Although my "blind" meeting went well, and my new business contact is now part of my personal business network, it's not much of a stretch to imagine a time when the in-person meeting itself will be all but obsolete. With the growing array of Web-based live communication tools, an online business networking site can offer a meeting environment where professionals can converse, face to face, through the site's own technologies.
The natural next step beyond assisting with the network meeting process is to provide an online application facilitating rich, real-time communication. Just as in the online dating world competition for members depends on expanding feature sets, leaders in the emerging online business networking space will separate themselves by implementing new applications that support better methods of business collaboration online. Forward-thinking entrepreneurs will do well to begin getting comfortable with online audio and video technology, so that they can be among the early adopters as these services become available.
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Michael Jones is President of Userplane in Los Angeles, a pioneer in applying Flash-based instant messaging to support live communications for Web-based communities.