[Air-L] Pronetos: The Social Network For Scholars

[John S Veitch (OFL)]

Gerry Mckiernan and Emma Duke-Williams
Have listed:

The Nature Network, Eduspaces, Facebook and Ning as networks for academics.
Pronetos is added as a new-comer. 

I'm not surprised at the apparent lack of in depth knowledge of networks 
demonstrated by that list.

Academics already have thousands of expert lists run by various 
universities that are well established as ways for each community of 
practice to keep in touch.
One of the key benefits of PUBLIC networks is to make contact with 
industry and with the world of ideas beyond the university. Community 
contact is critical.

For that reason I do recommend that all serious academics join LinkedIn, 
where you can profile your professional interests in a less formal way, 
so that you might attract the interest of external groups. You need to 
build more than 100 NON-university connections there to give your 
connection base diversity. Joining LinkedIn and connecting mainly to 
other academics (Which is what academics and government employees always 
do.) defeats the key value of LinkedIn. (19 million members, mostly 
business-people, with a good search capability.)

 In terms of "getting the message out" if the members of your department 
participate in a diverse range of social networking forums, there will 
be a two way benefit. Ryze, Xing, Ning, Ecademy and Viadeo immediately 
come to mind for me, but there are 100's of public social networks with 
forums that encourage open discussion, including parts of Facebook.

As for a social network that is open to the public but is primarily for 
academics I recommend the struggling group at Academici.  Academici has 
22,000 members, but it's had a difficult birth and early childhood. It's 
currently being rebuilt for the THIRD time. Many of you may still be 
members of Academici. Take a trip back there and re-establish yourself. 
If you are not a member, perhaps that's something to consider. Today 
Academici understands much better what special tools an academic group 
would appreciate, and they are working hard to provide those.

This single link will put you close to Ryze, LinkedIn, Academici, Viadeo 
and Xing.
http://www.openfuture.biz/

For some useful advice on social networking try this directory:
http://www.openfuture.biz/networking/

I'm particularly interested in working with universities in Australia 
and New Zealand to overcome the lack of awareness of the value of online 
social networking to develop the PERCEIVED VALUE of the university and 
of each university department. Contact me through the Open Future web 
site if you want to talk to me about that.

Regards
John