netzooid

Jon, you’re just a internet zooid :-P.

I think LinkedIn is a really cool tool. I like being able to view my network and how people connect. But, there are quite a few things that bug me and the launch of O’Reilly Connection seems to keep many of these same irritants:

• Its centralized
• It seems schmoozy – I always feel weird inviting people to LinkedIn, especially people without an interest in such technologies
• It doesn’t support varying degrees of trust and relationships (although endorsements help)
• Its not mobile – Cell phones are the basic unit of social networking and communication. I’m rarely in social situation with my computer. There must be some way to take advantage of the cell phone.
• It doesn’t have an API
• It doesn’t interoperate with all the other social networking tools

OC is positing itself as a place to connect to find developers. You can see this in their profile builder which is actually quite nice. Finding developers is Hard (capital H), especially with Google/Microsoft/Amazon/etc stealing anyone who is any good lately. I also realize that this is a niche, but I don’t think theres a big enough difference between it and LinkedIn for it to differentiate itself. I could be wrong though, as its beta.

I’m thinking about some possible solutions to my gripes. Hopefully I’ll post them soon, in the mean time, do others have ideas?

Also if you want to connect via Linked/OC just look me up as I’m now on both.