Though I like the way social business network platforms such as Ecademy use the 'personal profile' to place yourself in the network, there's some considerations I have.
First I need to admit that unlike a community, where your identity is also built through participation and quality of conversation, there is a lot of ongoing work that needs to be done in the profile. You almost start off with a framework and incrementally build a decent profile that matches your business needs and describes your ambitions (whether personal or business).
For this, most of them seem to use keyworks. "Describe yourself in 50 keywords" is a very good exercise to bring down "You" - your identity - down to a couple of elements. I tried to stay away from the business keywords only and introduce personal ones as well. To do this I started off with 15 personal keywords and 15 business keywords. Then I let my associates put in four new ones of each category and take one or two out from the ones I came up with (as long as they are motivated..). I did the same with some friends who were able to describe me better than I myself. The result is that I have a list of words that could describe me from my personal perspective (who I think I am, or want to become) and from the perspective of people that know me (who people think I am, or have been).
But how does one emphasize on one keyword? I would really like to make sure that some things are more important than others with these keywords. As long as I cannot do that, the value of "seach people like me" feature (which looks for people with likewise keywords) is heavily inflated. I am not sure that the description inside the profile will make a difference - so I have included the Ryze'izm "What I have" and "What I need" to make sure that people are aware of what I am looking for and what I can offer, complementary to the keywords.
This happened at 7:54:50 AM or
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