Valuing Social Networks: Ecademy, LinkedIn & Twitter

I have been a member of Ecademy since 2003. Over the years I have made some good contacts and enaged in some excellent conversations in the various online clubs that I joined. I have also met some good contacts through the occasional offline events I have been to.

However, the value of the system has declined in the past couple of years to the point that I have decided to leave.

There are two reasons for this:

1. I get consistent “add me to your contacts” requests which arrive with no message, no introduction or no reason for why that person decided to want to connect with me. This is just a numbers game and I don’t subscribe to this method of networking – I even make it clear on my Ecademy profile page but still they come in their droves (maybe it’s because I am “famous” ). The main issue I have with the numbers game on Ecademy is that once you are connected with somebody else they are able to send mailshots to their entire contact list and some contacts tend to do this a lot and the etiquette of Ecademy does not lend itself to follow/unfollow as easily as Twitter.
2. My email address has been spammed as a direct result of the negligence of one of the founders who decided it was OK to send me and 100+ other contacts a direct email from their Google account with an attachment related to an event they invited me to via Ecademy 5 minutes previously, yet I had not confirmed attendance or requested the 2Mb PDF email. The result of exposing my email address lead to receiving another email about an hour later from a company I have had no dealings with or prior contact inviting me to watch a 10 minute video on YouTube to sell me a “work from home and make lots of money” type of business.

A social network relies on its credibility and this is achieved by how it protects its members. Sadly, Ecademy’s credibility as a social network has been completely undermined by one of its founders as they have allowed my details to enter the public domain and as a direct result has allowed my email account to be spammed. There are other privacy issues that have been discussed on other forums and blogs about Ecademy (just search Google), and while I have not been personally exposed to these issues, the fact that they exist adds weight to my reasons for cancelling my account.

However, this is not specifically a post about the actions of certain individuals within networking organisations, but how their actions (and those within those networks) directly affect the value of the networks we use. And the action of lazily sending a scattered broadcast email has significantly devalued the Ecademy social business network (site) for me.

Twitter Value

Twitter is a social networking tool. It allows anybody with a Twitter account to listen to what you have to say. And you can talk about anything. Some people choose to use it to talk business (as part of their personal/corporate brand), while others talk about what they had for lunch or post what they are listening to. Twitter works brilliantly as the “first line” (or outer tier) of online networking – it allows for wide exposure.

In my opinion, Twitter helps “accelerate serendipity” as you can find out useful and relevant information as well as develop relationships between you and your followers. There are some very interesting and influential people on Twitter and it useful to listen what they have to say – Twitter helps you get directly to core information on almost any topic.

Ecademy Value

Notwithstanding my comments earlier, Ecademy does have a value in online networking.  I would suggest you use it as your “second line” (or middle tier). Ecademy is advertised as a “social business network”. As such, it sits in the middle ground as you can benefit from Twitter-like exposure, random friend requests, spam, junk and other rubbish. If you want to use it purely for business you will need to weigh the balance of the social stuff you will be exposed to versus the business stuff you want to engage in.

Because Ecademy offers a different tool set to Twitter, you can more effectively communicate and collaborate with contacts. There is a messaging system as well as a host of online forums covering all types of subject or territory. It is relatively easy to make global connections through Ecademy.

If you are using it as a second line network, you could connect with people from Twitter with whom you want to develop a better business relationship.

LinkedIn Value

LinkedIn has always been billed as a business network. It doesn’t have the “social” side that the previous two systems do, although there are now groups in LinkedIn. But LinkedIn feels much more tightly connected, more focused and more business oriented. I have never received a random “connect with me” request and don’t get spam, junk or endless requests for this, that or the other. It allows me to effectively manage my close connections (business and personal) – my ”third line” - and sits very well as an inner tier network.

Also, the LinkedIn interface is much less cluttered – has less calls to action – than Ecademy. As an example, on my last visit to Ecademy I counted over 50 different text links solely for actions I could perform from that page – there were two tabbed reagions above my profile, as well as an actions panel on the left. I didn’t even get to the links at the bottom of the page! This makes LinkedIn much easier to use and less overwhelming.

Using these three systems in concert allows you to funnel or group different networks more effectively. You could have 8000 Twitter followers (or follow 9000 people), 500 Ecademy connections (people you know better) and 80 LinkedIn connections (people you have a closer working/personal relationship with).

Naturally there are other systems which could be used instead of any of these (e.g. MySpace, Facebook, Ryze, Spoke, etc) but the value of these networks lies in the strength of the connections within them. 10,000 followers may be low value if you only have connections with 3 of them, but your more closely-coupled networks are where the true value lies.

So, which networks do you use, and how do you use them?

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• Social Networking Is Not Just a Numbers Game (debbieweil.com)
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4 Responses to “Valuing Social Networks: Ecademy, LinkedIn & Twitter”

1. Poll Results on Professional Usage of Social Networks | Social Marketing and Branding says:

   April 11, 2009 at 10:55

   [...] Valuing Social Networks: Ecademy, LinkedIn & Twitter (brilliantthinking.net) [...]
2. Monica says:

   March 31, 2010 at 10:02

   Thank you for this article. I have been bombarded by ecademy emails everyday and I was wondering if it was worth blocking it from now on. So I looked up ecademy vs linkedin. I am trying to understand social media in how I can apply it effectively to my (small) business and whilst a lot of tools out there are useful you have to screen through so much rubbish. I will look up your blog as they seem to provide some very interesting information.
3. Edward says:

   April 5, 2010 at 19:06

   Thanks Monica,

   I’d also recommend Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It! which talks about Social Media and how to apply different platforms to your business. You can find a link for the book in the sidebar of the following post:

   http://www.brilliantthinking.net/2010/01/19/putting-web-analytics-into-perspective/

   If there’s anything specific you’d like to talk about just let me know and I’ll see if I can cover it here or in another post.
4. diane says:

   May 8, 2010 at 16:01

   I agree with the comments made about Ecademy, Ecademy has gone down hill and no long a valued network, it has now become more about money than business