blog.extendr.com

With all the opportunity now in the social networking environment to meet people and extend personal and corporate brands why are we making people search for us? When we search, the vast majority of the time we don’t find what we want to find anyway. Now consider when someone searches for you. Are they finding what they want to find? So what good is all the opportunity if it’s lost because people can’t find you?

In this context we wonder why we don’t all make a great introduction page for ourselves and make sure people in each of our networking locations point to it. It’ll sure beat the process of constantly managing your search engine optimization. Not only would you be providing context for yourself, which everyone who would search for you is looking for anyway, you can track the volume of your page. You can see if people are looking for you.

Our question is, why make people search for you? Really. Why? Why make people search when the wide majority of the time you have the opportunity to craft your introduction vs. leave that introduction to the chance of search engines. You can give people an introduction page of optimized links to your stuff online that looks like search. In that case, if they see that page first, they’ll likely never have the instinct to search.

So, one link to rule them all on your card, on your profiles, in your email signature. You’re happy. The people you meet are happy. It’s your internet signature and your network extends.

We thought we’d invite you into the office by pre-releasing our press release in a draft form. Many of you likely have more skill in press releases than we do. Regardless of your press release acumen, we look forward to hearing your thoughts.

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.extendr.com was started to solve a difficult problem with a simple solution. Joseph noticed that in our online presence we tend to make very poor introductions to our personal brand. We’ve got several email addresses (work and home), several media pages (Facebook, MySpace, a blog, etc.), but they’re typically scattered and disconnected.  How do we bring all that together into a single identity? Joseph approached Neil, a college friend & master coding ninja, about building a web service together and .extendr.com was born.

.extendr.com’s primary function is to aid you in gathering all of your online presence (e.g. social networks, micro-sites, etc.), organize and present them in one place.  It works a bit like a personal homepage, an easy storage space for your interests (links), contact info (email), blogs, and social media pages (Facebook, MySpace).

Having an .extendr.com page allows for simple introductions to your entire personal brand, consolidation of your complete web footprint, & a true extension of you in the online world.

Interaction on the web is like a continuous cocktail party where you’re meeting new people everytime you go to the bar for another drink. There’s just one major difference. At a real cocktail party, when someone approaches you pause the conversation, politely introduce yourself and invite them into your conversation. Why do we act so different online? Online we keep on with our conversation without a well-formed, coherent introduction. Online we’re pretty good with interaction but rather poor with introduction.

How do you introduce yourself, your personal brand, online?  Who are you?  What are you about?  Where do you come from?  What do you like?  What do you care about?  What is the “essence” of you?  At .extendr.com we provide a solution that empowers you to make a positive and powerful introduction online by consolidating your links, email, and social media pages in one place. This way your new connection doesn’t have to rely on Google to find your online identity–and Google’s impersonal formula isn’t in charge of your personal brand.  Lets face it, we don’t have time to google everyone we wave to online. We need to streamline the way we introduce ourselves and say hello.

.extendr.com offers a simple thing, Your links, one place.™ The address doesn’t change but the content can.

Now you can be at ease about printing your introduction web address on your business card, use it as your twitter link or in your social profiles, and put it in your email signatures.

Don’t just wave, Say Hello!

At one point I was a window washer. When I was looking for a different gig and trying to make the best impression of myself. I would meet people in person and be able to control and package the information they received. However, when I met people online or left my card with them I had no idea what would be the best link to give them. I was continually wondering what they would find of me online. Moreover, I could not game google enough to get the links I wanted on the main page of my search results.

So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I built a site full of the things I wished google would find of me. I tossed a little personal brand texture in, and stuck it up on one url. When I started sharing that one place that included my picture and video links right along with my company and personal websites I got huge feedback. Both traffic and positive words about the concept were sent my way. That’s when I thought maybe I had something to build as a service so others could do the same.

I approached Neil, a friend from those formative college years, with the idea and he agreed to be the developer ninja on the project. .extendr.com was born.

Since then we’ve been developing a tool to help people do more than wave at each other online. Our goal is to help people say, “Hello” in a way that makes a great introduction.

We’re happy to welcome you along for the ride. — Joseph

Dave Morin mentioned recently, via twitter that “Business cards don’t scale.” On one hand, if the business card is left as it has been for years, we agree, they don’t scale. Physical cards only go so far. But what about a digital card that could be edited at anytime and be sent to anyone? We think .extendr.com could be the ticket. Do you?

Some tactics we’ve seen totally eliminate the card all together. Others make tons of cards while still others have some form of digital card. We at .extendr.com think there is some blend to be made between the analogue world and the digital.

To our minds, it seems like a clutch idea to have one place where all the other places links are and can be presented easily. It can be your introduction page to all the places you interact. In this way when someone new meets you they are empowered to decide on what level they want to interact with you, something blogs do not typically offer. Gone are the days of hunting people down on a pile of social sites if those people have an .extendr.com page, go there to find where they are. Lets make introductions easier. Consider telling your friends about .extendr.com.

If you’re on twitter tweet about it now

Social media has such power to connect people and job seekers need connection to new people, therefore we’re seeing a significant shift toward using social media in the hiring process. Both sides are using it.

For the job seeker, being active in the right space seems to be a high priority. Many people are signing up for all kinds of services and maintaining activity there. On the hiring side, social media has not only made it simpler to connect with people but also to learn more about the people who have connected with them.

.extendr.com can help both sides. For job seeker, collecting your links in one place can send a strong message that you’re confident and open. Who else is doing the Google search on themselves, collecting it nicely and presenting it to their future employer? Further, what good is a ton of activity in the social space if employers don’t find it? For the hiring person, wouldn’t it be great if everyone came to you with what they wanted you to find of them in Google? Wouldn’t that help inform your decisions for the better?

Recently, the .extendr.com page of one of the founders played a crucial role in landing him a significant opportunity. We think .extendr.com can do the same for you and when it does or if it has, we’ll be pleased to have helped out.

Consider encouraging someone to sign up and build a profile at .extendr.com today.

.extendr is a dynamic tool. We built it with that in mind. Yet, the wheelhouse for its usability, as we currently see it, is in aiding both digital and analouge introductions. There are many sites that do interaction. .extendr.com’s goal is to be an elegant and easy to use tool for making your introductions more efficiently and more successfully so you can then leverage any of the many great platforms for interactions.

Join us today.

There is some discussion out there regarding if the business card is dead. Well, it is more than a discussion. A handful of companies are actively working toward that end.

To our minds, the insight the discussion is addressing is that a growing number of us are gaining more and more contact points, more than you can put on a card for example. So in that sense the card is dead. We’re simply pushing on the boundaries of the surface area on a card. Further, the trend is to get mini cards, i.e. MOO.com. Not only that, but we also change our communication habits quite regularly. So, what is the point in having a card at all if after printing it it just changes anyway and there is to much to print?

Well, we have on a number of occasions, had someone give us more than one card. We still want to give something to people when we meet them. Or better, it seems we want to help them remember us. So in that sense the card is not dead.

It seems the card is both dead and alive but to be sure it is changing. Enjoy http://www.thebusinesscardisdead.com and http://www.thebusinesscardisnotdead.com. We made them redirect just for you. No matter which side of the field you land on for this challenge it seems some part of our solution can help you share.

Google is going to find you. It is just the way it is. Maybe you’ll run a race at some point, your name will be printed somewhere, some place and boom, you’ve been found. So, the question is about what will be there when someone asks Google about you?

Google, in this sense then, can be seen as that contact, that friend that knows everyone in the crowd at the party and is so nifty, cool and interesting. Google is the disembodied entity most people have a real opportunity to meet. Google is the one you want to hangout with. The difference is that you don’t have to wait in line to introduce your self to Google and to strike up a conversation.

This is, in some sense, a factor in the decision to start extendr. We looked around and asked ourselves what it would be like to introduce ourselves to Google in a clear and elevator-pitch kind of way.

We don’t have the results yet. We hope you check it out and decided if the service is right for your goals. We’ll keep you updated as we continue down the path of this prototyping adventure.

Oh, least I mention that we also think .extendr.com could be a real nifty way to consolidate all your stuff in one place so as to make it easier to share your stuff with embodied people too. See, the “share” link and the “get cards” option for more on those strategies.

We think we have an idiom among us. It seems to be the popular notion regarding getting jobs and general success in the world, among the circles we run. Go ahead, tell someone you’re job hunting and its highly probable you’ll hear, “It’s about who you know” mentioned at some point in the conversation.

We at .extendr.com wonder though, does that really capturing what’s going on? To our minds its really more about who knows you. To that end then, its in all our best interests to make it easy for people to know us.

This insight, among a couple others, is part of why .extendr.com exists. Our goal is that on some level .extendr.com can be of assistance to you in your pursuit of being known.

Maybe we can all start using a new phrase and get it to spread, “It’s about who knows you.” Who knows, maybe you can stick that idea in your personal branding tool kit and use it to your advantage.