I'm actually excited about tonight's launch of MingleNow. The site's model sounds refreshingly: Link your profile to that of your favorite bars or restaurants and meet other regulars.

It sounds like Yelp meets MySpace — or an online version of "Cheers."

There are three motivations behind social interaction: Proximity, shared interests, and shared activity. Two fans of the same bar or restaurant presumably have proximity, and visiting the venue is the shared activity, and if it's a bar with character — the hippie feel of San Francisco's Noc Noc lounge, the rocking jukebox at LA's Tiny's K.O. bar, the lunch-time media crowd in New York City's Michael's — the clientele share an interest or two.

While the site has been slow to launch — it went into private testing back in May — corporate profiler VentureBeat says that MingleNow is ready to go with a 900,000-venue list and a social calendar that's embeddable on other sites. If the site uses universal event formats to play nice with sites like Upcoming and Yahoo Calendar, it has the potential to help users actually meet and interact — or at least reminisce about the last booze-soaked Saturday night.

MingleNow launches new bar/restaurant social networking site [VentureBeat]