1. Let me make an online resume, publicly connect with past colleagues, and give and receive recommendations and skills endorsements.
2. Sell job postings.
3. Sell search tools for jobs & candidates.
4. Don't trick people into uploading their contacts.
5. Don't provide an Invite All feature. Require users to state the relationship type for every invitation sent. Allow me to opt-out of connections by type: acquaintance, family, friend, school, work,etc.
6. Respect my communication preferences. For example, don't rename the preferences and re-enable them every few years.
7. Don't break core product functionality. For example, don't remove the email archive button for a year. Use functional integration tests.
8. Provide discussion Groups with useful moderation tools. This would draw users to your site every day. Don't provide useless moderation tools and let all groups flood with spam. Recruiters must pay for every message they post to a Group.
New feature idea: Allow groups to curate comprehensive FAQs. It could be like Quora & Stack Overflow for professional questions. This could grow to be a very popular and bring a lot of daily traffic.
I'd also love an 'age out' functionality.
As far as LinkedIn shows, someone I work with at my current job shows up as the same strength of connection as a random person I chatted with once at a conference a decade ago. Time and number of interactions should play some role in the strength of connection as displayed in the UX (at least to me).
Slight adjustment: Recruiters must pay group members for every message they post to a Group.
Won't finish it anytime soon but might heat it up in a year or so.
I hope to leverage my influence there to start a linkedin competitor, and will set up a nice basic for having a more trusting/open relationship with the users around their data.
As is true in the real world, when making decisions about the people to work with, we all use a variety of inputs.
We would consider SELLFF to be successful if it helps you to discover and connect with trustworthy people who meet your criteria for the person/people you want to meet. From there, the decision is yours. Use the TRU Score as an additional data point in your decision making, not as the final determination.
I would consider this to be accurate whether you are promoting/selling your services or if you are a buyer and looking to hire a service provider.
If I cannot influence my TRU Score, then it's not really a reflection of anything about me, is it?
The screenshots I've seen of your site suggest you give this score the most prominent position on info cards about people. This suggests to me you are designing the site to let people use this information first and foremost in making decisions.
So, there is no direct way for a member to "manipulate" the TRU Score:
- Your activities on the site contribute to your TRU Score
- The community reaction to your activities will contribute to your TRU Score
- If a member invests the time to develop their profile and is active on the site, those activties [if viewed positively by the community] will contribute to an increased value for the TRU Score
I believe this is a fair, appropriate and transparent way to derive a score. My belief is that our members will not only rely on the TRU Score in making decisions. Instead, they will also review other parts of the member profile. In the same way you might look at a Yelp or Amazon review.
Guessing that you do not make decisions based solely on the star ratings when buying a product or choosing a service. But that you might also read some of the reviews and look at images of the product/service. Thank you for taking the time to comment and share your thoughts.
For many of the reasons you stated, we chose a much larger range of values. So, instead of 1-10 or 1-100, we selected 100 - 1,000 with a starting value of 400.
In anything we do, there is the starting point from which you determine if adjustments are needed. If the TRU Score is deemed to be in error or unfair or inaccurate, we will make the needed changes.
It is also worth noting that people who are selling services and trying to reach new customers are looking for new/better ways to connect. It is our belief that SELLFF can become an additional, valuable option for these providers. Instead of having a reliance on the mega platforms that might have already lost out trust.
If you crowdsource reputation, people will be able to buy it.
[I think] Crowdsourced opinions are an excellent way to make informed decisions about products/services. A great example is using Amazon.com for competing products:
Product A: 5.0 star rating | 32 reviews Product B: 4.5 star rating | 5,264 reviews
Which product would you weigh more heavily when making a buying decision?
Keep in mind that SELLFF is positioned as a Professional Network. Any response or feedback will be relative to you, in a professional capacity. This might include the quality of the service you provide, your communication skills, did you finish the job on time, etc.
Also, any reputation you earn as a seller works in your benefit when you consult with others as a buyer. People want to work with other people who they have confidence in. This is true on Uber,Lyft and AirBnB, where both parties "rate" each other.
I think a digital reputation is a vital part of a healthy marketplace.
If your reputation system is taken seriously, people will buy their way into it.