The wishlist part is: When giving someone a referral it would be great to have an option similar to "Introduce to a Friend" where there was a drop down list to connect two Biznik members. Often I am giving one Biznik member a referral to another Biznik member and it is clunky to do so the way it is currently set up.
But I also have some other concerns and questions about the way the referrals are set up on Biznik. Are Introducing, sending Compliments, and giving Referrals all rated equal in the algorithm? The referrals (either direction) show up on our network, but not the connections.
I tend to feel far more comfortable connecting two people than doing a referral to a person I have not yet used myself. I got stung early on referring business to someone I wish I hadn't. I have used the "Introduce to a Friend" function many times which has resulted in a business transaction being made. However there is no way for the person to whom I actually referred the business to credit me for that.
Similarly, I will be reading someone’s profile and see what is listed in the Need section and think “Oh, they should contact X” but there is no way from their profile to refer them to the person using the referral option. So again, I use the “Introduce to” link.
Additionally, the current referrals arrangement seems to allow for easy “gaming of the system”. One Biznik member told me that 14 of the referrals given TO her came from one person who was trying to “get their numbers up". Only a couple of the referrals had even been real possibilities and I am not sure that any of them turned into clients.
Another referral type of thing that is not calculated into this is the work relationships we develop amongst us. (One of the best things about Biznik!!) I know we can give each other compliments but it seems like it would also be a good thing to rank or track. Like look how many people are using Dominic or Karrie! If everyone had to write compliments to get counted it would get sort of old even though they are fantastic.
I know that you are planning to set it up so that we can delete people from the "You have referred business to" section but then how does that affect the rankings and also the numbers on the profile pages. For instance if the member mentioned above deleted the person who sent her all the bogus referrals would both members’ numbers go down? (Actually you have not said that we will be able to delete people on "You have received referrals from". Don't know if that is really needed.) But the question still stands how deletions will affect things.
To some extent this boils down to that very involved algorithm of ranking. If we are going to rank members then we need to do it on what is important and keeping the ranking clean. No complaint in this because I know that is exactly what you (Dan, Lara, John, et.al.) are trying to do. It just seems that the referral part is sort of cloudy at the moment.
Sorry that this rambles a bit but I have felt confused and uncomfortable with the referrals for a while.
So, what do the rest of you think?