Personal Networking -In their ‘About Us’ page, LinkdIn proudly boasts that one new member joins them approximately every second. They have 65 million members in 200 countries, including executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. Member profiles are a dynamic online resume, formatted like a Facebook page, letting you post a running status of your current activities and suggesting new contacts for you to ‘friend’. Employers can search for potential candidates and list jobs, while candidates can research potential employers and ask their contacts for introductions or references.
A major rival, Xing, has similar functions plus member discounts on products and services, local event listings and a built-in address book. These two rule this market niche the way Facebook and MySpace dominate generic social networking. The business model starts with free basic membership, supported by ads, with an option to pay for an upgrade. Member companies can buy even more features. For example, Xing runs exclusive private sectors, called enterprise groups, available for a company to lease for their use only. Other competitors in the marketplace are Ryze, ecadamy and Ziggs. Plaxo styles itself as an address book tool, appealing to mobile users with brevity and portability. Spoke offers embeddable interfaces, with a tool bar for MS Outlook, a widget for a Yahoo desktop and other custom tools to attach to a Google home page, a Firefox browser or Internet Explorer 7.
Consultative Networking – TooStep, a free site aimed at mid-career executives, urges you to “join now to discover and share your professional expertise”. While job search is a site feature, the emphasis is clearly on sharing knowledge and experience. Members can join communities, participate in blogs, ask for advice or enter in idea contests.
Focus, which is also free, describes itself as a place where business professionals can help each other with their purchase and other business decisions. “Focus.com features high-quality research, 1:1 briefings with analysts, and a thriving community of business and technology professionals” All interest categories are divided as follows:
Find Answers – <emAsk A Question, Review All Briefs, Review All Research, See All Content
and
Share Expertise – Answer Questions, Publish A Brief, Become An Expert, Join A Group.
StartupNation claims that “Inside our site, you’ll find all the easy-to-follow, practical information you could ever need to start and grow your own successful business.”This site feels like a mash-up of a blog site and an infomercial. While membership is free online, the push is to get a local franchise and host monthly marketing luncheons. Attendees pay admission and members present their pitch to the crowd, for a fee.
Social Networks for Hire – Computer giant, IBM, is marketing a product with which companies can create and run an in-house social network. “Lotus Connections has five components – activities, communities, dogear (a bookmarking system), profiles and blogs – aimed at helping experts within a company connect and build new relationships based on their individual needs.” Employees have been using prototypes of the ‘profiles’ feature for years. The research arm of the company is also using the virtual community, Second Life, as a platform to develop upcoming projects.
While an in-house social network may boost productivity, setting up one of your own may require more resources than a company is willing to allocate to that purpose. Outsourcing is an obvious solution. Yourmembership.com offers turnkey systems that accommodate unlimited members, unlimited administrators, admin training, tech support and all future upgrades, charging $1495 to setup and just $5995 annually. More modest firms might prefer R360, where they offer a secure cloud networking solution for free. The basic no-cost package include 2 shared clouds, unlimited personal clouds, 1 GB of storage online and 5 mobile text messages a month. Since that is just enough to get you hooked, they have several levels of inexpensive upgrades, some for individuals and others for companies, all priced on a monthly basis.
No report on this subject can be complete since this field is expanding daily. There are additional social business networks that are too numerous to be mentioned here. In closing, I believe that social networking will radically alter the way people conduct business and that the wave of change is just beginning to build.
Reference List
Gregory, Alyssa (2009, July 28) 20 Social Networking Sites for Business Professionals, SitePoint under Web Pro Business.
Retrieved April 23, 2010 from http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/
Flynn, Laurie J. (2007, January 22) I.B.M. to Introduce Workers’ Networking Software, The New York Times: Technology Section
Retrieved April 23, 2010 from http://www.nytimes.com/
Cumbrowski, Carsten (n.d) Xing.com Partners with ZoomInfo.com, Search Engine Journal
Retrieved April 23, 2010 from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
Palatnik, Pablo (n.d) Social Networking for Business Professionals, Search Engine Journal
Retrieved April 23, 2010 from http://www.searchenginejournal.com/
Links to sites researched
http://press.linkedin.com/
https://www.xing.com/
http://www.ryze.com/
http://www.ecademy.com/
http://www.ziggs.com/
http://www.plaxo.com/
http://toostep.com/
http://www.spoke.com/
http://www.focus.com/
http://www.startupnation.com/
http://www.yourmembership.com/
Miriam S Benson 