International Model quits and Sets-Up Interests Network

July 26, 2010 - PRLog -- Rory Marshall is a revered model that has worked for the likes of Armani and Channel, and has spent many a week on the road working for such companies.

Now this might sound like a glamorous lifestyle to most; spending time with beautiful models, been waited-on hand and foot, and seeing some of the most cosmopolitan places in the world for free, but the truth is, it’s an extremely lonely job.

It was during one of Marshall’s moments of boredom on set that he tried to find out who was in London whilst he was working there, as well as trying to find something to do that evening. He looked around the web on his smart-phone, but was unable to find anything.

His Facebook app only showed what his friends were doing back home, MySpace is just swamped with kids/music and you can’t write enough on Twitter to have an in-depth conversation with anyone to find out what they are doing. Rory wondered why he couldn’t just go and find something he was interested in, but also find out if there was anything happening that evening, and from this he came up with the idea of an ‘interests network,’ which he eventually named ‘bongal’.

Bongal is the unique concept of connecting people through groups based on their interests and hobbies. Basically it’s a giant forum with an unlimited scope for what people want to chat about. If this had been invented before Marshall got bored, he wouldn’t have had to scour the net trying to find out what was going on in London that night. Instead he could have just gone onto the London group and find out what was happening that night, through what other users had posted on the group.

“I wanted to create a platform that the average Joe could use”, Marshall continued “to be able to interact with others who are into the same stuff as you is completely unique to the internet. Sure you can join a forum and chat, but bongal is about chatting about multiple things, which are all housed under one roof.”

After having the brainwave, Marshall decided that he would try and turn bongal into a business and decided to downgrade his modeling schedule in order to do it. He got in contact with Rippleffect, the largest web agency out side London and got the ball rolling.

“I thought it would be best to move back to Ilkley, which is where the majority of my friends and family are based, but it also let me get a little closer to the agency, so I could be in close contact with them, whilst Bongal was getting developed” Marshall said, as he sat facing me in the contemporary Bongal office, which looks out onto the Ilkley moors on one side, and a quaint shopping street on the other.

Since the birth of Bongal, Mashall has continued to expand his brainchild. In only three months the website has grown to a membership of over 10,000 and the bongal website has also developed rapidly. It has recently come out of beta testing and is due for another upgrade in the coming weeks.

Marshall’s dedication to the growth of bongal has been nothing short unbelievable. He has cut his modeling career back and has decided to follow his dream of creating a social platform that anybody can use. This really is a serious career change for the model that doesn’t want to feel alone in the middle of a bustling city ever again.

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Bongal is the unique concept of connecting people through groups based on their interests and hobbies. Basically it’s a giant forum with an unlimited scope for what people want to chat about.