Jigsaw: Alternative or Complement to LinkedIn?
I am a regular user of LinkedIn, using it both for biz dev and recruiting. I am a fan of the service, but still a bit of a skeptic on the business model. I decided to look at alternatives and the one that gave some use was Jigsaw. According to RWW Companies, Jigsaw is "a provider of business information and data services that uniquely leverages user-generated content contributed by its global membership." It claims to have 500,000 members and more than 500 enterprises using the product.
My conclusion; Jigsaw is reasonable useful, despite some flaws. It is a complement to LinkedIn and not an alternative.
Jigsaw came in for criticism when it first came along around 2006. But most services are raw when they debut, what matters is a) is the fundamental concept sound and b) can the management team continuously improve.
Jigsaw has top tier VC financing, so they can go the distance.
I chose Jigsaw to try because LinkedIn did not give me what I needed. I was searching for senior level contacts at a large company. LinkedIn gave me plenty of Level 3 contacts but I have learned from experience that Level 3 (somebody I know knows somebody who knows the contact) is not useful and can be a real time sink. So I only bother when I see a Level 2 contact.
I could pay LinkedIn to send an InMail to these contacts, but that is no better than sending a cold-mail and why spend money when there are free alternatives?
So my next stop was to Google the names. I saw Jigsaw coming up a few times so decided to give it a try. Fairly quickly I was able to get - at no cost - the contact details I needed. That is not as good as an intro but cold calling/mailing in limited doses can still do the trick.
There were some niggling irritations as with many relatively new services, but I did get value and the basic concept seems like it could be viable. Jigsaw works on a "pay or play" principle. You can just pay to get access to the contact information, as with any list. Unlike traditional lists, you can buy just one name. So this works well for selling high value stuff to senior people, not good for mass market spamming. Play means earning points by contributing contact information back into the system. They seem to have evolved good systems for managing this to avoid gaming and bad data.
So the data is user generated, as it is with LinkedIn, as opposed to scraped data from services such as ZoomInfo. Scraped data has value as well - you get the contacts that don't put themselves into LinkedIn.
However, data created by other people is not usually as good as data created by the person in question. I noted too many errors in my short stay on Jigsaw. I earned some points by correcting them, but this also made me question of the value of the data I had extracted.
I see some value in Jigsaw, if they can keep improving. I don't know how viable Jigsaw is as a business. It strikes me as an inexpensive service to run, so reaching profitability may not be too hard. But I don't know whether this can be a really valuable business in its current form. It is too easy to get email addresses in other ways (Googling the name and just using the corporate email standard) and you can always call via the company receptionist.
What has been your experience with Jigsaw? Have you worked with other alternative services?
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User provided content has proven to be useful, albeit you do have to take it with a dose of reality. In the database marketing work, where large marketing databases have been built, a common position for data quality improvement is thus -=if the data is multi-sourced, meaning from multiple sources - it is more likely to be accurate and correct. So, applying this to social networks, if you find the same name, title, company, phone and email on more than one social site (LinkedIn, Jigsaw, Ecademy, etc.) then the data you're looking at is far more likely to be good data. If you rely on one source -well, you get the picture - it's probably not as good.
Good points, but your thoughts on their business models may be biased based on what you do / where you sit.
LinkedIn is a killer tool for recruiters. They have an extremely successful model selling in various ways to in-house and independent recruiting teams.
Jigsaw is a killer sales tool. They have a successful model selling to sales, sales mgmt, and lead gen marketing.
Sure there can be / is overlap, but primarily they are optimized for those different verticals from a business model perspective, and functionality perspective.
Ian, good point. Sounds like a Mashup of multiple services would be pretty useful - API or screen scraping and legal allowing. Legals are interesting - who owns my contact details?
Jigsaw sends off all the wrong signals. I'm sure they have a legitimate model but it's been a while since I've encountered such a closed service.
It won't accept webmail e-mail addresses as business addresses, even though plenty of people conduct business through such accounts. More disturbingly, it took one click before the site wanted my credit card number... without coming anywhere near demonstrating actual value. For verification purposes only? Sure. Heard the same line from someone selling cheap pills three times this week.
Smells like a prettied-up, business-focused Classmates.com. No thanks.
Alternative!
There is no fun in being a complement service!
A quite different tool. Jigsaw is one of our very best sources for getting leads at work. LinkedIn is best for 1-1 business connections. (and recruiters, naturally)
Posted by: Louis Gray
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July 16, 2008 12:18 AM
@Bernard
Have you (or any other RWW readers) had any experience with www.ZIGGS.com ?
I have recently started using LinkedIN and am looking at Jigsaw for a use case not relating to recruiting or commercial marketing.
thank you wery much
This service lost its credibility right at the start!
I needed to verify my identity using a credit card, since my email address was not registered in their company directory. Whatever. So, on the signup page they stated: "Your membership to Jigsaw is completely free. Entering in your credit card information simply confirms your identity. Jigsaw will never charge your card for any reason without your consent."
However, upon registration, they deducted 1 USD from my bank account! That's how they verify ones identity... Afterwards, I found on my account page, that they listed a "Point Purchase Cost" of 1 dollar. So, anyone, who wants to save a dollar, should avoid signing up with a card number!
Jigsaw is not global and have too many authentication points, like a listed business in US (mine is listed in India). Asking for credit card number instead is ridiculous.
It is not a sound strategy and not adopted by LinkedIn.
Also, the employee count in the registration form asks for one of 3 choices, 1-10; 10-50 and >50, obviously meaning that the site is meant for small businesses.
LinkedIn and Jigsaw are in the same space, but they fulfil different roles in that space. Fundamentally, they are both about information on people. Now, if you are trying to get in touch with someone, you need to go through the following steps:
1 - define criteria of people you are looking for (e.g. head of sales at software company in California)
2 - find all the people that meet your criteria
3 - get the contact details of these people
4 - get information to improve your 'pitch' to these people
LinkedIn addresses the second step (and the third and fourth to a certain extent). Jigsaw covers the third step.
So, they are similar services, but address different aspects of the same need.
i think they dropped the need for a credit card - at least i never gave them mine to get started. yes that is a showstopper right out the gate.
I am a product manager for an alternative to Jigsaw called NetProspex (www.netprospex.com).
While we also embrace the concept of user-contributed data, we take on the responsibility ourselves of correcting errors and keeping records up to date.
From my experience, there is no single "right" or "best" tool (as others have noted) but much depends on what the goal is: recruiters effectively combine Linked In with ZoomInfo to get very recent details and check out whether "recommendations" are from pals/co-workers/classmates.
Jigsaw data can be quite old. And Linked In (like Facebook) makes it hard to know whether connections are real relationships or number games of who has the most 'friends.' I haven't relied on Linked In for that reason alone.
So the merger of scraped Web details (for freshness) with personal updating (confirmation, removal of duplicates etc) seems a better option.
I agree, Jigsaw is a compliment to Linkedin, but even together they are not the perfect solution for lead generation. The main reason is Linkedin only reaches a small group of people and usually these are the people that are or were looking for jobs at one point. It's like registering a resume on Monster. They need to bring in more passive candidates and then it would be a perfect solution.
I have been in the data business for 7 years. All data providers have their issues when it comes to updating data. Jigsaw's concept looks great on the surface, but how many people want to spend their time updating jigsaw's database? I certainly wouldn't. I guess it depends on how much your time is worth. Some people are willing to do this though. Anyway, normal data providers are not necessarily better. Many claim they call on every record at least once every 6 months. Somehow I doubt this. If you are calling into a company for every executive in your database every six months your expenses would be way too high....