Synchronicity 'R' Us

27 Mar 2008 | 07:35 GMT

By Wendy M. Grossman

IDEAS have synchronicity. One day they are unknown, the next they're everywhere. Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace seemed to come out of nowhere in 2003.

Months earlier, however, at the end of 2002, Kymberlee Weil, then the organiser of a technical conference, sketched an idea on the back of a napkin for a smart social network. Intronetworks launched in February 2003.

"It was before other companies had gotten going," says Weil, co-founder and president of Intronetworks, "and we have a different business plan."

Business plan? Just last week The Economist ran a piece arguing that social networks are today's free email: ubiquitous but not a business. Yet remember the old Net analogy: miners don't make money, but the people who sell them picks and shovels do.

Intronetworks, which provides private white-label social networks for organisations, is more pick-and-shovel. So here's how it started.

"I was seeing out there that a lot of designers and developers were content with creating Web sites," says Weil, "but they weren't thinking about approaching technology so they could create applications to change industries. And yet the technology was available to do this.

"People in communities weren't thinking big enough. So I had the idea to create an application to inspire all the people out there in my field to understand what's possible."

Weil's background is filled with warm weather and sports. She grew up in Valencia, California, and won a full scholarship to play softball at the University of Hawaii. She completee an MBA at Pepperdine, in Malibu, exchanging her softball bat for hapkido swords; she has a second-degree black belt.

Intronetworks is based in Santa Barbara. Weil ran the idea past Mark Sylvester, whom she'd met at a networking event. "He thought it was fantastic and added a twist. We were elated about what the application could become, and right then the vice-president of Macromedia, Peter Goldie, who had worked with Mark at Wavefront, said Macromedia was going to sponsor TED this year, and he couldn't push products but he could create an experience for attendees."

Weil and Sylvester wrote a creative brief based on the napkin, and Goldie successfully pitched it to Chris Anderson, TED's owner.

"We'd never worked together, and we had no team – and we had eight weeks to be in front of 1,000 of the world's thought leaders. The pressure was huge," says Weil. What would you do? They sent email describing the project to the best designers and developers they knew with the subject header, "Want to play?". " Every one said, 'I'm in', so we had our team."

They decided to call it successful if 30 percent of the attendees tried the software; they got 78 percent and big media write-ups.

"All of a sudden we had orders for this software, and we had to decide whether to continue to build a lot of rich applications or focus on this particular product since the demand was there."

They focused, and now have over 200 customer organisations, some companies, some conferences or other events. "Friend" means nothing on a public social networks. In Intronetworks communities, everyone shares an involvement with the sponsoring organisation.

Signing up involves filling out a profile form and describing yourself by dragging words from pick lists into forms. A circular display shows you matches for your interests and personality; the closer the pins to the center the closer they match you.

"No other social networks have this," Weil says of this visual representation. "By making a picture you can instantly make better decisions." Clients's goals creating networks vary. One is business intelligence: "You know exactly what your community is interested in and what they're not, what they're talking about, what's important to them."

In other cases, it really is the social connections that matter:

"In the case of a corporation, you can find mentors. Or if you have a job position opening and you don't want to hire from outside, you can instantly do a search and find candidates who meet the ideal job description."

One thing all these communities have in common: the challenge of getting people to participate.

"We're always working on this problem," she says.

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007