ecademy

www.ecademy.com

Ecademy has been derided as being 'full of business Uriah Heeps' although it has managed to develop a large user base in recent years. Based in the UK but also enjoying a strong presence in other parts of Europe, it offers a balance of online and offline in-person activity, giving users the ability to connect in person. In a partnership with BNI (Business Networking International) it is now slowly but surely gaining popularity in the US and also working to enhance its offline event offerings outside the US. Most of the content and communications in Ecademy seems to be driven by the posting of classifieds and forums. Unlike services like Fast Pitch! and LinkedIn, both of which link users based on their profiles, Ecademy is a more open environment. It requires users to be more proactive in searching for likely connections. Unfortunately, Ecademy's open nature means that it encourages mindless sales pitching. There are few buyers and almost everyone tries to sell. On Ecademy it is not unusual to be bombarded with people trying to attract you with spin on wealth creation, positive thinking and joining their cult. Perhaps this explains why the site has struggled to achieve the kind of subscriber numbers enjoyed by its rivals – it claims to have 150,000 member profiles worldwide.

plaxo

www.plaxo.com

Founded in 2001, Plaxo is viewed by Silicon Valley insiders as a forerunner of the social-network craze, but the one that lost its way. The site aims to keep people connected by solving the common and frustrating problem of out-of-date contact information. Plaxo provides a free service that securely updates and maintains the information in your address book. It has signed up more than 15 million users, although the number of active users is unknown. Although it created the first web service to share data between major address and calendar programmes, it is the least robust of the sites featured here due to its overwhelming emphasis on the function of simply updating address book information. It can be included in the social and business networking discussion, however, by virtue of its ability to keep people up to date and ultimately connected. Plaxo plans for a major overhaul: with Plaxo 3.0, consumers will be able to synchronise address books and data housed inside Microsoft, Google and Yahoo services as well as Apple Macs, Mozilla Thunderbird email and some mobile phones. "Who syncs best, wins," says Jupiter Research analyst David Card. "It's not something you can get from Google yet. Plaxo's approach has got good potential."