Posts filed under 'other portals'
I recently signed up on Ecademy [ re-signed up would be a better description because I had signed on in December 2005 initially and never got back to using the platform much ]. I was assuming that Ecademy would have atleast a comparable business population – comparable to LinkedIn and openBC – if not more, but was quite shocked to find when they recently announced “Ecademy reaching 100,000 members!”
LinkedIn fortunately shares the total number of members on their platform : about 7 million as on date and openBC, although not very open about the numbers has atleast a million. By those standards, Ecademy is way behind – hence I still do not “get” why business networkers use this platform and how it benefits them.
I am a premium member on LinkedIn simply because the network pays me back – similarly on openBC. On Ecademy I am currently on a trial basis and need to decide whether I should convert to a paying member or not. They don’t have the concept of a free membership as their guest accounts expire in 14 days – and 14 days is just not enough to gauge whether a business networking platform is a good fit for me or not.
I’d really like to find out what your experience has been on this platform!
October 4th, 2006
Rediff Connexions is an India-based online networking portal. I’ve desisted long enough from mentioning the same on this blog because I did not believe it was a serious online “business” networking portal and leaned more towards social networking.
In the past few months, however, I’ve been hearing more and more about the portals and since I have been a registered member since their early days, I’ve re-visited and am glad to report that they’ve made much progress. They are definitely not in league with our usual portals like LinkedIn, openBC and even Ryze, but it’s the first sincere effort by an Indian portal to tap the online business networking crowd.
They’ve also got me featured on their main page [ which is another reason why I thought it would be a good idea to finally mention Rediff Connexions 
]
While I’m not a fan of their interface, they could use some help with the design – in terms of functionality as well as aesthetics – they do allow the following basic functions:
- Creating your profile – with regular details concerning professional experience, interests etc.
- a basic mechanism to invite people to connect with you on the portal
- a basic mechanism to maintian your network, remove contact, send messages, keep track of contact details etc.
- Groups [ I haven't used this function at all so I am not capable of reviewing just yet! ]
They also have a decent Search function, which helps you get in touch with other people on the network.
The main DashBoard page also gives tidbits of information about new members on the network, people who’s birthdays are coming up, total people on the network who are in the same industry as your own, etc.
One main issue on their website currently is that I am unable to find the page that will help me get to invitations and message that people have sent for me on Rediff Connexions! Only when I click on the link in their intimation e-mail am I taken to those pages – getting to them independently is a whole different ballgame – unless I save the specific URL of course.
Rediff Connexions is definitely a bold initiative, but they need to work a whole lot more if they want to become a serious player in the online business networking market. They are still in beta.
May 23rd, 2006
I’ve just signed up for Jambo.
Naina’s DiscoverMe Page is where you can read my Jambo profile.
At the outset it seems geared more towards social networking – but could work for business networking too. But I’m not sure how it helps in the flood of already existing similar technologies. Sure it works with Wireless – but I’m in India – how’s wireless going to help my case? But then most software/technologies are not designed for developing countries anyway 
I’ve created my profile and now I have to look for and add friends – then Jambo will seek them out if they are close to me and send me some kind of message so that I can then get in touch with them. One scenario I can think of – and I maybe wrong – I’m sitting in the waiting lounge of the airport and working on my laptop, Jambo is on – suddenly it pings me that someone I know from LinkedIn or openBC is in the vicinity – it will tell me who it is and then I could probably stand up on my chair and holler out their name if I don’t know what they look like  Or I could send them a message on Jambo and tell them where I am…
January 24th, 2006
While we would want to know whether we are addressing a lady or a gentlemen while networking online and using online business networking portals like LinkedIn [ openBC is discounted here because they carry photographs ], in my opinon, it does not make sense to include identifying characteristics.
While we would want to address a lady with added respect and politeness, I don’t see how that affects online business networking communication.
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Wouldn’t we want to be courteous with “everyone”?
Wouldn’t we want to use the same language with everyone?
How would it matter if the person we were writing to was male/female?
If we did interact with someone with a generic e-mail, by the second or third e-mail we would have already been to their website and would have found out whether they are male of female anyway – so why bother with “features” that will tell you whether a particular member is male/female?
January 22nd, 2006
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!
December 8th, 2005
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