Introduction to How TradeAssoc (Trade Associates) Works   
Now let's explore how TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is different from other social networking sites.
How is TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Different?

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is different than other social networking sites in that it's designed solely for the purpose of professional networking. As we said earlier, a TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) profile page is essentially an online résumé, company profile. You can only post photos about your business, services or staff and your profile photo. You can host a blog to present your business and promote your services, products and inventions. You can embed your professional YouTube videos (3 pc maximum). However you can't personalize the colors or layout of your profile page or search for "single females, age 25-30" in your area.

Membership is by invitation only and each application (registration) will be reviewed before acceptance.

Even you are allowed to enter the site and post your profile; your membership might be recalled anytime by the administrator or moderator if it is found not following the ethics and principles of TradeAssoc.

The clean, streamlined design of a TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) profile page is part of a conscious effort to put a professional polish on social networking sites. There have been several high-profile cases in the news of people being passed up for jobs, or even losing jobs, because of a poorly chosen photo or comment on their blog, MySpace or Facebook page. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) CEO Eckhard Goessl commented that the site is designed to present its members in "a professional way of inter action on the Internet".

We also mentioned that a connection on TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) implies more than a casual acquaintance. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) recommends that all connections be viewed as potential professional or personal references. You should feel confident that all of your connections would give you a positive recommendation to a future employer or a kind introduction to other members of their network. Also, once someone becomes your connection, they'll have access to all of your other connections. You don't want to connect with anyone who will embarrass or misrepresent you with your other connections.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) differs from its closest competition, Facebook, because Facebook is group-based while TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is much more focused on the individual , company and its accomplishments.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has something called TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Groups, but the process of creating and joining a group is more involved than Facebook or most other social networking sites. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has a special review panel that accepts new group requests only from professional organizations, alumni groups, professional alumni organizations, industry conference and similar business-oriented groups. And once a group is added, the group's manager is in charge of accepting or rejecting all applications to join the group.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) also operates using a different business model than most social networking sites. There are some Google ads on TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), but no corporate sponsors or other commercial ads as of yet.

Instead, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) makes money in two basic ways. First, the site charges users for certain services. If you want to send more than five introductions, you have to upgrade to one of the premium accounts (Personal Plus, Business or Pro). Posting job openings costs money on TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), as do other site services like reference searches and expedited customer service.

But the way TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) really makes the big bucks is through TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Corporate Solutions, a powerful tool for recruiters and corporate headhunters. When a registered TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) user adds his professional and educational experience to his profile page, he's adding his personal information to the ever-expanding TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) professional database. For a steep annual subscription fee (as high as $100,000 to $250,000 for some companies), TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Corporate Solutions is developing ways to supply  recruiters and headhunters with enhanced search tools and management software to find the most qualified "passive candidates".

A passive candidate is someone who already has a job and isn't actively looking for a new one. According to TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), a passive job candidate generally has higher qualifications than the average active job-seeker [source: TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates)]. Corporate recruiters search out skilled workers in other companies and try to convince them to switch to another firm.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is an online social network for business professionals. It's different than other social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook because it's designed specifically for professional networking -- finding a job, discovering sales leads, connecting with potential business partners – in addition to making friends or sharing professional media like photos and videos.

Online social networking has exploded in recent years, largely due to the massive popularity of Facebook and MySpace. In August 2007 alone, MySpace had more than 60 million unique visitors and Facebook attracted 19 million, a growth rate of 23 percent and 117 percent, respectively, from a year earlier [source: Mashable].

Online social networks are Web sites where users create personal profiles, search for "Trade Associates (friends)" or "contacts," and create extensive networks of connections. There are more than 300 social networking sites in existence built around many different themes: video-sharing sites, photo-sharing sites, social bookmarking sites, music-sharing sites, blogging communities, all-purpose community sites like MySpace and professional networking sites like TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates).

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) was founded in March 2002 by Eckhard Goessl, CEO of Pylon Limited.

With more than 1600  members by October 2007, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is a fast-growing online social networks with global prospective. Average users typically are supposed to establish  two or three dozen connections, while a handful of "super-users" have amassed as many as they like to build

I will explain who uses TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), why it's different from other social networking sites, and whether or not it actually works.

Let's start with a step-by-step explanation of how to use TradeAssoc (Trade Associates).

TradeAssoc (Trade Associates) Profiles

To start using TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) you need to register and create a profile page. During registration, you'll be asked for some basic personal information: name, e-mail address, location, company, country. Later, when you visit your profile, you'll be prompted to fill out more detailed information on your profile page.

A TradeAssoc (Trade Associates) profile reads like a professional résumé or company profile. The focus is on employment and education or company history, not a list of hobbies and favorite movies. If you are an individual and not a company, you will be asked to fill out your profile page by creating separate entries for each of your current and former jobs -- job title, employer, industry, dates and a short description of what the job entailed.

Education experience works the same way. You'll create separate education entries for every institution you attended after high school. Education entries include the school's name, degree earned, years attended, awards won and any other notes you'd like to add. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will use all of this employment and education history later on to help you search out former and current colleagues and classmates.

Company, Industry, Employment and education history are the basics of the profile page. You can also fill out a summary (My Notes), which is a short description of your professional experience and skills, and post a profile picture (Picture-Avatar- Is mandatory). There's also a section to list any Web sites that you're associated with, both personal and professional, and a space for a short list of interests, affiliated groups and honors.

Now let's see how to find people to join your network.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Contacts

Now that you've filled out your TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) profile page, the second step is to search out and connect with other members of the site. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) provides several methods for searching out contacts:

If you have a Gmail or AOL e-mail account, you can type in your e-mail address and password and TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will automatically find all of your e-mail contacts and invite them to join the site. You can also use TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates)'s "Find INVITE function" to upload contacts from Microsoft Outlook or any other address book software.

Once you've uploaded your contacts, you then can select which of those TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) users you'd like to invite to become members of your network. You can also use this opportunity to invite all of your non-TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) contacts to join the site.

Using the employment information from your profile page, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will also show you all of your past and present colleagues who are members of the site. Just like your e-mail contacts, you then can choose which colleagues you'd like to invite to join your network. (coming soon)

If you click on the "Trade Associates Search" section of the TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Web site, you can conduct a name search by username or real name. With a name search, you enter either a full name or just the last name of the person you're looking for and TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will give you a list of all current members who share that name.

The third step -- after you've built your profile and found people you know -- is to turn these contacts into "connections."

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Connections

Finding classmates, Associates, colleagues and friends is just the beginning. To leverage the real power of TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) -- gaining access to your connections' connections -- you have to invite these people to join your network.

On TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), the people who are part of your network are called your "connections." A connection on TradeAssoc (Trade Associates) is different than a "friend" on MySpace or Facebook. Connections imply that you know the person well or that they're a trusted business contact. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) warns against adding complete strangers to your network, or accepting an invitation from someone you don't have a trusted relationship with. We'll talk more about this later.

To turn a contact into a connection you need to invite that person to join your network and they need to accept. Likewise, for another person to add you to their network they need to invite you and you need to accept. Regardless of who invites who, when an invitation is accepted, both parties are automatically added to each other's list of connections.

There are several ways to send an invitation through TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates). If you found the contact during a colleague or classmate search, or he or she is already one of your e-mail contacts, then the process is simple. You click a check box next to the name or names of the people you want to invite and press a button that says "send invitations." TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will send a generic invitation unless you specify that you want to add a personal note.

If you found the contact through a name search or advanced search, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has to verify that you really know this person before it will allow you to send the invitation. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will ask how you know this person: as a colleague, classmate, business partner, friend, groups or association, other, or "I don't know [name]." If you choose "friend" or "other," TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) will ask for the contact's e-mail address.

You can also remove a connection after you've accepted their invitation. You just go to your list of connections, check the box next to the people you want to remove and press the "remove connections" link.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has rules for contacting people within your network and the network at large.

The people who have accepted an invitation to join your network are called your "direct connections." They're described as being one degree away from you on the greater TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) network. You're free to contact those people directly by clicking the "send PM (Private Message)" button on their profile pages.

Now let's look at who uses TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) and for what purposes.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Users

There are many different audiences for TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates)'s professional networking services. The first is simply people looking to stay in touch (or get back in touch) with former colleagues and classmates. This is networking at its most basic and most passive. The idea is that someday you might need to leverage the connections in your network to get a new job or find a sales lead. But for now, it's just fun to reconnect with old friends and coworkers and see what they've been up to.

The second audience for TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is active job-seekers and job posters. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has an entire section of the Web site devoted to "Jobs and Hiring." It's free to search for jobs on TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), but it costs to post a job listing (discounts are available for multiple listings).

To search for a job, you fill out a quick search form with a keyword and your desired location. The search results are divided into jobs that have been posted on TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) and jobs that are posted on the Web.

If you're hiring, there are ways to use TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) without paying for a job posting. There's a search box on the Hiring and Recruiting page that allows you to search for candidates using keywords. You could also conduct an advanced people search with the keywords and industry experience you desire. Another way is to distribute a new job announcement to your network. This is simply a message sent via TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) “Trade Buzz Newsletter”  to your direct contacts asking if anyone can recommend someone for the open position at your company.

Another audience, as we've mentioned, is full-time recruiters and headhunters. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) is a boon for recruiters because it allows them to tap into a tremendous professional database with a simple Web interface.

Salesmen can spend thousands of dollars on targeted business-to-business sales lead lists. With TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), a salesman can search within his target industry for people who might be interested in his products. Then, either by leveraging an introduction from their existing network, or by contacting directly through PM (Private Message), they can make their pitch directly to an inside contact.

Entrepreneurs can use TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) to search out potential business partners, clients and vendors. Someone starting a small business could ask for advice from other people in the same industry. Or you could use the TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Services page to find contractors and specialty workers who have been recommended by other TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) users.(Blog your needs)

Public relations professionals are always looking for the right contact at newspapers, magazines or television stations to send a targeted press release. By conducting an advanced people search on TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), they could locate reporters and editors who cover their client's industry and contact them through connections PM.

On the flip side, journalists themselves can use TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) to find inside contacts within a company and avoid having to speak with a PR representative first.

Now let's address the big question: does TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) actually work?

Whether TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) works or not depends on what you're using it for. It's most useful when you have a specific task that you're trying to complete, like looking for a job or looking for advice from people in your field. It's less useful if you're just a passive member who's collected some connections but isn't really in the market for Business, Marketing or a new job, or in a field that requires much professional networking.

On the most basic level, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) works really well for reconnecting with past colleagues and classmates and business relationships . Because TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has reached a critical mass of members around the globe, there's a good chance that many of the people you've worked with or went to school with have already signed up.

Beyond the satisfying voyeurism of seeing what old friends (or enemies) are up to, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) offers its users a way to put this previously invisible network of connections into action. Of course it's fun to get back in touch with old friends, but that's something you can do on a lot of other social networking sites. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) wants to inspire its users to go beyond fun and get down to business. Whether or not users respond to that challenge will dictate how useful the site becomes for them.

A professional networking tool like TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has the potential to greatly expand the universe of who you know. A TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) user with 41 connections can have more than 200,000 members in his or her network. When it's time to look for a job, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) allows you to search for job openings, business opportunities within your network. Instead of cold-calling the office and asking for the hiring manager, you can get an introduction through a mutual friend.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) also seems to work for sales leads, particularly if you have a large network of direct connections. We read about a CEO of an online advertising company who used an introduction from one of his direct connections to contact the COO of a potential client and invite him to lunch. The COO responded immediately. He said he didn't have time for lunch, but that he did need a new ad server. They signed a contract two weeks later.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) won't provide salesmen with thousands of leads like a purchased sales lead list, but the leads the site helps generate come with a distinct advantage: the possibility of an inside connection. You can say, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) takes cold calls and "warms them up" through shared friends and colleagues [source: Inc.com].

As for entrepreneurs and small business owners, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) Answers can be an effective resource for specific business advice and potential partners. But like all social networking sites, TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) has the potential to be nothing more than an amusing time-waster, a way to gather your same old online friends and connections on the latest Web 2.0 craze. TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), however, is positioning itself as the place where social networkers will go when they get serious about networking. The idea is that all those Facebook-crazed college kids will shift over to TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) when real life comes knocking at the door.

To wrap things up, let's talk a little about privacy and hacking concerns regarding TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates).

When a Web site is as popular as TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of posting a profile page without considering the level of information you're sharing. Unfortunately, by posting too much personal and business information on a site like TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates), you could make yourself vulnerable to social engineering hackers. So never give away password, security number or credit card numbers.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) allows you to adjust your privacy setting for that public profile page, including an option to remove the public profile altogether. You can choose to limit your public, or post the "full view," which is your full profile minus recommendations and contact information. Even in "full view" mode, the public profile page will never list your connections.

 Ultimately, that puts users in control of their privacy. This is why it's so important to accept TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) invitations only from people you know and trust. If a social engineering hacker knows your name, where you work, where you worked, where you went to school, as well as names of current and former colleagues and classmates, it's much easier for him to come up with a convincing scam. He can use all of this information to win your confidence (where the word "con" comes from) and subtly persuade you to give up information you wouldn't have otherwise shared with a complete stranger.

TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) allows users to adjust their privacy settings anytime by clicking on the "My Profile" link at the top of every TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) page. On that page, you can make your name and location invisible to other TradeAssoc  (Trade Associates) users. You can control how and if your connections are notified when you make changes to your profile or add new connections.

As for TradeAssoc's  (Trade Associates) overall privacy policy, the site promises not to share or sell any of your personally identifiable information to partners. It does, however, share other information like your industry or region with Web site partners for advertising purposes. Basically, if you visit one of TradeAssoc's  (Trade Associates) partner sites, you might see ads that are targeted to your job or location.