

But the latest generation of social networking websites allows you to find new companions, have a gossip and learn a foreign language at the same time.

Voxswap, launched this month by Wirral-born mother-of-two Nicole Hargrave, aims to take advantage of the explosion of enthusiasm for socialising online.

So many people have been logging on to websites like Facebook that some companies have barred access during working hours.

Nicole’s idea, which she thought up with the help of her husband Sean, 38, adds another dimension to the craze – chatting on Voxswap is educational as well as social.

“So many people do go on sites like Facebook but this is more aimed at developing languages,” explains the 36-year-old.

“A lot of people we’ve spoken to who are in their 30s studied a foreign language to A Level and some people did it for their degree and have not really followed it up but want to, especially for their holidays abroad.”

The couple came up with the idea for Voxswap after reading the late Fritz Spiegl’s Lern Yerself Scouse books, a tongue-in-cheek collection of local expressions and pronunciations.

“With Sean being a cockney, my family always takes the Mickey out of his accent so we got him the books and he started e-mailing my family with silly comments and it went from there.”

“We thought if you could have people chatting in different languages it would help them develop their skills.”

As a member of Voxswap, you have access to live chatrooms, forums or can simply message other people in your native language or the one you are trying to develop.

Like on Facebook or My Space, you can post photographs, videos and even display cuttings from newspapers on your online profile. There is also a virtual keyboard that allows you to select accents or foreign letters, such as é, ö or ß, as well as a translator function should you need to look up a word.

With the site just launched, Nicole and Sean, a freelance journalist, are contacting foreign language departments of universities across the UK and further afield to encourage them to sign up. Membership is free of charge and the revenue will eventually come from companies paying to advertise on Voxswap.

“You don’t have to be a language student to do it, there are people like myself – mums who might just want to improve basic language skills in the evening when you’ve got a bit more time to yourself,” says Nicole, whose knowledge of foreign tongues is limited to schoolgirl French, although Sean speaks German.

“I’m on it all the time, in between nappy changes and feeding the children and school. There are quite a few German people we’ve been chatting to. We contacted Liverpool John Moores University and we’ve had good feedback from quite a few Scousers which is nice.

“We’ve had people from Brazil and Columbia getting in touch and people from the UK saying they want to go travelling to South America. There was a lady yesterday who’s learning Japanese and she’s been forwarding the details on to her other contact list of other Japanese speakers which is good because obviously the more people that are on the site the better it’s going to be.

“Because of the time differences around the world we need to get people on it 24 hours a day and you would need a good few thousand members for that to happen.”

Nicole’s own background is in broadcasting. She was a pupil at Upton Covent and Wirral Metropolitan College before studying communications at the then University of Central England in Birmingham. After graduation, she moved to London to work in TV production, returning to Merseyside during this time to make a BBC programme about the Vikings.

Now living in Oxfordshire, with Sean and their two children Fay, two, and six-year-old Daniel, she makes regular visits back home to see her parents – her mother owns a kitchen and bathroom firm based in West Kirby and her father, a retired Merseyside Police chief inspector, now works as a wedding photographer.

The timing of setting up Voxswap has been a particular challenge as Nicole is expecting her third child in the spring.

“Everything seems to be happening this year, we’ll be very busy. I’m sat here with a very large belly and a laptop while Daniel’s at nursery, trying to e-mail and welcome as many people as I can.”

lauradavis