In the fall of 2006, during my senior year of college, I took a career class that aimed to help students recognize their interests and successfully navigate the job search process. During the course my teacher invited us to join a new, invite-only social networking site called Doostang.
At the time, the invite to Doostang seemed like a great opportunity. Time Magazine said it was "Facebook for the Morgan Stanley crowd." Though I had no interest in Morgan Stanley or the world of finance, the exclusivity of the site still somehow seemed to be a feature rather than a bug.
But the site proved difficult to use. Many of the job listings could not be accessed unless you had successfully brought in 10 new users to Doostang. This was only a couple of years ago, but most of the people I knew thought of social networking as a quick way to lose a job, not get one.
Unable to attract the requisite number of new users, I soon stopped signing into Doostang, and I had completely forgotten about it until the class reading on LinkedIn.
It appears that Doostang still exists, and perhaps it fills a niche. But I think I'd of been better served if my teacher had just sent me to LinkedIn and insisted I join.
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Interesting that you brought up that companies look to deter some employees from social networking...
ReplyDeletea couple of years ago the company i worked for called me in because i was using one of the social networking websites and demanded i remove some information...i guess you never know sometimes.
I think that as much as companies are for social networking, they are also very careful about their information getting out and by information i mean sensitive information
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention that! I didn't even realize what that was--i keep getting emails from Doostang and didn't realize it was a social networking site. So I guess somewhere along the way I must have clicked on some link sent by someone. It definitely doesn't seem to have nearly as much of a following like LinkedIn and the folks that I have seen on Doostang (now that I went to the site) have not completed their profiles whereas on LinkedIn, it seems that it's the norm.
ReplyDeleteSimply put, Doostang is not user friendly and that will deter a lot of people from using it. Social Networking is synonymous with easy networking which means any social networking site which is not user friendly will lose out with regards to the social networking wave
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