Marketing Pilgrim's "Social Media" Channel

Sponsor Marketing Pilgrim's Social Media Channel today! Get in front of some of the most influential readers in the Internet and social media marketing industry. Contact us today!
by
7 Comments

Yahoo Launches Kickstart – LinkedIn for College Students & Alumni

posted on November 5, 2007


Yahoo’s hoping to fill a social networking void with its "preview" launch of Kickstart.

What’s the void?

That big gaping hole between Facebook and LinkedIn. Yahoo wants Kickstart to be a professional network that connects college students, recent graduates, and alumni for business networking and career advancement.

Realizing that Facebook might be a tad too whimsical for that purpose–sheep throwing anyone?–and LinkedIn a too vast–can you introduce me to that person you met once at a conference–Yahoo hopes Kickstart will be useful for anyone hoping to capitalize from their college association.

image

Kickstart allows you to create a professional profile, browse company profiles and network with your peers, professors, alumni and potential employers. If networking is the best way to launch a career, then Kickstart is the best way to start building your network – by leveraging what you have in common with the people you need to get to know.

A product of Yahoo’s incubator Brickhouse, Kickstart is a smart idea, especially when you consider that we all play favorites to anyone that shares our alma mater*. Life would be so much easier if I could just recruit North Carolina State graduates without having to get the cooties from those resumes from UNC grads–I kid, I kid!

image

As part of the launch, Kickstart will award $25,000 to the alumni association that has the most profiles created by the end of the year. Oh that will never work. Since when do alumni associations have any interests in money?? ;-)

* or our adopted one.


Related Posts

Zemanta
  • http://bushidoblog.com.ar Zen

    Linked in never became a trustworthy reference since people accept any invitations that come their way claiming they know that certain someone just to win a contact. This is pretty much the same, no?

  • Allan

    It seems interesting enough, but can Yahoo really pull it off with so many players? Yahoo has struggled in social networking, notably in the failure of its Yahoo 360 blogging and social-networking service to gain significant traction.

    The fact is that Yahoo! is probably too late with LinkedIn and Facebook close to this space. Also, the KickStart product is very similar to a site called Doostang.com, an invite-only career social networking Web site.

    Doostang has over 300,000 users from the top schools in the country, such as Harvard, Yale, MIT and Stanford. Companies including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, DE Shaw and Google have hired off of the site.

    Doostang, dubbed the Facebook for the Morgan Stanley crowd by the media, is exactly where Yahoo! wants to be.

  • http://www.watersubject.com Water Subject

    ok, Yahoo killed 360! Was testing Yahoo Mosh, and now this kickstart thing, What are they trying to do? I am sure they mostly use the same software for all these networks. Yahoo got completely lost in social network boom.

  • Barb

    I was wondering if Yahoo will treat this the same as yahoo 360 or are they trying to make a copy of Facebook? They have said that their plan is to make a universal profile, will that include Kickstart?

  • Pingback: SocialSphere » Blog Archive » Kick-start your job search with new Yahoo social network

  • http://thecollegeguide.blogspot.com The College Guide

    Informative post, thanks!

    The College Guide’s last blog post..Accepted, Deferred, or Rejected by Early Action or Early Decision

  • http://www.onlineuniversitycolleges.com/ OUC

    This is good news! Thanks

    OUC’s last blog post..Bates College: Glazer piano concerts celebrate remarkable anniversaries

Filed Under: Social