

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN - they aren't it - sharecred

I took a long time to get on Facebook, may be because the notion of telling my friends what I did every minute of my day (or sharing 'interesting' photos) was not my definition of keeping in touch with friends. Yes, Facebook turned out to be a great experience, just not what I had in mind for the use case of keeping in touch with friends.<p>LinkedIN, defines how we stay in touch with our professional relationship. It is, again, a great tool for that purpose! I cannot think of a better tool, as of now, that serves this purpose.<p>Twitter - oh God, do not ask me what it is useful for. I am as vague as anyone can be. I am sure it is serving a purpose, I just do not seem to get it.<p>Anyways, given some of the criticisms I mentioned above, the question I would like to ask is this - can there be a 'different' type of network? After struggling with the question, I think I found one other type of network - network based on merit, not based on who we know, but based on common set of interests.<p>Imagine being able to identify an interesting 'persona' on the other side of the world that shares your opinions, and being able to converse with them. We do this today, through other people's blogs - if they have one. But blogs are notorious for how hard they are to promote and reach a meaningful readership.<p>Also, let us say I create a blog and start writing there. But the problem is that I need to maintain the theme of the blog, I cannot write on any topic that deviates from that theme. Hmm...am I to create another blog?<p>I think blogs is not the answer, at least for those of us that already do not have huge followership. But we still have a lot of good things to share.<p>That is why we created ShareCred! Please visit &#60;a href="http://sharecred.com"&#62;http://sharecred.com&#60;/a&#62;, and let us know in the comments what you think.<p>Signing up is easy - just sign-up through your LinkedIN.<p>Thank you for your time,
ShareCred team
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neogodless
Is signing up through LinkedIn the only option? For a brand new, unheard of
web site, I'd really rather just create a new account that is not directly
tied to my professional networking account. If I like what I experience with
the site, then I might want to tie in external accounts later. If it's the
only option, I am not joining.

This registration strategy seems at odds with the "anonymity" the site
markets.

On a positive note, I do believe that community rating of content is a useful
mechanism, and connecting yourself and your content to certain areas of
interest can also help others find people and content that may be relevant.
It's hopefully a more structured way to find your way around than Twitter's
hashtag stew.

Good luck in all you do!

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sharecred
hi Thank you very much for your feedback. Point taken. The reason (not saying
it is the right one) we started with only LinkedIN was that it is seen as one
way to keep the quality of the participation.

Trust us (you can ask - what is that?), there is not going to be any
connection between your LinkedIN account and your ShareCred activity. It is
just a way to login.

Having said that, we will seriously consider opening up registration.

Thanks again,

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terrykohla
It seems like what you're describing is achievable via Twitter.

Use hash-tag for a particular topic.

If you like what somebody posted (perhaps a link to their blog), you follow
them and if need be you can interact with them.

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sharecred
Theoretically, I agree with you. But since the conversation itself (comments,
related posts, recognizing merit, etc.) is not the focus of Twitter - it is a
good tool for emitting news, but not built as a platform/environment for
meaningful dialogue or eco-system.

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intellegacy
Quora?

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ArekDymalski
Mixed with Glipho perhaps?

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sharecred
Actually, in my earlier response, I missed the term 'mixed' in your comment.

Having realized that, I agree with you. I think it is right to characterize
what we are doing at ShareCred as a mix of HN and Glipho (of course with
additional features, enabled by the combination).

Thank you,

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ArekDymalski
Yeah, that's what I meant. Such combination is an interesting one. However the
critical thing (besides design) is how are you going to attract the required
mass of users to keep it vivid. So far there's little incentive to put my
content there, and without content there's no incentive to visit the site. The
loop is closed. Maybe you could consider an easy way for users to
automatically put their content from other places, via RSS for example? That
way you could focus on the discovery not content creation.

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sharecred
Agreed that there is a catch-22 here (as I would imagine with any social
network - if our friends are not on the network, what is the point in me
joining?). As I mentioned in my post, it took me a while to join Facebook. And
how long LinkedIN has been around, it feels like only the last couple of years
people have been 'regular' on LinkedIN.

Having said the above, I wholeheartedly agree with you. In fact, we are
working on a Wordpress plugin to let users cross-post to ShareCred
simultaneously. RSS could be another great way, but we will have to work out
ownership.

Frankly, I am glad that the discussion is about how to attract users than 'the
concept does not make sense' - which was the first hurdle we wanted to get
through.

Now that we are through it, I truly appreciate any ideas you (and others) can
share.

