Professional Networking & Project Leadership
Every project leader will be faced, at some point, with the issue of a missing team resource. Sometimes using a networking tool can help you identify the right person – but which tool? With the recent spate of high visibility social networking sites, Beaufortes decided to find out if anything had changed for professional networking. We surveyed some of our established professional networks, comprising about 800 people, mostly UK based, with some European and US members. Mostly with Blue Chip credentials, very often with consulting experience. The age profile is 35 – 55, probably peaking in the early-mid 40s.
After 36 hours, we had 56 responses. Here are the results:
| Platform/Tool | % Time cited as used by respondents |
| 78.6 | |
| Plaxo | 32.1 |
| Ecademy | 23.2 |
| Xing (Formerly OpenBC) | 16.1 |
| 12.5 | |
| NONE | 8.9 |
| Small World (private) | 7.1 |
| Orkut | 7.1 |
| Friendster | 5.4 |
| MySpace | 5.4 |
| Business-scene | 3.6 |
| Friends Reunited | 3.6 |
| FastPitchNetworking | 1.8 |
| BNI | 1.8 |
| Business Referral Exchange | 1.8 |
| Bebo | 1.8 |
| Tilllate | 1.8 |
| 4Networking | 1.8 |
| Ning | 1.8 |
| Google Groups | 1.8 |
| BlueChipExpert (private) | 1.8 |
| Neurona | 1.8 |
| Qube (private) | 1.8 |
| YouTube | 1.8 |
| Blogger (blog site) | 1.8 |
| Geni (family based) | 1.8 |
| Ryze | 1.8 |
| MSN Groups | 1.8 |
| Decayenne (private) – Not used | 0.0 |
| Blackbook – Not used | 0.0 |
Suggested in survey, but not cited in responses: Bizwiz, BizMeed, Tribe.net, Spoke.com
Comments:
- All the tools mentioned in responses have been included, even if the respondent didn’t indicate they used them.
- NONE is the count of responses saying that they do not use on-line networking platforms. This number is probably understated since the active networkers surveyed are more inclined to respond.
- It’s interesting that LinkedIn is considered primarily a
- Plaxo and Linked-in have recently integrated their address book capabilities (they are owned by the same VC firm). According to respondents, Plaxo is not considered a networking tool – a view shared by us – but it was included in the survery due to its curious positioning.
- All the outbound communications for this survey went through a Google Groups platform – due to the low rate of citations, clearly our respondents don’t see it as a networking tool.
- It is possible that there is a network effect amongst the surveyed groups that distort the results, though it is unlikely to change the fact of Linked-in’s predominance.
- I (Philip Greenwood) need to declare a bias: I know Bill Liao, the CNO of Xing on a personal basis. This research is not for Xing or Bill – it was conducted independently of any networking platform.
Our conclusion is that, among this demographic, the high profile social networking sites have yet to make a dent. The qualitative feedback was that they were basically useless for professional networking.
However, while used much more broadly, the old style networking sites fared little better in the qualitative comments – people just didn’t understand how to use them effectively. Clearly these are tremendous untapped resources – perhaps someone will point us to references about how to use them effectively in the comments below? One such resource We’ve found is this link to Guy Kawasaki’s Blog. Fast Company are also talking about networking tools.
Philip Greenwood is a member of Linkedin, Plaxo and Xing (Phil Greenwood)
Jason Bates is also a member of Linkedin and Plaxo.
Look us up, and link to us!
Our own citations are not included in the research. Many thanks to those who responded.
— Philip Greenwood & Jason Bates
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I was not wholly surprised to read that many felt that the social networking sites were useless. Many still view networking as a hunter /gatherer activity - present yourself, exchange business cards, follow up. In reality, the social business networking sites work more like conferences - you bump into people, get talking and then, if you have made a good connection, they begin to see how you may be of value to either them personally or to others in their network.
Networks like Ecademy are meeting places for groups of advocates. You really only get out what you put in. To succeed in these spaces you need to be useful first before the community will be of use to you.
I recommend both LinkedIn and Ecademy to my corporate clients for different reasons:
LinkedIn is great for referrals and for research (we were able to make contact and arrange meetings with a targeted list of 16 companies out of 20 on a recent project within 2 days using LinkedIn).
Ecademy is streets ahead of the other social business networks and is already attracting attention from the High Street Banks as they consider new strategies for building communities.
The chair of Ecademy (Thomas Power) is fond of saying that the platform is live R&D and in many ways the early adopters are defining how effective networking will be carried out in future. However, the fundamentals of success in these human environments are the same as offline - people like people, give to receive and seek first to understand!
Regards,
Simon Phillips
"A Friend in Every City" is the latest book by Thomas Power and can be found at http://www.ecademy-press.com
Posted by: Simon Phillips | May 23, 2007 at 05:16 PM
A rather useful blog piece from Simon Phillips on this subject:
http://simesconews.blogspot.com/2007/02/networking-scorecard-in-recent-years.html
Posted by: Philip Greenwood | May 23, 2007 at 05:52 PM
The Blue Chip workplace is probably behind the pack in effective use of Networking. These organisation are resistant to change and have not woken up to the potential and capabilities of the Web.
Posted by: Mike Farrow | May 23, 2007 at 06:15 PM