Monday, July 16, 2007

Interview with Jim Crabbe, President and CEO, Konnects

Jim Crabbe is President and CEO of Konnects (www.konnects.com), which recently rolled out a service that allows any organization create their own social networking site. We spoke with Jim recently to learn more about the company fits into the world of social networking, and what it is hoping to accomplish.

What is Konnects, and how does your service fit into the social networking area?

Jim Crabbe: Konnects.com as a business really sits in the middle between linkedin.com, ning.com, and social networking sites like Myspace.com. Like Linkedin, we are professionally focused. We also show how business professionals are konnected to one another. But the similarities stop there. Konnects provides a number of community building features such as blogs, event postings, discussion forums, and many more that are not provided by Linkedin. Users of our site can also integrate video, documents, and styles to their profiles to make them unique. In these ways we are more like the social networking sites such as Myspace.

Like Ning.com and the Facebook, we consider ourselves a new platform. The Facebook considers themselves a platform because they have opened their site up for developers to write software integrated with the Facebook. This is a great example of a developer platform. We however are a consumer platform. By that, we mean that we are a technology enabler that allows traditional organizations, unions, trade groups, chambers of commerce, or newspapers to create their own fully functional online professional network. This is closer to how Microsoft serves up Windows to consumers for them to find their own unique needs for their productivity tools. Konnects enables any traditional organization to transition to the online world and be productive with their membership online. Where we differ from Ning, is that we are professionally focused, and encourage people and companies using our platform to actually make money through a variety of means.

Where did the idea come from, and what's your background?

Jim Crabbe: We started building Konnects at about the same time as the rest of the social networking niche started to evolve back in 2002-2003. My business partner and I helped to build a web application development company back in the mid nineties. We did a lot of work for Fortune 1000 level companies. While doing this for a living, we formed a professional networking event company focused on technology professionals to help grow our local technology economy. We built out Konnects to solve the pain we experienced as owners of a traditional networking organization. Both my partner and I have an extensive background in Web development, and have been in the technology industry for 11 years.

What made you decide to make Konnects a business rather than just a project?

Jim Crabbe: We knew that if our networking company needed an application like Konnects, then other organizations would need it as well. The challenge for any organization is how can you afford to build an application that can compete with Linkedin or other online networking tools. We figured that if we architected our solution correctly, we could defray everyone (all of the traditional organizations out there providing networks) costs. That was when we decided to become a business.

Who is your target customer, and why would they want to use your service?

Jim Crabbe: We have customers on two levels. One is the individual professional who wants to expand their circle of influence to better their career in some way. That could be by finding a resource, a partner, a job, or a needed service.

On another level we have several large clients that have implemented our technology to provide a fully functional online professional network to their constituency. This way the organization can provide greater value while finding a new way to promote, grow, and further monetize their audience. We also remove geographic limits on their growth and enable them to provide 24X7 service to their membership.

How is Konnects funded?

Jim Crabbe: We are funded by Angel investors at this point.

Finally, What's next for Konnects?