A few weeks ago, we talked about the coming changes in Ryze’s networking model. Today, what I consider to be by far the biggest change goes into effect:

These changes are designed to improve the quality and experience of business networking on Ryze. In particular, they are designed to reduce spam and encourage thoughtfulness and quality in networking. These are pretty big changes that will take some time to adjust to, and will also likely require some fine-tuning. We thank you in advance for your patience in trying things out.

Here’s a summary of the main changes:

• Basic level members can now only communicate with people within 2 friends of them, or in the same networks as them.
• Gold and Platinum members can communicate with up to 25 and 35 ‘distant’ members each month, people who are more than 2 friends away and not in the same networks.
• Advanced searching is now available to all members.
• All members may now use the Pivots as well — links in member profiles that lead to listings of members with that link in common in their profiles.
• Guestbooks have been defaulted to ‘Friends-only’ for all members (excluding those who previously turned it off)
• You can change your guestbook setting…to turn it on for everyone, if you want.
• Gold and Platinum members may set their account to let distant members communicate with them, without counting towards their limit.

I imagine that this may not immediately be a popular change, primarily among free members. But before anyone jumps to conclusions, let’s look at the impact of this:

• Note that there is no limit on contact with people who are in the same networks as you. This will encourage new members to get involved in the networks. I believe that this only primarily affects the rate at which you make new connections. How many people do you engage in ongoing conversation that aren’t a member of at least ONE network that you’re in, too?

• There’s now a compelling reason for just about anybody to go Gold. Previously, the two (as I see it) primary benefits of Gold membership were the ability to search and to run a network. Out of 200,000 Ryze members, only about 1,100 apparently considered the value of running a network sufficient. I don’t know exactly how many more were Gold and for what reason, but the answer is (my opinion) “Not enough to support Ryze’s continued development and growth in an ad-free environment.” Hopefully now more people will step up to the plate and pay the $10 a month (less than one business lunch or most in-person events).
• There’s now no excuse not to be random, rather than focused. Everyone has access to pivots and advanced search, so now everyone can seek out people in their hometown, from their place of birth, with common interests, in the same industry, etc., etc. This is extremely powerful, and it’s now in the hands of free members. Take advantage of it, folks!
• Communicating with distant members? Those limits are pretty much one a day. And remember — distant means more than two degrees away and not in any of the same networks. If that’s really going to be a problem for you, you might just give a moment’s thought as to whether what you’ve been doing is networking or cold-calling.
• I do have a concern… this new model implicitly encourages people to build a large friends list. Granted, the new requirement for an email address (more on that in a separate message) will help dampen that effect, but still, the friends list now has a direct impact on both your visibility into the network and your ability to communicate.

Overall, I see this change as a good thing. It will definitely encourage more focused networking habits. But this isn’t just a feature change — this is a major re-positioning of Ryze’s nature and purpose. Its previous openness has been a major part of its identity — good to some, not so good to others. It remains to be seen not only how the existing members, but how other people who might not have previously been interested in Ryze, will react to the changes.

“If people like you they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you they’ll do business with you.”- Zig Ziglar

We are providing a tool kit on this site to manage your network strategically. However, we acknowledge there is a clear tension between managing your network strategically, and managing your network successfully.

Let us say you meet someone at a conference:

You: “Hi! I’m Fran Greensmith with SFA Software. How are you?”
Wai: “I’m fine. I’m Wai Ching, with ENC Corp.”
You: “I sell sales force analysis software. I noticed that you’re a salesperson. Are you in a position at ENC to make buying decisions about software?”
Wai: “Go away.”

When you make it crystal clear that you are only interested in someone because they can help you, you damage the relationship. You first have to take some basic steps to build a relationship with that person.

This is why the best relationship building does not take place at “networking” functions; it happens at meetings, conferences, online communities, and other venues where the people are united by a common goal other than meeting one another. A common problem with self-described “networking functions” is that most attendees are explicitly focused on meeting new people to achieve immediate professional goals: a sales lead, a new job, an executive to hire, and so on. When people are primarily focused on, “What’s in it for me?”, and “How can you help me?”, they are usually so self-centered that it is difficult to build a strong relationship with them. They are so busy listening to radio station WII-FM (“What’s In It For Me?”) that they cannot hear you.

By contrast, an event or online venue that brings together people with an altruistic goal and a common interest other than themselves may be more effective. Conversations tend to focus initially on the common charitable endeavor, rather than “What do you do for a living?” Once you make the bond—you both care about raising money for orphans in Africa—the conversation will naturally evolve towards other topics that are of business interest.

How can you resolve this tension between strategically managing your network, and not being perceived as exploitive? We think that the resolution is first, having the right goals, and second, sincerity.

For example, you are a car salesman, and you meet Nina, a new college graduate who just moved to town. You will be a much more effective salesperson if you sincerely like and want to help Nina. We suggest: offer to help Nina find a good deal on an apartment, mention in passing that you are a car salesman, and say that you would be happy to give her a loaner for 2 days while she looks for an apartment.

If you are insincere, Nina will sense it. But if you are sincerely looking out for her best interests, you can be explicit about your (legitimate) business goals, and you have a shot at selling her a car.

The best way to avoid the smell of insincerity: build your genuine desire to help people. Aristotle wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” If you lack the character trait of lovingkindness, the sincere desire to be of service to others, then the best way to overcome it is simply to do it. Be kinder to people, and you will be a kinder person.

As Stephen Covey observed in Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, much of modern success literature is focused on the superficial, e.g., how to appear friendly. You will do better to focus on building your character.

What do you think? How can you manage the tension between strategically and pro-actively managing your network, while at the same time not making people feel “used”? We would very much like to hear your feedback.

First of all, a sincere congratulations to Italian IT consultant Carmelo Cutuli, who has now made the top 30 most connected people on LinkedIn. And I’m all for creative use of press releases, but is this really newsworthy?

This article on Gender Gap in Cyberspace is 10 years old, but still seems quite accurate.

I enjoyed reading and recommend this thoughtful, amusing, free profile of the social software sector by Caslon Analytics: social software and online social spaces.

It’s probably an indicator that it was written by someone outside of the American tradition of self-promotion that this lengthy piece is unsigned.

There is a lot of other material on this site worth exploring, on blogs and other topics.

Scott Allen found this very brief overview of human-computer interaction: http://www.ida.liu.se/~davca/HCInotes/Introduction2HCI.pdf.

Stowe Boyd makes a start at The Ten Commandments of Social Networking:

1. Social networking applications [SNAs] shall provide explicit and easily used opt-out features; specifically, every message sent by a social networking application on behalf of users, as marketing, or for whatever purpose shall provide a mechanism for complete opt-out, as well as a means to opt-out by email and at the SNA website.
2. SNAs shall not send messages to any user’s contacts without the explicit consent of the user, and without first displaying both the list of contacts to which the message is to be directed, as well as the complete content of the message.
3. SNAs shall not expose any user’s contact information or the information associated with the user’s contacts to anyone other than the user without the explicit permission of the user.
4. SNAs shall prohibit unsolicited commercial messages through their systems, and should bar or block users that try to send such messages.
5. SNAs shall provide means so that users can block messages from specific users.
6. SNAs shall provide users an “unlisted” capability, so that their use of the system can be undiscoverable if they wish.

Let’s help him come up with four more! My contribution:

7. SNAs shall not make it easy to do things that are a really bad idea — socially inept, if not downright illegal.

For example, it’s a really, really bad idea to send the exact same canned invitation to your entire contact list. SNAs think they’re making it easier on their members to invite more people, but there’s an unintended consequence of creating social ill-will both for their members who do that and for the sites themselves.

I contend it’s a really, really bad idea to send almost ANY message — commercial or otherwise — to all your friends of friends.

I know some prefer the Darwinian approach — those with poor practices will simply not succeed. The only problem is, there’s no disincentive. There’s little or no negative feedback for them, at least in most SNAs. They simply don’t get results, and you have to hope that they eventually tire of a lack of results and leave. In the meantime, the rest of us have to wade through all the noise.

I tend to take a fairly libertarian approach — let people do what they want — minimal restrictions. But you still don’t hand them a loaded shotgun (e.g., the ability to send a generic mail to everyone they’ve ever met electronically). Bad idea.

Adam Greenfield writes that social networking sites are officially useless to him.

His concerns include:

…the indisputable fact that they introduce awkward social situations that did not otherwise exist, or were at least far less explicit.

…the naked asymmetry. What to do with the “friend” offering a wildly effusive testimonial for you, with whom your acquaintance is so touch-and-go that you barely know how to compliment them back.

…the YASNS’ messaging functionality offers nothing but an extra spam channel.

Finally, there’s what is perhaps the strongest indictment of all, which is something that I call the “so-what factor”: you’ve spent all this time on your social-networking site of choice, building out a profile and establishing threads of affinity, joining groups and posting testimonials. So what? What’s the return on your investment? What have you gotten for all that effort? In my case, the answer is clear - very little but headaches.

While industry pundits have been debating whether or not there’s a viable business model, and while Adam has had 18 months of no success with social networking sites, my co-author and I have been collecting dozens and dozens of success stories of people for whom they ARE working.

I’m not just talking about web designers and work-at-home moms — I’m talking about people doing 4, 5, 6, even 7-figure deals as a result of relationships made through social networking sites.

In an informal survey of 125 active Ryze users, more than 1/3 reported having gotten profitable business as a result of their participation on Ryze. I know people who’ve gotten jobs, major clients, sales, business partners, and more.

Take a look at our online networking success stories for a small sampling. We have numerous others that we haven’t published that we’re using for our book. Stay tuned to that channel for more.

As a note… some of Adam’s criticisms are unique to Orkut. I have yet to hear a success story from Orkut. Given their anti-commercial terms of service, and their complete lack of sensible boundaries between personal and professional, I don’t really expect to, but it’s certainly possible. It’s fine for social purposes, but there are other sites that are far more conducive to doing business.

In the meantime, I politely propose that perhaps the problem is not with social networking sites, but with how some people are using them, and that the real issue is not to get rid of social networking sites because they don’t work, but to educate people on how they CAN work, based upon the people who already HAVE made them work.

If social networking sites aren’t working for you, and you’re wondering why, I suggest start by looking at your own practices, and then looking at the practices of the people who are being successful with them.

So, regarding the death of social networking sites, I assure you that news of their death is premature.

I just received this email from Jigsaw:

> Dear Jigsaw Beta Member,
>
> Our Beta Program ended on August 13th and we’ve had a great response
> to the PAY or PLAY options. The Jigsaw community continues to grow
> rapidly, and we now have over 105,000 contacts.
>
> Remember, if you PLAY (and add 25 contacts to Jigsaw per month), you
> can continue to use the service for FREE. For more details, go to:
> http://www.jigsaw.com
>
>etc. etc. etc.

Unfortunately, the email was sent showing all the emails of the perhaps 500 recipients, instead of using a BCC. So every recipient could see the emails of every other recipient. Several recipients sent very silly responses to the entire list saying, “I’m a broker in California, here’s what I do.”

To put it mildly, this does not promote confidence in social network software.

To Jigsaw’s credit, they at least sent a follow up email (with a BCC) apologizing. I do not believe that Orkut ever apologized for their gaffe (orkut spam). In fact, Orkut said that they had to send their messages, even three months late.

Jigsaw’s error was one of carelessness, not deliberate. By contrast, the Orkut incident was a baked-in design problem.

ZeroDegrees also has received some flack for social network spam (”SNAM”) (see Stowe Boyd’s experience with ZeroDegrees ). ZeroDegrees (and some other social network systems) allows users the option of inviting every single person in their address book. As a result, some users (e.g., Stowe Boyd) have accidentally sent invitations to everyone whom they’ve ever traded emails with, including their own blog.

I understand ZD’s argument that users had explicitly opted to send out emails to their whole address book. However, I suggest that giving users the option to do something which only a very small percentage really should do is not good user interface design.

It is doubly imperative for social networking companies to be careful around these issues. Given recent crackdowns on spam, spamming people is asking for trouble. The flow of extra email that social software systems are generating is already damaging the industry.

UPDATE: Jas Dhilon (CEO of ZeroDegrees) called, and said that he personally sent emails to everyone of his firm’s clients’ contacts who accidentally got SNAMed, apologizing to those people.

In addition to these tips: CareerJournal: The Top 10 Blunders Of Online Job Hunters

I would add:

+ Use simple text formatting in your resume: one font size, minimal table usage, no italics, no shadowing, and no graphics. Resumes are often read on a word processing system different than yours, and fancy formatting makes them hard to read and harder to scan. Do not use the automatic bullets in Word; instead, manually type in hyphens. These are more likely to retain their formatting when viewed by a foreign word processor. Make sure to include the key words relevant for your profession.
+ Do not use PDF format (Adobe Acrobat). It is large in size, non-standard, and—most damaging—most headhunters and corporations use resume search engines that do not read that format. We recommend whenever you send a resume, include it as an attachment in Word or HTML format, and also include it in the body of the email.
+ Give your resume a name in the format: “Smith_John_Resume_2004.doc”. When the reader of your resume saves the file, it will therefore be easy for him or her to know later what is in that file. Names like “Resume.doc” make your reader’s job much more difficult.