WhoDoYouKnowAt: Because LinkedIn is Too Open
According to Lee Blaylock, founder and CEO of new business networking site WhoDoYouKnowAt, many business executives are reluctant to share their contact information publicly. For this reason, a number of professionals are hesitant to network through sites like LinkedIn where you have to connect with your colleagues and then make those connections available to anyone wanting to use your connections for an introduction. WhoDoYouKnowAt flips this concept of business networking on its head, letting you control the level of access to your contacts based on who's asking.
To do so, WhoDoYouKnowAt offers a unique "Levels of Trust" system which allows your online relationships to more accurately reflect those in the real world. With each connection, you can set their "Level of Trust" to reflect your real life relationship. For example, when sharing a contact's information with some folks, you can choose to remain anonymous. With your more trusted relationships, however, you can choose to share all your network information. For those close connections who you want to invite into your trusted network, you can invite them to "pair" with you, meaning you'll mutually exchange all your contact information. Unlike with LinkedIn, you don't "pair" (aka "friend" or "connect") with all your contacts - just the designated trusted ones.
The site also offers special "In Company" features which let you network among your work colleagues differently than how you network with persons outside the company. With your "In Company" connections, you may choose to reveal a relationship with a high profile contact that you would not share to others outside the company...or the other way around. Also, "In Company" users with Silver or Gold memberships can make unlimited introductions and information requests.
Another unique feature is WhoDoYouKnowAt's Contact Data Integrity Management option (CDIM). This allows you to control who has access to your current contact information. To set this up, you fill out both your current and formerly valid, but now outdated, contact information. When your data is matched with others' contact lists, you're automatically notified. If they still retain your old contact information, you can then choose to grant them access to your new information or ignore the notice without them ever knowing.
Too Complex?
These features are only scratching the surface of what WhoDoYouKnowAt has to offer. The site has been thoroughly thought through, with seemingly every scenario or use case accounted for. There are options like Prospect Lists for connecting with contacts at targeted companies, Alerts, Relationship Rankings, and a Productivity Center for managing your connections.
In fact, if anything, WhoDoYouKnowAt might be overly complex for a niche product that aims to address only the needs of heavy-duty business networkers who find LinkedIn uncomfortably open. (Just look at that chart! Click to maximize). We suppose that, for those folks, WhoDoYouKnowAt could be the perfect solution given all its levels of privacy and trust. However, for the everyday business professional, LinkedIn or even Outlook will probably still suffice...or these days, even Facebook may work.
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It'll be interesting to see how things go. The customized trust levels better match how people interact IRL, which bodes well. This allows people to tailor their online interaction in the same way they tailor their IRL behavior, in order to optimize their personal experience. (One of the reasons I think LiveJournal, although not huge, has such a loyal following, is precisely because they've offer natural social grouping for years via highly customizable friend groups and communities.)
If you're interested, there's a presentation (Designing for Purpose) about the subject on the website I've linked above.
I like the idea, but what is the market penetration? Has WhoDoYouKnowAt reached a critical mass milestone for users?
These guys seem to understand why there are people like myself who stopped using LinkedIn. Circles are not all equal. I will definitely give this a try.
Shouldn't it be, whomdoyouknowat, grammatically speaking?
It just launched today at DEMO fall. I think the concept of having levels of trust is valuable in trying to network like you do in real life. I registered today using the promo code in the presentation DEMO2009, and it seems pretty cool.
"where you have to connect with your colleagues and then make those connections available to anyone wanting to use your connections for an introduction."
this is not true btw. there is a privacy setting that lets you disallow people from seeing your connections.
http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=pop%2Fpop_more_browse_connections
So now you can people how much you trust them - that will definitely not make some people more friends, quite the opposite.
This has already been done before:
http://whototalkto.com/
Thanks for the write up Sarah. Some items your readers will find of interest is the 3 pain points we solve: 1) You don't know which of your contacts in Outlook are current or out of date, 2) you don't know all the relationships in your company that exist at your finger tips to help you and 3), most business development professionals spend way too much time asking if someone has a relationship - we help them get to that answer immediately, without asking folks who can't help them. We totally recognize relationships are complex, tiered and situationally dependent. We're a very simple app at the core with all kinds of functions for the advanced user, plus additional. Like Microsoft Excel, casual users or power users alike will find it valuable. It just depends upon what business problem you're trying to solve!
Best,
Lee Blaylock
CEO
WhoDoYouKnowAt