Usually, this blog is limited to the topics of web conferencing, webinars and e-learning. However, since social networking is a critical form of communication and an excellent venue for making business contacts, I decided to stretch the bounds of my blog for this one entry.
Ecademy.com is a social networking site with a noticeably global reach. When I first joined, the site behaved very much like others in this space, LinkedIn, Xing, Plaxo, etc. About a month or so into my free membership, I was informed of a change in policy. Free members would no longer be able to send messages to other members. They could only reply to messages they received (ostensibly from paid members). This was implemented to curb the increasing trend of spam advertising that was harrassing many members of the ecademy community.
Unfortunately, the only way to make connections to members of the ecademy community is by messaging them. Hence, the disabling of messaging for free members makes it impossible for free members to increase their network (unless they are messaged by a paid member). What good is a social network site if you are unable to network? While I understand this policy was implemented to curb abuses, what it amounts to in the final analysis is a method to force members to pay for privileges they can get for free on LinkedIn and Xing. Hence the word "extortion" in this entry's title.
I wrote the CEO of ecademy, Thomas Power, and was told that ecademy was simply following the lead of LinkedIn and Xing. I informed him that he was mistaken. LinkedIn and Xing do not make you pay a monthly subscription to simply add people to your network. I further advised him that free members could not even message people already in their network. He indicated this was not so but when I brought the issue to ecademy technical support, I was reminded of their "no free messaging" policy.
The message you receive when you try to contact any ecademy member is "As a free member, you can only reply to messages you receive."
My email exchange with Mr. Power was disappointing to the say the least. Ecademy offers many of the features of other social networks and seems to have a particularly European and Asian membership which is excellent for those Americans looking to make contacts abroad. My only warning to prospective members is that you will have to pay for the most basic functionality on the site, functionality that is free on most if not all of ecademy's competitors.
As I wrote to Mr. Power, I hope that ecademy can find more imaginative ways to curb member abuse while allowing free access to interested and responsible customers.
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