BestThinking

Bestthinking.com is a social network that provides publishing and syndication of journal quality content as well as a place for thinkers to blog and network with other identity-verified thinkers. The site has members from all disciplines, and publishes articles and blogs in the areas of arts, business, economics, energy, engineering, history, law, lifestyle, medicine, politics, science, society and technology. Users have a detailed profile, which gives their background, experience and accomplishments. Users can have their own blog, message other users and belong to groups. Users have a My Thinker Page, which gives access to their profile, a summary of topics they have written on and a summary of the groups they belong to. Users also have a My Messages page, My Control Center (account settings) and My Participation, where users can quickly gauge their participation on the site. Users can create Topics, which are assigned to a detailed category. The Home page gives a summary of the latest thinking, recently added topics, recently added thinkers, a featured topic and a search box for searching the site's content by keyword. Users can syndicate their content, and can advertise their reputation on the site (for a fee). The site also sponsors the BestThinking Speakers Bureau, which helps users schedule and receive payment for speaking engagements. Cary, NC-based Bestthinking.com was founded by Bob Butler, now CEO, and Todd Carlson, now CTO in January 2007. Competition to Bestthinking.com comes from sites such as TED, a non-profit site devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. TED features talks given by outstanding people in their fields. Another site, The Do Lectures, features talks (in audio format) by great thinkers and doers of our time. The Bestthinking site consists of more contributors than either of these two sites, but there is a certain amount of self promotion involved with Bestthinking.com. The Bestthinking.com site has a clean and uncluttered look and feel. The site conveys a lot of information on some pages, but the pages still have a clean look. The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The search feature is quite responsive as well. The site is somewhat intuitive, with duplicated links shown on some pages, which is somewhat confusing. Advertising is displayed to free account members of the Bestthinking.com site. Registration to Bestthinking.com is free and is required to use the site. The initial registration process asks for email address and password. The user is then prompted to verify their identity by one of several methods. Users can choose public records, which is immediate, by mail, which takes some time, or by invitation, if they have received an invitation to join the site from another member. The public records method requires the user to enter full name and address information, date of birth, and details about the user's background and field of expertise. Users are then prompted to answer questions based on public records retrieved about them, such “Which of the following address have you been associated with”. Once a user has successfully completed the identity verification, they must validate their email address. The Bestthinking.com site offers a number of paid features. Ads can be removed for $5 per month or $50 per year. Users can also have their credentials verified on an ongoing basis for $5 per month or $50 per year. Free users are limited to 500MB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth. 2GB of file storage and 5GB of bandwidth can be purchased for $5 per month. 5GB of storage and 10GB of bandwidth can be purchased for $10 per month or $100 per year. The Bestthinking.com site is recommended to anyone who wishes to share their best thinking in their field of expertise. It is also recommended to those who find it necessary for their profession to maintain a certain reputation and body of published work. The site is also recommended to users who would like to read the thinking of some of the brightest minds. The site has a large number of articles on a large number of different topics.