This is nothing like facebook, users can search the world in any language for people, based on need and attributes. Other social networks are merely sites to chat and keep in touch with friends on the internet.

Good job PeopleJar!

http://planbiznes.ru

Looks like most of the positive posts are biased, Step into real world guys.

Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner (phrase coined by a “Chinese” person, not me)

What is the point of this website, when person in china cannot speak English and want to connect with American or Russian , still he is stuck in his own network of people. If I want to find a nanny or model I will use craigslist !

For sure the website is going to stay for a while, but when it SHUTS DOWN nobody is going to hear about it.

Move on and pitch new investors on your next social app idea du jour.

Any application that relies upon a sizable user base will require both time to grow and a dialogue with the community (one of which has been demonstrated here). PeopleJar is growing every day–a fact I know from a recently fixed bug so it can only get better. They’ll need to maintain a great relationship with their community and integrate their service and search to gain popularity and succeed.

(I am not the same Chris who wrote the post with poor grammar above.)

GOOD LUCK

To clarify a few things:

Major one, on Positioning: PeopleJar is not a social networking application. It is a tool to be found and search. It is not meant to bring your existing relationships online. It’s goal is to help create new connections: social or professional for real life oriented needs. It is not much of a tool to maintaining that established connection either. Indeed, after such relationship is established, it may result into being somewhat social on PeopleJar networks, but it is not the main focus. There’s no goal to compete with Facebook, take their users, etc. As one of the comments stated right on: it is an application built to fill the void in the Internet that making a new connection today is still restricted and a micro-site owned industry, mostly membership fee driven. Why such microsites (all independently successful businesses in their categories be it dating or equestrian sports) to this day are able to get away with charging users fees, if searching for and connecting with people is resolved by Facebook & Myspace? These are 2 separate domains: social networking (existing friends) & microsites (new connections for sports, professional, hobbies, social reasons). And everyone keeps looking in the social networking direction, Still… Today: social networks are General, they are NOT industry specific. They do NOT do specific search connecting you to people. On LinkedIn you can search by these attributes: a person’s name, school name, company – only 3 more or less. The fact is: today, microsites own connecting new people and industry specific people search domain. It is sad to see the majority’s perception that Facebook is to develop it all and to fill all the voids, encouraging people to submit to the Matrix and take the blue pill:). As Mark Zuckerberg,founder of Facebook stated in his interview with the LA Times on October 7, 2007, “We’re not trying to help you make new friends online. We’re just trying to help you digitally map out the relationships you already have.” Maybe big boys will change their focus and start making new connections too, but they aren’t an answer to everything. Internet is still at its infancy. It’s nice of you to rip us compared to giants in social networking domain, but we’re “evolving microsites-up” type of application. Everything is relative.

On the Content: Our networks are dedicated to particular fields and its amateur to compare it to groups. We only allow one network per field, like Wikipedia only allows one article on a given topic. More importantly, if you look deeper: within each network there’s a set of attributes (also dynamically expandable by user contributions) that people in this field use to describe themselves by. So, if you are a model, attributes will be height, weight, skin color; if you are an aupair/nanny: perhaps a spoken language, driving ability, working experience with handicapped/autistic child, etc. Attributes are linked like this to related fields and are universally considered useful to connect with people in this network/industry by its audience. As stated in some comments: this is somewhat similar to eBay’s approach to products – when listing a car it asks you what year it is, what mileage is on it, etc.

From a couple of examples given above: what is “an establish new connection application”? When a family is looking for a nanny with that particular experience. It is to help connect for a job and go work for them, it is NOT for them to sit online and socialize about being an aupair and make wall posts about it. Same applies to a runner, a programmer, a drummer, filmmaker, etc. PeopleJar is not filled with social features, rather is focused on a simple core search/be found functionality. We don’t do wall posts and alike social functionalities as was pointed out. We may introduce additional features to help people connect and benefit the network to help people be found better. Some social features overlap on many sites, e.g. YouTube is not a social network, yet making comments, messaging a member is a common set of tools necessary for any site. Is video foundation a business or a feature? I see it as clearly defined business foundation…. PeopleJar’s nucleus is making new connections and being found through unique approach to expandable by users attribute-driven search. Perhaps you might end up finding your existing friend by last name or school or company name too, and somewhat socializing with them on PeopleJar, but this is a tangent.

Being an internal people search, it is vital for PeopleJar to have the audience base. eBay was built with no inventory to buy or sell either. It is also a common misconception about searching for people online to get instant results. For example, when you are company and looking to hire a software developer, you cast your line first: “I’m looking for Rails developer with 2 years of experience in Irvine, CA”. This action, is equally as important as getting your match. Tons of individuals and companies do this kind of “casting query” activity daily and paying for it. Be it looking for a runner in the area, aupair job, individual student filmmaking project, or a career search. It has little to do with social networking or being a Facebook wannabe. It’s an activity coming out of a need that is resolved with utilities. On social networks you can browse through thousands of repeated groups yet you cant event search by a Spoken Language. What PeopleJar should be compared to is tons of microsites like greataupair.com, onemodelplace.com, monster.com that (despite Myspace & Facebook) dominate connecting people fields on a tribal level. Like product sales microsites dominated more prior to eBay coming along.

I personally faced the lack of this solution many times on a global level in every field I looked into, whether it was being a foreigner coming to the US to study, getting a job or making a new sport friend in the area.

For some we’re perhaps yet another feature that has to be dealt with. And we’re proud to be the first to bring this to light. Many great things start small and meet a great resistance and negativity from amputated spirits who sit back criticize and never create anything.

Internet has brought me through a long path from a little hometown in Russia with a dream of one day being here with no means to do so. PeopleJar was brought to life with a sincere dream for me & the team to gift people across the world a tool make that path easier whatever their industry may be, wherever it is in the world.

We’re proud of every step taken. And there’s plenty more to go…
Thank you everyone for your input.
–
Alexander Alexandrov