Zerply may be the best thing since sliced bread in its design, but I'm not going to be the one to spam all of my business connections with yet-another-social-network.
If I started getting lots of invites from people I trusted, then I might consider joining. But I'd never even heard of them before reading this article.
LinkedIn goofed up ONCE in allowing your face in ads when you have some connection to the company. That's nowhere near as slimy as Facebook putting your face on ads you'd never even CLICKED on (famously a woman saw her HUSBAND in a picture advertising a singles site...), and that's just the tip of Facebook's privacy betrayals.
And since LinkedIn has a totally dominant market share (and mind share) in "business connections," it's going to likely take a lot more than a better design and easy import to dethrone them.
It looks like the hook is "use us to host your online resume! We'll make it pretty!" That approach has some potential; I'll keep my eyes open for a Zerply-hosted resume moving forward.
In this case, it was not Facebook who put that picture there, but an advertiser, who got and used that picture in a way that was against Facebook's Terms of Service, and Facebook then blocked that advertiser.
But this is the internet, where anything which in any way involves Facebook is Facebook's fault, and, furthermore, was completely intentional and malicious.
The thing I like about Zerply is finding people to work with. Which is kinda the point of a professional network when you think about it.
It's only fairly new, but I think the value will come from endorsements more than connections.
If you're looking to hire a developer, does it really matter if you know me or know someone that I know. What's the point of linking to people you already know anyway?? If you're looking to hire someone, it's far more important to understand their reputation than it is to understand how you're connected to them.
If I started getting lots of invites from people I trusted, then I might consider joining. But I'd never even heard of them before reading this article.
LinkedIn goofed up ONCE in allowing your face in ads when you have some connection to the company. That's nowhere near as slimy as Facebook putting your face on ads you'd never even CLICKED on (famously a woman saw her HUSBAND in a picture advertising a singles site...), and that's just the tip of Facebook's privacy betrayals.
And since LinkedIn has a totally dominant market share (and mind share) in "business connections," it's going to likely take a lot more than a better design and easy import to dethrone them.
It looks like the hook is "use us to host your online resume! We'll make it pretty!" That approach has some potential; I'll keep my eyes open for a Zerply-hosted resume moving forward.