John Baeyens

The House of Marketing revamped its Marketing Mingle Zone. I helped defining the site when I worked as a consultant for THOM; long before Orkut, Friendster, Openbc and others were launched. At the time of launch there was a strong dichotomy between oldschool and newschool management. The people opposing really didn’t want to open up their organisation: THOM consultants appearing with their CV and side activities, competing consultants using the mingle zone as a platform to promote their services.
Eventually the revamp allows to do just that:
. One can see publicly that Anthony is the founder of Lomography next to being consultant at THOM
. Competing consultants use the Mingle zone for promoting their services

And yes, now you can add friends, use and abuse the interview feature to have your profile featured on the homepage. But the decission just came too late. The mingle zone has 18 unique visitors a day, by far not the liquidity needed to turn it into a really useful platform. Meanwhile 4 people mailed me after having confirmed my attendence on the wireless forum network. I guess it’s a segmentation and dedication issue really. Yes, I am a marketeer, but I prefer sharing specific industry knowledge instead of sharing ‘marketing expertise knowledge’. A discussion on ‘the brand gap‘ is just far less intriguing than a discussion on whether in 2006 30 or 80% of the ADSL users will use a webmail as their primary e-mail interface. Running a blog and/or social network requires dedication and personal commitment. Which is why Luc’s Blog features as nr. 3 in the Belgian Blog hotlist: he is dedicated and has a vision. Try it and check again in one month.
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