You Should Meet vs LinkedIn
A few weeks back, when I started this post, I had talked to one of the founders (Richard Banfield) of You Should Meet, which is an extremely simple application that lets people introduce two people. It is the way that a referral should work: a proactive networker identifies an opportunity to connect two people for their mutual gain. Linkedin and Ryze have created a larger barrier for this to occurr, as they require that both people being introduced are members. This requirement is not necessary for YouShouldMeet.
Here's their blog. Here's a great interview by my Social Networking weblog partner-in-crime, Robyn Tippins, about linkedin's new policy of limiting invitations.
Here's a comment from Jeff Jarvis on Linkedin that I agree with:
I�m not much happier about Linked-In and find it particularly irksome when people spamming their address book can�t be bothered even to type in their own message � who do they think they are, the Parents Television Council? I think it�s particularly nervy of people I�ve never met to ask me to declare them friends and I have yet to find a single worthwhile contact out of Linked-In, but I will at least throw a link to people I actually have done business with. But in both cases, I have the gnawing fear that I�m thrown into a transaction that neither player truly controls.
Like Jarvis, I've never gotten a good feel out of LinkedIn. I've used it because it seemed like a good tool for networking. But, as I got into it, I just felt like I was collecting business cards like baseball cards. I'll never meet many of these people and like the baseball card collecting hobby, the market is saturated with valueless collections.
And as I learned from some masters of networking more recently, it is about giving first. With LinkedIn, networking and referrals are a passive activity. I respond to requests for introductions. A good networker should initiate referrals and introductions. That's what You Should Meet enables.
Fast forward to this past Friday, I talked to Richard Banfield again and then sent him some email interview questions. Here's the questions and answers:
1. What does You Should Meet do?
You Should Meet allows you to make introductions and referrals between your contacts independent of what social or business network they belong to. By storing those introduction and referrals you have a way of tracking your network building activity. In a way, YSM is the Switzerland of social networking because no membership is required of either the sender or the recipient to receive the benefit of the introduction or referral.
2. Why do you thinkYou Should Meet's approach to facilitating online networking is better than linkedin's or ryze's approach?
YSM is not a competitor to LinkedIn or Ryze. Those sites are really good at aggregating profiles and direct links. YSM aims to complete the next logical step in networking by providing a tool that will allow you to gain indirect benefits from passing on leads, making referrals and introducing friends and colleagues together. It's a fundamental rule of networking that if you expect to get referrals and introductions from your network then you need to start by making referrals and introductions.
3. What are the next steps with You Should Meet?
We're adding a follow-up feature that will allow our users to get feedback from the people they introduced to each other. There will also be a ticker on the site that allows visitors to see how many introductions are being made in real-time. This is a fun addition that will demonstrate how frequently the tool is being used and suggest how many good things are happening because of it.
This past Monday, Richard presented Fresh Tilled Soil's 37Signals-ish philosophy at David Beisel's Boston Web Innovator's Group, which I attended. Coverage here, here and here.
Next week, Richard is moving in with me and my wife. Just kidding. But, I certainly have had quite a few interactions with him recently. And I think they'll be more as I use You Should Meet.
~admin
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