home > Blog > 2004 > June > 05 > ContactSpan–another social network visibility site

ContactSpan–another social network visibility site

6/5/2004 By

On the Harvard-startups mailing list, I saw this note below, about another competitor to Spoke/LinkedIn/VisiblePath/ContactNetwork/etc. It’s very unclear to me what distinguishes them; I welcome any insights you have.

———
We would like to invite you to join a business
networking service called ContactSpan
(ContactSpan.com
) .

ContactSpan is an online business network that helps
you connect to decision makers, find jobs, close
deals, recruit employees, raise capital, etc.
ContactSpan leverages your existing network of
contacts to help you find the most efficient and
relevant path to an individual or organization via a
chain of trusted referrals.

Business networking technology was chosen as the
Technology of the Year by Business 2.0. The
technology has been featured as a highly effective
professional tool in Time, U.S. News & World Report,
the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, CBS, NBC, BBC,
eWeek, Washington Post and other business media.
ContactSpan is your entry point into more effective
business.

Using ContactSpan, you can extend the reach of your
business network instantaneously. For instance, if
your personal network consisted of 100 business
relationships, each of whom have 100 other
relationships, your available network through
ContactSpan would expand to over 10,000 individuals.

The key for making this work is a trusted referral
system regulated by ContactSpan’s strict privacy
policy. Contact between ContactSpan members take
place based on existing relationships and approved
referrals only.

ContactSpan recently launched and its extended network
has grown to over 25,000 relationships in a matter of
weeks. Already, there have been compelling success
stories:

“I used ContactSpan to find a marketing expert to help
me launch a new product. A search and referral
request introduced me to a colleague of a close friend
with specific expertise launching children’s products.
The results were great and ContactSpan created a
connection that I didn’t even realize that I had.”

- Brandy G., Media Executive

We encourage you to experience ContactSpan firsthand
by visiting www.contactspan.com. It’s free to use and
we are confident that it will make your business more efficient.

Sincerely,
The ContactSpan Team

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Filed Under: Miscellaneous, Web 2.0 Industry
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Jon Cintron

I have actually used several of the online business networks and I found ContactSpan to be the most intuitive to use. Maybe they learned from the mistakes that Spoke/Linked In/Zero Degrees have made to date. As we all know, online networks are about how quickly and safely you can build a semi-private network and ContactSpan gives you a number of options (based on your comfort level) to grow yours which I like. You have the option of a) inviting individuals to join your network, b) manually adding contacts to an online addressbook (which then connects you to existing ContactSpan members that you know) or c) automatically uploading your contacts via Outlook into ContactSpan. It's a bit kitschy, but I also like their Network Strength calculator which gives you a sense of how your network fares against other members. In addition to motivating you to be a better networker, it motivates others in your network to do the same and hopefully grow each other's networks more quickly.

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RN

I have used ContactSpan and I believe that it is definitely a more attractive model than the other sites you mention. It seems that it was designed with privacy in mind. If you don't want a fourth-order (or second-order) contact browsing who you know, this site is geared for you. You also don't have to convince your contacts to sign up for the service. The other services tend to be focused on "increasing the virality" of their site by incenting you to spam your contacts - you don't have to on contactspan.

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