The EXT social networking platform seeks to fill a niche not currently filled by any existing social networking site. Platforms such as Facebook.com or MySpace.com encourage networking for networking’s sake, without any particular goal in mind. These and other similar social networking platforms generate revenue from advertising viewed by contacts as they interact with each other through messaging, promotion of events, and giving of ‘electronic gifts.’ The purpose of the EXT platform is more targeted. The hope in creating this new online networking toolset is that smaller networks will form between members, focused on specific goals, for more specific purposes. Rather than simply joining EXT to ‘network,’ the dream is that members will choose to join EXT to allow deeper and more meaningful interaction and a better chance at achieving a common objective.
Whereas many users of other networks may soon tire of the social aspects provided through them, the creators of EXT believes that their members will remain active for longer stretches of time. Those who form networks using the EXT platform and toolset are more likely to do so for a particular purpose. That purpose will be what encourages them to continue making use of EXT. Rather than relying on novelties to retain members, EXT hopes that the goals of the members themselves will keep them active. This should especially be true of those who see the value of the networking tools EXT provides for organizing, strategizing, and helping a group’s vision become a reality.
Some groups succeed in their plans, while others fail. The difference between one group’s success and another’s failure has often been difficult to tease out. EXT believes that it can capture and index the work done by a group struggling to achieve a particular goal, with the aim of sharing that information with other groups involved in similar endeavors. Experiences shared by group members, and advice given between them could serve as the basis for much improved experience-based search engines as well.
Groups who take advantage of the EXT platform’s pool of stored knowledge and experiences could well shorten the learning curve necessary in seeing their vision become reality. The transfer of the experiences of one group to another, in a sense, makes the former group an additional and invaluable collaborator in the new group’s problem solving ventures. It is from this ‘experience transfer’ component that the ‘EXT’ social networking platform takes its name.
There are certain tools that EXT has created that make it more likely to sustain Micro Social Networks (MSNs) within the greater EXT network than could other social networking platforms. One such tool is a member’s ability to create more than one profile for his self or her self. Other platforms allow the creation of only one profile per member, which suggests that the member has joined the network for only one reason, likely to ‘network’ in general. With EXT, members can create multiple profiles, and design each one to fit the particular micro network for which it was created. A member may create one generic profile that is accessible to anyone on the EXT network. But another profile may be private, restricted to approved contacts, and be focused on a particular cause with which the member is involved. The first profile may be very generic. The second, however, should allow the member to provide information about his or herself and their ideas that would only be of interested to those in their MSN also committed to a particular issue or interest.
EXT was designed with the hope that online social networking could move beyond what might be called the ‘novelty phase,’ to become a truly powerful knowledge-building, cause-centered collaborative tool. As a network platform, it is set apart by the tools it employs to transfer the experiences of others, its encouragement of members to create multiple profiles, and its enabling of members to control who can see what profile. With these tools, EXT hopes to further the work of many charitable organizations, community activists, and volunteers committed to a common goal or ideal.
Newswire.net a subsidiary of Extensions, Inc. (Symbol:EXTI) www.ext.com makes use of a patent-pending technology to harness the power of independent bloggers, writers and journalists and the extent of the internet to create a forum for all news stories, not simply the few that interest the main media outlets. Newswire seeks to be for the news world and for independent journalists what the Sundance film festival has become for cinematography and independent filmmakers. The technology used by Newswire will allow news stories with even the smallest niche audiences to find those readers, and give truly talented but underappreciated independent writers, bloggers and journalists an opportunity to make a real impact and to be part of a credible news organization.
To learn more about Newswire visit http://www.newswire.net/