IT Counts opens up…well sort of

I received an email from one of the people behind IT Counts telling me the site is now open to view by anyone. That’s good news and something that a few of us have been lobbying for behind the scenes. It also means that IT Counts can now be indexed by Google. Love them or hate them, Google Rank matters.

Closed professional communities have their place but if you’re positioning yourself as a resource that demonstrates thought leadership then it’s all a bit pointless if the only people that can see what you’re saying are those who are ‘allowed’ to be part of the community.

The next step is in figuring out how to open up for comments and the like. I asked about policy and this is what I was told:

Login and you get all the community goodies, from comments to connections. We’ll have menus to help make this clear to the user in a few days time, both for guests (register and get the goodies) and registered users (post/make connections).

This may change but that’s where we’ve got to so far;-)

Sorry folks but that’s a fail in my book. For those that simply want to comment occasionally, there is no point in having a registration system. It represents a hurdle over which many simply don’t want to climb. More to the point, it is old style publishing thinking that stifles the ability to get interaction going and presents a false picture of membership. More important, the edge types who are more likely to be active simply won’t bother. They learned a long time ago that attention is a two-way street with a price on both sides. they are also the kind of people who will stimulate the most interesting, thought provoking and leadership generating discussions. That’s why barriers to entry should be as low as possible.

Here are my alternative suggestions:

• If you want to comment then fine but accept there will be a moderation system in place. This is not uncommon on blogs and is there to protect the community as a whole. My place, my rules and all that.
• If people want to be *really* active then by all means have a registration process but please keep it simple and don’t overburden the registrant by asking all sorts of dopey questions about what they do and where they work. IT Counts uses Wordframe and that includes the ability to add in all manner of profiling information that people can enter, if they choose. People will quickly learn the value of entering their profile in the same way they do at places like LinkedIn.

That’s it. Simple, user friendly and a demonstration that the user comes first.

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Tagged as: Community, google, LinkedIn, Moderation system, Social network