Social network sites dedicated to lawyers?
I just received an email from Doug Neal on his Lawyer-Link. It's described as a "Professional Networking Site for the Legal Community and was developed by Twelfth Floor, LLC., the Leader in Vertical Professional Networking Sites. Though still in beta, and that may be a stretch, he asked for my feedback. Also got me to revisit the issue of social network sites exclusively for lawyers.
Doug's is in the very early stage so there is not much to give feedback on. I was a little put off though by the claim that you're "the leader when in vertical professional sites" when the name "Twelfth Floor, LLC" cannot be found on a Google search.
My take's been I don't see social networking sites exclusively for lawyers taking off. Lawyers are networking in spades via blogs and the effective use of RSS. Goes for law students, law professors, and practicing lawyers, whether young or old, whether a solo or in a large firm. This networking is working both for marketing and the advancement of legal acumen.
But Doug's email prompted me to check out Lawbby, a mirror of MySpace for lawyers. Lawbby's been up awhile and appears to be getting some traction. At least there's some legitimate legal vendors buying adds.
We have a whole generation of young people growing up on social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook. And if I recall, GreedyAssociates.com, where kids making $150,000/year on graduation could diss their law firms, had some success in the dotcom era. Maybe I need to start rethinking these things.
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I completely agree that networking sites exclusively for lawyers won't do so hot. In my opinion, why would we want that? Don't lawyers need to networking with people outside the profession as well? Why not use something that draws in lawyers and non-lawyers?
One tool I have been experimenting with lately is LinkedIn, which I wrote about here. This seems to be the kind-of tool that lawyers need, along with blogs and RSS.