Somewhere: Better Than LinkedIn [en]

[fr] Somewhere, c'est bien mieux que LinkedIn.

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of LinkedIn. Sure, it’s a good place to keep your resumé up-to-date (paper? are you kidding?) and display your network (though Facebook and Twitter do that very well too).

I know some people get a lot out of LinkedIn, but it never clicked for me. I find it dry and boring.

I bumped into Somewhere yesterday, through Stowe‘s article on GigaOm: Somewhere is the LinkedIn for the new way of work. I’d say Somewhere is the beautiful bastard child of LinkedIn, Pinterest, and a blog.

Somewhere profile sbooth

It’s very visual. Basically you share information about your work life/profile in 250 character snippets accompanied by a photo. Your profile looks like a collection of cards (here is my profile). You can imagine what a challenge this is for me. I usually don’t even illustrate blog articles, and my work in general isn’t very visible. Most of the time it took me to add my first two “sparks” (that’s what the cards are called) was figuring out which photo to use and digging it out.

But the principle is great. And I think it’ll be of particular interest to freelancers. Right?

You should try it out. I have an invite code (J0rMyZH2) but it seems to not work (let me know if it does). Otherwise you can head over to Swiss Miss who has a working signup link in her article.

Now I just need to figure out how to change that frowny profile photo I initially picked.

Stephanie Has a Newsletter [en]

[fr] Voilà, j'ai une newsletter. Je la rédigerai en anglais et en français, et y parlerai principalement de mes activités professionnelles. Je vais certainement radoter, il faut vous y attendre -- mais seulement une à deux fois par mois. Je parlerai aussi des choses que je n'aborde pas dans ce blog. Pourquoi une newsletter? J'y ai longuement réfléchi et écrirai sans doute bien plus à ce sujet dans les semaines à venir.

Je suis curieuse. Quelle est votre réaction? Est-ce que vous vous inscririez à une telle newsletter? Je me réjouis de voir ce que va donner cette expérience.

Taking example on my friend Martin, I decided it was time I had my own newsletter. There’s a lot of thinking behind it which I’ll share here at some point (when I’m less in a hurry).

To answer a few questions:

  • I’ll publish a couple of newsletters per month
  • I’ll talk mainly about my professional life
  • Yes, I might ramble
  • I’ll talk about stuff you won’t find on the blog
  • Not everybody reads blogs, no
  • Yes, you can unsubscribe (it’s managed by Google Groups)
  • Nope, I won’t spam you or give out your e-mail address

If you want to subscribe you can do so using the box below.

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What’s your reaction to this? Would you sign up for such a newsletter, or not — and why?

I’m looking forward to seeing how this experiment goes.