I met Matt Zito at that SMBIZ4ME Conference I went to last week. I had done a little work before with Maine's Creative Economy (one of my old bosses is on the Maine Arts Commission). I enjoyed talking with him and the idea of having a place online to connect with other people in Maine who have similar "creative" work. (Myspace is great for music and film but kind of leaves out other professions as far as major networking opportunities.)
Here is my take on www.mainecreates.com.
The Bad
The site is a little cumbersome (I have been trying to add to my ideas unsuccessfully for about ten minutes, though I am admittedly not the most web-saavy person). It is hard to browse for something unless you know specifics. For example, I can look at all the cabinetmakers on the site or all people in Ellsworth but there seems to be no "here's everyone" place on the site (you have to select one user at a time). The very specificness of the categories also makes it on one hand, easy to glimpse what people specialize in but on the other, harder to just "run into" people.
The other thing about the site is you can only have 10 connections total. (That seems to mean ten people/profiles, though I'm able to send messages to people I'm not connected to, it just involves an extra step). Limiting the number of connections seems odd; the more connections you make on a social networking site, the longer you stay on it, right? I'm also unsure about how the site determines my "possible connections". Is it by location, or perhaps similar work?
And the site will start charging for access after a year. Hopefully, the revenue can be generated by advertising or some other way besides charging users in the future.
The Good (Because despite my long paragraphs above, the site is mostly good)
Mainecreates.com is clearly a site with a lot of thought put into it (both in design and information organizing). This is clear because people are joining it in addition to myself. (It's less than a month old.) The creative economy is a dynamic part of Maine that needs to be celebrated and needs to connect people.
On a more selfish end, I enjoyed how easy it was for me to create a profile as well as how easy I found people I knew (or people I want to know). If you live in Maine and have a creative job, sign up for an account. It's free and you might meet some people to collaborate with.
I also see that Matt is taking every opportunity to present this site to people (he wasn't impatient talking to me at all, even though I'm just one blogger). The guts to go out on a limb for people who don't have a ton of money but need representation (I'm guessing most creative folks in Maine do their craft as a supplement to their income).
So spread the word about this website if you know someone who could benefit.
Liked this post? See related post: Getting Up In My Business (SMBIZ4ME Conference)…
You can send a Request to Connect to an unlimited number of members. Like you said Nicole in your Blog, you were able to send connections requests to anyone. This is correct. This is what we want. We don’t want to stop the flow of possible people you are seeking to connect. We don’t charge you to seek relationships. If a member accepts your request to connect the member will then show up in you’re My Connections and you are now connected. The requesting to connect process is free.
We enable you to Accept 10-members into your network for free. When a member sends you a request to connect and you Accept the member, you spend or use 1-connection for accepting the member in your network. We believe value at MaineCreates.com occurs at the point you decide to accept a member into your network. In effect, when you accept a request to connect from a member, you are saying this person is important. You are saying, yes, I want a relationship with this person. You control who you accept and do not accept. After you have accepted 10 members, we then charge you $15.00 for every 10 members you accept thereafter. You buy member connections in your account under “My Profile.”
You can add your creative profile for free for up to one year whether or not you accept connections and build a network. We are currently offering a limited lifetime membership for $99, which includes being able to accept, unlimited connections for life of the site. This is a great deal and will only last for a short period of time.
The idea area of the web site is still being developed but we believe its the heart and sole of our online community. I am not sure why you had difficulty adding an idea, I apologize for your inconvenience. We are working on making this feature easier to use and will be adding more collaboration features in the next few weeks.
Thanks for your review of MaineCreates.com. We are building a company with a mission to connect the creative people of Maine with one another and to the world.