Startup 7 Degrees is launching PeopleMaps, a social business application that aims to give professionals direct visibility into how they are connected to any person or company. Basically, PeopleMaps sifts through educational, social and business information to determine personal and professional relationships between people.
PeopleMaps allows users to automatically search their personal contacts from Outlook, LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, and Yahoo, while simultaneously searching data from public Internet sources. The application’s graph engine then analyzes all of this data to determine “connection paths” to any person or company, which lets you see how you are connected to any person or company. PeopleMaps also pulls in bios of individuals (when they are public info).
The application also offers a professional, paid edition that is optimized for sales professionals to create better leads. PeopleMaps is actually launching on Salesforce’s AppExhcange today and will be available to be incorporated into any Salesforce CRM. Similar to the free version, PeopleMaps will import contacts and then establish connections with leads, letting salespeople establish personal and professional connections with leads and potentially create more successful sales. The CRM-focused app will instantly analyze and ranks sales prospects based on the strength of personal and professional connections to people and companies. Sales managers can then assign each prospect or lead to the salesperson with the most relevant connections within the CRM itself.
Sales teams can also access maps of each employee’s personal and professional relationships to tap into the collective network of an entire organization. While the professional edition is priced at $49 per user per month.
Founded by for Yahoo Finance exec Tim Sheehan, PeopleMaps has received $1.2 million in seed funding from vSpring Capital and Parkview Ventures. PeopleMap’s graphs are similar in theory to the connections made by LinkedIn within the social network. The application is undoubtedly useful to visually determine your social connections, and is even more compelling when used in conjunction with a business software like Salesforce.
“At this time only Firefox version 3 is supported on the Mac.”
Lame.
Does not work on google chrome, fail…..
Just tried to start using it, but for some reason it only allows you to use Google Apps mail accounts if your domain name ends in .com?
Great concept, but appears a bit rough around the edges right now.
Sounds useful. A mobile application of such kind will be great.
I like the sound of the graph engine – do you have an API?
Not impressed with the User Interface, take a look at WeaveThePeople.com (my company). We are loving the TweenLite API for ActionScript. DM me to find out more.
Thanks everyone for your feedback and interest!
Sacha / Nemo – Support for Chrome and Safari is coming soon.
Joe – We just removed the .com requirement for Google Apps email accounts. If you return to Import Contacts via the My Account link, you will be able to import your contacts from non-.com domains.
Mike Bates
VP Products
Thanks Mike,
Good work getting that issue fixed. The app looks impressive, if a little clunky. I found it to be quite inaccurate in building connections between my contacts. I’m sure these are teething problems that will be ironed out as the app matures.
I’d suggest taking Paul Caswell’s advice and giving the UI a bit of a makeover too – it doesn’t have the fluidity of a modern web application.
Best of luck with the venture,
Joe
Pathetic since they require you to give your credit card info…should be free 7 days and then delete free subscription.
Registration for the Free Edition does not require a credit card.
Wow, once you let it import your data there is no way to delete it or close your account. Proceed with caution!!!
Adam we process all delete requests immediately.
Additionally, all the data you import is yours and yours alone and NOT made a part of any public data set.
If you would like me to delete your account, please send me an email.
Mike,
I was going to sign up, but the Terms of Service put me off. Broad legal handover of rights such as
“if you choose to submit something… you must grant, and you hereby actually grant a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide,
perpetual, unlimited, assignable, sublicenseable (including through multiple tiers), fully paid up and royalty free right to us to copy, prepare derivative works of, improve, distribute, publish, remove, retain, add, and use and commercialize, in any way now known or in the future discovered, anything that you submit to us, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third
parties”
(and this is only on the first page of a 14-page document) was what caused a backlash against Facebook some time back. I suggest you be clearer about how you intend to use (and limit the use) of user information.
Hi,
I like the idea but in my opinion the product is less than half-baked.
First of all, I really don’t like being unable to unregister by myself without having to send an e-mail to customer support. Please change that.
Regarding my experience with the tool, I gave up at the point I was asked to enter additional information (company and strength of relation) regarding the ~200 hundred people I wanted to add to my network… This is just far too time consuming. And imagine a guy like Mike Arrington using this app
He would have to hire an intern for the summer just to fill the form about his contacts.
Final result: I just got an empty screen and no map. Not thrilled…
Thanks to all our http://www.peoplemaps.com friends and customers who contacted us to say “WTF” – there’s a doppleganger PeopleMaps!
Step forward the real http://www.PeopleMaps.com : A blog post… http://bit.ly/1unvgm
@Mike – thanks, though – it looks like our traffic has seen a boost over the last day or so, and some properly interesting new prospects have got in touch ;o)
Thanks to all our http://www.peoplemaps.com friends and customers who contacted us to say “WTF” – there’s a doppleganger PeopleMaps!
Step forward the real PeopleMaps : a blog post http://bit.ly/1unvgm
@Mike – thanks, though – it looks like our traffic has seen a boost over the last day or so, and some properly interesting prospects have got in touch ;o)
It’s ridiculous that a company these days wouldn’t take five seconds to check Google first to see if the name they intend to use already exists. What happens if you do? The real PeopleMaps, which Julie writes about above, is the *first* hit.
I guess if they decided to form a band, they may as well call themselves The Beatles. After all, nobody would have used that name, would they?
Sheesh.