“Well, I just had my 10th unsolicited ‘request to be a contact’ on Marzar from someone I don’t know, doesn’t know anything about me, is not connected to anyone else I know and won’t know my normal email address.”

If all you want to do is interact with folks you know…stay in your desktop contact manager. The purpose of social networking is to exand your connections…to meet folks you do not know. If you look at the core functionality of most social networking sites you will find that you are limited by the number of connections you have. You do not have visibility to activities that happen outside your “network”. So if you really want to work a social networking site to exploit its full potential…you have to build your personal network.

The concept of spam happens when one of my contacts begins sending numerous email on topics for which I have no interest. Or they constantly ask for recommendations when I don’t know them…or they ask for introductions…these are easily dealt with (the delete button).

I am an open networker and I interact with a large number of open networkers. I have been able to offer assistance to contacts from fiji, Japan, India, South Africa, Europe, Brazil, the US and Canada.

I would not have known any of these people if I had not been open to making connections.

I have been social networking for three years. I have interacted with more than 50k unique contacts and to date I have never been sorry that I accepted invites or provided invites to any of these contacts….even the “unique” ones have a certain charm.

What I do not understand is why social networking sites:
1. ask us to invite all of our contacts and then limit us to the number we can invite.
2. ask us to invite all of our contacts and then penalize us if they don’t join in an “appropriate” period
3. ask us to invite all of our contacts and then if they press the dreaded IDK (I don’t know) button the site assumes we were spamming - even though there is a “spamming button” which is not the IDK button…btw I have a number of contacts that hit the IDK button but then sent me an invitation..so even though they are contacts the site still restricts my access to functionality
4. make us spend most of our time adding new contacts…instead of conducting the business we came to do - reality is that there is rarely anything else for us to do.

I have recently been introduced to Marzar and John. Very quickly I realized that the Marzar site has been built around useability: Build groups, announce events, share documents, jobs/contracts/items there is a Craig’s List like space…on top of all that John has made room for suggestions and is trying to interact with the Marzar members…wow! a developer that cares about what I want (need)…is Marzar the perfect site..no…however, the process and structure that John has implemented will give it a great chance to be an awesome business site…and if it’s not…I can only blame myself for not participating.

Viadeo is also going to blow the doors off the north american based sites… multi-lingual! and lots of real business functionality. They also looked to members for input and recently delivered their GA release. It is amazing and has gone fare beyond the recommendations of the members. It recently past the 2m member mark and with a couple of acquisitions (yet to be announced) it will hit critical mass…and it will establish the new benchmark for social/business networking.

I feel that I need to answer you. I took am happy to accept everyone has a point of view. The reason I am saying the point has been missed is that we do have a road map for the development of the platform only our users will help inform the development. We are in a test phase using this to refine the product before going to market.

Who are the best people to help develop a networking platform? perhaps it is the networkers who are proactive and using them all the time? these are our early adopters.

And what I mean by informing the development is just that. We will be asking questions about our products development from a professional audience that is why we will get it right. Would you Paul in all your wisdom develop a product and not ask questions from a panel perhaps?

After all these are our customers so we need to get it right for them and provide the best service. If some one has a great idea for the development of our product and they happen to be a user then we would be crazy not to hear the idea out.

The users of Marzar should feel involved as we together with them will build a great platform.

And Paul when I have some thing to say I would rather say it then use a name like Fanimagnit give me that at least. And Paul C thank for giving me the credit of wanting to enter into a debate and not a thoughtless argument.

As for LI we are not talking about taking them on ?? please but that is not correct. We provide a different set of services we and have a similar audience but we are not the same.

We provide a free networking service and additionally we provide services around files such as syndication to a business audience of press releases, case studies, technical document and so on. Whats more is users can set up groups and share document or set up private groups and store business files. Working as a consultant I alway found it an issue not to have an online client space. Well I have solved that problem.

Can you do this on ecademy or Linkedin? I would say that is a no.

As for ecademy one point could be that we are not charging users for accessing and replying to a message or restricting any networking functionality and calling that a premium service.

As it happens, I’m quite good at reviewing business models and helping CEOs to make improvements almost immediately. I could tell from some comments alone that it’s doomed for failure in this case. As Paul C. reiterated regarding modifications based on user feedback, it’s an open and shut based on this alone. So, I didn’t even have to read Mike’s post to come to my conclusion.

I can draw a good qualified judgment on a business idea alone, let alone a well documented opinion from Mike coupled with a response from the company founder as I’ve mentioned above. I don’t need to use the site.

BTW, everyone is qualified to comment. I’ve just decided to write a blog post based on this conversation.

Did you pass judgment on LinkedIn or Facebook within a day of it launching? If so; it says a lot about you, if not; then why now in the case of Marzar?

My attitude is open, you seem to have decided Marzar is an open and shut case; “I lost interest in your site as soon as I read the first paragraph”

I have no association with Marzar. Quite how I could take the comments personally needs a bit of explaining as I have no vested interest in Marzar I’m not on the payroll (or do you prefer pay-roll?) and I haven’t written (or stolen in the case of Facebook) code for the site to use.

Frankly, I think I have stated what I understood to be happening with Marzar. I think it suits you to keep your conspiracy running about any association I have with Marzar, so go ahead.

I’m a LION, Facebook user, MySpace User, Spoke, Xing, Ning and user/member of plenty of other networking sites. I am being impartial unlike you Paul who wants to sparr it seems.

I’m happy to hear anyones point of view, but if you’re not a user of the site Paul; who are you to comment?

Surely your feedback is a proxy of the opinions of Mike. Have you registered, have you used the site have you made suggestions about the site?

I don’t know but I doubt it, it seems you’re too busy telling people how to use hyphens. Now that IS sad! Nevertheless I look forward to my lesson on the use of punctuation.

For reference on hyphenation look here;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7004661.stm

“Language is always changing. It has to move with the times. There have to be conventions. There has to be a negotiated common ground but within that there’s room for variation and a degree of creativity.”

BTW, what is “a lot steep road” do you mean “long steep road”? [touché]

Paul - Always enjoy sparring with you

When I try to subscribe by e-mail to TechCrunch UK using the form on the right, I get a message from Feedburner saying: “The publisher has deactivated subscriptions by email”

Could you please active them!

I remember Robert Loch coming across a couple of people who headed to the Valley sulking (his words). Companies should ask for feedback, not get upset and throw toys out of the pram. I know way too many successful entrepreneurs who ask friends and colleagues for advice, so reading the comments above just got to me.