Online social networking is a craze that shows no signs of slowing down. According to internet research company Compete, 2 out of 3 people using the internet visit social networking sites. These sites have experienced a 109% growth since 2004 & are still going strong!
The best known social networking sites, such as MySpace, tend to target college students but there are plenty of social networking sites with a business focus. Savvy entrepreneurs already use social networking to connect with potential customers, promote products, build brand awareness, post jobs & get questions answered, all at low or zero cost.
If you're a small business, it's a sure bet that social networking is going to appear on your agenda sooner or later but where to start? Below is a list of some of the more higher profile business networking websites:
Facebook
Although primarily a social network service, Facebook is slowly positioning itself to be a platform where both casual and business networking can take place. Groups of potential interest include CreativeCoffee Club, British Library Entrepreneur, SmallBizPod.
LinkedIn
A business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking. It allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. The people in the list are called Connections. Users can invite anyone to become a connection. As of May 2008, LinkedIn had more than 24 million registered users spanning 150 industries.
Ecademy
A social network for business professionals with over 150,000 members worldwide (60% of which are located in the UK). Ecademy includes a free basic membership and a paid premier membership (required to create clubs or to view personal business introductions & private meetings).
Xing
A social software platform for enabling professionals to establish networks internationally. The company operating it claims that it is used by people from over 190 countries.
Plaxo
Plaxo provides automatic updating of contact information. Users and their contacts store their information on Plaxo's servers. When this information is edited by the user, the changes appear in the address books of all those who listed the account changer in their own books. Once contacts are stored in the central location, it is possible to list connections between contacts and access the address book from anywhere. In May 2008, the website reported 20 million users.
Ryze
Ryze.com is a free social networking website designed to link business professionals, particularly new entrepreneurs. The site claims to have over 250,000 members in 200 countries, with over 1,000 external organizations hosting sub-networks on the site. Both paid and unpaid membership levels are offered.
Zoominfo
ZoomInfo is a vertical search engine focused on people, companies, and the relationships between them. In addition to using the public web as its source to automatically create professionally-focused summaries of the people & companies it finds, ZoomInfo also allows users to contribute information to their own summaries or building new ones where none exists. A count in April 2006 indicated upwards of 30 million summaries of business professionals and 2.5 million company profiles.
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