クリエイティブな仕事人間はLinkedInに不満–そこでZerplyが登場

[筆者: Ben Tseitlin]

編集者注記: Ben Tseitlinは起業家で、これまでにさまざまなスタートアップでWebデザインやマーケティングを担当した。彼の起業家としての関心はとても幅広くて、起業したスタートアップの中にはBenchic Chocolateというチョコレート屋さんもある。今回はTechCrunch TVのゲストとして、ZerplyのChristofer Karltorpにインタビューしてもらった。この記事も、彼の作だ。

Zerplyの協同ファウンダChristofer Karltorpの信ずるところによれば、デザイナーやライターや写真家などのクリエイティブな職業の人たちは、LinkedInでは自分たちのニーズが満たされないと感じている。彼らは自分の専門家としての技能や作品を、もっとクリエイティブなやり方で見せたいのだ。それに、Christoferが指摘するもっと重要なことは、クリエイターの世界にかぎらず、どんな産業でも、最近は短期間で職場を変える人が増えていることだ。多くの人が、長期就職という形ではなく、短期的なプロジェクトの要員として雇用される。Zerplyは、そういう人たちも自分のこれまでの担当職責や担当したプロジェクトを展示できるようにする。

Zerplyは、メンバーの評判グラフもサポートする。そのほかのメンバーや一般のビジターは、彼らが経験的に知っている優れた技能の持ち主を’推挙’することを求められる。これまでにも、多くのスタートアップが、評判グラフの構築を試みてきた。今も、RG Labsなどがトライしている。

プロフィールのページのデザインが良いこと、そして仕事に関連したサイトへのリンクを張れること（Twitter、自分のブログ、作品を展示するDribbble のようなサイト、など）、この二つの特徴から、ZerplyはLinkedInとAbout.meのあいだに生まれたハーフのようだ。ただし、現状で、人びとはLinkedInやAbout.me（など）を捨ててまで、Zerplyを使う気になるだろうか？　このインタビューでChristoferは、Zerplyへの大量移民が起きると彼が信ずる理由を述べている。

Zerplyには、500 Startupsが出資している。すでに、 Evan Williams,、Dave Morin,、Mint.comの主席デザイナーJason Putoriなどの著名人が、プロフィールを作っている。

[ビデオトランスクリプトは英文ママ]

Yeah, Zerply’s a way for you to present who you are as a professional. It shows your background, education, experience – all that traditional stuff – but it also connects all your other social sites and other areas that your active on online, it adds a layer of validation that other people can say and confirm that you are who you say you are.

So, the first question I think a lot of people who are watching this are going to have is, how is this different from LinkedIn and what does it offer them? So, what’s your take on that?

Well, if you’ve been on LinkedIn for any considerable about of time or any time at all, it doesn’t attract every professional out there. And that certainly didn’t attract me and my co-founder, and a lot of people like ourselves felt like a big, stiff, web 1.0 corporation that didn’t really express us as professionals, as sort of new professionals.

Great, so what is it that you feel that Zerply does better that attracts some of these creative professionals?

So I think it’s the combination of adding background, education, experience, sort of all that stuff, and then where you’re active online, your work, the stuff you’re actually good at, your skills, and focusing in on the stuff that you can actually do and build. And LinkedIn doesn’t do that very well right now.

If you’re a designer you want to be able to show off your design. If you’re a developer you want to be able to show off your code and that’s what we want to focus in on. Actually show a better picture of who you are as a professional. Not only, not just professional stuff but also your interests in your, give a better overview, a holistic picture of who you are.

One thing that you mentioned earlier about Zerply, which I think is really interesting is this idea of work evolving for a lot of especially creative professionals to be a lot more project based and how LinkedIn might not necessarily work for some of those cases.

Yeah, I mean, it’s changed, completely. Like, it used to be that you worked for a certain company for like five or ten years. But now it’s, you do a two-month project, you do a week-long project. During this whole time you acquire their skills and these skills is really what’s important, and that’s what we want to focus in on, and let other people confirm and validate these skills.

and these skills keep adding your professional identity just grows and gets better.So what do you think happens since this is something that’s evolving a lot of people.
Can see that what do you think would happen if Linked In adds this as a feature, the ability to add your endorsements, interests and also more projects?Well we kind of have that already but it’s still.

Sort of the same format and structure, like a corporation basically where these freelancers these people who work for themselves, they use the web differently. It’s more of an open, transparent medium, and that’s how we want to build zerply. And so, so what do you think stops Linked In just from building something like that in?

Well they could, you know, they could certainly try.

They could they could make prettier profiles but I think there’s something there that doesn’t really click with the way they do, they run their business. And the way that users express who they are. They can show off more specifically what they’ve done. And, I think it might be hard for them to completely build that by themselves.

Got ya. And so can you talk a little bit about what kind of user growth you’ve had and how much people have been engaging with your site in general?Yeah so we’ve been in.

For a little while. We opened up, we went through 500 start ups this summer and from there we opened up into public beta in mid June. We’ve seen good growth.

since that time, between 20 and 40 percent growth, since we opened up. And Yeah but .

20 to 40 percent you said that’s monthly?

Yeah a monthly growth.

Great. And have you found, and also talk a little bit about this endorsements feature that you guys have, have you Notice a lot of people engaging with that part of your site?

Yeah the endorsements, the actual feature’s been there for a while but we’re just kind of surfacing it more and more. We’re seeing So can you describe what it is for people that don’t know?

So You sign up to set up your profile and you get to assign to yourself 5 tags, and these tags can be Developer, Skier, whatever this likes describes who you are. These tags can be endorsed by other people and right now it’s just a, we want to find something that’s a little more than a Facebook like, which isn’t worth a whole lot, and less than a LinkedIn recommendatio
n, which is almost too much and too formal that most people won’t do it.

So, me with my professional identity, I confirm that you are who you say that you are, essentially. I want to add more value by adding little comments and kind of letting people give an additional depth to their tags and skills.

And so how have you seen people using it that has made you feel that this is something that people really want? Have you seen a lot of people using this to put on their site and to get endorsements around their profession?

Yeah so what we’ve seen people will use it on their Twitter bio, on Kora, and other places where they want to give a better overview of who they are, essentially. Where it’s limited space to really dig into who you are, and that’s where people will use their Zerply links. So we provide feedback, obviously statistics for how many people view your profile and all that stuff.

And that’s been the most common use case up until now. But also people take their tags, we have widgets, people can put them on their blogs and on their websites and basically surface endorsements in other areas, and not just inside of our site.

And as you said in general, it feels like you fall somewhere between LinkedIn, which is purely professional, and something like about.me, which is very much personal with a little professional stuff maybe thrown in. So what makes you think that people want another site like this, that mixes the two?

Well I think the way that you can find people right now, it’s been a little broken. That’s why we want to add skills, interests and all these things into the mix so that anyone can go in and search –I want to find a developer in SoMa who’s interested in so and so–and even if you’re not connected priorly, if you don’t have anyone in the sixth degree of separation or you’re not friends on Facebook or connected on LinkedIn, there’s still something there that can form the first basis of connection.

And that’s what we’re seeing more and more as people They come for the pretty profiles basically and than they see that there’s a utility, as they can be found on the basis of this information… So that’s, that’s a… Stuff that’s happening and endorsements kind of validates that, because the information that you’ve uploaded about yourself, if other people <span
class=”STtranscriptContent” name=”398740″ id=”STtranscriptContent212″>confirm that, it becomes even more valuable.

So changing the topic to how you guys are planning to make money, I know you guys are still early so you’re focused, I’m assuming, right now on just growing your user base.

Yeah.

But what have been some of things you’ve explored. Right now, you do premium themes, and talk a little about that and how, the success of that.

So, we’re talking a premium model right now we have premium themes, like you said, we just launched that a little while ago and we also have custom domains and it’s all sort of related to the profiles. And people claim and they use it as their professional, sort of, hub on the web. So, that’s one angle.

And there’s a lot of designers that we’ve lined up who want to create themes, so that’s kind of a tumber model that we can start Monetizing on but then we also know that bringing these people that we’re bringing that are kind of hard to find on other sites, they’re not sort of, they’re on specific vertically based sites such as Dribble, or whatever it is that, for specific professions, if we can gather a lot of these people, from many different verticals, that will become powerful and that’s something we can definitely monetize in the future.

So you mentioned Dreble, which is mostly developer focused and there’s also vhance, which has a lot of photography, and there’s all these sites for different verticals. First of all, do you have any plans to integrate with any of those? And, what makes you think that people want somewhere to collect all that and not just use those sites individually?

Right, so we’re actually first starting to work with vhance, we initiated talks with them, and for us to be able to display their portfolio material that they have. They don’t have the layer of the resume style, and connecting people, and other things. So, let’s see if we can tap into their API and actually display that stuff that they have.

So there’s a bunch of sites out there, that we can start working with potentially, and show off the work that people have already prepared.

Great. So, to someone watching this, what would be your pitch to why they should use Zerply if, let’s say, they already have a few, a presence online. They might even have their own website. What’s your pitch to them?

Well, it’s. First of all, it’s su
ch an easy the thing to do, you set it up, you collect, most people will have all this data, they’ll have the resume stuff on LinkedIn or Facebook but this brings it all together and shows hey this is me, this is who I At least my version of myself. But in addition to a pretty and sort of a beautiful showcase of who you are you can also have that validated by other people and that’s really what brings people to our site.

They see that real people will confirm and say that this is cool, this is actually good at something.

Great. And so the final question what’s next for you guys? Where do you see the site moving forward and what are your plans in the future?

So, endorsements kind of focusing on that right now and letting that become the currency of the site. It’s already happened for a while but now it’s becoming more and more apparent. So we’re doubling down, focusing on that and then. Like I said the partnerships with certain sites to be able to dig in and dig deeper and say you actually you want to see code, well here’s code on Get Well, here’s code on Forest or other places.

That’s what we’re doing to paint a deeper and richer picture of our users.

All right great thanks Chris, thanks so much for joining us.

All right, thank you.

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（翻訳：iwatani(a.k.a. hiwa)）