社交网络过度分享风潮中蕴藏的商机

    上个周末，你很有可能曾经通过社交媒体向朋友们表达过感恩节祝福。不过，你到底跟其他人分享了多少信息呢？简单的更新一条“节日快乐”状态是一回事，可你是不是还在Twitter上发部了火鸡大餐的照片？是不是还公布了自己吃饱喝足之后，躺在沙发上看的是什么电影？还有参加晚宴时穿的是什么衣服？

    人们对于个人生活中的细节态度越来越开放，愿意在社交媒体上广泛分享。这不是什么新鲜事，不过，两家分别名为Identified和RNKD（发音为“Ranked”）的创业公司希望通过奖励手段，鼓励人们更进一步、分享更多——并同时帮助企业用户。两家公司都是在11月初的时候才刚刚启动服务。

    Identified用户所获奖励是无形的，或许可以称之为“吹牛的资本”。该网站授予用户一个分数，以衡量用户在潜在雇主眼中的吸引力，用户发布的信息越多，这一分数也就越精确。如果这听起来像是一种鸡毛蒜皮、华而不实的竞赛，该网站联合创始人布兰登•华莱士倒也不否认。“这就是一个追逐名声的游戏，”华莱士称。他本人先后毕业于普林斯顿大学（Princeton）和斯坦福大学商学院（Stanford Business School），曾在高盛工作（Goldman Sachs），不到30岁就当上了CEO——凭借这一履历，若是他参加自己网站上的排名，想必会很靠前。

    华莱士憧憬Identified能成为人们在商务社交网站LinkedIn之外的另一种选择。他认为，Facebook才是规模最大的职业社交网站，LinkedIn只能排行第二。Identified的绝大多数信息都是从Facebook上获得的——只需抓取公开信息即可。事实上，除非用户的Facebook主页完全不公开，否则他们可能已经有一个Identified资料页和排名了——哪怕他们根本还没注册该网站并使用其服务。华莱士指出：“许多人仍然将其Facebook资料页设为完全公开，这类人数量之多、透露的信息之多简直令人难以相信。”

    不过，在Identified上，人们选择分享额外的信息，乃是为了凸显自己作为求职者的吸引力。这类信息包括：大学论文的主题、评级成绩、SAT考试分数甚至是参加的夏令营等极为个人化的细节。不过，社交媒体专家、Activate公司董事总经理安尼尔•达什指出，人们愿意分享这么多信息，并不是非常出乎意料。“除了在网络上之外，关于分享的社会规范也是依各个地区、各种文化的不同而存在差异，”他说。“作为一个纽约人，我觉得在聚会上聊聊自己每月付多少房租是正常的，可在美国其他一些地区，这听起来或许就很奇怪。‘过度分享’一词的存在本身就表明，我们的文化看待分享的观点是：只有控制在一定范围内才是合适的。”

    对企业来说，Identified的吸引力显而易见：它提供了一个数据库，允许企业根据特定标准进行搜索，比如说某家律所只想找耶鲁大学（Yale）毕业生。目前已有多家大公司与Identified签约，包括百事可乐（PepsiCo）和传媒集团康泰纳仕（Conde Nast）。不出意料，风险投资者也对该网站表现出了浓厚兴趣。华莱士称，这是“因为我们掌握了其他任何人都没有的信息。”目前，Identified已筹集550万美元资金，活跃用户约为10万人。该公司计划，最终将能够创造和发行以数据分析为基础的报告，研究女性的职场表现等话题。

    Chances are pretty good that last weekend you expressed some Thanksgiving wishes to friends using social media. But how much did you share? A simple "happy holiday" status update is one thing, but did you tweet a picture of the turkey? Did you reveal what cheesy movie you watched as you lounged on the couch in full-bellied bliss? What about the outfit you wore to dinner?

    People are getting increasingly open about which details of their personal lives they are willing to share on social media. That's nothing new. But two startups, Identified and RNKD (pronounced "Ranked") are hoping to reward people for sharing even more -- and help businesses in the process. Both launched earlier this month.

    In the case of Identified, the reward is intangible; call it bragging rights. The site assigns users a score meant to represent how appealing they are to prospective employers. The more information users post, the more precise the score. If that sounds like a formula for petty, pompous competition, co-founder Brendan Wallace says that it is indeed. "It's a fame game," says Wallace, a Stanford Business School grad who himself has the kind of record that ranks very well on his site: he went to Princeton, worked at Goldman Sachs (GS) and is a CEO before age 30.

    Wallace envisions Identified as an alternative to LinkedIn (LNKD). He argues that Facebook, not LinkedIn, is the biggest online professional network. Identified gets the vast majority of its information from Facebook, merely by pulling public information. In fact, unless your Facebook page is completely private, you may already have an Identified profile and ranking -- even if you haven't signed up for the service. Wallace points out, "You wouldn't believe how many people still have their profiles set to be completely public, and what info they have up there."

    On Identified, though, Wallace says people are choosing to share additional information that represents them as a job applicant: extremely personal details such as the subject of their college thesis, their GPA, SAT scores and even summer programs they've attended. But Anil Dash, a social media authority and managing director at Activate, says it's not a huge surprise people would share so much. "Separate from the Web, norms about sharing are very cultural and local," he says. "As a New Yorker, I'll talk freely at a party about what I pay for rent, but in the rest of the country that probably seems very strange. The fact that the word 'over-sharing' even exists shows how our culture looks at sharing: that only a certain amount is appropriate."

    Identified's appeal to businesses is obvious: a database with the ability to search by specific criteria, such as if a law firm wanted to look only at Yale alums. PepsiCo (PEP) and Conde Nast are among the major companies that have already signed on with Identified. Unsurprisingly, the site has had big interest from VCs "because we have information no one else has," says Wallace. It's gotten $5.5 million in funding so far and has some 100,000 monthly active users. Eventually Identified plans to create and disseminate analytics-driven reports, on topics such as women in the workplace.