So what can I do with AccountTweet?

It’s all about understanding twitter streams and correlating that information to specific accounts. We allow you to easily follow any group of accounts you want – and quickly visualize in real-time what is happening. By following an account – you also benefit from a direct message twitter alert when any account tweet volume demonstrates an above average level of activity. Learn instantly when an account has important news, activity or if someone is specifically inquiring about that account. AccountTweet connects you in real -time with the accounts you care about most  – and the people who share that same account interest!

• This app sucks – you are an idiot.
• This app is kinda cool, but you need to do zyz…
• This app is super cool – you guys are leading edge!

It always hard to judge your own development efforts – and it’s really up to the community to help decide if you’ve down a good job or need to re-treat ( or re-tweet) into a dark hole and never surface. Yesterday I started to send out a few tweets – just a couple to start to let everyone know we were back in the game and have something cool to offer. And offer at an excellent price – which is free!

I’ll keep this post short. I have a lot to share and reflect upon since the beginning days of Connectize how quickly the selling world is changing.

Right now, if you have 30 seconds, feel free to check out our new light weight app. We’ve spent zero on UI – we can juice that later so don;t worry about how it looks. Right now it’s about the core value and concept of social collaboration and how we believe the sales 2.0 world will further accelerate this trend. Feel free to leave us feedback – and there is no such thing as bad feedback so tell us what you really think. Thanks!

This is a really cool online application called Wordle that I found today. Makes my hack artistic skills pop to life and also tells me right away what my blog has been weighted on. It’s all about:

• Sales
• New
• Time
• Enterprise

So if I had to tie that into a short value proposition…

Connectize is about helping sales people, get new information, so they don’t waste time when selling to the enterprise

How’s that sound?

Are enterprise/internet applications too complex? I think the answer is yes. And it is the same answer to the same question that I have about Connectize’s current release. During a beta – you get a lot of time to reflect upon what you have so painstakingly built, the thousands of details you have solved, who your targeted user is and how well they understand what value you are attempting to deliver to them. When you live and breathe a product – as a founder -  you totally understand every square inch of each page of the application and what it’s supposed to do. And it is really fun to add layers of complexity and think you’re really smart. Unfortunately, that is not cool for new users coming to a site, who have about 20 seconds free to to figure out what value (if any) you are offering and how easy it might be for them to participate in your solution.

If you need to cut a rope, you need a knife. Simple right? But if I gave you a Swiss Army knife and asked you to analyze and try every tool available in this device – you might never get around to cutting the rope – which in the end was the ultimate goal. Point is, you can miss your goals by following exactly what your instincts tell you to do. I think we might have designed the uber Swiss Army knife with our current release. Agree?

Connectize – let’s dumb it down! Our beta was basically an enterprise app pushed out to the internet. There is a BIG difference in terms of targeted user, available time and adoption curves between these two very different environments. The Sales 2.0 evolution begs me to make things simple, both from a development and user perspective. It’s the core idea behind “The Power of Less” which was the theme at the past Web 2.0 show in San Francisco. The KISS Principle still exists and is even more relevant with today’s new internet generation. Call them Gen X, Gen Y or Gen Me, – but basically – everybody and everything needs to be really simple today and solve a specific problem.

So what does all this mean? There is a new release of Connectize coming which is downright simple! So simple it is dumb. So dumb, it is brilliant! The new version will deliver a value that remains untapped today and from an existing ecosystem of real time experts. Enough said for now…expect to see the new release in July!

Sales 2.0 as we (or I) preach, talks to people, processes and technology efficiencies all integrated to accelerate the selling cycle. Connectize, in this new upcoming release, is what I would consider the fastest way for a sales person to find the help and account insight they need. The new site is aimed directly at sale people who want the edge on accounts they are prospecting or currently engaged with. Down the road – we will share a product road map with upcoming features that you can vote on to help us prioritize what you really want. These features will bolt seamlessly onto this upcoming core release and be spun out very quickly. Agile software development at it’s best!

I think you will enjoy the new Connectize. If you have been wondering where we’re been – now you know. Stay tuned as we crank on the code.

Web 2.0 meets Enterprise 2.0 enables Sales 2.0!

If you’d like to get a quick explanation of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 – then Andrew McAfee from the Harvard Business School is your man! We all tend to throw around Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and Sales 2.0 like they all have some standard and defined meaning – but that’s just not the case. Andrew breaks down Web 2.0 user technologies as being simply;

• easy to use
• no imposed structure or rules for the user
• tend to be platforms where communities come to together and content accumulates

Cool. So what is Enterprise 2.0? According to Andrew, “It’s the process of using these same tools within the enterprise. It’s the use of free form social software platforms inside organizations.” Andrew also raises the point of actual software usage over deployment – and although he did not get into it in this short video – this is where things get really tricky for any enterprise to adopt social tools. The procedures and processes that are baked for traditional enterprise application deployments do lack some of the concerns one might be interested in protecting when using open community applications. Just what is standard operating protocol for commenting on product road maps or twitter feeds of an executive or recent layoffs is still quite murky waters for most enterprises. I don’t think Twitter updates or Facebook feeds are covered yet in most employees HR guides. It will be though…

Now that we’ve covered Enterprise 2.0, what is sales 2.0? Well for me, it is should be the application of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 (including both internal and external communities) and focusing these user technologies to better enable the corporate sales process. The focus should be to increase efficiency and velocity of the sales pipeline. Help sales people save time, make better decisions and most importantly, close deals more quickly. Sales 2.0 is about acceleration. It is measurable both by the cycle time of a deal and the size of the commission check! I’m going to be focusing more on metrics in another post. Numbers don’t lie.

Hope you enjoy the video.

I had the opportunity to write a guest posting for Jonathan Farrington a few weeks ago. It was geared towards the Sales 2.0 Conference that hit the “Streets of San Francisco” a few weeks ago. You can read the post Sales 2.0 Conference – Another Perspective. or at Sales 2.0 which is run by Nigel Edelshain. I touched on the subject of evolution in the post and now for some reason it hasn’t quite yet left my mind. There is definitely a pattern change going on in the sales world. I say “pattern change” since a few of my old co-workers were always talking about J2EE patterns and since then, the concept of patterns has been stuck in my head. So I like thinking of “things” in in terms of patterns. When you think about it, a good sales process is nothing more than a pattern for success – so patterns and pattern matching are really good concepts to think about if you’re a sales minded person.

What is the pattern I see today?

• Extinction of the old Sales 1.0 Rep.
• Birth of the new  Sales 2.0 Professional.

Notice I call out the distinction of Rep vs Professional. Sure, I used to be called a rep – I was a “Sales Representative” to be precise! I was actually called Sales Representative I, then Sales Representative 2 and then I finally reached the 3rd level of honor – Sales Representative 3. It was a blind path to follow and conform to. I worked for one of the largest computer companies after I got out engineering school. It was the thing to do. VMS is VMS is VMS right?.

Let me go back to this previous post and take 2 points because I feel they are really important to re-iterate.

Natural selection suggests great Sales 2.0 professionals will emerge

We have to get used to sharing, collaborating and aligning our interests with our customers. New sales people will be born into this new way of thinking. Most existing sale people will successfully make this transformation and emerge. But others, like the dinosaurs, will get trapped in the tar sands and perish. Survival of the fittest will naturally occur across existing sales organizations.
The conference crowd was a mix of young and old, but surprising more weighted to the older side. Many great sales leaders are older, and come pre-packaged with Sales 1.0 processes and methodologies. It’s this group that will need to make a more dramatic transformation. The new and younger sales generations are generally already on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and others. Social media is part of their sales and social world. And they’ve done so very openly and naturally. Has the process of natural selection already started?

Genetic drift suggests there will also be Sales 2.0 superstars
This genetic drift concept is interesting – since you might be thinking this conference produced 450+ Sales 2.0 robots. Fortunately, our ability to absorb, interpret and action new information varies by person, location and industry. This represents an opportunity.

How will superstars emerge? My opinion is that true Sales 2.0 superstars will leverage these new processes and applications and successfully align these capabilities with their customer’s buying patterns. Superstars will add their own unique personality and reasoning in the application of Sales 2.0 – something a robot can’t do just yet.

Conclusion
The evolution has started as evidenced by this conference. It is now the time to decide if you will perish or emerge as a Sales 2.0 superstar. Your customer is waiting.

Scary? It must of been for the trapped dinosaurs too! So – heads up. Start making some changes now to the way you think and the way you act.

I’ve been thinking like a dinosaur too – so don’t feel alone. I am trying to be a Sales 2.0-y CEO – so much of this week has been twittering, commenting on blogs, and product design. Twitter is an amazing tool for anyone in sales. As part of this evolution, why not sign up and start playing with it today? It’s free – so it’s within everybody’s budget especially in today’s economy!

Go one step further and ask your customers “Are you on twitter?” and see what experiences (positive and negative) they share with you. You can search for your customers and just follow – but of course its a great topic for new conversation and insight into how they are adopting and leveraging social media into their work and personal lifestyle. It would also be interesting to see what corporate governance is being applied to their tweets. Are they free to openly tweet or are there specific restrictions in place? Make sure to add you own personality and reasoning to every tweet you post to make sure you reflect yourself as a Sales 2.0 superstar. More on twitter in an upcoming post.

Evolve now. Get on twitter. You can follow me @tomcanning.

Are You A Sales 2.0 Robot?

Ok, time to put the robot picture on the right hand side of the blog! Why is this significant you ask? Because it represents a shift in my way of thinking. I resent shifts. I actually hate shifts. But they are required and I force myself to make them from time to time. This topic ties in with an upcoming guest blog post I am writing on the concept of evolution and how it applies to Sales 2.0. Look for it next week.

It’s been a busy month in San Francisco. The Sales 2.0 Conference was a blast! I got to meet really cool people and hang with the stars of Sales 2.0. It almost sounds like it could be a TV show! Stars included Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway who wrote the book Sales 2.0, Sales Strategist  Jill Konrath and Sales 2.0 Shaker Nigel Edelshain. I had to be quick on my feet for Sales Evangelist Karl Goldfield for a quick on the spot interview. I think he talks almost as fast as I do! So as you can see – I’ve been busy.

This robot thing came to me after the Sales 2.0 conference dust had settled and I had some time to reflect on the show and all the folks I had met

Is there a danger we will all become Sales 2.0 robots? If the sales processes and tools are emerging and converging to support this evolution – what’s left for me to be me and for anyone to be able to differentiate themselves? Well – there are steps in a sales process which are robotic – like setting up a webex, (oh I hate that so much!) driving to a call, or getting bumped on your United Airlines flight – but the rest is all about you baby! We can and should always apply our personality and active reasoning to all parts of any sales process or methodology we follow. “Let’s keep it real” as they say. But let’s also “Get er done” in terms of correctly aligning with the customer’s needs and getting the business closed.

Apart from the conference and some night time tech events, we’ve been busy in Connectize Labs working on real time collaboration capabilities and content for the account wiki. I’ve been a little quiet with the community – I realize everyone is time challenged – so once we finish up and deploy a few of the major features we are working on – I will notify everyone and ask for your feedback. Unlike a robot – I will take feedback and actually roll it that into our product road map! I hope to be a good community manager but I need your support and direction.

Don’t be a boring robot. Be a Sales 2.0 Superstar!

Danger: Don’t Be Just Another Sales 2.0 Peep!

Yes – that’s the headline today. I mean it’s all good to follow Sales 2.0 as a new methodology and belief – but the real key is to make sure you bring your personality along it. For anyone is sales, personality is a really key factor that can make or break a deal. Don’t let Sales 2.0 or social media change that. Typing in your Twitter update, Facebook’s “What are you doing now” or Linkedin’s “What are you working on?” still needs to promote and differentiate you as the person you really are. If you post boring and really vanilla updates – you will have your customers in a deep coma. It’s great to see “I am washing the car” or “Just finished shining my shoes”, but wouldn’t it be much more interesting to post “just finished reading Oracle’s eWeek on-demand release 16 article – check it out at http://tinyurl.com/bs7ydg“

Get it? Start using these free services as a way to promote your interests and expertise in a sales way. It’s your personal fabric, weave it for the best results and value to your customers and prospects! Post independent thoughts that set you aside from the noise and offers a perspective your customers will appreciate and value.

So how can you start to shift towards this way of thinking? Start listening to the experts! I recently had the opportunity to become acquainted with Jonathan Farrington – who is the master of sales consultancy and is based in London. Jonathon has created TSE – Top Selling Experts and it is one of the greatest time savers for sales people anywhere. Why? Because it’s one of the fastest ways to get a pulse on what is actually happening across the top sales trainer, bloggers and sales consultants. I know first hand how time consuming it is to surf the web for “stuff”. Hey – you can either waste time looking or spend time reading – your choice! Jonathan has created an Article Vault – I’d seriously check it out. Remember – sometimes just the slightest change in strategy can result in a major win within an account. Why not take advantage of the collective intelligence of others (see my Crowsourcing post) and see how it can help you in this time of economic downturn.

This Week’s News: Let me congratulate the folks at Coit Staffing. Not only do they help sales people across the world advance their careers – but they also helped Connectize in helping promote our beta. A big thanks to Joe Belluomini and the staff at Coit!  Joe is not only a great guy – but he also hosts the The Monte Carlo Night 2009 in San Francisco benefiting the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. A great cause to support!

• I am really busy eh?..
• I’ve been traveling all week…
• I’ll add this my Outlook or SFDC tasks. Next week….

The good news is that there is no big rush for most things – they say “Don’t sweat the small stuff” right?   So as far as this sales 2.0 stuff goes, ” Tom,  just let me get this quarter over and worry about it in Q2.”  No problem with that approach – as you will have plenty of time while you search Monster and Linkedin for your next sales job after missing your Q1 number!  Come on folks – it’s February 2009 – you need to have kicked in your Sales 2.0 game plan!  Did you?  Nope.  I know.  And I know why.  You just don’t know what Sales 2.0 is and how to get started!

It’s not like going to see a dentist – but I think a lot of sales people think it is.  Sales 2.0 is not a do-it-once-a-year drilling.  It is a planned and measurable process and tool set that will increase the most important aspect of your sales career – more customers!  Ok, so I jumped a lot of steps in between, and went from concept to big commission check in one sentence.  No worries.  Over time – I will be sharing what I think makes a really good Sales 2.0 self starter plan.  Why do I think it will be a good plan?  Because everyone will be able to understand it, apply it and see results.  Sales 2.0 is in bold five times (5x) in this posting to start getting you used to the term and thinking about it.

This Week’s News: Paul Cohan is our winner! Paul is a senior recruiter at Vmware and helps great sales people get involved with virtualization. Thanks Paul for helping share the news of Connectize!

Isn’t winning the greatest feeling? I told you that I would pay out $100 in Amex gift cards each week to the person who invited the most users to the Connectize beta  – and I am paying out today! This week’s lucky winner is Brad Buck! Brad is at OpenCrowd in NYC – a really cool company that helps customers in the web 2.0 space and cloud computing! Brad and I met when I worked for a SaaS SOA company. Brad – thanks for helping us build out our beta user base – the check is in the mail!

Ok – so half my friends were like “Canning – You-capital-efficient-CEO-money-machine – I will never see a red cent from you even if I do win!” Trust me (I’m in sales!) I have a drawer full of cards to give out – and they are yours for the taking! Just try me… as they say, “These cards gotta go this quarter!”

Moving on, we’ve been busy with the Wiki. Very cool things you will see this month. We’re doing some heavy back end lifting for you that will just blow you away when you see it. Stay tuned as we work on getting this ready for prime time. A lot of good work leveraging SOAP web services!

Cloud Computing I heard is all the rave from a good friend of mine who attended a VC event this week. I have had Cloud on the brain ever since I heard SOA was dead. I think I participated in that funeral process. More to come on the cloud over time – and to be precise – it’s Cloud 1.0 for now!

A big Welcome to new users that signed up! Feel free to voice any suggestions. The invite promotion continues throughout Q1 – take a few minutes and maybe you can be next week’s winner!

Money Talks! – so let’s kick in the new year with our first promotion! Connectize is now available as a beta release and we want to thank-you for your support!

Earn a $100 Amex gift card by simply sharing this release with sales and business professionals who you think might be interested. Why Participate? Because helping us build this community helps everyone including YOU!  As the user base increases – the availability and liquidity of the community increases. The probability of you connecting with the right resources increases, the probability of you monetizing your expertise increases. It’s a win-win for everyone!

Visit the “invite” link on top of any page. We’ve made it super easy to invite 5-10 people, or 500-1000 by importing your Microsoft Outlook or Linkedin .csv file. Each week we will award the user who sends the most invites with $100.  The card will be mailed to your address or charity of choice. We’re going to run this promotion for Q1 – as in any viral promotion it takes time to get the word out and we also want to extend this offer to the new users that join this quarter. Pretty simple right?

We’ve just started to on board new users. If you are new to Connectize – feel completely free to email and tell me what you think.  I’d rather hear what you don’t like rather than how cool you think it is :-).  We’ve set up a feedback form at the bottom of each page.  I realize we’re all busy – but if you like to see some new features – ping me and we’ll work on getting them rolled into an upcoming release.

Welcome 2009!

Jeff Howe is a contributing editor at Wired Magazine, where he covers the media and entertainment industry. I saw his video on YouYube and thought I would share it on my blog today. Crowdsourcing, as Jeff describes it, is when “a company takes a job that was once performed by employees and outsources it in the form of an open call to a large undefined group of people”

Mmm…  I remember working for various companies were we had employees responsible for competitive intelligence, lead generation, territory help and basically attempting to enable the sales organization to be more effective and efficient. I also remember how rarely that information actually helped me close a deal! For years, smart sales people have “crowdsourced” the important information they needed – and it was this information that made them successful in their sales execution. I’m really pleased that Jeff has written this book. You can check it out at Amazon.

Connectize is a form of crowdsourcing, enabling a sales person to reach out to an undefined group of people and to connect with these people based on shared interests. Every sales and sales related person either needs or has information on an account, territory or industry – yet all to often there is no easy and fast way to get to the right person. Sales people have various crowds they can access; prospect, current customers, past customers, fellow employees, partners, school, social, etc… and yet there remains an undefined “crowd” (the people you would never normally meet) that possess vast amounts of untapped information and expertise. It is that crowd that we hope to connect you with. The person you don’t know, haven’t met before but based on shared interests, could play an instrumental role in your sales success and career.

This week’s feature is

• Connection Referral

As a way to help build the Connectize Sales 2.0 community and extend the “crowd” we’ve added the ability to refer someone. By simply referring a profile need, it is really easy to share with other users or anyone that might not yet be aware of Connectize, an opportunity to help someone and get paid in the process.  Referral activity generates an in application meassage for all parties involved – so you will always know when someone might be looking outside the crowd to help you.

Are you Sales 2.0 licensed yet?

Can you imagine if every sales person had to get a license to sell?  Maybe it would look like this?

As Sales 2.0 starts to heat up in the market place – there will be a lot of changes in the ways that we find and sell to customers.  If you look at the Sales 2.0 conference that took place in San Francisco last week – you can see that this change is starting to happen.  Panel discussions included; Sales Process 2.0, Customer Engagement 2.0 and even Compensation 2.0!

The real question for any busy sales person is - “What the heck is Sales 2.0?” and “Can it save me time and make me money?“

Enter the Sales 2.0 tools world and we’re starting to see a new level of sales enablement to drive and deliver the early principles of Sales 2.0.  For me, It’s all about increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of a sales process – let me get my job done as quickly as I can and maximize the end results for both my customer, my company and myself.  I like win-win and that should core value for anyone involved in sales.

So, why do we need Sales 2.0?  Simply put – the Sales 1.0 model is completely broken.  Take a look at the enterprise software space.  Mix together the the availability of information/standards groups/events/webinars/blogs on the Internet, throw in open source (cheap), software-as-a-service (no commitment required),  and finish with web 2.0 consumer applications (sexy, cool, free).  It leaves the whole enterprise software space gasping for a new model and process to adjust to a heavily educated and consumer influenced customer.  Today’s customers are faster, smarter and have a ton of choices.  Sales cycles are compressing, deals sizes are falling, and everyone wants to chop the cost of sales – it tells me that it is time to change the model.

Over the next few posts – I will start sharing my thoughts on Sales 2.0.  Certainly, the idea of collaboration, leveraging and monetizing shared expertise is certainly on the top of my mind.  As we evolve Connectize – you will see features that reinforce this direction in our service.

This week’s product update:

• New site design
• Network grouping using tags
  
• Group messaging
• My Website for blog/company/personal promotion
  
• Additional email address/log-in support

Next week we start work on team and private group capabilities. Think of private marketplaces for internal sales teams or business groups and you start to see where Collaboration 2.0 meets Sales 2.0…

Did you mean: Connective?

No, you idiot, I meant Connectize!

OK, we haven’t spent any time on SEO. That is now changing.

Ever try to think of a bunch of words that describe yourself?  Not a pretty thought eh?   Well, try to do that for your company and you start to see how much fun it can be.  We started our SEO efforts last week.  Here are some of our keywords, let me know if you think I missed any obvious ones…

Social collaboration  Sales 2.0   Enterprise 2.0   Social networking   Collaboration   Sales process   Sales pipeline   Sales experts   Business Experts   Industry Experts   Sales Prospecting   Sales Mentoring   Sales Methodology   Sales Acceleration   Lead Generation   Sales Partnering   Sales Training   Sales Leads   Sales Marketplace   Knowledge Management   Knowledge Discovery   Business Intelligence   Business Knowledge    Business Development   Business Networking   Social Networking   Sales   Sales Management   Channel Sales

It will take a little time for these to kick in – but we’ve set the initial groundwork so that the next time you Google Connectize or Enterprise 2.0 – you should see Connectize popping up in proper form and fashion.

We added a few more users this week. Thanks to our new users for joining and sharing your thoughts on the site. As we open up the site to more users,  IE6 support became more apparent.  So we added it to this weeks release;

• SEO optimization
• IE6 support

IE6 just won’t die.  It’s a seven year old browser that still lives locked and loaded on many corporate desktop environments.  Unbelievable.  IE6-corporate-pc-locked-down users – welcome to Connectize!

Have you seen the news?  Have you heard the news?

News is something that drives our professional activities everyday.  Sales and business people react to the news they hear and the news they make!

When I was in sales, I used to read news feeds and articles while having an early ( or not so early ) morning cup of coffee.  I would leverage both positive and negative news in my daily sales efforts – it was a way to differentiate myself from the “other” sales people.  In the customer’s eyes I was on top of my game and a person to trust.  It was also a catalyst for reaching out to new prospects.  News creates action.  It is a reason to search out and connect!

One of the problems we solve is connecting people to people-with-information within the the context of their business goals.  Real time news can be a fast trigger to tell you that something has happened and that you need new information.

Imagine when the news breaks about a new C-level executive at a F1000 company where you’ve spent 6 months working on a large project.  What do you do?  If you’re  smart – you’ll want to quickly connect with someone who can share their knowledge and expertise on this person and the past company he just left.  You need to leverage this information in your “new” sales strategy.  The more quickly you can understand this change and make any necessary changes – the more likely you are to succeed in the account.

News is the new feature this week.  It’s an early feature and we’ll be adding to it.  We want to first understand how it can best serve as a trigger for someone to connect with another person and what other news features/services users might like.

In today’s release you will see the following additions;

• My News
  • New main tab feeding news for all your needs and expertise tags
  • We use the top 5 needs tags you have prioritized as the default quick view
  • Click on any tag in the news page for a view page view
• Home News Feed
  • Maps top 3 needs you have to a real time feed for quick viewing and triggering
• Share
  • Click on the share link for any news item and share it with anyone in your network
  • Great for sharing across sales/business teams or using as a new connection catalyst
• Connections
  • Now a main tab to help separate pending and active connections
  • Easier to focus on and track required actions

I hope you enjoy this news.

]]> http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/11/09/news-a-catalyst-for-connecting-with-others/feed/ 0 Tom Canning newguybw http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/11/03/connectize-in-simple-english/ http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/11/03/connectize-in-simple-english/#comments Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:32:54 +0000 Tom Canning http://connectize.wordpress.com/?p=335 ]]>

“What do you guys do?”

It’s a question I get asked – and my answer is pretty straightforward and simple to understand.  We monetize business information in a social dimension.  Pretty simple.  Business people and especially sales people are always in need of accurate business intelligence and at the same time possess a great deal of knowledge and expertise. If you match up someone who “needs” with someone who “has” – it’s a win-win situation.  Doing this socially just makes good sense since it’s the easiest way to convey and transfer information.

Anyways, rather than write this all out or have to always explain what we do – I created a short video called  “Connectize in 4 minutes“.  I quickly walk you through Connectize and the story of Bill and Mary.  It’s also on the main page at http://www.connectize.com.

This week we continue to update the site with the following additions;

• New home page
  • We decided to condense font sizes and boxes… we forget we work on 24″ monitors:-)
• New layout
  • Things are moved around.  Cleaner.  Simpler.
• New Video
  • A quick and friendly way to get to know Connectize and what we do
• Invite only login
  • Increased security while in alpha
• Weekly user activity update
  • A concise snapshot of what activities and events happened last week in your marketplace

We’ve got some really cool things in development to help with initial utility value – hope to be releasing something next week.

• Chicken and egg?
• How do you seed the marketplace?
• How do you scale quickly?

There’s been a lot of research written on multi-sided markets – to give you an example check out Andrei Hagiu’s article “New Research Explores Multi-sided Markets” in the Harvard Business School Working Knowledge forum.  A great article as Andrei addresses a lot of common questions that folks have.  An example;

Q: What are multi-sided platforms and how do they differ from other types of markets?

A: Two-and multi-sided markets are markets in which firms need to get two or more distinct groups of customers who value each others participation on board the same platform in order to generate any economic value

At Connectize, we have two distinct groups of people who value each others participation;

1. People that need information

2. People that have information

So how do we encourage participation?  If you can imagine the first eBay user logging in only to find nothing listed – well this is exactly the challenge.  I need information – yet when I search for someone, no one comes up.  It takes takes time to build a marketplace.

You can’t on board a million people overnight, but you can provide utility and value to users as the marketplace and community grows. I thought this bricklayer picture was a good visual to help highlight that it’s a step-by-step process.  One brick at a time.

Today, we introduce new features to help build and strength

en our “wall” – the Connectize community of sales and business professionals.  New features include;

• My Network
  • View and message your network directly.
• Ask Network
  • Publish your needs and expertise to your network.
• Open Invite
  • Invite your network and more effectively manage your needs and expertise with the people you know and the people they know.

Why these features?  Because we all have private networks that we do a very poor job of leveraging and managing for information needs and expertise.  If I have 500 Linkedin contacts and another 400 contacts in outlook – it makes sense to have a simple way to alert, manage and help my existing first level network. It also makes sense to only focus on the sub networks of these people for specific categories of information and expertise.  Stay tuned for more shortly…

It’s not a question about joining a social networking site – but rather the existence and importance of your own social network and how you leverage that network for business value.

And maybe you call this your business network, or business-causal network or social-business network…

In this week’s release of Connectize – we bring forward some very fundamental features that take “social networking” to the next level and apply them to the sales and business world.  If you were to ask me “Why do you network?” – my answer would be “It’s to get the insight and knowledge that’s not available on the street”.  I am looking for “help” and I’ll work that “need” into the conversation (when appropriate). I’ll also offer my opinion or “expertise” on any other topics that are part of the same conversation.

In then end, I network to either get, give and exchange information that can help me do my sales job better/faster.  That’s the importance of having a social network!

So with that in mind – 5 new features/themes this week that enable this are;

• People that need your help
• People that can help you
• My Network activity
• Tag clouds to describe your needs and expertise
• Increased in-line messaging between users

I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and update your tags.  Every sales or business person needs something and has something they can monetize in a sales and business context.

This is the fastest way yet we have seen to enter a tag, a description, a price, an expiry and a relative sense of urgency or expertise based on the type of tag.  Nobody likes typing a lot… try this I think you will be very impressed on how simple and fast it is.

Think of Connectize in this way and you will see how worthwhile and fast it is to get started.

]]> http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/10/13/the-importance-of-a-social-network/feed/ 0 Tom Canning home1 needs4 http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/10/03/check-out-the-new-connectize/ http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/10/03/check-out-the-new-connectize/#comments Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:41:21 +0000 Tom Canning http://connectize.wordpress.com/?p=283 ]]>

The new Connectize has been officially released – here is a quick screen capture!! What’s new?

• Simplified tag creation
• Focus on “what do you need and know”
• Set rates rather than auction style bidding
• Auto-creation of listings based on what tags
  
• Top tags
• Addition of collaboration as connection
  
• Featured connections on home page
• Connections based on profiles
  
• You decide if phone, email in person
• Less screens and faster navigation
  
• New UI and colors

We’ve migrated all users over to the new version – but please log in to verify your profiles and listings. The new design is really faster and easy to use so you will find it a breeze to update anything,

Going forward – we will be making weekly updates. Please tell use features you would like, or things that you don’t think work that well. We are looking for feedback from both the sales and expert community on where this product should go and how best it can serve you.

]]> http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/10/03/check-out-the-new-connectize/feed/ 0 Tom Canning dubdubgood5 http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/09/09/is-kite-boarding-like-an-alpha-launch/ http://blog.accounttweet.com/2008/09/09/is-kite-boarding-like-an-alpha-launch/#comments Tue, 09 Sep 2008 19:36:31 +0000 Tom Canning http://connectize.wordpress.com/?p=185 ]]>

Our alpha is now officially launched!!!

Have you ever gone through the job of launching an early software release? It’s a heck of a lot of work, preparation, unexpected surprises, but such a great feeling when you finally hit the “Let’s Go” button!  So great, that I decided to take a break last Saturday, walk to Crissy Field and enjoy the summer weather of San Francisco. For those of you not familiar with Crissy Field, it’s a great fun to run, hang out, chill, play, windsurf and kite board. And where this story is headed…kite boarding!

I watched a few boarders go through the trials and tribulations of getting launched and then it dawned on me – heck, they were just like me!!!  They had experienced;

• A rough and tough walk ridden with pebbles and stones just to get there…
• A ton of stuff that they needed to figure out and put together…
• Friends to help them get things untangled and airborne
• No clue just when the right wind or wave was coming…
• Changing weather conditions and constant adjustment…
• The need and desire to just get out there and rock!

Once they got up, their initial velocity was cautious, taking time to get stable, gather their bearings and set course. Wow?  Wasn’t that exactly what I had been going through the month leading up to our alpha release?

So, just like the kite boarder with friends who helped, thanks to all our Connectize friends for helping us with logging in, trying stuff and giving us feedback. We’ve received a ton of feedback and continue to adjust and drive our product for usability, functionality and value. Building a marketplace is not easy, but as we (and our users) invite people, we hope to build a strong community of information oriented sales and business professionals who get real value from using Connectize.

Enjoy the alpha. Enjoy this video. They share a lot in common!

Note: You will need an Adobe Flash player to view this clip. Get one here.