Okay, it’s still in its beta phase, it’s still rather young, but when I come across something I like, I just have to review it. A few days ago (maybe it was yesterday, maybe longer, who knows… or cares) I saw a post on TechCrunch about Scoutle. Seeing a Dutch concept on TechCrunch (provided it doesn’t suck) of course immediately peaks my interest, being Dutch myself.
So what is Scoutle?
Scoutle is a new form of social networking we refer to as Automated Social Networking. You do not have to do anything, nor do you have to know each other and there is no need of communication in order to connect, on the contrary. Automated Social Networking is all about networking without all that. It is a way of building a network of your own choice with no real-life obligations.
At least, that’s how they would describe it. Now let’s do it my way. On the right side of the page, you can see a Scoutle box. You see so called ‘Scouts’ walking by each other. This is called a meeting. How often your scout has meetings with other scouts depends on the categories you’ve placed your website in, connections and networks you’ve let your Scout join.
It’s a great tool for meeting other bloggers within your niche and maybe subscribe to each others’ pages, comment on each others’ sites, or even exchange links. The widget you install on your website also functions as a banner. Leave a good tagline and you might attract visitors from other websites straight to yours.
Scoutle has an automated rating system for Scouts and the websites attached to it. Valuable sites, with Scouts that are active on Scoutle (making connections, joining/creating networks, etc.) are thus noticed more often than Scouts with less value. Scoutle also aims to tear down one of the main problems they see in social networking. Are you important when you have a 1000 friends, or are you important if you offer good quality? Scoutle aims for quailty, not quantity. Although arguably, people with a lot of connections have a big social influence and are thus more interesting for networking purposes.
Overall I’m very happy with the service and expect it to be developed wonderfully. It seems like the makers are putting a lot of time and effort into it. I’d like to highlight some things I’ve experienced that, when improved, would make Scoutle great:
- Too many emails. I woke up this morning and found 10 emails from Scoutle. Although I like email updates, 10 in one night’s just too much. A daily activity digest would be nice, I’ll stay up-to-date from moment to moment with the personal RSS feed offered by Scoutle.
- Not enough members, yet. Although I think things are really starting to roll now. I expect that within the next few weeks a lot of people will start joining (and I think the makers of Scoutle think the same, since they’re installing new servers so the service can run faster and more efficiently).
- After registering I found myself losing overview. I created my scout and I figured “now what?” I had to push myself to make something happen. I think a good service invites you and guides you through it, but not obtrusively.
- When browsing profiles, at first it wasn’t clear how to make connections. I was looking for an Add Connection button, but it took a little while to realize the button I was looking for was actually called Control Connection.
- Networks have no comment wall. I just thought that would be a nice addition. Right now all the communication you can do is basically your tagline, website description, joining networks, and one on one communication. It would be nice to be able to post a comment where more people could see it.
- Make networks searchable.
- I prefer a tag-based system as opposed to a category and sub-category system. I had to pick a category for my scout, and so I did. The sub-categories were quite limited though and I saw sub-categories within other categories that really suited my scout well. Same goes for networks. Some networks fit into multiple subcategories which are part of different categories.
I urge you all to go and join Scoutle. It’s a great service and I think if you jump in now, it will be a lot easier to keep your head above the water when the site will be swarming with scouts. Go build your value. A trick to build your value is to start looking for networks you’re interested in and if there isn’t one: create it! For anything! You want to be the first. You want people to notice your name first when they join a network. Just create it before someone else does. Oh, and start connecting!
Below is an introductory video to Scoutle. Explaining their philosophy and concept in an easy way.
Sphere
May 18th, 2008 at 6:24 am
Bas, you have amazing content here. Your blogs are so detailed. Much more info, much more in depth than techcrunch (which I love). I’d would appreciate it if we could hold discussions.
June 15th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Thank you. That is a great comment!