My first thoughts on opening an Ecademy account is that the site looks remarkably similar to LinkedIn with the menu tabs located at the top of the page. It also seemed a little harder to navigate – perhaps due to the fact that you are initially faced with more options. For example, you can manually optimise your profile and company information for the benefit of search engines.
Ecademy does provide a greater variety of ways to interact with blogging options, and an interactive online boardroom for premium account holders, making it more than just a touchbase community. One of the key founding principles of the site is to provide the opportunity to share knowledge, and also develop your business. This means tools, tools, tools — and Ecademy certainly seems to offer more in the way of interaction and conversations, rather than just being a CV and networking site.
And all this makes the site a little more interesting for serious online business conversations. Any freelancer or contractor who finds social networking a key tool for their business will find the options available particularly enticing — casual networkers may find the plethora of possibilities a little intimidating and unnecessary for their purposes.
With Ecademy being a lesser known professional social network, there is obviously going to be a reduced user-base in comparison to the likes of LinkedIn. However, if you require a feature-laden service which links you with other professionals/companies with greater interactive options then Ecademy will provide you with a useful alternative.
The truth is that LinkedIn is set to remain a pretty indispensable tool for freelancers and contractors, but in the short-term Ecademy can be a useful alternative service. And who knows? In the long-term Ecademy may become an increasingly prominent service for networking professionals as everyone moves to maximise their online presence.
