OK, things are going pretty well. We don't have to go to networking groups and meet strangers if we don't want to. We don't even have to cold call or warm call to strangers. Life is good!
I said that this sort of gated online community called Ryze would smooth over the rough edges of this networking thing. Ryze, like a lot of other new networking or community-building kinds of web sites, is an emerging phenomenon - it has a life of its own and is constantly evolving. Plus, similar sites are springing up and each has it's own particular nature and feel. Here's a brief list of some of the competition: Friendster, blogging communities like Live Journal and Radio Userland, LinkedIn, Ecademy, Friends Reunited, There and Everyone's Connected.
Let's remember again, why we are doing this. We aren't getting onto the internet and futzing around with an online community just for the fun of it you know. This is serious! ;-) We are doing this because we want a way to more easily identify and connect with kindred spirits for our mutual benefit. We are looking to activate the field of dreams we've been talking about. Humans are social beings - we want and even need to socialize. Maybe we as individuals are going for two things in all this, then: (1) we want to socialize with people we really like and resonate with and (2) we want to trade knowledge, opinions and support with them once we know and trust them enough to feel comfortable doing so.
So, the fraternizing in item #1 is potentially really enjoyable, but right now let's stay on track and look at what needs to happen to get the knowledge, connection and support benefits of item #2. To do this, we need to (1) find the "right" people, (2) get to know them and (3) establish trust and (4) feel comfortable. Ryze business networking operates on and enables these things. Let's look at the first task and see how Ryze works:
Identifying People: There are many ways that Ryze helps here. Everyone has their own home page and this allows people to reveal themselves to others including photographs plus a lot of identifying information like current town, home town, schools attended, companies worked for, positions held and interests. For paying members (up to $10/mo.) these words are all clickable hyperlinks that find other Ryzlings who match that interest, home town, etc. A general search function allows you to find on any word you want. The only real hitch here is whether or not people feel safe enough to reveal information about themselves in this environment and whether or not enough people find this kind of thing worth doing. [To be continued].