Biznik Blog

Biznik is built on the notion that business networking is NOT a spectator sport. It’s a game where you get out of it in direct proportion to what you put into it. The more active you are, the more you’re likely to gain … and the more the entire community gets out of it, too. So we’ve developed an algorithm that rewards active members by displaying them at the top of the membership directory. There are a lot of reasons why you’d want to earn a spot close to the top: Google ranks your profile much more highly, for example, than if it finds your profile buried on page 59 of the directory. Not to mention the fact that the membership directory is the second most popular page on the entire website, so tons of real people will see your profile and have an opportunity to learn about your services, which can translate into increased business for you. And getting more business is a big part of why we’re all here!

So here’s the scoop: Today we made a huge change to that algorithm. And it’s already resulted in a big change in who’s who in the membership directory. And there are even bigger changes coming. We’re going to cut to the chase and give you an overview of the new rules of the game, so that you can start playing, too.

In a nutshell, we’ve changed the rules to reward what we call “active” rather than “passive” participation. Up to now, we’ve rewarded passive participation such as simply viewing another members profile or updating your profile. No more. As of today, members are rewarded for “active” participation only. Here’s what we’re talking about: 1. Hosting an event. The most active form of participation, by far, is hosting an event. The value to everyone – including the person hosting – should be obvious. 2. Attending events. Enough said – events are where real relationships are formed, and it’s what makes Biznik special from just about every other online social network out there. 3. Since the value of Biznik to every member increases in direct proportion to the size of the network, we value you inviting your friends, especially when your friend actually accepts your invitation and joins. So that’s now worth a ton of points.

Other forms of activity that we consider active: uploading photos from an event (you will get points every time you do that – we want to encourage that because much to our surprise, hardly anyone is uploading photos from their events and it adds a lot of value to see what’s happening at your event). Sending business referrals. Introducing members. Sending compliments.

A note to event hosts: we discovered while we were at it that event hosts weren’t getting the points that they should have been getting, which is why you’ll notice that there are currently a whole bunch of event hosts who don’t appear on the first page of results. That’s about to change. From now on, event hosts will get a huge (and I mean huge) number of points at the moment that they record attendance for an event. So it’s going to be possible for people who are hosting Biznik events to go from zero to sixty just by hosting several events. All of this is time sensitive, by the way, so just because you hosted a dozen events last year doesn’t mean much – it’s what you’ve done relatively recently that gets counted (although we do have a long tail in the mix, so all things being equal, you’ll outrank a new event host if you’ve been hosting events for awhile).

We’ll be keeping a close eye on how members sort out using the new participation point system, because we want to make sure that the active rather than passive members of Biznik are getting the most visibility for their participation. So jump in, and rest assured your active participation will be rewarded!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 11:33 pm and is filed under News. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.