Ziggs profile services

I had found Ziggs quite by accident and am glad I did. Ziggs is not a networking platform but a great place to put your professional profile that can be viewed by “anyone” whether registered on Ziggs or not. That was one of the problems I had with LinkedIn and openBC – when someone clicks on my LinkedIn profile link in my e-mail signature, and they are not registered members of LinkedIn, they can’t see my profile and LinkedIn asks them register [ when they don't know what LinkedIn in, why will they sign up just to take a look st my profile!? ] and the case with openBC is that while it allows a non-registered member to see most of my profile, it hides the most relevant details – like current company.

Also, neither LinkedIn, nor openBC allow the non-registered person visiting my profile to contact me.

Ziggs not only is a convenient place to create your online professional profile, it also allows the visitor to get in touch with me via ZMail.

And this is part of the free membership package.

One of the things you can pay for on Ziggs is to have your profile listed on the top Search Engines. When someone types in your full name, your Ziggs profile will come out on the top [ my immediate question is: What if there are two people with the same name and who are premium members? - I don't know the answer to that yet ]. Also, not only do you get listed, you also get results delivered to your inbox – giving details of when your profile was accessed and what part of the world was the visitor from.

Another issue I have with the listing is – why will someone search for me by name unless I’m a celebrity [ in which case I'll be hiding myself and not making myself visible! ].

Apart from that, if you already have an online presence, chances are that when someone Google’s your name, using a couple of classifyinf keywords, they will be taken to your URL [ if your basic search engine optimization tricks are working! ].

For example, if you search for my name “Naina Redhu” without the quotes, my Ziggs profile is on the first results page [ it's number 5 or 6 ] and the first result links to my Innovation Blog on Blogger. So I don’t really need Ziggs’ premium services – but I do like the ability to have an online professional profile – which is so well designed and is accessible to anyone who cares to look for me!

Add comment December 8th, 2005

Skype integration on openBC

openBC had been Beta testing integration of its service with Skype. They launched it on Firday Friday [ yesterday ].

From what I can make out, when you view someone’s profile – the main contact page – like my profile, you have a drop-down list of option, which give you a handful of methods to get in touch with that person via Skype. The following image will show you what I mean:

I think this is an AWESOME feature! I no longer need to individually add new contacts to my Skype list – I simply go to their profile on openBC and give them a call! Adding them to my address book will simply be for convenience now. I believe this will increase communication between openBC members and that is THE MOST important thing for online business networking – MORE COMMUNICATION! You can also set who has access to your Skype username.

Neat feature Lars and team!

2 comments December 2nd, 2005

Potential use of OpenLink

I’d been wondering what the advantages of being part of OpenLink would be in one of my earlier posts and within two days of joining/signing up for LinkedIn’s personal Plus, I have exhausted all my ten introductions. This is how I utilized them:

• Since I am in the business of design, it wouldn’t be “good for business” if I got in touch with other designer – in the sense that it wouldn’t bring in any new business – I am connected to many other talented designers and we’re great friends but I really wanted to put Personal Plus to use here! Now unlike openBC, LinkedIn does not provide the option of searching for people based on their “wants” so there is no way that I can directly search for people who “want” design services.
• Thought of one thing that I was involved in currently and realized it was “blogging”.
• Searched for the keyword “blogging” and restricted it to OpenLink members.
• Visited 10 profiles and read them in detail.

Picked up their weblinks and blog links and paid their blogs a visit.

• Found something of interest on their blog [ posts related to LinkedIn, internet technology, blogging, graphics industry, etc. ] and left them a comment.
• Also followed up with an introduction on LinkedIn itself – many of them had their e-mail id’s on their blogs and websites and it would have been awfully easy to send them “Invitations to Connect” instead of “Introductions”. At the same time, it would also have been awfully easy for them to refuse the connection!
• Wrote a brief personalized introduction asking them about their interests and quoting something from their blog/website and told them a bit about myself – the whole time focusing on the keyword “blogging”.

I’ve already had positive replies from three of the ten people [ and have connected networks with them too! ] and have sent out the hence freed-up introductions to three more people.

It’s a wait and watch thing and it will be really sad if I have to withdraw even a single introduction [ maybe LinkedIn should have something like openBC's "Activity Meter" so I know who's been using LinkedIn and who's left the portal ] – but I’ll let you know how it goes!

Add comment December 1st, 2005