I will be attending this Friday, 3/26, the KM Cluster Social Networks NYC Conference. Check this space for notes from the event.
> 2004 > MarchSpecial offer on our book if you sign up for our newsletter by Friday, 3/26
3/25/2004 By
Last week, in order to handle the increased volume and to be fully in compliance with all the new CAN-SPAM laws, we changed our newsletter from our own server to a hosted service at EZezine. I’d like to give a special thanks to Lisa Micklin of EZezine, who we met through Ryze, where she runs the E-zine Publishing Cafe Network
In celebration, we’re making a special offer — sign up for our newsletter by this Friday, 3/26, and you’ll get a link to purchase The Five Keys to Building Business Relationships Online for just $9.95 — that’s $5 off the regular price of $14.95.
If you’ve already purchased our book, we have something for you, too — your choice of one of two full-length chapters from our upcoming book, The Virtual Handshake.
The link will be included in our newsletter Friday night, so you must sign up by Friday in order to receive the special link.
Contact Network Corporation — rapid growth
3/24/2004 By
We just posted in our site guide a profile of
Contact Network Corporation, based on our interview with Geoffrey Hyatt.
Highlights:
= As of March 2004, Contact Network has 16 corporate customers and 24,500 paying seats. The Boston Consulting Group and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business are among their clients.
= As of March 2004, Contact Network’s revenue run rate is about $1.5 million annually.
= Prices:
$5,000 – $30,000 /month depending on size and type of enterprise (includes installation, support, upgrades and training costs).
Online Business Networks site now under Creative Commons license
3/24/2004 By
After much consideration and research, we have decided to place all the contents of this site under the Creative Commons Attribution License (except as noted, which will generally be content by guest contributors). You can read the full legal code here.
In short, you may use any content from this site (except as noted) however you want, so long as you credit the author(s) and provide a link back to the page on which the content is located. This means you can run our newsletter articles, blog entries, and online social networking and business community site reviews on your site, in your newsletter, etc., without having to ask—just put our name and a link back here. While not required, we also certainly appreciate it if you let us know about it.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Creative Commons is a non-profit organization devoted to creating licensing models for creative works of all types that allow the work to be public under certain conditions, as specified by the content creators. For a fun explanation, take a look at their two new comics explaining the variety of different rights needs content creators have and how to select the appropriate license and use it to license your work. It’s kind of like open source for other types of intellectual property.
If you’re publishing articles or lengthy blog entries for business or career promotional purposes, we highly recommend using a Creative Commons license over traditional copyright. Make it easy for people to re-publish your content.
TrackBack in plain English
3/23/2004 By
Lee LeFever offers an explanation of TrackBack in plain English. It’s a great addition to Six Apart’s beginner’s guide to TrackBack.
In case you’re not familiar with TrackBack, it’s a technology that allows a blogger to notify another blogger when they reference their blog. The second blogger’s blog automatically keeps track of these references and can display them.
Lee’s post answers many of the questions people have about TrackBack when they first hear about it:
- How do I use TrackBacks, as a reader of weblogs?
- How do I use TrackBacks, as a Weblogger?
- Why isn’t it easier?
- Why don’t people just leave comments instead?
- Why would someone use TrackBack- what’s the big deal?
- Why don’t all sites use TrackBacks?
- I want to try it – how do I TrackBack to an entry?
I still wish it were better automated! 
Spoke launches its association product
3/22/2004 By
Following up on Scott Allen’s post about LinkedIn’s new offering, Spoke is offering a parallel product : Spoke Launches Professional Relationship Networking Product for Alumni, Professional & Political Associations.
Objections to online networking
3/22/2004 By
Stephanie West-Allen, a great advocate and practitioner of online networking, recently posted a question on one of the lists we’re on together about the various objections she gets from people about online networking. Never one to keep my opinion to myself about a topic I’m passionate about, I gave my replies.
Maybe you’re hesitant yourself, and some of them will help address some of your own concerns. Or maybe you’re trying to persuade some friends and colleagues who aren’t as into it as you are, and this will help:
Objection: It takes too much time to figure out/monitor. Are the benefits really
worth it?
Yes. Forget about me — I’m a bit unusual because this is my core business. But for example, I recently made a referral to someone through purely online networking (Ryze, in fact), that turned into a $10K+ deal for them. They’re a web design firm — a few employees, not just a one-man shop — and they have reported to me that fully 5% of their business this year has come directly from Ryze.
What’s a 5% increase in your sales worth to you? Surely $10 a month and a half an hour a day, right?
Objection: I do my networking offline and this lacks the personal touch. It can’t
create a real relationship/trust.
Untrue. My co-author and I have been working together well over a year. He’s probably one of the most trusted business relationships I’ve ever had. And yet, he and I have still not met face-to-face. I routinely do 4-figure consulting deals without ever meeting face-to-face.
Frankly, especially if someone blogs, you can learn far more about them in fifteen minutes of reading what they’ve written than you can in fifteen minutes of talking to them, because we read, on average, about twice as fast as we talk. Plus, you’re “listening” the entire time online.
Besides, people can develop enough trust to propose marriage to each other only having met online — why should business relationships be different?
Objection: This is for the younger kids.
NOT! Even Tribe, which attracts a younger crowd in general, is 28% people in the 31-40 age bracket. I don’t have data on the other networks, but a random scan through Ryze or Ecademy will certainly contradict this perception.
Objection: No really professional/established people use this.
HAH! This one’s easy… LinkedIn has folks like Pierre Omidyar, Esther Dyson, Marc Andreessen, Flip Filipowski, and many more. Ecademy has a number of Directors and VPs from Microsoft Europe, BT, and others. Even on Ryze, I’ve met a former Fortune 100 President, the CKO of Ernst & Young Canada, a Managing Director of the Chasm Group, and many, many other very senior people. On Spoke, you’ll find all kinds of people — maybe not as members, but accessible through members. There are also other, more exclusive communites — the MBA Association, The Square, et al.
Objection: Maybe the value of this will eventually build but I will wait and see.
Fine. Wait and see. By then, the early adopters will have built up a wealth of social capital, and you’ll be playing catchup. If it has value for you ever, it has value for you to do.
Objection: This is for the introverted people who don’t like direct communication.
Yeah, right. Anyone here ever met me face-to-face? I’m a total extrovert. I max out the scale on “E” in the Myers-Briggs. Lots of other extroverts I know. Heck, on Tribe, there’s a dedicated group just for ENTPs (like me).
Objection: Okay, are people really getting business there?
Yes. How much evidence do people need? This may sound really harsh, but flat out… if you’re not getting business through online networking, either a) you’re not doing it right, or b) you don’t have a credible product/service.
Objection: They are not free-flowing enough.
I’m not sure what this means. Once you get into a direct conversation with someone, it’s as free-flowing as you want to make it.
What objections have you heard (or do you have)? How have you answered objections from others? Please leave your comments below.
What makes a good first post in a discussion forum or other online group?
3/19/2004 By
On one of the Ryze networks I’m on, Eric Sohn’s “Bigger. Better. Faster. Fewer Ulcers.” Network, the moderator put forth the question for discussion, “What makes a good first post?”
What makes a good first post varies from one network to the other, because some networks want/allow an introduction message, whereas others don’t.
If they don’t allow it, then it’s easy — a good first post is to simply join the conversation, either with a relevant question (that hasn’t been discussed recently — search the archives before asking), or with a relevant response to someone else’s post.
Let’s look at an introduction, though, as that’s more common — what makes a good introduction online?
I actually teach this in my online networking workshops and teleclasses. Here’s a summary of what I see as the key elements a good introduction should have:
- Positive emotion
- Why you’re here (your expectations)
- Short, relevant history
- What do you do now that relates?
- Break down barriers by sharing something personal
- Make an invitation to connect with you
- Affirm your commitment to participate
I can perhaps best illustrate it with an example that I think perfectly models all of the above elements:
www.ryze.com/postdisplay.php?messageid=10760&confid=94
90% of the self-intros I see on the various social networking sites only satisfy one or two of these. You can easily stand out from the crowd, make yourself memorable, and invite relevant connections by giving yourself a great introduction following this simple format.
Social networking executives interviewed on nPost
3/18/2004 By
Niche job board nPost.com has a great collection of interviews with technology entrepreneurs. As one might expect, several recent ones are in the social networking / online collaboration space, including:
- Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn
- David Pulaski of IM-Age
- Jas Dhillon of ZeroDegrees
- Craig Newmark of Craigslist
- Mihail Lari of BlogIt
- Michael Schutlzer of Classmates.com
