I wanted to share some information about Viadeo (which was called Viaduc up to the end of 2006). The company was started in 2002 by three serial entrepreneurs in France. They felt they knew pretty much everyone worth knowing in their entrepreneurial community and decided to create an “English gentlemen’s club” online. The idea was that it would give them access to the right information at the right time; being able to speak with shared contacts about the problems they encounter. They created Viaduc as their own internal tool to work their own network and started it with around 200 hand picked companies.
Fairly quickly people within the network started asking to bring friends/colleagues on board and it was extended to the semi-public world. It was launched to the public in France in 2004. By the end of 2005 there were 100,000 members and 10 staff. Today there are 50 staff and just over 1 million members.
Viadeo is a business networking site, similar in a number of ways to LinkedIn, Xing (previously called OpenBC) and Ecademy.
While today the majority of members are French speaking, they have recently bought a network in China that gives them close to 1 million new members. They have also, in the last month opened offices in Spain, UK, Portugal, Germany and are working to create local networks in each country. They will soon be launching with offices in Sweden, the Netherlands, USA, Canada and India. They are certainly working hard to make the site a local business in each country but with a global reach above and beyond the current French operations with local language interfaces, profiles searchable in many languages etc.
Viadeo’s whole ethos is about community. They have public and private hubs. These are special interest groups/shared background groups with blogs, forums, etc. The private hubs could be for an alumni or a social group. The public could cater for a geographic membership or a group of people with a specific technical skill (eg, XML programmers). However, even with the public groups there can be moderator control and the ability to determine who can contribute information. Within France (where they are obviously more established) these online hubs quite often lead to offline meetings and networking
They are not a job board but do sell services to the recruitment industry, including the ability to post jobs to the network. You can search for people who are registered on Viadeo by name, company, keywords, etc. In fact if you register as a recruiter you get access to a profiling tool that is more sophisticated than the advanced search option. You can then view profiles of individuals to determine if you wish to make contact.
With Viadeo, 70% of the services are free. In fact everything a user brings to the network – their contacts, their profiles and their contributions in hubs is free. The act of connecting two profiles together is free of charge. Each recruiter also gets one free “job offer”. This can be promoted to specific people based key words in their profile.
The method of building your network is similar to using LinkedIn. You find someone you wish to connect with (for example, Bob) and Viadeo shows you the route to connect. For example, in your network you may have Sue and Sue is already connected to Bob. To connect to Bob you can ask Sue to “introduce” you. In some cases there may be two or three people between you and the person you are trying to connect with. However, if you want to contact people directly without going through each link you need only become a premium member. When anyone sets up their profile they choose if they wish to receive requests for direct contact. A nice touch is that rather than just having to pay to be a premium member you can get one month free every time you bring 10 people into the network or a year’s free premium membership if you forward a job ad that leads to a person being recruited.
Another useful feature is that when you looking at a potential new contact you can see who sits between you and him/her. This makes sure you don’t make contact via someone you’d rather not involve in the process (perhaps your boss if you are looking for a new job!) and allows you to see who your potential contact knows.
After only a month since the UK launch Viadeo already has about 10,000 users based over here. The PR kicks off in the next week or so. I expect that with the current interest in business and social networking the site will become another tool which recruiters should utilise when sourcing candidates or conducting business development.
You can join my network of contacts on Viadeo here.
Note added 31st Jan. Viadeo have made a small (but important!) change in the last couple of days. You now get one month free if you add five new people, not ten as before. Get connecting!
