B2B Social Networks - CrowdVine

Original Post  - March 25, 2008

Do you need a quick and dirty social network right now? CrowdVine offers a free social network with basic features that takes just a couple of minutes to create. CrowdVine’s networks are centered on allowing network members to connect and communicate. Everything on the network exists to facilitate this communication - profiles, comments, blog posts, and profile questions, all of which are featured on the homepage.

Connecting with other users is primarily through keyword clouds or by seeing an interesting update on the homepage. CrowdVine’s networking assumes users are familiar with keyword clouds and know to click on the keywords to see users associated with them. The keyword clouds are generated entirely from answers to the profile questions, which places an extreme importance on both the questions and the answers in order to properly connect people. Browsing members is also possible, but you have to click into each member profile to get any real information, which can be tedious for a large network.

As stated previously, setting up a CrowdVine network is extremely easy: choose a url, a network name, some colors, and your questions and you’re done. Inviting members is through email, Facebook, or other CrowdVine networks. Obviously the latter two are only useful if you have a group of people who use either, which is probably fairly limited in the B2B world.

If you’re looking for a fast and easy social network with no cost and just basic features, CrowdVine may be worth taking a look at. Keep in mind that your members will need to be savvy with keyword clouds, your profile questions are extremely important, and you’ll need a very active community to get things going. CrowdVine also offers a social network for events that we’ll tackle in a future installment.

I created a sample CrowdVine network, feel free to take a look, join, comment, and get a feel for how it works.