LinkedIn meets Tinder! Have you ever had trouble networking with people online? Professional social media platforms like Linkedin are great for keeping up with people you already know. Let’s be real, when was the last time you actually met someone from LinkedIn? CoFind seeks to solve this problem by creating a one to one space to get to know other professionals through the lens of a dating app.
Professional networking has always been an activity conducive to physical environments — coffee chats, conferences, galas, etc. With a disruption like COVID-19, meeting people in these types of physical environments are no longer feasible. In most other social circumstances, we seek refuge within digital social media platforms. Linkedin is the industry leader in terms of professional social networks, but considering the circumstances, it has one major flaw. Linkedin is very focused on recommending people based on pre-existing connections and maintaining professional connections created elsewhere. LinkedIn is not a good resource for searching for new connections, as does not necessarily push the user to connect with strangers. In fact, it does the opposite. It encourages users to establish connections with people that have a common trait, whether that be company, industry, education, or mutual connections. There isn’t much of an incentive to create meaningful conversations between strangers. Networking to create diverse startups is a daunting task, particularly for young entrepreneurs with minimal experience starting their businesses. With current professional social networks like Linkedin, the space to create intimate conversations with like-minded strangers is severely limited. However, one type of social networking platform that does an excellent job of inciting conversations is dating applications. This is due to the way the application’s design creates intention. In a non-technical sense, the process of networking with professionals is quite similar to dating in pursuit of a romantic partner. The design of the application plays a major role in the intent and interpretation of how to utilize its features. The methodology utilized in dating applications limits the amount of information presented to the user to create a more intimate, individualized experience when matching with other users. Users are typically presented with a main single image with some brief information about the potential matchee. CoFind is a mobile application that aims to fill the space in the market for an online professional networking solution by adapting the user experience of dating apps to a networking context.
Tags:#mobileapp#socialnetwork#professionalnetwork