Concept: Virtual Resident Experts - Technology Evangelist

Lately, I've been working on the concept of "virtual resident experts." I define the term like this:

People participating in an online group with identified and respected skills.

In the offline world, groups of friends manage to identify who the expert is within their groups on various topics. For example, you know who to turn to if you're looking for a great restaurant recommendation, a trustworthy car repair shop, a great bottle of wine, home buying advice, fitness tips, or fashion advice.

However, when you first met your friends, you didn't know which of them possessed specialized skills like those listed above. And you didn't know which ones talked liked they knew something about a topic vs. those you truly knew what they were talking about. Over time, this sorts itself out in the real world through referrals and trial & error.

In the offline world, the one skill that you know your friends possess is the skill needed to do whatever they do for a career. They must be sufficiently competent at that to be employable, right?

Moving that same group of friends to the online world opens up new opportunities for sharing "resident expert" expertise. As your friends start building out their profiles online, you discover specialized skills your network of friends possess. It turns out that one tunes pianos as a hobby, another is a master gardener, another has been to Belize, and another is an expert on home brewing.

There are unidentified resident experts in your network.

Having relatively direct connections to people with expertise in areas that either interest you or fulfill a need makes the world smaller. Technology accelerates this process by allowing people to turn in their specialized skills and interests through their profiles or blogs.

Do today's websites make this work? Sites like LinkedIn and Facebook certainly help, as well as personal blogs where this type of content may be revealed. However, I think the concept of "virtual resident experts" is still in its infancy online.

If I were looking for an "expert" on something, I'd probably utilize LinkedIn more than Facebook. LinkedIn is more professional whereas the latter is used by mostly students. But if it's something that's really urgent, I'm more likely to pick up the telephone and start calling friends than to log onto one of my social networking accounts.

Ed, what do you think of About.com? they were certainly one of the early players in this space .... and the NY Times sure paid a hefty price for 'em a couple years ago

Great comments, guys. Based on your responses, I realize that I need to work on my explanation of what I'm thinking.

J.R., what I'm envisioning is a way for people who have hidden skills, such as hobbies that border on professions, rather than people's primary skill. I agree 100% with you about the trap of taking work home with you. That's a huge problem for IT, and also for real estate since both can lead to endless conversations and counseling.

Brad V., LinkedIn does a good job with primary professions, but it doesn't seem to tap into the potential of other skills possessed by their members. At least not yet. And the site isn't particularly social at this point compared to other social networking type sites.

Graeme, interesting point. About.com is a site where people could become virtual resident experts in fields beyond their primary field. It's not exactly what I'm envisioning here but it's something I overlooked.

Comments

1. Posted by: J.R. Tapper on August 31, 2007 4:23 PM:

Maybe I am just old fashioned, but the way I look at it the current crop of social networking sites are nothing more than fancy chat lines that are extremely efficient time wasters. This will forever limit their attractiveness to busy people who are looking to get something accomplished.

My question is how could you monetize this and, if you could would it be more popular?

For example, everyone knows the neighborhood/office computer expert and asks this person about every computer question/issue all day long. (As you may guess, I am speaking from experience) Why would this person want to log on to a web site and talk about computers when they get home? What is the incentive?

If there were a social network site that awarded the "givers" of knowledge and charged the "takers" (probably with an e-bay style rating system), don't you think this would be more successful? I am not talking about phony money like Flooz or something, I am talking about real US Dollars.

I would probably be a lot more willing to spend time "giving" to a site like this if I saw a tangible reward for the effort, otherwise the only reward is an ego stroke. That doesn't do anything to feed the kids.

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