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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

That is why we created ShareCred! Please visit <a href="http://sharecred.com">http://sharecred.com</a>, and let us know in the comments what you think.

Signing up is easy - just sign-up through your LinkedIN.

Thank you for your time, ShareCred team

[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!

[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,

[sharecred]

hi neogodless Thanks again for your feedback. We have now added sign-up with email! Please check it out at https://sharecred.com/signup.

   We truly would like to know what you think of the site.

Thank you,

[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.

[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.

[intellegacy]

Quora?

[sharecred]

hi Quora does indeed have very good content, but driven by questions. It is not oriented towards expression (like a blog) for example.

Thank you,

[ArekDymalski]

Mixed with Glipho perhaps?

[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,

[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.

[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.

[sharecred]

That is a very good observation. We do feel that Glipho is close to our use cases, but not where we want to take it ultimately. I think some fundamentals are different between us.