Ecademy.com, one of the oldest social networks on the Internet, is a social business network that helps business people to build relationships and do business with each other. The site is similar to other social networks, but with a total emphasis on business networking, rather than personal. New users can invite their business associates to join, using convenient wizards provided by the site which import contacts from a variety of email applications. The site has a huge amount of features, all geared towards helping people connect with one another. Ecademy.com can be used to help a business establish an online presence with tools provided by the site. Members can have their profiles indexed in Google, and can send unlimited messages to other members. In addition, users can start their own Blogs, Clubs (groups), schedule Events and place them on the site Events calendar, or add listings to the site’s Marketplace. The site offers three levels of membership, with varying degrees of access to features on the site. Ecademy.com was founded in 1998 by Thomas and Penny Power. Julian Bond is CTO of the Grayshott, UK based company. The site currently has hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors and continues to maintain a prominent position on the web. The site has an Alexa page rank below the 10,000 mark. Competition to Ecademy comes from the newer social networks such as MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn. Ecademy is most like LinkedIn, with its emphasis on business, rather than personal networking. All three of these sites have many more users than Ecademy, but Ecademy has a devoted following of users, some who have belonged to the network since it’s inception in 1998. There is definitely an established, stable base of users on Ecademy. Ecademy.com is definitely not a Web 2.0 site, with a somewhat outdated, cluttered look and feel. Advertising is displayed on the site and most pages on the site are quite cluttered with ads and links in addition to content. There is a rather steep learning curve involved in using the site. The site is fairly responsive, with most page loads happening in 2-3 seconds. Navigation is difficult, mainly due to the large number of features offered by the site. There is a convenient top menu bar shown on most pages on the site, but its content is sometimes duplicated in sub-menus, making navigation somewhat confusing. Registration for a basic membership at Ecademy is free. The registration process asks for email address, password, first and last name, organization and country. Validation of the email address is required. Basic members are only given the ability to maintain a profile, search for contacts and respond to messages. They cannot send messages or use any of the other features of the site, past viewing most content. A premium membership is required to make use of most of the features on the site. There are two levels of premium membership. The first is called PowerNetworker and costs $14.95 per month. This level allows members to respond to and send an unlimited number of messages, have their profile and content indexed by Google, start blogs, and post advertisements in the Marketplace. Most users of the site belong at this level. The second level of premium membership is referred to as the Blackstar membership and costs $140 per month. This gives members access to an exclusive group of members who can start clubs, belong to mentoring groups, schedule events, and use other advanced tools for business development that are provided by the site. The site accepts PayPal and credit card payments via Worlpay for premium membership payments. Ecademy is recommended to business people who would like to become part of a business network that helps them to make contacts and find people to do business with. The site offers a very closely knit community of users, and will most likely provide a more effective network of contacts than the other social and business networking sites on the Internet. A premium membership (at least the PowerNetworker membership) is required to do anything really useful at the site. Potential users need to weigh the costs vs. benefits and decide for themselves if the membership is worth the price.

• Users can join an established, closely-knit network of business contacts
• The site can help the user or their company to establish a presence on the web
• The site offers a large number of tools to help people network with one another
• Users can have Contacts, belong to Clubs (groups), start their own blogs, and post advertisements in the site’s Marketplace
• Premium membership (at least $14.95 per month) is required to do anything truly useful at the site

http://www.ecademy.com/