Open Networkers

A revolution generally implies that something is ‘changing’ with an impact to society, just like in the industrial revolution of the 19th century, when we learned how to use machines steam-engines for transportation, or the mechanization of industry itself, about half a century later which enabled us to produce good more efficiently.
Also, the word ‘revolve’ is part of ‘revolution’ , implying reoccurring movements not only in mechanisms (your watch e.g.) but also in society (e.g. the ‘Flower Power’ era of the late 1960 where an expression of individualism much like the Enlightment period Western societies experienced in the 17th century).

Most revolutions are very similar, they come from a desire deep within ourselves that has always been there; the unspoken desire of every human being to understand its’ position or purpose of being alive and the quest to maximize that experience.
In general you could say that the more a society succeeded in creating more individual freedom of expression, the more the individual was able to be creative and invent new ideas and beliefs.
Society and even companies where always trying to regulate that into the ‘common’. That has its’ purpose also. During the 20th century e.g. we build our society around regulated and structured thinking. And …it worked, we were all part of the machinery in which we specialized in our own little niche, becoming specialist parts of the large mechanism. It worked very well…we all had our place, a familiar place which was regulated, safe. It gave us a sense of ‘safety’, we had things ‘under control’.

That is about to change a natural revolution back to the individual. The end of the previous millennium gave us the Internet which needed some time to develop and to mature into a communication tool that the masses can use to express themselves.  
In fact most people are just beginning to discover the possibilities. The Net used to be a very technical environment that could only be used by experts and only to broadcast the untargeted, ‘common’ message.
First expressions we saw on the internet where merely expressions which where part of the regulated society, the institutions, governments and companies who used it for their purposes; to preach the common message and to give information supporting that. But now, broadband has increased, technology in general has evolved into easy to use tools or portals in which most individuals are increasingly finding their way to express themselves.

Most of us don’t know why exactly, but we like the idea that we can show ourselves to the world and that we are enabled to seek other people online who share our passion.

Making your own webpage was still very technical, but around the beginning of this millennium the first easy tools to create webpages where born. Portals and blogs enabled us to create our own free webpage and more importantly, they forced us to think about the next step. What do I want to write about, what is so profound or personal to me that I want to show it to the whole world? It forced us to take a second look at ourselves, to see what we where doing, was this truly what we where all about? The work, the hobby, the…Me? Is the ‘Me’ a representation of the common, the regulated society or the company we work for, or does it have a different meaning to us…?

That would have been enough to create a very decent revolution, but it didn’t stop there. The next thing we discovered was…Well if we don’t want to be a mere reflection of our surroundings, our society, who are we? Thankfully we are not going through that process at the same time, that would create an instability in our society with large consequences. Most people value the rewards of the common regulated society and the symbols that go along with it; the big house, the fast car, the flashy dress… The community is safe, it is known and the rewards and symbols are pleasing, they are being understood by the other people in the community. It gives us purpose, status.


The Internet has numerous popular portals representing all stages of development:




It is in effect a mirror of society, it shows all the different stadiums of being part of the common, status minded Society to the individual oriented Creator.

So if you look at a few of the best known online tools to express ourselves you can very clearly group them along that line as well. Using a certain community already says something of ourselves, how we think, where we stand along that line. But it just says very little, because most of us just have joined a community not knowing what is available online. We just try and only after a certain period in which we have tried them all, we can finally choose the tool that reflects our current personal online development the most.

One word pops up quite regularly already..: ‘community’. On the internet and in normal vocabulary it is used in many different ways. I use it in my way. When I speak of the ‘Common’, I try to address the majority of people who is still living in the Regulated, common society. The world of companies and institutions that has created the Common rules and values we see around us daily.
Advocates of that belief generally use the internet for information purposes and the transmit their message targeting a general audience, ‘Broadcasting’.

However, on the internet when someone speaks of a ‘community’, that person doesn’t mean the Common people, but a selective group of people who share a belief, a ‘special interest’. They are often referred to as SIGS (Special Interest Groups).  I like to call them ‘Same Interest Groups’ instead because those are groups of people creating a small ‘Common’ with people who share a passion or way of thinking.
They are half-way between the Common and the Individual, they lack the regulated structures of the Common but they also lack the pure individualism in which the Individual doesn’t need the regulated safety of the common any longer for his communication.
There are millions of SIGS online today. Are you a Beatle-fan or do you like to drive a Harley Davidson? Chances are that you can Google hundreds of SIGS online with people participating on that website and sharing information because they are all sharing that passion.

We created our own ‘Commons’. We knew something fundamental was happening of course, we sensed it, we spoke about it, we knew it had something to do about the internet.
At first we thought it was all about the technologies making the internet, so we made up all sorts of technical terms (web 1.0, web 2.0 etc)  to describe the development of internet. But it isn’t about technology at all. It is about the quality and easiness in which You are enabled to express yourself and share your beliefs with soul-mates.

In fact, it is You and Me who are ‘under construction’ along that line from the ‘Common’ to the ‘Individual’, not the Internet. It is the Road of ‘getting there’ what counts.  We have to accept and respect that we are all busy along that road, some in the Common stages and others in the SIG or Individual stages, If you can respect that and if you don’t put a status or value on the different Groups, you’ll be able to find soul-mates online. Also you have learned your fist lesson in how to differentiate the people who we want to target online.

We all have a meaning in being online, but we differ in approach because we are ‘under construction’, in the changing internet society. In other words, if you a follower of the ‘Common’ and you want to address the Common by broadcasting your message, that is perfectly fine!
It is just as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as an ‘Individual’ online addressing other ‘Individuals’ using a more targeted message using personalized communication tools. Each has it’s audience and value.

However, the way we are enabled to do that is often technology based, the flexibility of the Portal enabling us to be ourselves, either Individual or Common, is thus important if we want to make effective use of the Internet. Therefore I created this equation:



     Online networking quality = Ability to Be and Express yourself & interact



Already we see that Portals and online tools who are successfully enabling that are becoming more popular than other Portals. E.g.: LinkedIn is very much a status oriented portal, very close to the ‘Common’ group. It thus has a very legitimate audience because most of the people in Western society are at that stage as well. However this Portal lacks flexibility. Sure you can just state in words who you are and what you have done in the past but for now it doesn’t allow you to share photo’s, videos, direct communication or other ways for adding rich information to express our Personality in a quality way. LinkedIn has grown to an audience of 15 million profiles today.
Myspace however was instantly more popular than LinkedIn because they do enable a certain networking quality by sharing photo, video and instant messaging for their members.  Myspace currently has about 230 million profiles. There are more differences in the build-up of the user groups and demographics of those user groups that I will address later, but I just mentioned it to show you that ‘flexibility’ is important in order to express yourself.

The ‘Ability of expressing yourself’ is the shared value of all groups online, either ‘Common’ or ‘Individual’.

That is also why I have created the central forum of my own network, the Open Networkers (Opennetworkers.info) on a portal that enables maximum flexibility, Ning. It allows any kind of rich content such as photos, videos and communication tools for either the ‘Common’, ‘ SIG’ or  ‘Individual’  oriented open networkers to express themselves.  In fact I used the results from the assessment / behavior of the 24.000 + Open Networkers ( 9- 2007) on many portals as scientific reference for my theories described in this book.

Online networking and communication is different
Assessing where people are online doesn’t tell you much about them. Rich content however does.
It will show something about you, your passion and the way you communicate online.
How we communicate online or offline always has been the great differentiator in why we choose people to interact with. If we don’t like someone, we will not become friends or share personal information. If we don’t find a ‘click’ in our networking interaction, we cannot expect to do any business.
So online networking and communication is essential in order to achieve ‘something’ online. That ‘something’ could be anything, from just sharing information about your hobby or holiday destination to genuinely doing business.
Online networking and communication has its own mechanism that differs a bit from normal networking. It took me a while to understand it and it contradicts to a certain extend. The theory arose that ‘human behavior, not the technology enabling it is important’.
It all has to do with the fact that the internet enables us a different ‘first contact’ experience. Normally you just walk into a bar in order to meet someone. Then the rule applies: ‘what you see is what you get ‘ . You don’t have any choice, you’ll have to sit it out if you decide that you don’t like him..  On the internet we can choose from millions of profiles first, making a very selective choice indeed.

The Art of Profiling
The strategy thus always is from Quantity to Quality in online networking. In order to be effective in doing that, we need to learn the Art of Profiling. ‘What’ and ‘where’ we show our Profile is leading to the information and networking relationships we get back. That is just the way the Net works. I already have addresses the ‘where’ which is a starting point in assessing profiles. The ‘what’ is more complex, but equally important. The way we communicate reveals a lot about our personality and ability to network with others. The best profiles are thus made by people who are genuinely in touch with themselves and who are able to describe the person behind the statistics (e.g. a CV). A good profile focuses on what a person does now and isn’t a mere summary of past experiences.


A glimpse of the theory behind the Art of Profiling
Be informed that this book is not about discussing a technical model for interaction, but about online networking but I find it important to explain a little bit about my thoughts behind it so that you can see why I made my choices in this book. It is all about Being and Expressing yourself.

Our dominant communication styles from an online perspective (ON- Networking model, © Ray van den Bel) can be categorized into 5 main groups:




The Manager
The ‘Manager’-type writes short profiles, sticking to the main aspects he deems are important to describe himself. He is ‘action’ driven and delegates being informed of details to other documents. That reflects his operating method in real life where the manager-type is likely to be a leader in a Common environment and where he can use his ‘helicopter view’ to delegate non-essential issues to others in the company or organization.

Famous Manager-types:  Margareth Thatcher, George Bush, Norman Schwarzkopf
Companies associated with this type: Mercedes, GE, Shell

The Artist
The ‘Artist’-type is expressive and action driven in his communication style. Something he describes is either ‘wonderfull’  or ‘useless’ , ‘ black or white’  but nothing in between. We like to look at Artist-types, we do it daily on the television. They are flamboyant and good product-sales people. But because they cannot communicate with nuances the tend to get into relationship troubles more often than other types.
Emotional unstable, the ego is important.

Famous Artist-types:  David Bowie, George Michael, Pim Fortuin, Steve Balmer
Companies associated with this type: Media, Nike, Porsche,

The Teamplayer
The ‘Team-player’-type is a follower of general trends. In fact he likes the uniformity of the majority. His writings shows social empathy and responsibility. In real life he is likely to be good in social relationships and is not afraid to show emotions. He is a follower (reactive) of fashion.

Famous Teamplayer-types: Bill Clinton, Olaf Palme, Ghandi
Companies associated with this type: Governmental Institutions, NGO’s, Charity

The Inventor
The ‘Inventor’-type likes to do things differently, he takes nothing for granted. His writings are elaborate and show creativity. He is more likely to be a web 2.0+ user seeking interaction with other free minds.
In real life his disability to perform in fixed positions in a highly regulated environment makes him unable to such an environment. Nevertheless, the fruits of his creativeness influences society more than other types, the ego is not important.

Famous Inventor-types: Da Vinci, Copernicus, van Gogh
Companies associated with this type: IBM, Toyota, Tesla

The Adviser
The ‘Adviser’-type likes to be elaborated but niche oriented in his writings. He is a specialist in his area and contrary to the Inventore –type, he has no problem to conform himself to the regulations and strictness or companies and organizations. In real life he is likely to consult about his specialism, often to the Manager-type who needs his specialist views. He is the true rationalist amongst the types.

Famous Adviser-types: Dr. Spock, Balkenende, Alan Greenspan
Companies associated with this type: Ernst & Young, BCG, McKinsey


What does that mean for online networking?
All in all the ON- Networking model© gives us a pretty powerful tool to assess profiles. If we are able to use it properly we can be successful online. That sounds very simple, but it isn’t.

First,  you depend on the flexibility of the online tool that enables you to show yourself. If it isn’t, like e.g. LinkedIn, we have a hard time to assess the real person behind the written profile. A video makes it far easier to do that, it shows how someone is dressed, if he is expressive or not or conforms himself to leading opinion.

So, the more flexible the tool you are using, the better are your chances of choosing the right business partner or candidate for a vacancy at your company.

Second, what is for you? In general if you know your communication-style, your online target should consist of the 2 styles that are bordering your own style and naturally, same styled people as well.
People who are opposite to your style in the CM- Communication model© to your own style will not add to your effective network.

That means that if you are e.g. an ‘Inventor-type’ , the Adviser and the Teamplayer types can make an addition to your effective network, but the Manager-types and the Artist-types will give you headaches in the long run. For short term relationships (eg in sales) you’ll know what to do to be more appealing in your online communication to the different communication styles.

It is an Art all of its’ own to use the CM- Communication model©  Maybe I’ll write a sequel about that, but first lets have an overview of the tools that are shaping the silent revolution…
Chapter 1:  Searching Online & Targeting

Searching
Let’s start out with a field we all know online because that is where we started our online experience, the field of online searches. The Internet became too big to manage overnight so we needed ever more effective search tools to find what we were looking for.
Most of us are searching online using Google or a elated tool. Google however isn’t showing you the best solutions to your search-questions but increasingly so, the most commercial interesting solutions to your search question. In general, you will have to pay to enable a Google-ability of your online message.

That is leading to ever more frustrations to the person online who is just trying to find some information quickly. Also it is quite frustrating is you want to share your message to a targeted audience and you don’t want to pay for that. In fact it has become increasingly impossible to do that.

However with the creation of online profiles which where led by blogging tools and newly created online networks such as LinkedIn, Xing and Friendster. They focused around a common interest such as for instance finding and offering jobs and personnel. It became increasingly possible to search for people and services within targeted communities on those networks. Those network however tried to cash in on that by forcing people to pay for increased search and messaging possibilities. E.g.; you will have to pay on LinkedIn if you want to network with someone who is in your network but who you don’t know directly.
For a certain amount you will be able to send a certain amount of email (Inmail on LinkedIn) in order to do that.

Every online network had it’s own centralized solution and business model to let networkers pay money. It didn’t work. Emails are becoming increasingly uneffective as a means to contact another person. Most emails coming from online networks are never read by the networking Target.
That also reminds me of a course I gave on a school in Breda, Holland about a year ago. When I showed the kids (aged between 10-12) the mailing system on the Dutch equivalent of Myspace, Hyves, they instantly rejected it as ‘old fashioned’. They were already used to MSN as a direct messaging tool and weren’t using the email at all anymore.

So closed networking Portal such as LinkedIn do enable effective searches, but it is almost impossible to do anything with that knowledge because you aren’t enable to communicate effectively with you online target. Communication became important, better yet, the ability to do it cross-portal became strategically essential. Naturally you don’t know who is showing his / her profile on which network, so what do you do then? Join all the networks? That is a bit impractical and impossible and it certainly will take too much time to manage all your online requests on the many platforms.

Therefore I created a clustered search tool. You can try it out for free, it is on the Open Networkers (www.opennetworkers.info).The little search-tool is now enabling me to see about 600 million profiles across portals.
That saves a lot of time and anyone can do it.

Yet you will probably still have a great number of solutions to online search. The next step is to filter out the networking styles which are fitting to your individual search.
That means that you will have to ask yourself: who am I searching for, what is his networking style or what is the most common networking style of the company I am representing?

If you company is a product- sales driven organization and you need to find a key-person at your Target (e.g. the company you want to sell your product to) , surely you can do an Open Networkers deep-search on the key-words: ‘manager’, ‘procurement’ at … (name of your Targeted company) in ‘Oregon’.  If you get multiple solutions for that, because your company happens to be e.g. MacDonalds who has a lot of people responsible for procurement in Oregon, you could printout the individual profile an see who is most likely to fit your networking goal.

In this case you will be looking for a networking style of someone who either has a networking style matching yours and your company networking style (Artist = Expressive), or if that isn’t available, has a networking style that you will be able to influence successfully. That is the bordering networking style of either the ‘Manager’ or the ‘ Teamplayer’. This book will not enter the subject of networking styles too deeply, but it is good to understand the very general purpose of the model.

If you are not using Deep or clustered searches but are relying for some reason on finding people within a closed network such as e.g. LinkedIn, the same technique applies. First go to the search page and add your functional search and after that, if there is a choice in people you can contact, choose the person who is most likely to react positively to your message.

Targeting
The way you address your Target is essential as well. Be yourself but keep in mind what your Targets’  networking style is. If he has a short profile, just stating the bare essential information, he probably has a ‘ Manager’ (they are direct and basic in profiling) or ‘Artist’ style (they sometimes don’t want to spend a lot of time in adding their profile) in networking. An Artist profile is either very short and basic or very much enriched with photo / video material. A profile which has a lot of text with a lot of photo / video material as well does NOT belong to an Artist, it belongs to the ‘Inventor’ type, a type which is opposite to the Artist type and which he should not approach in order to network / sell successfully (!)

From this example you can also see that some networks are not enabling quality networking, simply because they do not offer flexible / rich ways to add content and photo / video material to your online profile. LinkedIn only enables you (9-2007) to add texts. That doesn’t give you enough clues as to what kind of networking style the other person is using.

Being able to recognize networking styles does sound very technical and difficult, but the fact of the matter is that we all do it all the time and quite good most of the times. If we meet someone in person at a bar we instinctively know if we will be successful I networking with the person we are meeting with. Most people learn this skill to an ever better perfection during their life.
Being online is different and potentially more effective because we can choose. We don’t have to network with someone we have to meet because we made an appointment, we can first choose the people we have something in common with. If you know where to look reviewing a profile, you are very much enabling your online networking skills the same way you do as when you are meeting someone in person and judge that person on his clothing, hear, expression or self-confidence.

Using the portals that offer the broadest way in which we can profile ourselves thus has it’s advantages also for effective targeting purposes.

The best way to do it is to:
1)first do a targeted search using Open Networkers deep and clustered searches, and
2)after that, if you have a choice, use the platform which enables the richest way of profiling and communication tools.

Remember, email is NOT an effective tool. As a matter of fact, try to keep clear as much as possible from using email as your way of interaction. Abolish it as a tool altogether if you can. Sure it is easy to use but it is too temping to use it in a non-targeted way and anyone can and will read your email-message differently because they interpret it from their own networking style. If you have the chance to talk to someone first on the phone you’ll be able to listen and to assess in a more quality way.

A 2 step approach is most often very successful:
1)Phone your Target and discover if you have a ‘common ground’ or interest from where you can take the next step. Don’t push things, be polite but also guard that you stay on the same level with your Target. Being submissive doesn’t help you, there always must be a mutual and equal benefit from the contact.
2)You have nothing to loose, if possible stay relaxed and propose to forward information or a time-out to think things over. No-one in his right mind will make proposals directly over the phone, people like to discover more about the other person, his recommendations and beliefs in doing business. After you have established that, take the initiative to arrange an online Skype with video meeting (videoconference) or better yet, try to meet in person in order to work towards a common deal.

You will notice that Targeting online is much the same as Targeting in Real life. It only differs in the quantity stage, where you are able to select from a multitude of possible business partners online.
You’ll do that on the basis of a matching Profile, which bring me to the Art of Profiling.


Profiling; different techniques
Depending on the Portal you are networking on to show yourself in a Profile there are a multitude of ways and tools to use. Let go through a number of the most popular one’s beginning in a more web 1.0 (text and information oriented) environment and end with a web 3.0 environment (like Second Life), where we can even create the setting of our interaction.

LinkedIn: Currently LinkedIn is enabling text only with the exception of a photo that people can upload to their profile. These profiles tend to look and feel more or less like the old-fashioned CV’s we used to send out in order to apply for a new job. This is the main group of users LinkedIn is targeting, so the application is very close to it’s intended audience using profiling techniques that adds value from a functional perspective for e.g. recruiters. Yet, people noticed that LinkedIn is only functional as a quantity tool. You simply have to have a large network on LinkedIn to be able to view who is in you network. You cannot ‘see’ who people who aren’t in your network on LinkedIn let alone contact them. That resulted in most users trying to get more contacts to their network so that their reach on LinkedIn would increase. LinkedIn thrived by it because with the ‘numbers’ came the ‘status’ on that network. If you have a lot of ‘friends’ online that seems to tell something about you, that you are successful, powerful and that a lot of people seem to know you. If you have a lot of contacts, you are OK. Well people reacted in much the same way, trying out different techniques to manipulate the LinkedIn system. It started in 2005 when people discovered that they could upload entire CD’s with millions of email-addresses to their LinkedIn account and mass-invite people they new nothing about except for their email-address. Those addresses where free on the market, oftenly used by spammers and collected by spider-tools. Quantity ruled, all of the sudden people on LinkedIn were having thousands of direct contacts, something LinkedIn didn’t foresee would happen. Most top-networkers on LinkedIn with more than 15.000 direct connections exchanged a file of LinkedIn users which they mass-invited. They are still on top of that dubious ‘Leaderboard’ .
In 2006 LinkedIn countered, ordering that no one could invite more than 3000 people to their network. That helped just a bit, because people where just trying to find way around that limitation, sending  e.g. mass emails from an online email-client or creating clever hyperlinks (translated into ‘tinyurls’= www.tinyurl.com) that you could click and instantly become a network of the other person’s network.
People behaved more and more towards quantity and noticed that you could use your profile as well to attract more people to your network. LinkedIn just counts the number of times you use certain key-words and therefore, people just added a lot of the same key-words to their profile. The profile therefore decreased in quality because the quantity purpose was more compelling.
LinkedIn is trying to change that by adding new restrictions in the use of the profiling tool. Nevertheless, they only focused on managing text, not rich quality material and that is where LinkedIn made a strategic mistake. They never understood that they had to change the quantity orientation of the Portals business model. People are still behaving towards the ‘status’ they think they can achieve by having quantities.

Meanwhile social networking added a new dimension towards online networking. It allowed ‘rich’ content such as photo and video material to be uploaded and shared within your network. Myspace and Facebook and tens (Facebook) or even hundreds of millions of users (Myspace) overnight and where instantly valuated at billions of dollars.
It didn’t matter there if you had a large network or not. Once you were a member on Facebook or Myspace, you are able to see every profile on those networks. Not only that, they enable photo, video or fancy little tools (facebook) with which you can enrich your profile or communicate directly (instant messaging) with other members from your networks. The difference in approach was clear.

Facebook did something very new in the online networking market. They made it easy to add little applications to your profile. On Myspace, networkers were already enabled to add the html of ‘widgets’ (little applications) to their profile, but that was all too technical for the vast majority of the online population. On Facebook you didn’t have to know any html at all, just push the ‘button’  and the widget was enabled on your profile.
Although these little widgets didn’t have a very functional purpose, it allowed for more flexible profiling on Facebook. People liked them started using them en mass although there wasn’t much purpose to it.
Facebook profiles were also very well findable using Google and other search tools and naturally on facebook itself. That changed when Facebook had some disputes about the profiles. They made one crucial mistake: enabling ‘funwalls’ and other little widgets they allowed you to add information on someone else’s profile. Therefore you could manipulate the other person’s profile and use it to your own commercial goals. Even worse, the profiles did no longer represent a true reflection of the person behind it.
Multi level networkers and product salesmen were quick to add photo material of vitamin pills, Viagra and other unwanted material to the profiles of networkers on Facebook which led to a wave of complaints.
Facebook reacted by disabling open the search ability of profiles on their network and therefore restricting the findability of the profile online. All of the sudden you where just enabled to see only the profiles of the people in your direct network instead of the total of all 45 Facebook networkers.

As a business tool Facebook is now unusable, yet Microsoft paid 260 million dollars for a stake of just 1.6% in Facebook. Google must have laughed at that wisdom, they successfully drove up the price of the Facebook shares and opted out in the end, presenting their OpenSocial strategy.

Chapter 2:  Moving towards a new world online


Tools & widgets
I already mentioned the importance of tools and widgets in the web 2.0 networking arena. All the major players, such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL are moving towards a ‘widget’ oriented internet.
So what are these widgets and why are they so important that all these companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in them?
Imagine an online world that is there for you instantly. You don’t have to startup your computer anymore, instead your phone, your TV, car or other piece of hardware is directly enabling your personal information.
Your ‘hardware’ has become smart, it knows exactly who your are, want you want and where you are. It is instantly combining these variables into an outcome that adds value to your personal hobbies or passion.
That probably still is a bit unclear, so let me give you an example:
You are driving down the road, following the instructions of your GPS enabled Google-phone that you have just purchased. All of the sudden the phone’s voice come to life and tells you that: ‘..after 300 yards you will pass company X on your right. Do you know they have a vacancy there that exactly matches your profile..?’ .
What has happened? Your profile online is known to Google, they know who you are where you are and what you want and added commercial messages to that information. Scary isn’t it? Sounds like George Orwell’ best seller and it probably will be worse. Google is realizing that and has been the first to call out for standards to ensure the safety of our online personal information.
It is not a matter of ‘if’ this scenario will happen, but ‘when’ it will happen. It is a trade-off for being able to call people for free and using the internet for free using the Google-phone. Somewhere they have to make their money and you can be sure they will this way.

So your content is important, it will be reused in a flexible way anywhere in ways you cannot even begin to imagine. If you are a frequent internet user, you have probably noticed the orange little buttons representing ‘RSS-feeds’ on many websites. They are sprouting up anywhere and for good reason.
RSS feeds enable that your texts and other content can be shown on other, decentralized places online. It is just a ‘button’ which you can click but which enables a hyperlink that you can add to any tool that can read the hyperlink. It dynamically pulls new news-items from the website where you have found the RSS feed and adds it to your RSS reader anywhere. And anywhere truly is anywhere, not only on any place, website, blog or profile online, but also on different devices such as the Google-phone I just mentioned.

The best strategy to use these tools is not to follow the Facebook nor the Google OpenSocial example I mentioned. That will result in adding applications to your profile which will enable uncontrollable content to your profile. If that profile is used to act upon by targeted information, it could be a long way off and be very dangerous indeed.
Take e.g. Facebook where widgets are enabling a ‘spammer’ to add some semi-pornographic material to your profile. The next time you are driving with your family through town you don’t want to be reminded of certain very personal services in the red light district by your Google-phone, don’t you? Naturally you can remove the widget from your profile but it is much easier for the average internet user to add one than to remove one.
Facebook users like the little widgets and tools and want to keep the tool itself in place but to remove the ‘bad’ content. That means that you’ll have to check your profile all the time, something most of us don’t want to do.
Keeping profiles ‘personal’ and ‘clean’ is essential in order not to create real life problems. Widgets and tools should only be an enabler for decentralizing ‘clean’ content to the internet, not as a publication tool for others on your profile. Only then it can be an enabler instead of a potential danger to your online and offline personality.
Widgets and tools therefore should be for communication, information retrieval and interaction based upon ‘clean’, unchangeable information and profiles. Naturally you should be enabled to choose for yourself ‘what’ and ‘If’ you want to enable your content that way. There should always be a possibility not to use it and that you can just pay for certain services which are otherwise ‘given’ for you for free (free mobile calling and GPS services).

Your widgets will come in all shapes and sizes. The simpler ones will be RSS based, creating decentralized content, maps and profiles. In a second phase more complex widgets will arise combining functionalities such as Matchmaking widgets, Speech & GPS functionalities. These will still just ‘inform’ you. In a third phase the widgets will grow to little virtual robots, also enabling ‘actions’. For example: your Google –phone will make a direct appointment for you related to the feedback you gave about the Job-opportunity you just passed on the road…


Symbioses of online and offline Worlds
Online and offline worlds and experiences will therefore merge together. Tools that will enable that in the most human, natural way will become the best-practices in this emerging networked society.
When I talk about this people always ask me what I think about Second Life. Second Life is a virtual world in which people can create their own reality and take part in that.
People who have used Second Life often regard it as being a ‘game’ because it is unreal, a fantasy.
In order to be successful as a networking portal, people need a reflection towards the real world around them. On Second Life you can see that as well. The ‘Islands’ on Second Life where there is a reflection to real life are the most popular (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Dublin).
Second Life came 5 years too early, it eats server capacity by the tons and you’ll have to have very up to date hardware (no more than 3 years old) in your computer to have a chance to use it successfully.
Other Second Life-like worlds are being worked on, like Google-life. Google-life will be the successor to Google Earth. Just imagine a Google Earth where you can zoom in on a geographical location as normal, but instead that you are able to participate with your avatar (your virtual ‘puppet’ representing you) in a close copy of the real world. It will enable you to check out your hotel room online effectively because it is a one-on-one copy of the real hotel room you will be staying in during your holidays. It will be just as second Life is today, but more ‘real’.

The more real it is, the more genuine can be (and will be) your online personality. On Second Life everyone is beautiful, young and a superman / woman. On Google-life you will just be you, and that is what we prefer (!). It will be more effective as well. If we add ‘clean’ profiles to our virtualization, it will enable real business instead of virtual dollars.


All about You
The new online world is all about who we really are. Not about who we think we are or what we represent, but about Us. If you are assessing how online networkers behave online you can already see that happening. There is a vast interest in networked websites which enable us to add rich content to our profile such as Facebook and Myspace. Without realizing it, we are all in the process of rediscovering ourselves because online, we can.
In Real Life you just have to take what you get in meeting someone. There is no or limited choice because we are physically limited to a geographical location. Online there are no such limits. We can choose from an internet population of hundreds of millions of people. The moment you realize that, you will be more conscious in your profiling behavior. You will use it as it was intended: to show something of yourself and if the other person likes that, he’ll interact with you.
We all still have to get used to that. For now we are still behaving towards a believe that our quantity in our online network gives us ‘status’. We are feeding our Ego in a way that is normal to Real Life where our looks and appearances seem to tell most people something about our success as a human being. Most people measure each other and themselves that way using all the status symbols to underline that. It was the way our society worked, and it worked quite well that way for centuries. We are all conditioned more or less towards behaving in a materialistic environment where the environmental perception rules over the individual being.

A few years ago I came in contact with Eckhart Tolle’s work , The Power of Now which opened up my eyes. Tolle’s work is full of spiritual interpretations and relations which can be a bit annoying for someone like me who tends to think and act rationally. Yet being ‘Now’ is a tool to explore what you really want in life, who you really are. You will notice the difference once you realize that and once you do you will truly become self-consciousness, explore your passion and life towards it.
Being online is also about You, being truly self-consciousness. Only then you will be able to truly make a good representation online of yourself. Ask yourself if you have a profile online: Is this really me? Or is this just a mere summarization of what I have done in the past. Am I (e.g.) really a sales-man or was that just a ‘label’ which was created for me in order that people understood what my working status was?

Online there are a great many active networkers who are in the transition from ‘status’ to ‘self-consciousness’. That isn’t an easy way, because we have been so comfortable in the doing things the way we were used to. Our status and materializations gave us a sense of being there, being important. What are you if you are just....You?

Well, ‘You’ are what matters, you are everything and now you have the chance to explore that, Be yourself online and ultimately offline. You will notice that if you dare to make the choices towards who You really are and claim that space in real life, things will start working for you. In 2 years time I changed my life from being just another sales-man towards starting my own vision in online networking and communication. It led me to a quantity network first and from there on to a quality network which I started myself (The Open Networkers) and which now has over 43.000 followers (3-2008) worldwide.
Life gave me new jobs in which I could exactly do where my passion drove me, building the Open Networkers. People started listening, noticing, asking me but more important I became Me.

Change
The current changes online but also in society is thus far more important than just a change in technology. It is a true revolution of an un-imaginary and unprecedented scale. It will transform the World and it is happening today. You are all part of it, you will all start to think about your Profile. There is no escaping it, you’ll have to if you want it to happen or not. Just let it happen and be open-minded towards it and you will notice that it will be an enabler, but off and online..


Who you are is what you’ll get back online
Online there are multiple ways to search for people. The most common, using a Google search, will search for web-frontpages nad for underlying pages which are known to Google. In order to do that you’ll either have to ass sub-pages manually or to use a grouping technique for certain sub-folders of your main webpage (tool is available at Google if you have a Google account). Only then Google will know all the subpages and can index all the content on these sites.
Knowing this system is important, because as you can understand, it doesn’t only sound technical, it IS technical. For some reason Google hasn’t produced a simple way or tool to add clusters of websites and their explanations are horrible for private users.  
And since most of us are no webmasters with detailed technical knowledge, we’ll have to use other ways to make use of the Google indexing-system so that we can be found and searched online.
One way to do it is to choose a networking portal to add our profile where they actively target Google with pinging techniques. Sounds too difficult? Well just forget that, it means that you will have to search a Portal where they are good at notifying Google of the existence of your profile. In order to let that happen your profile has to become a website in itself (your detailed profile has to be visible on one single page, not grouped with other profiles).
Other profiling systems are merely ‘tag’ or ‘label’- enabled. These can work just as good as well. In essence what you do is just tag or label your profile with a number of key-words and instead of having to index your whole profile and all the content on it, search engines just have to index the key-words (your tags/ labels).

LinkedIn will give you a moderately good visibility on Google. You will probably not show up if someone is trying to Google you without using your name. Most of us want to be visible for our expertise, not our name and therefore I can recommend that you either add your Profile on the Open Networkers ( www.opennetworkers.info ) or at Tribe.com which uses a pretty good profiling system. Soflow did an outstanding job in this field of expertise but that network did not survive.
A Xing profile is tag based. Every word you’ll add in your profile will become a key-word in itself. If you have a very specialized profession (e.g. you are a nuclear physicist). That could work because the key-words ‘nuclear’ and ‘physicist’ are probably not very common on Xing, but you are in trouble is you are a sales manager..
Jobster.com tags are quite good as well. Naturally all of these systems change from time to time and the bad thing about relying on networking portals for your visibility is that you’ll have to keep track on all those changes and change your profile accordingly.
Instead you can also try my method: try a Blogger.com account. Blogger has become part of Google and its pages therefore are automatically well indexed and found by Google. Creating a ‘blog’ is a bit technical, but once you’ll notice how it works it is a free website which you can use successfully in you online strategy.
One strategy you can use is to just describe your expertise, your company or your product on your blog and then use other, well read blogs or websites to advertise it. Most online newspapers e.g. allow you to react to articles online. Your reaction can use the same key-words and the hyperlink of your blog. Google will index the well-read newspaper article and will also index your reaction with its key-words and blog-hyperlink creating instand high Google-ability and visibility to your blog.
Naturally you can also use marketing-techniques such as adding Google AdWords to your account. If you have a Google account (free) you can add your key-words there which means that an advertisement will show up on the internet the moment someone uses your key-words for a Google search. If someone clicks that he’ll get back to your webpage or blog / profile. Naturally you’ll have to pay for that but thankfully you can maximize the amount of money you want to spend on this advertising tool.

All these techniques will give you better visibility, but what do you profile to the other person? The better your profile is the better the reactions to it. Also, you can expect that people with opposite networking styles (to your style) will not relate to your online message. And that is very good news indeed because it gives us also a tool to attract matching (valued) people or to deflect certain types we don’t want to spend our time with.
That is how it should work in an ideal world. However, you will have to count in the network you are using as well. LinkedIn distorts the image of free and quality profiling considerably. LinkedIn has a business model that is based upon adding more quantity of people to the network.
LinkedIn is one of the most popular networking portals with over 20 million profiles. Once you start using it, you'll find it hard to resist for a number of reasons. It has some very good tools such as the search tool which you use to search for other networkers. It is 'top of the line'.

However, LinkedIn will only let you search the amount of profiles which are related to your network. You'll either have to know them directly, indirectly (friend of a friend) or in the third line (his friends). So a 'bigger' network leads to more visible (and thus available) profiles (quantity).

Furthermore, it works the other way around as well. You'll be more visible the moment you have a bigger network.

That principle in itself would have been enough to stimulate a quantity oriented growth on LinkedIn, but they went further by 'ranking' the LinkedIn networkers to the numbers of contacts in various ways. Amongst others, LinkedIn ranks;
- the amount of contacts you have;
- the amount of questions and answers you give in the Q & A section;
- the amount of recommendations you have;
- the amount of key-words you are using in your profile.

If your ranking is 'higher' you'll be more visible throughout your network, so being quantity driven became a real necessity in being (regarded) successful on LinkedIn. The more quantity, the higher your 'Status'. It's business model thus appeals directly to our status, our Ego, on how 'good' we appear to be to the others.

Before we knew what was happening, everyone was trying to connect with everyone and people got addicted to the quantity system which still echos on the internet on many Portals. I do not use the word 'addiction' lightly, it is a real problem. People where getting addicted and spend more and more time online in finding ways to add more quantity and thus status to their profile. We send out emails by the bulk and when we became restricted on LI, we where quick to use other means (e.g.: their private email client and using other quantity oriented groups like Plaxo Pulse Beta or Yahoo Groups) to add attention towards our LinkedIn profile and personal page. The LinkedIn behavior influenced behavior on other networks as well even if they aren't quantity oriented.
There are quite a number of really addicted networkers now who are just adding quantity to their profile on LinkedIn. They are working on their LinkedIn quantities all day, neglecting their family, just hoping their LI-network will make a difference in their job. In the end we totally forget we are just feeding our ego...
The system itself is thus targeting our ‘status’. The mismatch of networking styles on LinkedIn is considerably greater than on social networking sites where people are not manipulated in their profiling behavior.

The message is
Being yourself will get you valuable business online. It is as simple as that. Beware of status oriented networks, they can only add the quantities to your network, not the quality. Spend some time in order to really think about your passion and how you would like to explain your passion itself (not the underlying product or expertise) to your online audience.