One year of openBC
by Volker Weber
It has now been one year since I accepted an invitation to join OpenBC. At that time I had been bugged by many friends with invitations and I wanted to be safe from receiving even more. I registered without high expectations. The "impossible" high water mark at that time was Mitch Wolfson who had 483 contacts after being a member of this service for only one year.
Much to my surprise it did not take much time to pass that number. Currently I have 607 people registered as contacts. (Mitch has 683). And there are lots and lots of people I know who never participate in these kinds of games. During the time I worked at the university I had personal contacts with about 500 students, almost none of them are in my network. There is also a large number of people in my class that I permanently lost contact with. But there is hope. I have recently been found by a member of my high school class on openBC.
The network has grown tremendously over the last year. If I recall this correctly there has been a time when there were only 9 people on the network that invited more other members, and only 49 people who had more contacts. These numbers now stand at 12 and 203.
Has it earned me any money? None that I know of. Was it worthwile anyway? You bet. It is now my primary directory for looking up addresses and phone numbers that I don't even bother to write down in my address book. And all of those addresses are maintained by their respective owners.
In case you are not yet playing, here is your free invitation.
Comments
Same for me. Not earned one Euro with my membership - but never had to spent a Euro for it on the other hand ;-)
Its my primary source for looking up adress and contact information, at least for german business partners. But I still miss a way to sync the data bidirectional, so the adresses stay up to date in my adressbook. Hope they will integrate this in the near future.
And another cool thing on my wishlist is an integration with Plazes, so users can see who is online and next to your plazes...
I would not need a sync. But let me have an LDAP interface ...
A sync tool is being prepared, we are betatesting it internally now.
An LDAP interface is unlikely. To enforce privacy and data security, we try to avoid APIs that make scripted data mining easy. If you have suggestions, don't hesitate to contact us, though.
Best regards from epublica, the technical guys behind openBC.
I'm amazed... not too long ago, I reported some trouble about the OpenBC-plugin for Notes and a couple of days later I was contacted by their support. We couldn't fix the problem, but two weeks (or so) later the guy emailed me again and said there was a new version and asked whether I might give it another shot. That worked...
Now, you mention it here again and hoops, there's someone listening for suggestions. That's what I call having an ear for your customers.
Big e-hug!
Wow (vowe ? ;-)) 594 contacts within not yet a year.
Got some less and started open BC even prior to their official start.
Isn't it quality instead of quantity ?
But there you might go.
Sure, no Euro / Dime earned so far directly through open BC but personal contacts you couldn't even pay for !
For me it's fun to check whether the person who just called me up - sometimes making a big fuzz about everything - is a member of open BC. If so, it's often funny to see his/her open BC "history"... ;-)
Best
Heiko
Congrats to the number of contacts and thank you for your warm words! Like many of our members you use openBC like the "yellow pages", wich is indeed one of the main benefits of openBC. To widen your possibilities to earn money on the platform we are currently working on something... Can't tell you more, but I have to say that we get a lot of feedback from users who've already earned money thanks to openBC, wether it's as a result of winning a new client, finding a new business partner or indirectly promoting your business in a group for example.
Jetzt auch mit Skype!
Ankündigung im VoIP Forum:
Endlich !
Nachdem es sehr ruhig um die vormals propagierte openBC-interne Telefonie-Lösung (ISDN-basierendes openBC-Conferencing System, kurz openBC-phone genannt) geworden ist, wurde jetzt offenbar der bereits im August 2004 im VoIP-Forum, ( jetzt in VoIP-Gruppe umbenannt ) behandelte und an die "openBC-Macher" in PM-Form übermittelte Vorschlag zur Skype Integration, realisiert - zumindest erscheint seit heute, 25.Nov.2005 auf meiner Kontaktseite im Kurz-Statistik-Feld eine entsprechende Funktion, dargestellt als unscheinbares "Häkchen auf günem Hintergrund, daneben schlicht skype und mit verknüpfung zu "skype:openbc?call"
Da ich diese Erweiterung grundsätzlich als echten, Gruppen übergreifenden Mehrwert ansehe erschien es mir sinnvoll, hierfür in der VoIP-Gruppe ein eigenes Board zu eröffnen.
Ich erhoffe mit dieser Vorgehensweise eine ähnlich konstruktive Diskussion zu initiieren, wie dies auch zum Thema "openBC-phone" gelang.
Ich freue mich diesbezüglich auf Ihre hoffentlich zahlreichen "skype:openbc" Beiträge, insb. zu usability, Funktionsbewertung, Verbesserungsvorschläge und/oder konstruktive Kritik im allgemeinen .
Herzliche Aschaffenburger Grüße
Michael Gehlert,
Gruppen Initiator & Moderator
Congratulations, Volker!
To be quite honest, I have not had much time this year to put into building my contact base, so it is no wonder you caught up ;-)
Almost all of the ones I added this year are people who connected to me. I have about 50 people in my queue to approve, but I am not sure if I know them, and I do not know when or if I will get around to approving them.
Keep up the good work!
Mitch
