Hello from Schmoozii

Thanks for the replies.

Joe, I saw an opportunity with Schmoozii to provide professionals (accounting, marketing, small business) a place where they could learn from others, engage in discussions, and organize. Professional networking sites are hot right now and still in the early adopter phase. The biggest site is Linkedin with 22 million profiles. This is less than 10% of the American workforce and if you subtract the Indians, Chinese, and British profiles on the site it is really less than 5%.

Dan, great question. I separated the site into groups to provide the users access to what they need quickly. When you sign up it ask for a default group, which sets all tabs to that default group. You can change the view, but most people will not change it. For example, an accountant on the site will come for accounting information. The default view will allow him to get the information he wants without having to sort through information on the other professions.

Barry, the site is closed because this is what works for networking sites. The most successful sites (Linkedin, Facebook) started completely closed from the front, open from the back. It's a marketing strategy that is based on how the user gets to the site. Most users that come to the landing page are coming from a referral. They heard about it on a blog, a friend, an invite, etc. There is not much content on the landing page, so it's difficult to be rank in the search engines. Because they are coming on a referral, they are already interested in the site and will sign up. This is what Linkedin and Facebook did from the beginning. If you go to their landing pages you will see they mostly sign up information, although Linkedin recently opened the answers section. The 2nd way users come to the site are from search engines. These users do not enter the site through a sign up page. They are searching for content and they will not wait to get it. So we let them into the site directly to the page that comes up in the search results. After they get the information they want they are asked to sign up. This is same strategy used by Linkedin and Facebook which indexes their profiles/content. Another reason we get them to register is because users will not register if not required. There is a value to advertisers in knowing your demographics. In your example you mentioned Biznik does not require registration. I'm estimating (from scrolling through their membership list) they have around 10,000 members, but their usage is around 35,000 members per month. Other non-registration sites have similar numbers. It's also two different models. Our site will be advertising supported so we want the details on our demographics. Biznik has a subscription service which appears to be working.