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The Business Blog at Intuitive.com
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Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980 and
is widely recognized as an expert on both technical and business
issues. He has been published over a thousand times, launched four Internet-related
startup companies, has written twenty business and technical books and holds both an MBA and MS Ed.
Dave maintains three weblogs, The Business Blog at Intuitive.com, focused on business and
industry analysis,
the eponymous
Ask Dave Taylor
devoted to tech and business Q&A and The
Attachment Parenting Blog,
discussing topics of interest to parents.
Dave is an award-winning speaker, sought after conference and workshop participant and
frequent guest on radio and podcast programs.
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A Surprising Social Network Barrier to Growth: Invitations
I've written before about the mistake that many people make using the default invitations - in particular with LinkedIn (see don't send generic LinkedIn invitations!) - but what's amazing to me is how many of the newer and perhaps less well known social networks aren't learning from the experience of the big guys.
Two cases in point that are in my inbox right now, one from Naymz.com and one from Fast Pitch.com.
Here's exhibit A, the invitation from Naymz:
What the heck? This is really extraordinarily ugly and formats so poorly in my email program (Microsoft Entourage) that it makes me wonder if the people with Naymz have ever actually received an invitation. Yech. I won't join just because it's ugly.
Exhibit B, from Fast Pitch, is even more interesting:
My understanding is that Fast Pitch is a legitimate professional networking site, but really, this whole coy "a colleague has invited you" is a huge spam warning flag and there's also no way in heck that I'm going to join a network that sends that kind of invitation.
So what the heck? Is it so hard to produce attractive, coherent, intelligible invitations to join new social networks as they are created?
Sheesh.
Dave:
You are right on the money with this.
People, take some time when you are networking, online or in person. It is about building trust and appreciation in your network, not just building numbers. If you are insincere in your networking, your network will be weak.
-Rob
Posted by: Rob McNealy on February 15, 2008 4:58 PMGood point Dave, I have also received many such emails from the HR companies where they create the login details and send you the invitation in a Web 2 friendly manner. Inviting to join a micro community is good initiative but there are many non-spammy ways of doing it, people can learn this from gmail invitation engine.
Navtej Kohli
Posted by: Navtej Kohli on February 20, 2008 6:07 AM
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The Business Blog
