Yahoo! has entered the social networking business kicking and starting with Kickstart, a site that seems to want to bridge the fun of Facebook with the more grown-up, careerist aspects of LinkedIn. Kickstart’s stated purpose is “to connect college students, recent grads, professionals and alumni to discover internships and jobs, or get career advice and mentorship.” Karine Joly (of collegewebeditor.com) recently interviewed Scott Gatz, who manages the Kickstart team.
Kickstart is also offering $25,000 to the university that can sign up the most members by Dec. 31 — a move that will benefit the big schools. And already, a few big schools have signed up.
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The prize should be for most members proportional to a school’s alumni population.
There are a bunch of things wrong with the Kickstart model, and I’m guessing it will be as successful as Yahoo 360. That was Yahoo’s prior foray into social networking. They shut it down recently without even making an announcement.
An additional question. Did those big schools “sign up,” as you say? Or did Yahoo! just create Kickstart profiles for them, hoping alumni would sign up (and perhaps assume there was an official connection with the school)?
Seems like that latter, given that the links in the schools’ Kickstart profiles go to the campus home pages. I’d think that an alumni association would put its own link in that space. I know I would.
Andy – I didn’t realize that Yahoo 360 disappeared. I always wondered whether it would catch on. As for whether the schools on Kickstart actually signed up themselves or were added by Yahoo — well, I guess I give Yahoo benefit of the doubt. But your point is well taken. If I were heading an alumni association and were responsible for linking up my institution with Kickstart, I’d certainly want to direct visitors to my alumni association site. But then again, Kickstart is for current students as well as for alumni, so it makes sense to link to the university website.