A rundown of some of the major players in the social-software field, along with their cost, their ease of use, and their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to recruiting.
By Douglas Wolk Comments 0 | Recommend 0
Friendster (www.friendster.com)
Primary purpose:
Keeping friends in touch with each other, so they
can meet other friends (and potential dates). Business applications are a very
distant second.
Users:
Seven million-plus users, most of them college students, 20-somethings and
imaginary friends.
Cost:
Friendster is still nominally in beta, and all its
current services are free.
Owner:
A privately held corporation, founded by CEO Jonathan Abrams.
Employment information:
There are spaces in each profile for affiliations,
companies and schools, but that's it. Users' friends are all displayed, and
can write testimonials.
Openness:
Users can set the length of the friends-of-friends chains up to which people
can view their profiles or send them messages.
Ease of use:
Well designed, but painfully slow; pages often
don't load. The company is adding staff to address the problem.
Unique features:
As the most famous social-networking site, it's already had most of its major
innovations poached by others.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
More users than any other social-networking
system; connections other than business affiliation are most likely to turn up
here.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
Relatively little professional content.
LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com)
Primary purpose:
Targeted networking--each successive circle of
friends vets you to the next until you reach a specific person.
Users:
450,000+ and 48,000 "regular users," most of them
white-collar workers; 90 percent are not currently seeking a job.
Cost:
Currently in beta and free; will eventually charge
for contact with willing targets.
Owner:
Founded by CEO Reid Hoffman, formerly EVP at
PayPal.
Employment information:
Profiles are devoted to professional experience.
Other users can also contribute endorsements.
Openness:
Protective of users' privacy at the expense of the
free flow of information. You can see who your contacts' contacts are, but you
have to be vetted by people you both know to communicate with them.
Ease of use:
Cleanly designed; can also upload contacts from
Outlook.
Unique features:
Partnered with the Direct Employers Association.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Large and growing quickly; extensive privacy
protection makes it attractive to high-powered and popular members. Useful for
targeting references. A way to target the popular "passive candidates."
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
Privacy protections make it tricky to fish for
potentially interesting contacts.
Monster Networking (network.monster.com)
Primary purpose:
Business networking,
for more generalized connections (that is, meeting people with the same
business interests as your own).
Users:
The same people who use Monster.com's more
familiar services.
Cost:
Basic service is free; to get more information
about users, it's a $25 "initiation fee" plus $3/month.
Owner:
Monster Worldwide owns Monster Networking, which
is overseen by former Classmates.com CEO Michael Schutzler.
Employment information:
Users can post extensive professional profiles,
although you have to pay to get their full names and direct contact
information.
Openness:
It's meant for "crawling" searches (based on other
users' characteristics and interests) more than targeted searches; it also
proactively introduces members to each other.
Ease of use:
Cleanly designed; can also upload contacts from
Outlook.
Unique features:
Relatively well designed, with straightforward,
clearly displayed links between sections.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Carryover from Monster.com means a solid group of
users, and the discussion groups are useful.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
Fee-based services mean that many potential
contacts are not as involved here as they might be elsewhere.
Orkut (www.orkut.com)
Primary purpose:
Semi-experimental networking site, put together by
Google; encompasses both social and professional purposes, though more the
former than the latter.
Users:
To register for the site, you have to be invited
by a current member, although that may change soon. Almost exactly half are in
the United States, 38 percent are ages 18 to 25, and less than 5 percent are
over 40. Membership has expanded outward from Google staff.
Cost:
Currently free.
Owner:
It's "in affiliation with Google." Founded by
Orkut Buyukkokten, a Google engineer who worked on it as a personal project.
Employment information:
Each user has an optional "professional" page with
simple résumé-type information on it.
Openness:
Contact information can be designated as available
only to friends, to friends of friends, or to everyone. Otherwise, most
information is easily available.
Ease of use:
Designed to be simple to use, with an intuitive
visual interface (clicking on an icon of a person with a tie leads to a
professional profile, for instance).
Unique features:
Relatively well designed, with straightforward,
clearly displayed links between sections.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Lots of IT types among its users; a handful of
good professional forums.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
More social than professional, and it's hard to
tell whether the context in which users know each other is strictly personal
or business-related.
Ryze (www.ryze.com)
Primary purpose:
Ryze centers on message boards meant for
"interacting" and "growing organizations"--more business-based
community-building than job-seeking.
Users:
80,000+ registered users, almost all professionals
of one kind or another.
Cost:
Basic membership is free; for $10/month, users can
search by company and get a monthly list of new members.
Owner:
Founded by CEO Adrian Scott in 2001, ahead of the
social-network curve.
Employment information:
Basic résumé information appears on users' home
pages. There's a "guestbook," but not references as such.
Openness:
You can send messages to some other users,
depending on their privacy settings, but you have to specifically permit any
given user to see most of your personal information.
Ease of use:
The site is three years old, and looks it.
Unique features:
Sponsors real-world events for users to meet up.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Business-oriented, with a fairly extensive pool of
users.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
Boards are active but often have little of
substance; the site's biggest network is "entrepreneurs."
Spoke Showcase Network (www.spoke.com)
Primary purpose:
Targeted networking, very much like LinkedIn.
Harvests contacts from address books and calculates "strength of
relationship."
Users:
Business-based; claims a database of 15 million
people, although relatively few of those are registered users.
Cost:
Currently free.
Owner:
Founded by a team including CEO Ben T. Smith IV.
Employment information:
Users' professional profiles are visible to
everyone.
Openness:
Strict privacy protections: you can control who
can ask you to be a link in a chain of contacts, and for whom you can be
asked.
Ease of use:
Somewhat tricky, thanks to privacy restrictions.
Unique features:
Draws on Spoke's immense database of contact
information.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Spoke has extensive documentation of who's
connected to whom and how, including professional and alumni associations.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
Because not all users are willing to act as links,
it can be difficult to get in touch with people through Spoke--even if you
know their names to start with.
Tribe.net (www.tribe.net)
Primary purpose:
Social and interest-based networks: users can
register as part of "tribes" (with discussion boards) based on all sorts of
affinities. A bit of business networking, but not a lot.
Users:
140,000+ users; generally tech-friendly, young
West Coasters.
Cost:
Currently free and in beta.
Owner:
A San Francisco start-up, Tribe Networks; founders
are CEO Mark Pincus and Chief Technology Officer Paul Martino.
Employment information:
Users have a page on which they can list their
professional information, and their friends (linked, just as on Friendster)
can leave testimonials.
Openness:
Some personal and professional information is
available only if you're in someone's network (that is, at least a friend of a
friend of a friend). Otherwise, entirely open.
Ease of use:
Intuitive, if a bit cluttered: dozens of types of
links, pictures and boxes on many pages.
Unique features:
The "tribes" are the point of the site; members
also get direct access to CareerBuilder job postings.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Professional tribes' postings are available for
reading, which makes it clear who each tribe’s most prominent contributors
are.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
Mostly socially based; much more chatter than deep
discussion.
ZeroDegrees (zerodegrees.com)
Primary purpose:
Business networking, primarily for targeted
connections.
Users:
ZeroDegrees distinguishes between 1) "contacts,"
which is basically everybody it has contact information for, or several
hundred thousand people as of early March; 2) "members," who have registered
with the site; 3) "friends" (each user’s personal contacts who are also
registered members); and 4) "inner circle" (the friends each user particularly
trusts).
Cost:
Currently free and in beta. Will eventually charge
$10/month or so for membership.
Owner:
InterActiveCorp acquired ZeroDegrees earlier this
year. Founder Jas Dhillon remains CEO.
Employment information:
Résumé-like information, available according to
each user's preferences.
Openness:
Guarded. Information on each user's contacts is
available only with his or her permission.
Ease of use:
More or less requires plug-in application to work
effectively. Registration doesn't even work on Macintosh.
Unique features:
Application plugs into Outlook, and can
automatically import your contacts.
Potential strength for Workforce Management
readers:
Entirely business-oriented; comprehensive about
making connections.
Potential weakness for Workforce Management
readers:
If you don't already know exactly who you're
looking for, it can be difficult to find the right person.
Workforce Management Online, May 2004 --
Register Now!
Douglas Wolk is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. E-mail editors@workforce.com to comment.
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