Differentiating between a "network" and a "marketplace" can be tough (I'd call sitter city a marketplace because its buyers & sellers pretty much). That being said, here's some things that popped into my head recently:
- collect class schedules from all the different gyms (spin, Zumba, step, yoga, crossfit, etc) and let people browse them. Try to negotiate deals with some to sell drop-in passes OR charge a monthly fee for X passes and share some of the $ with the gym they choose to go to.
- Better than sitter city's model, I think, is to have an Uber-like model where you just text a number (Twilio!) and they'll line up for a qualified person for the time you need.
- Dating service where you pay monthly and that $ goes towards a weekly blind date lunch with someone they've matched you with. (Married 8 years so sorry if this exists or is utterly stupid)
- A decent upcoming.org replacement still doesn't exist (save some niche alternatives). Create a network to somehow crowdsource a local events guide.
- Youth sports and summer rec. activities. Our kids do a lot of stuff and its hard to keep track of what's going on every day. Also, finding things for them to do during the summer is a pain here (we have multiple cities, each with their own programs-all in friggin PDF form).
- text restaurants/bars at 2-3pm (Twilio!) and ask what their happy hour, dinner and drink specials will be for the night. Broadcast that to a web page/email list/app. Boom, eventually you could have something like Groupon but that restaurants can get behind better.
Let's say you are a web developer, living in city Z, and every day you spend 2 hours commuting to your web development job in city X. Unbeknownst to you, there's a web developer living in city X, who commutes 2 hours to her web development job in city Z. So my idea would be to connect these two, and see if their bosses agree to a web developer swap. Boom, 2 commuters less in the world. Granted, that's a huge "if", and this system won't work for all jobs. But might be something worth exploring.
It's hard enough when it's just one employer and employee involved. Now add another set? If any of the four parties involved aren't good to go... then it won't work.
I could be wrong, but just seems a working scenario is too rare to justify this as a variable business/network.