Comments on: the new business personals http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/03/30/ved-meetingwave/ Insight and opinion from the world of employment. Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:01:22 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: john http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/03/30/ved-meetingwave/comment-page-1/#comment-117249 john Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:42:33 +0000 http://www.cheezhead.com/?p=4550#comment-117249 Hi Jessica - Thanks for the feedback. We currently have "romance" invites, but those shouldn't be displayed to users unless they specifically search for them. We have considered building a separate site for dating and have spoken to potential partners in the dating space interested in licensing our patented technology for this purpose. If we proceed, people interested in dating may be funneled to the dating site and vice versa. Regarding the quality of invites in your area, this is our next focus for improvement. Currently, recurring invites (e.g. daily, weekdays, or weekly) are displayed multiple times for each date making it look like the same person posting over and over again, when its really just someone indicating they are generally available at a specified time on multiple days (e.g., coffee at 11 am on weekdays). However, we plan to consolidate these recurring invites into a single line and give the user the ability to expand to see each date. We also want to give the user the ability to hide any invites they have no interest in so they don't see anymore. We currently have a "flagging" feature that notifies us of improper invites to delete, but we plan to add a "hide" feature as well. In the end, each user decides which invites to post and which to accept so each member can decide which meetings to attend and which people to meet. From the Advanced Search page, you can set up one or more Meeting Alerts based on your search criteria and we will notify you by email of invites posted in the area. We encourage users to create Profiles with background information, including a link to their profile on LinkedIn or another site, but also recommend members posting an invite request this in their invite ("Please create a profile before accepting") and ignore any acceptance from members without profiles. If you import your contacts, you can then easily invite them to your proposed meetings. You can keep the location private and we'll only disclose to people you invite or approve to attend. Finally, from your profile page, you can export your public invites to a separate site such as a Ning page or blog. This will allow your invites to be displayed on your site. We have many improvements in the pipeline and appreciate your feedback. Thanks, John, founder Hi Jessica – Thanks for the feedback. We currently have “romance” invites, but those shouldn’t be displayed to users unless they specifically search for them. We have considered building a separate site for dating and have spoken to potential partners in the dating space interested in licensing our patented technology for this purpose. If we proceed, people interested in dating may be funneled to the dating site and vice versa.

Regarding the quality of invites in your area, this is our next focus for improvement. Currently, recurring invites (e.g. daily, weekdays, or weekly) are displayed multiple times for each date making it look like the same person posting over and over again, when its really just someone indicating they are generally available at a specified time on multiple days (e.g., coffee at 11 am on weekdays). However, we plan to consolidate these recurring invites into a single line and give the user the ability to expand to see each date.

We also want to give the user the ability to hide any invites they have no interest in so they don’t see anymore. We currently have a “flagging” feature that notifies us of improper invites to delete, but we plan to add a “hide” feature as well.

In the end, each user decides which invites to post and which to accept so each member can decide which meetings to attend and which people to meet. From the Advanced Search page, you can set up one or more Meeting Alerts based on your search criteria and we will notify you by email of invites posted in the area.

We encourage users to create Profiles with background information, including a link to their profile on LinkedIn or another site, but also recommend members posting an invite request this in their invite (”Please create a profile before accepting”) and ignore any acceptance from members without profiles.

If you import your contacts, you can then easily invite them to your proposed meetings. You can keep the location private and we’ll only disclose to people you invite or approve to attend.

Finally, from your profile page, you can export your public invites to a separate site such as a Ning page or blog. This will allow your invites to be displayed on your site.

We have many improvements in the pipeline and appreciate your feedback.

Thanks,

John, founder

]]> By: Jessica http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/03/30/ved-meetingwave/comment-page-1/#comment-117232 Jessica Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:54:27 +0000 http://www.cheezhead.com/?p=4550#comment-117232 Humm interesting concept. The one downfall I can see is that this will soon become a dating site, or serve other purposes other than "business." For example, in my area all I see are 5 pages of "Christians without a home," "navrartri," "dinner," "What is He/She Thinking?" and "Employment Law Discussion" posted by the same people over and over. No offense, but looking at some of the profiles on this site, there is no way I'd meet up with these strangers. If I wanted to network with people in my LinkedIn network, I'd keep that information in LinkedIn! Humm interesting concept. The one downfall I can see is that this will soon become a dating site, or serve other purposes other than “business.” For example, in my area all I see are 5 pages of “Christians without a home,” “navrartri,” “dinner,” “What is He/She Thinking?” and “Employment Law Discussion” posted by the same people over and over.

No offense, but looking at some of the profiles on this site, there is no way I’d meet up with these strangers. If I wanted to network with people in my LinkedIn network, I’d keep that information in LinkedIn!

]]>