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Michael Jones
Stepping into the conference room,
I realize that I&#rsquo;m headed into
an appointment with very little information
on what&#rsquo;s about to happen or with
whom I&#rsquo;ll be meeting. I know the names
of the participants, but would not recognize
them if I passed them on the street. Nonetheless,
I&#rsquo;m pleased with the opportunity and
eager about what may materialize from this
gathering.
Now here&#rsquo;s the punchline: this entire
in-person meeting was arranged online with the
assistance of “web introductions,”
through the business networking service
LinkedIn
Anonymous or “blind” meetings
may be a common occurrence for a single adult
who frequents dating websites, but it is an
experience I had yet to embrace—especially
in the business sector. For those who haven&#rsquo;t
joined one of the ever-growing list of online
business networking sites, these services are
specifically tailored to facilitate communication
and referrals for professional purposes. You
submit your contacts, invite friends and colleagues
to be part of an “inner circle”
of business or persona associates, then use the
system to seek “friends of friends”
or business contacts of your associates. Soon,
this inner circle of contacts expands as individuals
are contacted directly or as introductions are
made by mutual friends and associates.
Where services such as Friendster,
MySpace and Connexion have been successful
bringing singles and groups together based on
affinity and mutual interests, business-networking
services are now offering a parallel experience
in the professional world. Along with LinkedIn
are such offerings as Ryze
and Tribe.net.
My take? This use of online, friend/associate-based
networking will prove to be one of the most
valuable business tools the Internet has yet
provided.
Although the number of these services
available to entrepreneurs and businesspeople
is growing, LinkedIn strikes me as the easiest
to embrace, and the most effective. Typically,
each service has formal sign-up steps that assist
you in creating your online identity. This may
include information relating to your current job,
previous positions, and general interests. Some
business networking sites enable you to publish
you own “blog,” or join specific
community discussion groups.
Often, the key to using a business
network successfully involves the creation
of your personal friends—or business
connections—group. The registration
process is similar across the various social
networking websites but LinkedIn boasts one
of the simplest methods of inviting and
maintaining your social network. By simply
uploading an exported file from your contact
manager, LinkedIn can immediately tell which
friends of yours are members of the service.
This method of contact maintenance and
connection group development makes LinkedIn
a breeze to start with, immediately enabling
you to gain access to your contacts, without
having to laboriously enter emails to discover
if associates are already there.
Member sites will be given a unique and numbered
IDEA OASIS logo to place on their Web sites to
show their clients that participating companies
are in full support of the standards and ethics
that IDEA OASIS promotes. These standards will
increase the level of trust that members of the
public will have in member sites.
With your account set up and contacts entered,
a small but growing network of individuals
can now easily search your personal network
for relevant business contacts.
This may be as simple as entering a name
of an individual you&#rsquo;re seeking, or
specifying a broad search for contacts within
a specific industry. This ease of creating
personal contacts and developing online business
events makes the service much more efficient
than the traditional (and often stilted) network
mixer.
Although most online business networks
are currently free, the model will soon change
to a subscription basis, and just as many
IM users have AOL and MSN accounts, those
in the business world will need to join and
maintain accounts on multiple services, until
bridges are built to connect them all. The
pay-for-network service model is familiar
to most businesses. Offline business networking
events are rarely free, and even high-priced
events rarely allow people to find who they
need. By contrast, online business networks
enable members to seek a confident introduction
through a friend, to a much-needed business
contact—clearly, a valuable capability.
Although my “blind” meeting
went well, and my new business contact is
now part of my personal business network,
it&#rsquo;s not much of a stretch to imagine
a time when the in- person meeting itself
will be all but obsolete. With applications
such as our own Audio/Video Instant Communicator
and other powerful Web-based live communication
tools, an online business networking site can
offer a meeting environment where professionals
can converse, face to face, through the
site&#rsquo;s own technologies.
The natural next step beyond assisting
with the network meeting process is to provide
an online application facilitating rich,
face-to-face collaboration. When that occurs,
certain business networking sites will have
the horsepower to outlast others.
Just as in the online dating world
competition for members depends on expanding
feature sets, leaders in the emerging online
business networking space will separate themselves
by implementing new applications that support
live online conversations—and, ultimately,
better methods of connecting business users
online.
Michael Jones is President of
Userplane
in Los Angeles.
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About Userplane
www.userplane.com
A wholly owned subsidiary of AOL, Userplane is the world’s premier communication
platform for online communities. The company’s hosted applications enable instant community
and communication for websites of any scale and audience. The combination of instant and elegant with
robust and powerful has made the platform a must-have for thriving sites worldwide – supporting
millions of daily users. Founded in 2001 by long-time partners Michael Jones, Nate Thelen, and Javier
Hall, Userplane is a diverse and talented team headquartered in Santa Monica, Calif.
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