Well, it's not quite like Business Week made me a columnist, but this is pretty interesting. BW's Business Exchange is sort of a cross between LinkedIn's Answers and Social Media Today (or maybe even Techmeme). Users of the service (now in beta) can even import their LinkedIn profile data.
Every time a major business media property launches a social site like this, they're obviously trying to convert (or beta-test) their site users to social features, to see if it increases site engagement. Business Week is off to a decent start here, but there are quite a few pluses and minuses to the implementation.
Advantages
Skins: Simply put, Business Exchange has a much better looking GUI and site than LinkedIn or Social Media Today. Although the site design is far from perfect, in terms of ease-of-use, the site is rather easy on the eyes.
Content: Before a given source (blog, RSS feed) is added to Business Exchange, it's carefully read by the BW editorial staff. Usually, this results in well-chosen content, but occasionally, this can result in a "Victor Wang" (see link). Although high-quality content may be added, one man's "limited utility" content can be highly prized by another.Â
Disadvantages
There are a number of fairly serious issues that Business Week will begin to correct before Business Exchange can begin to really drive traffic or engagement. I feel that if the site stays in its current state, veteran social site users will find it too confusing and restrictive, and new users will have trouble learning how to use the features.
Unclear Directions To Add Topics: There is no set of site directions that instructs users how to add topics to their profiles (the way to do it is to follow a given article *within* a topic that you wish to add).
Cross-Linkage: Although Business Exchange gets a thumbnail-sized skybox on Business Week's front page and the thumbnail is posted on internal pages, no attempt is made to sell users on the benefits of the service until after they have already registered.I find it hard to believe that BW site users are going to flock to Business Exchange given this low level of linkage.
Categories: In the Exchange's Social Media silo, the only categories that currently exist are Social Media Business Failures, Social Media Business Successes, Social Networking,
Reputation: Users who submit stories to the exchange are not reputation ranked; the only metric that gauges a user's level of participation or reputation in the community is the number of stories they have contributed. Social sites like Yelp and LinkedIn have multiple reputation indices (friends, # of reviews, etc.); it's up to user-based content aggregation sites like Business Exchange to vet their content as well, or at least differentiate "valued" users from ones who just produce a lot of content (I'm not naming names here, but one user in particular has added over 300 pieces of content, over 10% of which appear to be his own).
Confusing and "Unfriendly"Â UI: Why would a social network put a little "X" next to every user's profile picture? Should we want to dissolve our social bond with certain users every time we see their picture?
Junk Mail: Why must users opt out of receiving junk mail from McGraw-Hill and third parties to use this product? What is this, an eVite sign-up screen?
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Overall, if the BW team can clean up the site featureset over the next few weeks, I think they might have a real winner on their hands (one with killer SEO, no less), but unless they do this, they could be looking at a really expensive and robust site with super-limited adoption.
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